Labor Movement

Labor Leaders Provide Cover For Privatization Of Medicare

December 15, 2022 Ed Grystar, Counter Punch. Educate! Health Care, Labor Movement, Medicare, Privatization

Such a statement from the AFL-CIO would suggest that labor is determined to protect Medicare and even support improving and expanding it to all Americans. Additionally, President Biden and Democrats regularly criticize Republican threats to reauthorize and voucherize Medicare. Meanwhile, what’s left out of both the Democrat talking points and the AFL-CIO’s 2022 national resolution on healthcare is any acknowledgment that the real threat to Medicare and healthcare today is the decades-long tax-subsidized privatization supported by both major parties. With major support from organized labor, including AFL-CIO President George Meany at the signing, Medicare was signed into law in 1965. Before Medicare, only 60% of those over 65 had insurance since it was unavailable or unaffordable via private insurance (seniors were charged 3x the rate of younger people).

Theatre Row Workers Unanimously Demand Voluntary Recognition Of Their New Union: Theatre Shop Union

December 15, 2022 Left Voice. Organize! Labor Movement, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Theater, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - On Tuesday, December 13, workers at Theatre Row — a multi-venue theatre in New York City — submitted a unanimous card campaign to the board of their parent organization, Building for the Arts, demanding voluntary recognition of their new union. This union — Theatre Shop Union (TSU) — is an independent union and the first of its kind in the theatre industry. In a press release, TSU wrote: We, the workers of Theatre Row, are proud to announce our intent to organize a new, independent union: Theatre Shop Union (TSU). With one hundred percent support from workers eligible, the twenty-five members of TSU went to the Building for the Arts board on December 13th to demand voluntary recognition of our union. Regardless of the board’s decision, we are eager to meet them at the bargaining table to negotiate a contract that meets our demands.

‘I Walked Away Like A Giant’: New York Troublemakers School Draws 400

December 14, 2022 Hannah Grimmett, Labor Notes. Organize! Education, Labor Movement, New York (NY), Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - Four hundred rank-and-file organizers gathered November 19 in a New York City high school at the largest Troublemakers School yet. The day was part learning opportunity, part celebration of shared struggle. In the opening session, led by a Teamster and two educators, troublemakers roared with applause at the proclamation that a potential UPS strike next summer would cause “6 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] to stop moving” and booed the “customer service” mentality being pushed onto educators by school administrators. Then participants broke out into classrooms for workshops like New Organizing, Assertive Grievance Handling, and Race and Labor. Among the skills practiced were laying out step-by-step escalating campaigns that build capacity as you go; recognizing the qualities that make an issue ripe for organizing; and how to push co-workers to get more involved in the union, while also respecting their boundaries and complex personal and internal lives.

Eric Blanc Takes A Hatchet To US History

December 13, 2022 Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. Strategize! Democratic Party, History, Labor Movement, New Deal, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

From unionizing Starbucks and Amazon workers to thousands of graduate students on strike, we’re seeing a fresh upsurge of union struggle in the United States. And that movement is becoming more militant: the last few months alone have seen a major uptick in strikes, with this year already outstripping the last. Eric Blanc has weighed in on the upsurge. Assistant professor at Rutgers and writer at Jacobin and elsewhere, he recently sent out and posted a four-part essay (here are parts I, II, III, and IV) responding to the work of Charlie Post as well as Cody Melcher and Michael Goldfield. In it, Blanc wants to convince union organizers our first hope has to lie in the Democratic Party. For him, a key part of our strategy has to be voting for, and appealing to, Democrats.

A Communiqué From The Liberated Dining Halls Of So-Called Santa Cruz

December 11, 2022 IGD Worldwide, It's Going Down. Resist! California, Education, Labor Movement, Strikes, Unions, University of California, Worker Rights and Jobs

Santa Cruz, California - The colonial capitalist university will never win. Union sell-outs and scabs will never win. Here at so-called Santa Cruz, we declare and express our solidarity to all communities in struggle. Today, along with comrades across so-called California, we are engaging in a transterritorial attack on UC incorporated and what they call food insecurity, a condition created by their capitalist greed. These spaces, like the dining commons, are spaces we understand as battlegrounds of the ongoing war against subsistence, where proles take up the war against capital by expropriating dining halls and feeding one another.

