Labor

Lettuce Picking and Left-Wing Organizing

March 28, 2014 Steve Early, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent years, two college-educated writers, Gabriel Thompson and Tracie McMillan, have followed in the footsteps of Barbara Ehrenreich, producing their own versions of Nickel and Dimed. Both went undercover to blow the whistle on worker abuse in low-wage jobs. Unlike Ehrenreich, the much younger authors of Working in The Shadows and The American Way of Eating each tried their hand at farm labor. In contrast, Bruce Neuburger spent much of the 1970s as a picker of lettuce and other California agricultural products, during the heyday of the United Farm Workers (UFW). As recounted in Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in The Fields of California (Monthly Review Press), Neuberger’s experience was very different than Thompson and McMIllan’s—and not just because the union has virtually disappeared from the scene during the intervening decades.

Academic Labor Unrest Spreads to Maryland Colleges

March 22, 2014 Bruce Vail www.inthesetimes.com Educate! Labor, Maryland

“We simply can not meet the needs of students when we must have two—and sometimes three—adjunct positions to even begin to support ourselves. I’ve heard stories about adjuncts who can’t afford an apartment and are living out of the back seatof their cars,” she adds. Smith estimates there are about 200 adjuncts at MICA, who teach about 45 percent of the school’s courses; overall, he says, the campus environment is a positive one. “We do enjoy working at MICA and it’s a great place to teach,” he says. But that’s not enough to outweigh the worries about survival and consistent employment that being an adjunct entails, he points out. “Of course compensation and benefits are big issues, but job security is probably the biggest concern,” he says. “You can have been an adjunct for ten years, but you still don’t know whether you will have a class to teach next semester.”

Saving Labor From Itself

March 21, 2014 Jon Flanders, www.jacobinmag.com Educate! Book Review, Labor, Unions

It has been Steve Early’s fate to chronicle in excruciating detail the decline of the labor empires that grew up in the flush years that followed the World War II — a task he takes up in his new book Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress. With the US triumphant on the world stage and industrial rivals defeated in the wake of the war’s destruction, US labor took the CIO-generated industrial union wave to a high point of 35 percent of the workforce with union representation. While the radical edge of the 1930s labor insurgency was driven out during the McCarthy period, the ranks of union officials grew and prospered; corporations, flush with cash, bided their time, while union bureaucracies grew ever-larger.

Labor Calls For More Solidarity To Stop Deportations

March 21, 2014 Staff, www.laborfightback.org Organize! Immigrant Rights, Labor

Labor councils and city councils in many cities began adopting such resolutions. And now this movement has been extended to the streets of cities nationwide. On February 22, an important youth congress of more than 500 DREAMer delegates met in Phoenix, Ariz., and voted to target Obama with a national campaign to stop the deportations and grant protected legal status to all undocumented immigrants. As Nativo López writes in a posting from Hermandad Mexicana, "This is a significant development considering that many DREAM groups, networks, and alliances supported the Obama immigration plan and S.744 as the proverbial 'path to citizenship' so touted by Washington, D.C. beltway-funded advocacy organizations and the Democratic Party leadership." The delegates took to the streets of Phoenix and urged youth activists, immigrant rights' organizations and labor organizations nationwide to do the same.

Worker Lawsuits May Force McDonald’s to Raise Wages

March 18, 2014 Thom Hartmann, www.alternet.com Resist! Activism, Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

McDonald’s workers across the nation have filed seven class-action lawsuits alleging that the fast-food giant practiced systematic wage theft of its workers. McDonald’s employees filed two lawsuits in Michigan, one in New York and four in California. The lawsuits name the McDonald’s corporation and McDonald’s franchises as the defendants. The lawsuit filed in New York alleges that McDonald’s employees are required to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms and all uniform cleaning expenses. Those additional expenses really hurt already struggling McDonald’s employees, and they also violate a New York state regulation that requires companies to reimburse workers weekly for the cost of buying and maintaining uniforms. Meanwhile, the lawsuits filed in California allege that McDonald’s managers are constantly playing fast and loose with employees’ hours in attempts to keep down costs, which violates federal wage and hour laws.

Postal Unions Unite to Fight Staples

March 14, 2014 APWU Web News, www.apwu.org Organize! Labor, Organizing, Post Office, Unions

Declaring that “the U.S. Postal Service is under unprecedented attack,” the presidents of the four postal unions have formed a historic alliance to fight back. “A congressionally-manufactured financial crisis drains the USPS of vital resources,” the union presidents write in a proclamation [PDF] signed over the last several days. “Six-day delivery is under constant threat of elimination. The reduction of service standards and the elimination of half of the nation’s mail processing centers has slowed service and wiped out tens of thousands of good jobs. Post offices in cities and small towns are being sold or closed or having their hours cut back.

Health Care Cost Emergency Declared By San Francisco Labor

March 3, 2014 Carl Finamore, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Health Care, Labor, Unions

It’s a national epidemic finally getting some long overdue attention. To put rising costs in perspective, a dozen oranges today would cost $134 if adjusted at the same rate of price inflation that we’ve seen in healthcare since 1945. And, it’s only getting worse. California health insurance premiums soared 185% since 2002. But we’ve heard these complaints before, it’s not new. What is new is that the largest unions in San Francisco are doing something to reign in price gouging by insurers like California-based Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest HMO with 9.1 million subscribers. For UNITE-HERE Local 2, one of the city’s largest unions representing 13,000 employees of restaurants and hotels in and around San Francisco, it has become a necessity.

