Worker Rights

Berkeley Urban Ore Workers Win IWW Union Election

May 19, 2023 Industrial Workers of the World, It's Going Down. Organize! California, IWW, Unions, Worker Rights

The Urban Ore workers of Berkeley, California won their union election with a two-thirds majority of workers’ votes on April 7, 2023. The union received confirmation of their certification from the NLRB as a bargaining unit on Thursday, April 20. The campaign went public on February 1. While one of the employers had told local media he objected to some of the ballots, he did not file any objection before the deadline with the regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office. Urban Ore is a 3-acre for-profit salvage operation in Berkeley, California, founded in 1980 with its goal “to end the age of waste.” Workers describe it as an essential part of the Berkeley community.

Gig Work Is Getting Dangerous

May 14, 2023 Veronica Avila and Mariah Montgomery, Scheer Post. Educate! Gig Workers, Uber, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

In recent months, stories of rideshare drivers and delivery workers carjacked, robbed, or even killed on the job have made headlines around the country. Now, growing research shows that there is an all-out crisis in app-based work. This May, Gig Workers Rising, PowerSwitch Action, and ACRE released new research that suggests the safety crisis among app workers — especially app workers of color — is escalating. They found that in 2022, at least 31 app workers — three-quarters of them people of color — were murdered while working. That’s more app workers murdered than we have been able to identify in any prior year.

Labor Organizers Launch New Model For The Fight Against Private Equity

May 13, 2023 Derek Seidman, Truthout. Create! Labor Movement, Private Equity, Wall Street, Worker Rights

On May Day, a small group of labor advocates and workers weaved through midtown Manhattan, stopping at the shiny corporate headquarters of several firms with names like KKR, Sycamore Partners, Apollo Global Management, BC Partners and Roark Capital Group. Most people don’t recognize these names, or if they do, know very little about them. But these are some of the wealthiest and most influential firms on Wall Street, behemoths within the ultra-powerful but opaque financial sector known as private equity — the arm of Wall Street that oversees trillions in assets and specializes in buying out, restructuring and selling off privately owned businesses to turn a big profit.

A Union Busting Chatbot?

May 6, 2023 Abbie Harper, Labor Notes. Educate! AI Chatbot, Nonprofit, Retaliation, Unions, Worker Rights

Is artificial intelligence a new union-busting tool? For the leadership at the National Eating Disorders Association, it would seem the answer is yes. Two weeks after the Helpline Associates at the NEDA won our vote to unionize and join Communications Workers (CWA) Local 1101, NEDA interim CEO Elizabeth Thompson made a surprise announcement: the Helpline was being eliminated and replaced with a chatbot. Every newly unionized employee would be jobless as of June 1. The National Eating Disorders Association is the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to eating disorders. Its programs and services raise awareness, build communities of support and recovery, fund research, and put essential resources into the hands of those in need.

At UFCW, A Reform Movement Rises

May 6, 2023 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! Democracy, Grocery Workers, Labor Movement, Worker Rights

Las Vegas — It was 7:30 on a Monday morning on the Las Vegas Strip, early enough to stand outside without sunscreen. A group of people — first a trickle, then dozens — wearing matching blue T-shirts that read “Organizing & Bargaining & The Right to Strike & A Voice in Our Union,” flooded the patio of the Mirage Resort & Casino pool, overwhelming the early morning smokers who had sought refuge there. This group was smiling, energized, far too wholesome for their garish surroundings. Like a team of underdogs before a critical game, they seethed with nervous excitement. These were the reformers.

Over 11,000 TV And Film Writers Go On Strike

May 6, 2023 Ezra Brain, Left Voice. Resist! Labor Unions, Strikes, Worker Rights, Writers

At midnight on Tuesday, May 2, over 11,000 writers organized with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike for the first time in 15 years. This strike has the potential to be incredibly disruptive to the entire entertainment industry, effectively grinding much of TV and film production to a halt. The key issues of this strike surround pay — specifically attached to the growth of streaming content — and concerns over how the bosses of the entertainment industry may use AI to “automate” parts or all of the writing process. This strike dawns at a key moment for both the entertainment industry and the labor movement as a whole.

Report: Tough Job Conditions Can Seriously Affect Mental Health

May 6, 2023 Deirdre McPhillips, CNN. Educate! mental health, Paid Sick Leave, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Certain work conditions – including inflexible or late-night schedules and lack of paid sick leave – can have a significant effect on mental health, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, about 1 in every 37 working adults experienced serious psychological distress, or negative feelings that were severe enough to impair social and occupational functioning and to require treatment, the report shows. The findings were based off of a representative sample of adults ages 18 to 64 who responded to the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Health Interview Survey.

In The Factories There Is Wealth, But There Is No Life

May 5, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! ILO, India, Worker Rights, Working Class

In late 2022, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released a fascinating report entitled Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World, in large part encouraged by a slew of initiatives across India to extend the workday. The report accumulated global data on the time spent at work in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ILO found that ‘approximately one third of the global workforce (35.4 percent) worked more than 48 hours per week’ and ‘one fifth of global employment (20.3 percent) consists of short (or part-time) hours of work of less than 35 hours per week’, such as gig work.

