Labor

A Different WWI Anniversary

November 11, 2018 By Robert Ovetz, Portside Educate! Labor, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

More than a decade before the New Deal, a wildcat strike wave during WWI brought about extensive concessions including right to organize, mandatory arbitration for employers, higher wages, and shorter work weeks. As we approach the anniversary of the end of WWI the history of this little-known period of class conflict has many critical lessons for us today. Above all, the lesson is that class conflict drives reform not the other way around as is commonly argued.

Labor’s Real Innovators Will Come From The Ranks, Not The Corporate World

October 25, 2018 By Chris Brookse, Labornotes.org Strategize! Class Struggle, Labor, SEIU, Workers Rights and Jobs

“Put your faith in the rank and file” was the advice that famed longshore union organizer Harry Bridges used to give. But instead of turning to union members for the bold ideas we need, some labor leaders are taking cues from the corporate world. Take the Service Employees (SEIU), which recently posted a job for an “Innovation Specialist.” What would such a specialist do? It’s impossible to tell from the posting, a garble of buzzwords that reads like a Silicon Valley venture capitalist’s TED talk. For instance: “The Innovation Specialist will train and guide teams in the use of innovation methods, tools, and practices to enable staff in SEIU’s locals and in its International Union to innovate systematically with method and rigor.”

Unions Bring Argentina to a Standstill As Macri Meets Bankers

September 28, 2018 Telesur. Resist! Argentina, Austerity, Finance and the Economy, Labor

On Tuesday at midnight, Argentina’s General Confederation of Workers (CGT) began its 24-hour general strike against Mauricio Macri’s austerity policies. On Monday, the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (CTA) launched a parallel 36-hour strike with the support of several smaller unions, neighborhood associations, and social movements to reject the government’s social and economic policies. Macri has faced massive protests and four national strikes. In June, shortly after the government agreed on a US$50 billion emergency loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the CGT and several other unions paralyzed the country to reject the agreement and the austerity measures that accompany IMF loans.

The National Prison Strike Isn’t Over

September 24, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Human Rights, Labor, Prison Strike, Slavery

From August 21 to September 9, prisoners in 17 states went on strike to protest inhuman living and working conditions and to promote ten basic demands. Although the formal strike is over, some prisoners are being retaliated against and others are continuing to strike. We speak with Amani Sawari, a prisoner's rights activist, about the strike, the demands and how we can all provide support to finally end legalized slavery in the United States. For an in-depth discussion of what we learned at the Toronto World Beyond War conference, "Legalizing Peace," subscribe to Clearing the FOG on Patreon and receive our bonus show, Thinking it Through. Visit Patreon.com/ClearingtheFOG.

Chicago Hotel Workers Strike Over Healthcare

September 21, 2018 Bryce Covert, Truthout.org Resist! Class Struggle, Health Care, Labor, Service Industry, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

Tina Graham has worked for Chicago hotels for 11 years, and in the beginning, she faced a predicament every winter: As the tourism industry’s slow season approached she lost her health insurance, even as she dealt with the wear and tear that such physical work takes on her body. “When you’re working, you’re moving all of your body, your hands, your feet, your legs, your arms, and they get tired,” she told Truthout. “It’s really hard.” Graham has had to have work done on her rotator cuff due to the repetitive nature of her tasks. She takes arthritis pills every morning and wears a medicated patch on her back throughout the day. “You don’t rest from the time you get there to the time you leave,” she said. “You’re on the move, pushing a big cart with your linens on it, chemicals on it, your vacuum on it, going from room to room.”

The Best Way To Eradicate Poverty: Welfare Not Jobs

September 19, 2018 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Labor, New Economy, Poverty, Revisionism, Social Welfare

The Census released its income, poverty, and health insurance data last week (ASEC, SPM). Among other things, the data allows us to see who was in poverty and therefore gives us good insights about how to eradicate poverty. In this post, I detail what I think these insights are using my own calculations of the 2017 microdata. Below is the overall poverty rate broken down by market income and disposable income. “Market income” refers to all income received from labor earnings and capital ownership. “Disposable income” refers to each person’s final income and takes into consideration taxes paid and government benefits received. For both figures, I use the poverty line of the Supplemental Poverty Metric. In 2017, the market poverty rate was 25 percent. The poverty rate when counting disposable income was 13.9 percent.

Vermont Puts Prisoners Out For Bid To Slave Labor Corporations

September 17, 2018 William Boardman, Readersupportednews.org Educate! Corporations, Labor, Prisoner rights, Slave labor, Vermont

Since the budget summary was written, Vermont has removed all its prisoners from the Michigan facility. In its place, Vermont used the Pennsylvania state facility at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where four Vermonters have died, one from untreated cancer with no palliative care. Now Vermont negotiators have reportedly agreed to a contract to send Vermont prisoners to Tallahatchie, Mississippi, to be housed in a 2,672-bed facility run by CoreCivic, Inc. (formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America), the largest private prison company in the US (2018 second-quarter profit $42 million on revenue of $449 million). The Vermont contract is currently secret. The ACLU opposes the contract sight unseen. State and corporate officials have refused to discuss it in any detail, but promise it will be made public once the necessary parties have signed it to make it binding.

Prisoner Strike Exposes An Age Old American Reliance On Forced Labor

September 4, 2018 By Calvin Schermerhorn, Theconversation.com Resist! Exploitation, Labor, Prison Labor, Prison Strike, Prisons

Prisoners in 17 states and several Canadian provinces are on strike in protest of prison labor conditions. Their demonstrations are compelling Americans to understand that some everyday foods are produced behind bars, for cents on the hour, in a system many call “modern slavery.” Prisoners in the U.S. harvest and process eggs, orange juice, ground beef and fish. They also staff call centers, fight wildfires and make sugar. For this work, they receive, on average, 86 cents a day, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group. Some formerly incarcerated people disagree with the comparison of prison work to slavery, saying that prison jobs teach real skills that may reduce recidivism. But the prisoners’ strike, underway since Aug. 21, shines a light on a troubling American habit of consuming, often thoughtlessly, the products of forced labor.