Organizing From The Inside: Salting

March 1, 2014 Jane Slaughter, www.labornotes.org Organize! Labor, Unions

Former salt Kendra Baker says salting offers something the labor movement badly needs: a “space for young people to develop skills as workplace organizers.” The 2011 uprising in Wisconsin and the Occupy movement created “a lot of curiosity and enthusiasm about the labor movement,” she said. Now coordinating a salting program, she stresses that salting ensures a union drive will have “a workplace-organizing component, to maintain a level of militancy on the shop floor and make sure the campaign is putting the workers first. Workers should be taking a lead on the messaging and on the goals and planning the actions.” Salts these days tend to be young people who were activists in college—the same sort of folks many unions recruit to be staff organizers.

A Call to Develop a Worker Cooperative Sector in New York City

February 24, 2014 John Lawrence www.truth-out.org Create! Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

Co-ops need access to capital to start and maintain business. Banks and other financial institutions such as insurance companies are reluctant to do business with worker co-ops. Linda Levy, CEO of the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union (LESPFCU) explained that credit unions are financial co-operatives and have a natural inclination to lend to worker co-ops. However, current regulations make lending to work co-ops difficult. She stated the regulator of the LESPFCU is reluctant to approve loans to worker co-ops because in worker co-ops there is not one specific person who is responsible for the loan. The Workers World has created a unique revolving credit line for worker co-ops; however, they are limited in their ability to pay interest to depositors. The co-op sector needs banking institutions, such as credit unions, with the mission of lending to worker co-ops.

Labor Gets Raw Deal In ‘Bargaining To Organize’ Approach

February 19, 2014 Steve Early, www.popularresistance.org Strategize! Labor, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In multiple industry settings—auto, telecom, trucking, healthcare, and hospitality-- “bargaining to organize” has enabled tens of thousands of American workers to join unions without management harassment, threats, intimidation, or job discrimination. Workers get to demonstrate their support for bargaining rights in one of two ways, and sometimes both. Their union card signing majority can be verified by a neutral third party or, less preferably, confirmed in a secret ballot vote engineered, per labor-management agreement, to be “free and fair.” The key element either way is a negotiated pledge of employer neutrality. This, of course, is not binding on third parties in Tennessee or anywhere.

Theories On Historic UAW Defeat At TN VW Plant

February 16, 2014 Mike Elk, www.inthesetimes.com Organize! Labor, Unions

To the labor reporters, who had seen many union election results, it was jaw-dropping news. How could a union lose an unopposed campaign? Volkswagen signed a 22-page neutrality agreement pledging not to interfere in the union election at the Chattanooga plant. The company even let the union onto the shop floor in early February to give a presentation on the merits of organizing. It is impossible to say why each of those 712 workers voted against the union and what the UAW could have done differently to win them over one by one. However, In These Times’ interviews with both pro-union and anti-union workers—as well as low-level Volkswagen supervisors, top UAW officials and community activists—point to a confluence of factors, including outside interference by GOP politicians and unsanctioned anti-union activity by low-level supervisors. Some questioned, too, whether missteps by the UAW and concerns about its prior bargaining agreements played a role.

Boeing Workers Vow To Fight ‘Wholesale Attack’ On Union

February 4, 2014 Jason Redrup, www.facebook.com/iamreform Educate! Labor, Pensions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It's important for the labor movement across the country to understand that this Boeing contract in Washington state is detrimental to all of labor. Our contracts up here have been the bellwether to measure others against. Our members have fought very hard and struck -- in 2005 and 2008 -- for pensions and for rights benefiting people who don't even work here. Now the road is clear for the bosses to get rid of pensions for public and private sector unions nationwide. When you go out and try to organize a new shop, you'll be told, "Hey, the Machinists gave up their pensions, why do you want to fight for pensions?" We are not just talking pensions for new hires, but giving up pensions for all Machinists under this Boeing contract in 2016. Also, keep in mind that this is not a company that was going bankrupt; it's a company that's extremely profitable, with record sales and profits.

Where Is Labor’s Opposition To Cuts In Food Stamps, Unemployment?

January 31, 2014 Labor Fightback, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Government, Human Rights, Jobs, Labor

On January 29, by a 251-166 margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut food stamp funding by $8.6 billion over a 10-year period. 89 Democrats joined 162 Republicans to bring about this result. "They are gutting a program to provide food for hungry people to pay for corporate welfare," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger. Anti-hunger advocates like Berg say crop insurance expansion would come at the expense of millions of people who depend on food stamps. "This vote is a tragic, heartless and economically counterproductive departure from America's bipartisan history of fighting hunger," Berg said. "Members of Congress who voted for this should be ashamed."

Kellogg’s Delivers Memphis A Slap In The Face

January 21, 2014 Steve Payne, www.labornotes.org Resist! Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

“I went to the ‘Gold Palace,’ Kellogg headquarters, last year,” said Trence Jackson, an officer of BCTGM Local 252G. “They had a nice display in their lobby on what they do for African Americans. They also put African Americans, like Gabby [Douglas], on their cereal boxes each February.” But this February Jackson and his co-workers at the Memphis Kellogg cereal plant face the prospect of spending Black History Month on the picket line. Three months into a lockout, the company has yet to return to the bargaining table. During local contract negotiations in October 2013, Kellogg demanded the right to hire more part-time and casual employees, at lower pay rates. When workers voted the proposal down, Kellogg locked them out. Scabs hired through an Ohio union-busting firm now produce Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops.

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