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Labor Unions

Labor Unions File UN Complaint Over ‘Outrageous’ Violations Of Workers’ Rights

October 8, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. , , ,
United States labor leaders representing workers in several trade unions on Wednesday filed a complaint with the United Nations' labor agency, making the case that under the Trump administration, the U.S. has violated numerous international labor laws during the coronavirus pandemic.  The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed the complaint in Geneva, home of the International Labor Organization (ILO), a U.N. institution dedicated to protecting workers' rights related to workplace safeguards and collective bargaining. 

Restaurant Workers Are Building Solidarity Amid The Pandemic

October 2, 2020 Alice Herman, In These Times. , , ,
Boise, Idaho - It was rain­ing light­ly June 29 when Geo Eng­ber­son, own­er of the Pie Hole pizze­ria, con­vened an emer­gency staff meet­ing. He had intend­ed a quick con­fer­ence in the park­ing lot behind the restau­rant, known for its steady stream of week­end bar-goers. Giv­en the weath­er, Eng­ber­son fer­ried the hand­ful of work­ers into his trailer.  Ear­li­er that month, work­ers at the piz­za joint peti­tioned for an hourly wage bump. Wor­ried that Pie Hole was pre­pared to replace them, for­mer employ­ee Kiwi Palmer says, she and her cowork­ers refused to train new hires. This refusal trig­gered a conflict. 

Workers’ Rights In Globalised Industry

September 26, 2020 Ben Chacko, Morning Star Online. , , ,
The Covid-19 crisis and the lockdowns imposed as a result hit the garment industry hard, causing order cancellations and job losses in producer countries. What can trade unions do to press brands to shield suppliers from the risk of a sudden loss of income that they pass onto their workers? “This problem emerged early in the pandemic. In April many brands endorsed a call to action, a tripartite initiative led by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with a commitment by brands to pay for finished goods and goods in production.

Trade Unions Need New Strategies

September 20, 2020 By Asbjørn Wahl, The Bullet. , , ,
Trade unions are on the defensive all over the world, under immense pressure from strong economic and political forces. We are facing a multiplicity of crises. Employers are attacking on all fronts, and the pandemic is being used as an excuse further to undermine unions, wages and working conditions. Since the neoliberal offensive began around 1980, we have experienced an enormous shift in the balance of power, from labour to capital. In spite of that, large parts of the trade union movement have continued to cling to the ideology of social partnership – with social dialogue as its main method of influence – which, in the current situation, is proving counterproductive.

Labor Must Make Defense Of Black Lives Its Own Imperative

September 19, 2020 King Downing and Frances Madeson, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Black trade unionists across the U.S. are calling on the labor movement to defend Black Lives Matter protesters and to fight racism in their own ranks. The attacks by police and increasingly violent armed racist militias evoke the memory of many such violent incidents against Black people in earlier periods, from slavery to segregation to the civil rights era. For Labor Day 2020, Truthout reached out to Christopher Silvera, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 808 in Long Island City, NY; Elise Bryant, executive director of Labor Heritage Foundation and president of the Communication Workers of America’s Coalition...

TUC Calls For Israel Sanctions To “End Apartheid”

September 18, 2020 Asa Winstanley, Electronic Intifada. , , ,
The British Trades Union Congress has condemned Israel’s annexation plan, calling it “another significant step in the creation of a system of apartheid” in the West Bank. Passed on Tuesday, the motion is thought to be the first time the British trade union umbrella body has described Israeli policies as apartheid. The TUC motion calls for the UK to “take firm and decisive measures, including sanctions” against Israel to stop annexation, end the occupation and respect the right of Palestinian refugees to return. It also called for unions around the world to join the campaign “to stop annexation and end apartheid.”

Time For Unions To Give The Democratic Party An Ultimatum

September 15, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
On Labor Day, Joe Biden did an online event with AFL-CIO pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka to talk up unions. At this point in his polit­i­cal career, Biden can do these things in his sleep. His well rehearsed grab bag of pro-union lines (”My uncle in Scran­ton, Uncle Ed, used to say, ​‘Joe, you’re labor from belt buck­le to shoe sole’”) flow out eas­i­ly. The ques­tion for America’s union mem­bers is whether any­thing tan­gi­ble will flow back to us if Biden is elect­ed, or if we will — as has hap­pened in pre­vi­ous Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions — have to sat­is­fy our­selves with pats on the head and White House photo-ops. 

Amazon Posted Job To Monitor Employee’s Efforts To Unionize

September 3, 2020 Aaron Holmes, Business Insider. , , ,
In a now-deleted job listing posted this week, Amazon advertised that it's looking to hire an "intelligence analyst" tasked with duties including snooping on workers' unionization efforts and reporting back to executives about their findings. It's a sign of Amazon's escalating fight to stop its workers from organizing. The company has previously turned to unorthodox methods to quash unionization — its subsidiary Whole Foods built a heat map tool specifically for tracking unionization threats, Business Insider reported in April.

Will COVID-19 Spur A Wave Of Unionization?