How Academic Workers’ Leverage Can Grow In A Long-Haul Strike

December 10, 2022 Jonathan Mackris and Abrar Abidi, Labor Notes. Strategize! California, Education, Labor Movement, University of California, Worker Rights and Jobs

California - Forty-eight thousand academic workers have been on strike across the 10 campuses of the University of California since November 14. It’s the biggest strike in the country this year. The strikers are in four bargaining units—teaching assistants, student researchers, postdoctoral scholars, and academic researchers—all affiliated with the United Auto Workers. The following speeches were written for and read out at the Strike to Win Assembly on December 6 at UC Berkeley. This assembly was put together by rank-and-file members from the humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in UAW Local 2865 and Student Researchers United (SRU-UAW) in order to develop strategies for a building a longer, sustainable strike across campus.

New York Times Workers Take The ‘Paper Of Record’ To Task

December 10, 2022 Teddy Ostrow, The Real News Network. Resist! Labor Movement, Media, New York Times (NYT), Unions, Walkout, Worker Rights and Jobs

For its wide circulation and daily, authoritative journalism of current events, the New York Times has been considered the “newspaper of record” for over a hundred years. But on Thursday, Dec. 8, there was a hole in that record — or, at least, a feeble plug. After 20 months of unsatisfactory contract negotiations with one of the only newspapers that still sees increasing reader subscriptions, Times workers have had enough. As of midnight on Dec. 8, over 1,100 staff made history as they commenced a 24-hour walkout in protest of the Times management’s failure to negotiate a fair contract and meet the demands of their union, the NewsGuild of New York. It is the newsroom’s first walkout of this scale since a multiday strike in September and October of 1965.

No Union? You Still Have A Right To Strike

December 9, 2022 Richard De Vries, Labor Notes. Strategize! Labor Law, Labor Movement, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last year there were 87 strikes by non-union workers, according to Cornell’s Labor Action Tracker, accounting for one-third of all work stoppages in the U.S. Even without a union, you have the legal right to organize strikes, job actions, and various protests—and your employer is banned from retaliating against you. Despite the law, though, many employers will fire troublemakers if they can get away with it. That can bring organizing to a halt. So if you’re organizing without the protection of a union contract, it behooves you to know your rights and how to enforce them. With a little practice, you won’t even need a lawyer. You and your co-workers can develop and submit your own unfair labor practice (ULP) charges to the Labor Board.

US Railroad Workers ‘Under The Thumb’

December 4, 2022 Jack Rasmus. Resist! Labor Movement, Railroads, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Probably the most important US labor event of 2022 has been the 115,000 US railroad workers and their unions attempt to bargain a new contract with the super profitable Railroad companies. As of December 2, 2022, however, that negotiations has not turned out well for the workers. The US government—the Biden administration and Democrat controlled US Congress with the help of virtually all the Republicans—have repeatedly intervened on the side of the management in the negotiations. Beginning last September, that intervention has ensured that the workers would not be able to strike in order to advance their interests and demands. This past week both the administration and Congress have made a railroad strike illegal by passing legislation to that effect.

Ten Years Later, The Fight For $15 And A Union Continues

December 1, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Organize! Fight for 15, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

On Nov. 29, 2012, over 100 fast food workers in New York City walked off the job to demand that their wages be increased to $15 an hour and to finally have a voice in their workplaces through union representation. That walkout was the beginning of a movement—a movement that articulated and emerged out of the need for human dignity and democracy in the workplace; a movement that has forcefully asserted that highly profitable industries dominated by multi-billion and multi-million dollar corporations can afford to pay their workers a living wage and allow workers to safely voice their concerns and address issues that impact them and their work. Out of those worker-led demonstrations a decade ago the Fight for $15 and a Union was born, a global campaign pushing to increase wages and improve working conditions for workers in low-wage jobs, from the fast food industry to retail.

