Labor Unions

No More Backroom Deals

November 20, 2014 Dan Clawson, www.jacobinmag.com Resist! Education, Labor Unions, Massachusetts, Teachers

To the causal observer, Massachusetts may seem like an unlikely place to open up a new front in the assault on teachers. The state has the highest test scores in the nation, and just this year the National Education Association named its chief executive “America’s Greatest Education Governor.” But on October 20, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) unveiled a draconian proposal that would tie teacher performance, narrowly defined, to teacher licensing. Thousands of educators knew an unmitigated attack when they saw one, and responded accordingly. Late last week, after a massive backlash organized by the Massachusetts Teachers Association — under the leadership of Barbara Madeloni, the recently elected president of the 113,000 member union — the proposal was withdrawn.

Walmart Workers Promise Biggest Black Friday Strike Ever

November 15, 2014 Bryce Covert, www.thinkprogress.org Organize! Labor Unions, Strike, Walmart

Walmart employees who are organizing as part of OUR Walmart are promising the biggest strikes ever on Black Friday, saying more employees will participate than the previous two years. Workers have gone on strike and protested for the past two Black Fridays. This time, they will also be joined by “tens of thousands” of community members, according to Stephanie Ly, AFT New Mexico president and a teacher, the “largest mobilizing of working families we’ve seen in recent history.” Teachers, elected officials, members of the clergy, and others will participate in protests at stores, flash mobs, marches, and prayer vigils. While Walmart some workers will go on strike, others will be asked to report to work the day beforehand: Thanksgiving. Nearly 1 million workers will be asked to report to work on the national holiday to keep the store open all day, with Black Friday shopping deals starting at 6 p.m.

Workers At US Capitol Strike For Living Wage

November 15, 2014 John Clarke, www.reuters.com Organize! Government, Labor Unions, usa

Hundreds of striking federal contract workers, including for the first time some from the U.S. Capitol, rallied on Thursday to urge President Barack Obama to boost pay and spur unionization. About 800 striking workers and supporters, including members of Congress, gathered at the Capitol after a march through Washington streets led by a brass band. The one-day strike by federal contract workers was the 10th organized by the Good Jobs Nation campaign for better pay and benefits since May 2013. "For the first time in history, workers are on strike at the United States Capitol," rally organizer Joseph Geervarghese told the cheering crowd.

American Postal Workers Union National Day Of Action Nov 14

November 14, 2014 APWU, www.apwu.org Resist! Labor Unions, Postal Workers, Protests

Join an Event Near You! Below is a list of actions taking place as part of the November 14 National Day of Action to Stop Delaying America’s Mail! Contact the organizer to sign up and get involved in a local action. And check back frequently as new events are being added all the time. Action will be held in all states, fighting for the union power of the American Postal Service Union. The APWU represents more than 200,000 USPS employees and retirees, and nearly 2,000 private-sector mail workers. For more than four decades, APWU has fought for dignity and respect on the job for the workers we represent, as well as for decent pay and benefits and safe working conditions. As an AFL-CIO affiliate, the APWU supports the struggle for social and economic justice for all working families.

French Farmers Grow Angry

November 14, 2014 Alan Taylor, www.theatlantic.com Organize! Food and Agriculture, France, Labor Unions

French farmers unions organized a nationwide day of protest yesterday, staging demonstrations in villages and cities across France. Thousands turned out, expressing their anger at collapsing prices (due in part to sanctions against Russia), increased environmental regulations, cheap imports, and high costs. They took to the streets, dumping tons of produce, flinging manure on government buildings, burning effigies, and throwing apples at riot police. The farmers also urged their fellow countrymen to "eat French" and support local agriculture. Farmers dump pumpkins in front of an entrance to buildings of the Vaucluse prefecture in Avignon, southeastern France, on November 5, 2014, during a demonstration called by French farmers unions FNSEA (Federation Nationale des Syndicats d'Exploitants Agricoles) and JA (Jeunes Agriculteurs).