We Are All Salts

May 5, 2023 Chris Townsend, Labor Notes. Organize! Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights

Today’s revival of union “salting” could not be more welcome or more urgently needed. A tactic as old as the labor movement itself, salting describes going to work in an unorganized workplace where there may be a chance to help initiate new union organizing. It’s also a label for taking jobs at already unionized employers, hoping to play a positive role. But here I will deal with the former: taking jobs to help spur new organizing. Whatever amount of salting is underway today—it’s impossible to precisely measure—it cannot come soon enough. The U.S. labor movement is mired in a crisis that threatens its very existence.

How Secret ‘Bondage Fees’ Trap Contracted Workers In Low-Wage Jobs

May 5, 2023 Sarah Lazare, Workday Magazine. Educate! Low wages, Noncompete Clause, Worker Rights

For almost six years, Raymond Pearson has been working as a front-desk concierge at one of the Galaxy Towers condominiums in Guttenberg, New Jersey, answering phones, getting packages to residents, dealing with food delivery, and developing bonds with the people who live there. “The residents become your family,” says Pearson, who is 34 years old and lives in nearby North Bergen. “You’re spending a lot of time with them. I’ve seen some of the residents’ kids graduate. I’ve seen some leave for prom. The same ones who left for prom, I’ve seen them leave for college.” But it wasn’t until this year, he says, that he learned that this whole time his livelihood has been subject to a contract—made without his participation or consent—that contains a poison pill.

Workers Fight Back On May Day, International Workers’ Day

May 1, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Higher Education, May Day, Strikes, Supply Chain, Worker Rights

May 1 is celebrated around the world, and unofficially in the United States, as International Workers' Day. In honor of this, Clearing the FOG speaks with two workers who are fighting for their rights and dignity. SN 'Yeager,' a spokesperson for the Graduate Employees Organization Local 3550, speaks about the conditions that brought them to go on strike at the University of Michigan (now in its sixth week), the tremendous outpouring of support for their struggle and how the University is retaliating against them. Billy Randel of the Truckers Movement for Justice, which is holding a day-long protest at the Department of Transportation today, speaks about the difficulties truckers are facing in the US and their demands that all workers are paid for all hours worked and greater transparency in the industry.

Southern Worker School Charts Path For Building Workers Movement

April 30, 2023 Southern Workers Assembly. Strategize! Labor Movement, People's Assembly, The South, Worker Rights

“We heard from the rail workers. We heard from the truckers. We’ve got the longshoremen in the house, too,” said Leonard Riley, a longshore worker with the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422 and member of the SWA Coordinating Committee, addressing a packed house at the Teamsters Local 71 union hall during the opening program of the 2023 Southern Worker School. “The reason I bring that up is because of the power that’s in this room. We’ve got bus drivers over there, teachers over here. There’s power in this room. It’s going to take strategy, planning, coming together, and finding out where the power connectors are to mobilize and exercise it.”

Workers Who Have Occupied An Italian Factory Are Close To Owning It

April 30, 2023 Conor Gallagher, Naked Capitalism. Resist! Italy, Occupation, Worker Ownership, Worker Rights

The longest-ever factory in Italian history is taking place in Florence where the 300 workers are now making progress at turning it into a worker-owned non-profit that would pay the employees and produce products that would benefit the community. Should the workers succeed, it could provide an inspiration for others. For three years workers at the former automotive parts factory, GKN Florence, were in limbo. According to Investigative Reporting Project Italy, in 2018 GKN was purchased by the British hedge fund Melrose, which went about enacting its motto of “buy, improve, sell.”

State Bills Would Eliminate Long-Term Job Security In Higher Education

April 29, 2023 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Educate! Academic Freedom, Higher Education, North Carolina, Texas, Worker Rights

Last Tuesday, Republican legislators in the North Carolina state house of representatives proposed H.B. 715, the so-called “Higher Ed Modernization and Affordability Act.” Its actual purpose is to destabilize academic jobs and exert political surveillance over North Carolina’s sixteen public universities and 58 public community colleges. Last Thursday, the Texas state senate passed a similar bill, S.B. 18. The North Carolina bill has several provisions, but the prospective elimination of tenure is getting the most attention. Under this provision, the tenure system would be eliminated for all new hires from July 2024 onward, and all future faculty would be employed at-will or on fixed-term contracts between one and four years long.

Workers Fighting Union-Busting Have A New Legal Tool

April 25, 2023 Sam Knight, Truthout. Resist! Grocery Workers, Legal System, union busting, Worker Rights

A company accused of lying about retirement benefits to stop workers from organizing can be sued in a class-action lawsuit, a federal judge ruled. The decision came on April 7 after the defendant, the California-based grocery retailer Save Mart Supermarkets, asked the judge to dismiss the case, which experts are calling a creative use of labor law against union-busting. The suit hinges on promises made by managers about retirement benefits to undercut the appeal of union membership to employees, a common tactic in campaigns against labor organizing. A ruling against Save Mart could haunt companies that have used similar tactics for decades.

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