Every Union Contract Right Now Should Be The Best Ever

November 30, 2022 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

If your union goes into negotiations right now and doesn’t win its biggest raise ever, you’re leaving money on the table. Soaring inflation means it takes a bigger raise just to break even. And with unemployment low, labor has extra leverage to win more. Dining hall workers at Northeastern University in Boston just approved a new contract that will raise them to $30 an hour by 2026—triple the $9 they were making in 2012 before they unionized. After a rowdy mass picket, Sysco food delivery Teamsters in Massachusetts won a 39 percent raise over five years. Here in Seattle, Providence Swedish hospital workers just won their largest-ever economic package, with two-year raises of 21.5 percent or $6.50, whichever is more. (They structured it that way so the lowest-paid workers don’t get the lowest raise.) These are just a few of many examples.

US Rail Workers Are Poised To Begin A National Strike Next Week

November 29, 2022 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. Resist! Labor Movement, National Strike, Railroads, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Despite the intervention of the Biden administration, after nearly three years of contract negotiations, workers who operate the nation’s freight railroads are poised to go on a nationwide strike as early as next Friday. “Our members, and all rail labor in general, are frustrated,” said Matt Weaver, a Toledo-based rail worker and member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED). “It feels like there’s no respect for us.” Last week, the two largest rail unions announced a split decision on whether to approve a tentative, five-year agreement brokered ahead of a strike that was previously set to begin in September. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) narrowly ratified the agreement with 53.5% of members voting in favor, while the deal was rejected by just over 50% of train and engine service members of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD).

Behind The Decline Of The US Left

November 29, 2022 Stansfield Smith, Chicago ALBA Solidarity. Strategize! Labor Movement, The Left, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The left has not become marginalized because of exhaustion or infighting. Its decline was caused by the US government’s more than century long police state operations, purging the left from its historic home in the working class movement, so that it now has only tenuous connection with the organized working class. The national security state – the actual US government – has constantly worked to neutralize anti-imperialist and class conscious working class voices, and instead promoted a “compatible left” in their long-term strategy to divide and control the left. The working class, particularly the sector in industrial production, had significance for the left not because workers are progressive in their thinking, but because they possess the power no other social forces have: they can vanquish the rule of capital by halting production, shutting off the capitalists’ ability to generate surplus value, life blood of their system.

Peet’s Coffee Workers Launch First Union Campaign

November 28, 2022 Jordan Zakarin, More Perfect Union. Resist! Labor Movement, Peet's Coffee, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

California - Add Peet’s Coffee to the list of unionizing coffeehouse chains. Workers at two Davis locations of the popular California-based cafe chain will submit signed union cards to the NLRB on Monday. The public submission will mark the culmination of five months of quiet work by organizers for Workers United, the SEIU offshoot that has provided the muscle and infrastructure for Starbucks Workers United. Leaders at the two Peet’s stores say that they have near-unanimous buy-in from their co-workers, who have grown tired of the low pay and high-stress demands placed on them by the company. “I really love what I do, and I really believe in the Peet’s values, but every year it gets harder to do this job, it gets busier and busier and everything gets more and more expensive,” Alyx Land, an organizer at the North Davis location, tells More Perfect Union.

Southern Service Workers Launch A New Union

November 23, 2022 Stephanie Luce, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, South Carolina, The South, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Columbia, South Carolina - Hundreds of service workers from across the South gathered in Columbia, South Carolina, November 17-19 to launch the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), taking their fight to a new level. The new organization grows out of the Raise Up, the Southern branch of the Fight for $15 and a Union, a movement backed by Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In addition to fast food, members work in hotels, gas stations, retail, home care, sit-down restaurants, and more. Some of these workers have been organizing their industries for a decade with Raise Up—fighting for higher wages and better working conditions. Others have only recently joined the effort—including many who felt that the pandemic exposed how essential their work was, and how little corporations and politicians valued them.

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