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Worker Rights

Condé Nast Bosses Wear Prada And The Workers Get Nada!

January 28, 2024 Bob Hennelly, Portside. , , , ,
“The bosses wear Prada, and the workers get nada!” chanted hundreds of News Guild CWA workers out on a one-day strike against Condé Nast, the publishing juggernaut that owns iconic titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Bon  Appetite. The boisterous picket line at the base of One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on a damp day January 24, drew a cacophony of honking horns whizzing by on West Street. After a widely lauded voluntary recognition of the union back in 2022 by the privately-held global media conglomerate, the union has run into what it told Work-Bites is hardball union-busting tactics that have really intensified with the New Year. Back in October, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch announced the company would be shrinking its global workforce of 5,400 by 270 while also predicting the publisher would see the “third straight year of overall revenue growth.”

The Real Artificial Intelligence Fight Is About Who Gets The Gains

January 20, 2024 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
AI is a labor issue. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will prove to be a marginal labor issue. Or maybe it will prove to be an existential, epochal labor issue on par with industrialization or globalization, each of which revolutionized their own eras of work. Before we get completely immersed in the battle over how AI will affect workers, though, it is important to frame the playing field correctly. This is not a fight between a backwards-looking labor movement on one side, and technological progress on the other. Rather, this is a question of where the wealth and efficiency gains created by AI will flow. Want to change the world? Share.

$15, Take A Bow; $20 In Our Sights!

January 13, 2024 Gabrielle Gurley, Portside. , , ,
The New Year blew in with higher wages for workers in dozens of jurisdictions across the country. Twenty-five states and 60 localities will raise their minimum wages in 2024. What is clear from even a cursory scan of these increases is that while a $15 minimum wage is the floor, many localities and some states have already passed wage increases that are higher than what the Fight for $15 movement coalesced around more than a decade ago. A number have landed on a $17 minimum wage for some or all employees, an encouraging development in the ongoing struggle to establish living wages nationwide.

Creating A Support System For Platform Cooperatives In Thailand

January 9, 2024 Akkanut Wantanasombut, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
Since its first proposal in 2014, Platform Cooperativism has evolved into a global movement as an alternative to Platform Capitalism. The concept has been adopted in over 546 known projects across 50 countries. The establishment of the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC), serving as a knowledge hub for the global community, marked a significant milestone. PCC fosters inspiration, knowledge, outcomes, and impacts—I am a testament to this, considering myself a small yet integral piece of the evidence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I enrolled in the online course ‘Platform Co-op Now!’

Starbucks Ordered To Reopen 23 Stores

December 17, 2023 Julia Conley, Commondreams. , , , ,
Like its alleged intimidation tactics and firing of workers who have led unionization efforts, Starbucks' closure of at least 23 stores amid a nationwide workers' rights push last year did not go unnoticed by federal regulators, who ordered the global coffee chain to reopen the locations on Wednesday. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint saying that eight of the shuttered stores were among the more than 360 Starbucks locations that have voted to unionize, and that executives did not notify the union, Starbucks Workers United, about the closures ahead of time—robbing organizers of an opportunity to bargain over the decision.

NIH Researchers Vote To Form A Union For The First Time

December 9, 2023 Max Kozlov, Portside. , , , ,
Hundreds of early-career researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, nearly completing the official process required to do so. They plan to call on the agency — the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research — to improve pay and working conditions, and to bolster its policies and procedures for dealing with harassment and excessive workloads. About 98% of the research fellows who participated in the ballot voted on 6 December to form the union, with 1,601 voting in favour and just 36 against. Barring any objections, the result will be certified by the US Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) after five business days, and the union will become the first ever to represent fellows at a federal research agency and the largest union to form in the US government in more than a decade.

Inspired By Strike Wins, 1,000 Volkswagen Workers Sign Union Cards

December 9, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , ,
Today workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant announced their third bid to unionize plant-wide with the Auto Workers (UAW). Riding the momentum of its strike of the Big 3 automakers, the UAW now wants to double its numbers in the auto industry by adding 150,000 workers at companies that have long avoided unionization. Thirteen non-union automakers are on notice: Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, Volkswagen, and electric vehicle producers Rivian, Tesla, and Lucid. The union says it has been inundated with calls and online sign-ups by workers at these firms. The Volkswagen drive is the first to go public, after 1,000 workers signed union cards.

Working For Climate Justice: Report Urges Unions To Lead Transition

December 5, 2023 Queen Mary University of London. , , , , ,
Ahead of COP28 the UN warns that the world is facing ‘hellish’3C of climate heating, and with European lawmakers urging COP28 climate summit to take aim at fossil fuels, a new report published today from the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice and Institute of Employment Rights, reveals why trade unions need to put climate bargaining at the centre of everything they do and maps out the steps that must be taken to achieve this. The report, ‘Working for Climate Justice: Trade unions in the front line against climate change’ asserts that until now, the trade union movement has failed to make climate change a core concern of their bargaining agendas.