Hoffa Caught Using Phony Member Profiles To Push Yes Vote At UPS

August 28, 2018 Staff, Tdu.org Resist! Class Struggle, Labor, Unions, UPS

Hoffa’s Package Division and UPSrising have sent members nationwide an email and leaflet that uses photos from the internet to impersonate UPSers and fraudulently promote contract givebacks. Hoffa and Denis Taylor are having such a hard time finding real UPS Teamsters who support their contract givebacks that they have resorted to using fake photos and phony membership testimonials. On Thursday afternoon, Hoffa's Package Division sent out a nationwide blast email of a leaflet supposedly featuring UPSers speaking out in favor of the concessionary contract. We got suspicious when we recognized the unidentified driver in the top-left of the leaflet who praises the two-tier 22.4 driver giveback.

How Missouri Beat “Right to Work”

August 22, 2018 By Nelson Lichtenstein, Dissentmagazine.org Resist! Class Struggle, Labor, Missouri, Workers Rights and Jobs

The most remarkable thing about last week’s rejection by Missouri voters of a right-to-work law enacted by the Republican-run state legislature was its magnitude. Not only did opponents crush the law by a margin of more than two to one, the total vote on the issue—nearly 1.4 million—exceeded by more than a 100,000 the number of statewide ballots cast on behalf of all candidates in both party primaries that same day. Labor won because its leadership reached deep into the rank and file to mobilize an army of activists who first collected more than 300,000 signatures to put a repeal referendum on the ballot and then door-knocked throughout the state on its behalf.

How European Workers Coordinated This Month’s Massive Amazon Strike—And What Comes Next

July 30, 2018 Rebecca Burns, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Amazon, Class Struggle, Europe, Labor, Strikes, Workers Rights and Jobs

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth topped $150 billion last week, making him the richest man in modern history, thousands of Amazon workers across Europe went on strike. The work stoppage, which lasted three days at some facilities, was one of the largest labor actions against Amazon to date, and the first to receive widespread coverage in the U.S. media. But the strikes and protests in Spain, Germany and Poland were just the latest in an escalating series of actions against Amazon in Europe, where workers belonging to both conventional unions and militant workers’ organizations are forging a transnational movement against the internet juggernaut. In Germany, which is Amazon's second-biggest market after the United States, workers at the company’s fulfillment centers waged the first-ever strike against Amazon in 2013.

As Prevailing Wage Laws Are Being Threatened, New Research Explains Their Importance

July 27, 2018 By Filiberto Nolasco Gomez, Workdayminnesota.org Strategize! Labor, Legislation, New Economy, Wages, Workers Rights and Jobs

The repeal was originated and pushed by Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) through the ballot committee Protecting Michigan Taxpayers. ABC represents mostly non-union contractors. Opponents of Michigan’s repeal(link is external) say that it will erode safety and training standards and hurt the construction industry’s ability to attract and retain skilled workers. Proponents of repeal claim it will save the state hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The savings are expected to come directly from the wages of the construction workers who currently earn Michigan’s prevailing wages. Interviewed in the website Crain’s Detroit Business(link is external), Michigan State University economist, Charles Ballard, is skeptical of the claim that repealing prevailing wage saves money.

UPS And Teamsters In Collusion Against The Workers

July 23, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Labor, UPS, Workers Rights and Jobs

UPS workers are in a critical struggle with both their employer and their union, the Teamsters, which are pushing a poor contract on them. Like many workers in the United States, UPS workers are facing low wages and cuts to health care and other benefits. Although UPS workers nationwide voted by over 90% to go on strike, they are being told that the new five-year contract is a “done deal.” Rank and file workers are doing all they can to reach workers and let them know that this is not the case. They can still reject the contract and keep fighting for a better one.

The Crummy Good Economy And The New Serfdom

July 19, 2018 Frank Stricker, Counterpunch.org Educate! Class Struggle, Labor, New Economy, Unemployment

For about a year now, the unemployment rate has been around 4%. That’s supposed mean full employment, labor shortages, and rising pay. But the latest earnings report is the same old story: no gains in real hourly wages from June of 2017 through June of 2018. Most employers have been able to find new workers without having to raise pay offers. What’s going on? There are screwball right-wing diversions and explanations. A Trump economist, D. J. Norquist, opines that it will take time for the Republican tax-cuts to work their way through the economy. As an explanation, this is nonsense. Just because the lords of creation get more money doesn’t mean more will filter down to workers. We have the evidence of forty years on that issue. Then we have Stephen Moore at the Heritage Foundation.

A Transformational Plan For Economic Democracy To Serve The People

July 19, 2018 Martin O’Neill and Joe Guinan, Renewal.org.uk Create! Class Struggle, Labor, New Economy

As Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell likes to say, ‘Another world is not just possible, it is within reach’. Largely unnoticed by its enemies within and without, the Corbyn Project is cohering around a programme for transformative change that could form the basis for a new political-economic settlement. Building on popular elements of Labour’s 2017 manifesto, For the Many Not the Few, and encompassing cutting edge thinking from the Alternative Models of Ownership report and beyond, the leadership is assembling the tools and strategies to enable a Labour government to pursue a bold transformation of the British economy organised around ownership, control, democracy, and participation.1

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