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Detroit Marathon Refinery Workers Strike For Better Pay

September 8, 2024 Brian H. Silverstein, Left Voice. , , ,
On September 4, following a 95 percent strike authorization vote, Teamsters Local 283 in Detroit, representing over 250 Marathon refinery workers, walked off the job. The Teamsters have been in negotiations with plant management since November 2023 and workers have been on the job without a contract since January 1, 2024. After the company halted negotiations, workers at the refinery went on strike for the first time in 30 years. Their main demands include cost of living raises that recoup the spending power lost to inflation since the COVID pandemic began, better healthcare, a requirement that all refinery employees be union members, and an end to the use of non-union subcontractors.

A New Model For Worker-Led Organizing

September 8, 2024 Eric Blanc, New Labor Forum. , , ,
Tens of millions of workers in the United States want a union at their workplace, but do not have one.[1] This unfortunate state of affairs is normally blamed on external obstacles such as our country’s broken labor law regime. But there are also significant internal obstacles within the labor movement that prevent it from scaling up to meet the widespread demand for workplace representation.

Thousands Of Portland Grocery Workers On Strike

September 7, 2024 Lyn Neeley, Workers World. , , ,
Thousands of grocery workers in Portland, Oakland, at 28 Fred Meyer stores walked out at 6 a.m. on Aug. 28, beginning a week-long strike. Workers are demanding better wages and pension plans in addition to good faith bargaining. On the third day of the strike, workers told this reporter that Fred Meyer’s sales have plummeted 69%. Kroger bought Fred Meyer in 1998 and also owns Albertsons and Safeway in Oregon. Kroger is the largest supermarket chain in the U.S. and the country’s fifth-largest retailer. Inside the Fred Meyer stores, the meat, bakery and deli departments have closed. Stores are opening two hours later than usual.

US Steel Threatens To Go Rogue

September 7, 2024 Harold Meyerson, Portside. , , , ,
On July 6, 1892, America’s most profitable corporation sent 300 Pinkerton agents to overpower the workers at its Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mill, all 3,800 of whom the company had fired four days before as a way to break their union. In the ensuing battle, seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed. That corporation—Carnegie Steel—was a marvel of its time, dominating America’s huge and growing steel industry. In 1901, J.P. Morgan worked out a merger between Carnegie and other leading steelmakers, which entailed paying a then-unheard-of $480 million for Carnegie’s stock (half of which went to Andrew Carnegie himself). The newly created behemoth was named United States Steel.

Hotel CEOs Prioritize Their Own Paychecks, Not Improvements

September 6, 2024 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. , , , , ,
Labor disputes are continuing to rage between unionized hotel workers and the bosses at three major chains: Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt. Over Labor Day weekend, more than 10,000 UNITE HERE members went on strike at 25 hotels in nine cities after months of unresolved contract negotiations. While most are back on the job for now, they’re urging guests not to patronize any of their target hotels until the union secures good new contracts. (They’ve mapped hotels with labor disputes here) Among the workers’ key demands: higher wages in line with the rising cost of living, fair staffing and workloads, improved benefits, and a reversal of pandemic-era cuts.

Plant Eligible For $2 Billion In Public Funds Is Union Busting

September 5, 2024 Kalena Thomhave, Portside. , , , ,
When Stan Upshaw got a job at Eos Energy Enterprises Inc. in 2020, he hoped for good pay and benefits, like the ones that went to union workers who decades ago built American manufacturing. After all, Eos’ zinc battery plant in the Pittsburgh suburb of Turtle Creek had already received a nearly $400 million conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, as well as millions in subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act. At Eos, Upshaw said he didn’t see the “good clean jobs” the act was meant to create. Instead, he saw management ignore seniority — and force workers to train new supervisors rather than promote from within, he said.

Over 10,000 Hotel Workers In The US Are On Strike

September 4, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Over 10,000 hotel workers went on strike early Sunday morning across the United States in pursuit of fair wages, better working conditions, and more staff to help. As working people across the United States are increasingly squeezed economically, hotel workers are coming together on the picket line under the slogan “one job should be enough!” Workers are on strike at hotels across 9 different cities in the US, including Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, Greenwich. Workers are also striking hotels in Honolulu and Kauai in Hawai’i. On Monday morning, 200 more hotel workers walked off the job in Baltimore.