December 7: Washington Post Guild Members Request Solidarity

December 5, 2023 the Washington Post Guild, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Around the world, The Washington Post has earned a reputation for being a news organization that holds the powerful to account. Every day, we work to uncover truths big and small, to tell stories that connect you more deeply to your communities and shine a light into the world’s darkest corners. We are profoundly committed to The Washington Post, to its longevity and success, and see our mission to report the news honestly and unflinchingly as essential to both. Now, we are applying those core principles to our workplace. For 18 months, members of our union, the Post Guild, have sought to negotiate a fairer contract for us all. But management has refused to bargain in good faith.

Adidas Exposed By Impostors At Tech Conference

November 19, 2023 The Yes Men. , , ,
This Wednesday, an "adidas executive" named "Aristide Feldholt" (actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men) announced to a huge, standing-room-only crowd at Web Summit — the self-described "largest tech conference in the world" — that adidas would reward tens of thousands of underpaid sweatshop workers, many of whom are owed significant backpay and severance by letting them frolic in a deeply weird VR world called the "adiVerse," paying for it with a cryptocurrency generated by a tiny chip implanted into their bodies. "Aristide" was joined onstage by the multi-platinum "DJ Marshmello" (actually Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men), who dropped his new single, "All Day I Dream (About Back Pay)."

Film And TV Production Assistants Are Unionizing

November 16, 2023 Mel Buer, The Real News. , , ,
We won’t grasp all the repercussions of 2023’s ‘Hot Labor Summer’ for years to come, but one place where the effects are already being noted is Hollywood. Building on the momentum of the newly-chartered IATSE Local 111, which represents thousands of commercial production workers across the country, production assistants in the Film and TV sector are coming together to fight back against exploitative working conditions in the industry. The Real News speaks with organizers from Production Assistants United to understand the conditions faced by production workers in Film and TV, and how the unionization of these PAs could reshape the politics of Hollywood labor.

Detroit Casino Workers On Strike For The First Time In History

November 16, 2023 Kyle Thibodeau and Emma Boyhtari, Left Voice. , , , ,
For nearly a month, the casino workers at Detroit’s three casinos, MGM Grand, Hollywood at Greektown, and MotorCity, have been on strike. This coincides with the strike wave that is happening in the Metro Detroit area, including workers at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and following the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike at the Big Three auto manufacturers who recently reached a Tentative Agreement (TA). The casino workers represented by Unite Here Local 24, UAW, Teamsters Local 1038, Operating Engineers Local 324, and Regional Council of Carpenters that make up The Detroit Casino Council (DCC) have demanded the following: a wage increase to keep with inflation, lowering the price of healthcare, and job security with the guarantee that the casinos won’t replace their jobs with technology before the contract is up.

Kellogg’s Initiates Lawfare Against Venezuelan Workers

November 14, 2023 Ultimas Noticias, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
The British company Kellogg Latin America Holding Company Limited has launched a fresh legal offensive against Venezuela by filing an investment arbitration claim with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) based in Washington DC. As reported by the Ibero-American Arbitration Center’s magazine, the claim was filed on November 9, 2023, and the multinational corporation is invoking the Venezuela – United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Bilateral Investment Treaty of 1995. In 2018, the company unilaterally ceased operations, abruptly leaving over 500 workers jobless.

Cornell Graduate Students United Wins Unionization Election

November 13, 2023 Jonathan Mong and Matthew Kiviat, Portside. , , , ,
Cornell graduate students have won their unionization election by a vote of 1,873 to 80, and will federate as Cornell Graduate Students United — an organization fighting for the rights of graduate workers — under the national United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America union. 128 ballots were challenged, but not counted because they would not have determined the outcome of the election. Voting occurred on the Ithaca campus between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8, as well as on Nov. 6 at the Geneva campus and at New York City’s Cornell Tech campus. Of the 3,175 eligible voters, 1,953 voted in the election.

What’s Next For India’s ‘Manual Scavengers’ After Major Legal Victory

November 13, 2023 Ankush Pal, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
In late August, hundreds of women sanitation workers came together at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. The 18th-century astronomical observatory has become a popular place to publicly show dissent in India due to its proximity to the Parliament, a little more than a mile away.  The protesters were opposing recently released official statistics regarding the death of sanitation workers. The women claimed that the number of so-called “manual scavengers” who died while on duty due to the precarious nature of the occupation was much higher than what the Parliament claimed. Timed to coincide with the government’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of India gaining independence from the British, the demonstration was part of a widespread series of coordinated actions using the slogan “Stop Killing Us.” 
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