IPCC Warning Spurs Union Calls For Energy Democracy

November 10, 2014 Sean Sweeney, www.unionsforenergydemocracy.org Educate! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Labor Unions

On November 2, 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Synthesis Report, the final in the “Fifth Assessment Report” process. It builds on three reports released by the IPCC since early 2013. The IPCC is a senior UN panel made up of thousands of climate scientists and this report marks its fifth ‘assessment’ since 1990 of the state of the climate and the present and future impacts of global warming. The Synthesis Report reiterates what the IPCC has been telling us for a decade or more: “Climate change is being registered around the world and warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Since the 1950s many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.” The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years in the Northern Hemisphere. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are “unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years”.

100,000 Workers Protest Belgian Labor Reform

November 7, 2014 Raf Cassert, www.ap.org Resist! Belgium, Labor Unions, March

One of Belgium's biggest postwar labor demonstrations brought about 100,000 workers to the capital on Thursday to protest government free-market reforms and austerity measures that they claim undermine Belgium's vaunted welfare state. For two hours, the demonstrators peacefully marched down the main thoroughfares of central Brussels to protest government policies that will raise the pension age, contain wages and cut into public services. Violence marred the end of the march, with police firing tear gas and the water cannon to break up incidents. No casualties were immediately reported. "They are hitting the workers, the unemployed. They are not looking for money where it is, I mean, people with a lot of money," said Philippe Dubois, who came from the industrial rust belt of Liege. The unexpectedly massive march opens a monthlong campaign by the trade unions against the business-friendly governing coalition and is to be capped with a nationwide strike on Dec. 15.

Denver’s Immigrant Taxi Drivers Build Unionized Workers Co-op

November 4, 2014 Minsun Ji, www.labornotes.org Create! Cooperative, Labor Unions

This month 800 immigrant taxi drivers in Denver—from 24 different countries in Africa—joined the Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7777. They hope to break out of poverty and challenge the workplace abuse many endure working for private taxi companies. The drivers also voted to build a worker-owned taxi cooperative, as an alternative to the existing companies. The local union movement is supporting the effort. Due to precarious relationships with their employers, taxi workers have been building similar organizations around the country. In Washington, D.C., and Seattle, drivers have joined Teamsters locals; in Boston, the Steelworkers.

Union Federation Gets Vocal On Harsh Prison Sentencing

October 22, 2014 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Human Rights, Labor Unions, Mass Incarceration, police brutality

Backers of a California ballot measure that would release thousands of non-violent prisoners have found a surprisingly enthusiastic ally in their fight: the nation's largest federation of labor unions. On Friday, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, is expected to deliver a speech in Los Angeles offering robust support for Proposition 47, a proposal that would reduce the penalties for simple drug possession and shoplifting. According to his prepared remarks provided to The Huffington Post, Trumka will declare that mass incarceration is a "labor issue" and that unions need to join other progressives in pressing for reform. "It's a labor issue because mass incarceration means literally millions of people work jobs in prisons for pennies an hour -- a hidden world of coerced labor here in the United States," Trumka's remarks read. "It's a labor issue because those same people who work for pennies in prison, once they have served their time, find themselves locked out of the job market by employers who screen applicants for felony convictions."

Tens Of Thousands Take Streets In Pay Protest

October 20, 2014 Chris Johnston, www.theguardian.com Resist! England, Labor Unions, Living Wage, Protests

Tens of thousands of union members have marched through central London to highlight their calls for pay rises. Members of Unite, Unison, the National Union of Teachers, the Communication Workers Union, the Royal College of Nurses and Equity took to the streets in the capital on Saturday, while other protests were held in Glasgow and Belfast. Pensioners and anti-nuclear activists also took part. The TUC, which organised the Britain Needs a Pay Risedemonstration to mark the end of industrial action by public sector workers, including nurses, midwives and civil servants, said up to 90,000 people were on the march. Midwives went on strike for the first time this month to protest against the government’s decision not to pay a recommended 1% increase to all NHS staff. Hospital radiographers and prison officers are due to take action next week.