August 20, 2020 Steven Greenhouse, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
In mid-March, someone asked me whether COVID-19 would spur a wave of unionization. My first reaction was no. How could workers possibly unionize when there was all this social distancing and people couldn’t even meet in groups? Moreover, I thought workers would be so cowed by the horrors of the pandemic that they wouldn’t give much thought to unionizing. That response was short-sighted. I didn’t realize how furious many workers would become about the uncaring, even callous way their companies have treated them during this crisis—about the many employers that didn’t lift a finger to provide masks or hand sanitizer.

Trade Unionists Back Campaign To Free Assange

July 18, 2020 Don't Extradite Assange. , , ,
In Birmingham, Plymouth, and Newcastle trades councils have voted to join the campaign to halt the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States where he could face 175 years in jail. In recent weeks the three metropolitan trades councils, which are attended by delegates from all the local unions, have voted overwhelmingly to support Assange. Even in Plymouth where a similar motion was defeated last year the National Union of Journalists’ inspired resolution sailed through last week. Both Birmingham and Plymouth meetings invited a speaker from the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign to address them before the vote was taken.

Flight Attendants Tell Airlines: Don’t Even Think About Concessions

July 15, 2020 Sara Nelson, Labor Notes. , , ,
The COVID-19 crisis hit airline workers with speed and devastation. Passenger flow through TSA checkpoints fell 97 percent in March compared to a year earlier. In the months since, travel demand has only barely recovered, to 20 percent of a year ago. Flight attendants know from hard experience the volatility of the airline industry and the harsh impact a crisis can have on airline workers. And this is a crisis like no other in the history of commercial aviation. We know cuts to our contracts at any one airline set up a downward spiral for our careers. Instead, we’re getting ahead of any attempts by management. Flight attendants across the industry are united against concessions. Together, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, and the Transport Workers Union—representing 80 percent of all U.S. flight attendants—signed an open letter

Thousands Of Workers Strike Bath Iron Works

July 15, 2020 Joe Piette, Workers.org. , , ,
Over 4,300 production workers — represented by Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) Local S6 — walked off the job at the Bath Iron Works shipyard June 23 after unsuccessful contract negotiations. Workers had made concessions in their last contract, but are reluctant to agree to attacks on seniority rights, increased health care costs and subcontracting which threatens current workers’ jobs. Bath Iron Works is one of the U.S. Navy’s largest shipbuilders and a major employer in Maine, with a total of 6,800 workers. General Dynamics, the company that runs the BIW shipyard, raked in $3.34 billion in 2018, largely through contracts from the Navy. Now General Dynamics is trying to squeeze even more profits from the workers.

How Black And Brown Workers Are Redefining Strikes

July 9, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
During George Floyd’s funeral on June 9th, Black dockworkers in Charleston, S.C., shut down the nation’s 4th busiest port and gathered to show their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. “All operations stopped, the terminals were shut down, no machines were working, trucks were backed up for miles along the interstate because we weren’t moving anything on the terminal,” said Ken Riley, a Black dockworker and President of ILA Local 1422. The actions were part of a nationwide effort in which the International Longshore Association, which is 65% Black, shut down all the ports on the East and Gulf Shore Coasts.  “It was a moving event because we were able to show as workers our ability to stop global commerce,” said Riley. “Any responsible manager is gonna look at that and say ‘Look, we are gonna have to deal with these people, or we are gonna have a problem.’ ” 

‘Workers First’ Car Caravans Drive Mass Turnouts Nationwide

June 23, 2020 By Mark Gruenberg, People's World. , , ,
From Fairbanks to San Juan and from Bangor to Honolulu, workers nationwide turned out June 17 in car caravans, at press conferences, and in call-ins to lawmakers to demand solons “Put Workers First For Racial And Economic Justice.” Their top demands are additional economic aid during the coronavirus pandemic, for workers, not bosses, and for racial justice and economic justice and to force the federal government to order employers to provide anti-coronavirus protective gear. To make their views heard, at least 1,000 cars, festooned with posters and flags, honked their way to Capitol Hill from two sites in the D.C. suburbs, then descended on the Mall to its west. Their point, and those of hundreds of other caravans in every state, D.C., and Puerto Rico, was to force the GOP-run Senate to approve a $3 trillion coronavirus pandemic economic aid package the Democratic-run House passed late last month.

Labor Vs. Police: Learning From Working-Class History

June 21, 2020 Martha Grevatt, Workers.org. , , ,
Led by oppressed youth, a working-class revolt has erupted, initially over the police lynching of George Floyd. It needs and deserves the unconditional solidarity of organized labor. Unfortunately, what top labor officials have delivered is something much less. Consider a recent statement signed by New York City leaders of the Service Employees (SEIU), American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, United Auto Workers, Communication Workers (CWA), Professional Staff Congress and the New York State Nurses Association. Overall, the statement is laudable. But these generally progressive union leaders felt compelled to include a caveat that “we do not, and never will, condone violence against police nor property.” (seiu32bj.org)
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