Los Angeles Teachers’ Road To Durable Power, Part 1: 2014–2016

September 3, 2024 Alex Caputo-Pearl, Portside. , , ,
From the 1990s to the mid-2010s, the dominant forces within the Democratic Party helped create, shape, and drive bipartisan neoliberalism in public education. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, a variety of billionaires, and others promoted a model based on austerity, market-based carrots and sticks, attacks on teachers’ unions, and unregulated growth of charter schools that undermined traditional public schools. These policies reinforced historic racial and class-based inequities in schools and demonized educators themselves. Fast forward to 2019, when House Democrats proposed cuts to federal funding for charter schools, and the Party began constructing a 2020 platform that would, for the first time, call for guardrails, accountability, and transparency for charters.

Union Challenges Government Order That Sent Rail Contract Talks To Binding Arbitration

September 3, 2024 Bill Stephens, Trains. , , , ,
Montreal — The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference is refusing to take no for an answer. The union, which represents 9,300 locomotive engineers and conductors on Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City, has filed appeals challenging the decisions that led to binding arbitration being imposed on their failed contract talks with the railways. The union argues that the decisions — made on Aug. 22 by the labor minister just hours after an unprecedented work stoppage shut down freight rail traffic in Canada, and then affirmed by the Canada Industrial Relations Board on Aug. 24 — stripped the workers of their right to strike.

Building A Labor Movement In The United States To Win Worker Rights

September 2, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
For Labor Day, Clearing the FOG speaks with Rand Wilson, a long time labor organizer who began his career with Tony Mazzocchi and the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and who has been involved in many campaigns to build worker power in the United States. Wilson speaks about the current challenges for workers, including the way contracts are negotiated, labor laws that prohibit strikes, antiquated union structure and union busting by employers. He comments on the call by UAW for a general strike on 2028 and he describes a new campaign, CHIPS Communities United, and what people can do to support workers where they live.

Israel’s Main Labor Union Calls Strike To Pressure Netanyahu

September 2, 2024 Dave DeCamp, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Israel’s largest labor union, the Histadrut, has called a general strike that will start Monday to pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a hostage and ceasefire deal with Hamas. The decision to hold a strike came after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages who were held in Gaza. “We must reach a deal. A deal is more important than anything else,” said Arnon Bar-David, the head of Histadrut. “We are getting body bags instead of a deal.” According to Axios, the strike will almost completely shut down the country. Many private sector companies announced they would join the strike, and the Ben Gurion International Airport will shut down at 8:00 am local time.

Hundreds Of Thousands Protest In Israel After More Captives Found Dead

September 2, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , , ,
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis flooded the streets of several cities late on 1 September to demand the return of prisoners held by Hamas. Around 500,000 are expected to join the protests on Monday. “It seems this is the biggest set of protests that we’ve seen since the beginning of this round of horrific assaults on Gaza that began after October 7,” Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and an international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace, said on Monday, calling the demonstrations a “big deal.” Israeli police fired stun grenades at protesters on Sunday night. Hebrew media reports that over a dozen were detained at the Tel Aviv demonstrations.

The Condition Of The American Working Class Today

September 2, 2024 Jack Rasmus, LA Progressive. , , , , , , ,
On Labor Day this writer has summed up the condition of the American working class over the past year. This national election year it is perhaps useful to review not only the past year but what has happened since the last election in 2020. How has the American worker fared the past four years—in terms of wages, benefits, inflation and jobs? How have their unions, now a mere 10% of the labor force, also fared during the period of recovery since the deep Covid era recession of 2020, the uneven recovery of 2020-21 that followed, and the past thirty months of what has been a modest economic growth.

Hundreds Of Rideshare Drivers Form Tennessee Drivers’ Union

September 2, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , ,
On Tuesday, August 20, hundreds of rideshare drivers voted to form the Tennessee Drivers’ Union and to strike on Friday, August 30 to address worsening working conditions at the Nashville International Airport. Workers are striking strategically on Labor Day weekend, as they recognize that it is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. These drivers represent 14 different nationalities and speak multiple languages. “We are many nations working for [a] common goal,” says the co-president of the Tennessee Drivers’ Union. “If we don’t come together as people striving for their rights then we will continue to suffer and [be] robbed by two giants, Uber and Lyft.”

Labor Militancy Is The Only Way To Increase Union Membership

September 1, 2024 C. J. Polychroniou, Common Dreams. , , ,
With Labor Day 2024 upon us, it is important to critically reflect on the current state of the U.S. labor movement and the challenges that it faces in an environment where Big Business dominates the economy and mainstream society continues to abide allegiance to the values of a Lockean political culture in which ruthless individualism reigns supreme. To put it mildly, without a strong labor movement and a public spirit guiding our institutions, the country will never succeed in realizing the vision of a just and fair society. However, the news on the labor front is not very encouraging. The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union has been declining since the early 1980s—an era which coincides with the full swing of the neoliberal counterrevolution and deindustrialization.
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