Corporate Anti-Union Strategy In America

September 29, 2014 Jack Rasmus, www.zcomm.org Educate! Capitalism, Labor Rights, Labor Unions

Labor Day 2014 in the U.S. has come and gone and it should be obvious to all but those with self-imposed historical myopia that American unions and workers are now well into a fourth decade of a strategic retreat. Retreat is not synonymous with defeat, of course. Resistance and fight-back continues to occur along several fronts—low wage workers’ attempts to unionize, immigrant workers’ protests, minimum wage fights, and scattered islands of resistance by teachers and public workers. But the private sector trade union movement, as well as the vast majority of the still unorganized working class, continues to show little signs of organized resistance in the face of a still growing overtly anti-union and anti-worker offensive by corporate America.

Broadening And Sharpening The Climate Justice Movement

September 12, 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Strategize! Climate Change, Climate Justice, Idle No More, Labor Unions

The climate crisis is a crisis of democracy requiring a coordinated global grassroots mobilization to stop harmful policies and practices and build alternative systems that are effective and equitable. The climate crisis affects all of us and touches everything we care about. It will take a mass "movement of movements" to counter the power of money and corruption that prevents the change we need. The last two decades have been wasted by political misleadership and, as a result, immediate action is required. A landmark report issued last week concluded: “By 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again, unless they’re either replacements for old ones or carbon neutral.” We have a big task before us and need to build a global movement to make it a reality.

Students At The Barricades

September 1, 2014 Christy Thornton, www.jacobinmag.com Organize! Graduate School, Labor Unions, Reform, Students

Last December, NYU graduate student employees won recognition for our union, GSOC-UAW, from the university administration. With an overwhelming 98.4% of votes cast in favor of the union, NYU became — for the second time — the first private university in the country to recognize the rights of its graduate student employees to collective representation. After more than fifteen years of organizing, NYU’s graduate student workers had won a major victory, and the voluntary recognition of the union by the administration had the potential to set a new kind of precedent for other graduate student organizing campaigns around the country. But recognition was the start of a new round of struggle: one around what kind of a contract we could win, and what kind of union GSOC would be. In July, a group of bargaining committee members — graduate students elected by their peers to represent us in our negotiations with the NYU administration — released a statement highlighting the “concessionary strategy, demobilization of our membership, and opacity of the bargaining process” on the part of UAW staff that they had witnessed over the course of the previous semester. That statement, which charged union leadership with failing to adequately communicate with the membership and with the marginalization of activist members who sought to create an campaign to support the bargaining process, called for a new strategy to win a strong contract: one based on transparency, accountability, and building democratic structures within our unit.

When We Stand Together, Working People Can Win

September 1, 2014 Susan Richardson, www.ufcw21.org Create! Inequality, Labor, Labor Unions

One hundred and twenty years ago, during another time of severe economic depression and social unrest in our country, President Grover Cleveland established Labor Day as a national holiday. It was not so much to honor as it was to appease organized labor. President Cleveland’s decision came days after he ordered federal troops to crush workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago who were striking for better wages and workplace conditions. Fast forward to 2014 and we see our country is still grappling with economic and social unrest as income inequality grows and the rights of workers to stick together for better workplace conditions continues to be challenged. I have lived in the Bellingham area since 1972 and have worked at Cost Cutter in Blaine for The Markets for 27 years. As a union member I have joined together with other grocery workers all across Puget Sound to protect our wages, benefits, and working conditions. And the community has stood right there with us. Despite efforts here in Washington by the big national grocery chains to cut pay and benefits and weaken our union, we have grown stronger. Not all workers are so fortunate and the cards are sometimes stacked against us. Too often, workers are harassed, intimidated and sometimes fired for sticking together to bargain for better wages and benefits. We have seen that locally with some of the workers at Walmart who have bravely stood up to this company and spoken out against their attempt to silence workers trying to act together to improve health and safety and improve their lives at work.

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