Worker Rights

$340 Million Anti-Labor Consulting Industry Is Behind Union-Busting

February 8, 2023 Tyler Walicek, Truthout. Educate! Labor Movement, Labor Unions, union busting, Worker Rights

The remarkable spikes in union activity over the last few years have given many on the left cause for hope: could we be on the precipice of a resurgent, newly galvanized U.S. labor movement? In the first three quarters of 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) documented a 53 percent increase in organizing petitions — including startling wins by new, independent unions at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and numerous others, across many sectors. There’s a widespread sense that a qualitative shift has taken place. That said — despite the perceptible increase in agitation — on quantitative measures, the picture is not quite so rosy. Overall union density in fact declined in 2022, to a new low of 10.1 percent. It’s yet to be seen if newly roused energies will translate into sustained, structured power. By some metrics, much of the present organizing wave seems to have been dashed upon the rocks — in no small part thanks to a merciless backlash from the bosses.

Fear And Loathing Among The Union Busters

February 4, 2023 Julia Rock, The Lever. Educate! Lobbyists, NLRB, Restaurants, union busting, Worker Rights

“Comrades,” said Chappell Phillips, as he grabbed the microphone, “please do not leave the conference. It’s all better from here.” Phillips, an executive at the buffet restaurant chain Golden Corral, stood at a podium in the front of a hotel ballroom in Atlanta, before some one hundred restaurant executives and managers and union avoidance lawyers mingling and sipping weak coffee. Minutes earlier, the government’s top labor watchdog had been standing at the same podium delivering the keynote speech here at the October 2022 summit of the Restaurant Law Center, the legal arm of the National Restaurant Association. Lobbying groups often invite government officials to their conferences to curry favor or gain insight into regulatory developments. But America’s chief enforcer of federal labor law at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had not stuck to the proverbial script.

Non-Compete Agreement Leaves Workers Homeless And Jobless

February 3, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Educate! Non-Compete Clauses, Retaliation, Unions, Worker Rights

Kevin Borowske is still mulling it over after being fired last week—and evicted as of February 28. Was he a scientist with the proprietary recipe for a cleaning solution? Was he the holder of a confidential blueprint concealing the secret rooms in the condo? Otherwise, he’s at a loss as to why the property management company FirstService Residential had him sign a non-compete agreement when he was hired as a caretaker—a job that blends janitorial and light housekeeping services—at a high-rise building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A non-compete agreement bars the worker from taking a similar job with another company for a period of time. You might assume that such agreements would mainly be used to keep workers with proprietary information from being poached by a firm’s competitors. But now all kinds of employers require workers to sign them—so many that the Federal Trade Commission is considering outlawing the practice.

Transit Workers Have Been On Strike For Three Weeks; No Agreement Reached

February 3, 2023 Tom Roussey, ABC7. Resist! Strike, Transportation, Virginia, Worker Rights

A strike by transit workers in Loudoun County is now in its third week with no clear end in sight. A county spokesperson said service for Loudoun County Transit began being affected by the strike on January 11. As of Friday, commuter buses that travel between various parts of Loudoun County and D.C. and Arlington, Va. had not been running for more than two weeks. “We have prioritized transit services to optimize any available drivers daily, prioritizing paratransit services, local bus routes serving the Leesburg and Sterling areas, and Silver Line bus routes ahead of commuter bus service at this time,” Loudoun County spokesperson Glen Barbour wrote in an email to 7News. “The impact to bus routes and transit services continues to be updated regularly on our website at www.loudoun.gov/buschanges. Subscribers to our notifications are also receiving the updates directly (sign up at loudoun.gov/busbiz).”

Chicago Grads Want To Turn City Into A ‘Powerhouse Of Organizing’

February 1, 2023 Sara Van Horn, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, Higher Education, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

Chicago's thousands of graduate workers — increasingly responsible for teaching and research work once performed by faculty — have long been overworked, underpaid, and non-union. This month, that might finally be starting to change. On January 12, nearly 3,000 graduate workers at Northwestern University announced a landslide victory in their union election, winning 93.5% of the vote. This Tuesday, some 3,000 graduate workers at the nearby University of Chicago (UChicago) will also cast ballots, and while UChicago’s election results won’t be tallied until March due to mail-in voting, a majority of workers pledged to vote “yes.” The two universities are the largest employers of graduate workers in Chicago, and union victories at both would reflect a dramatic increase in the area’s academic union density.

Mountain Equipment Catastrophe

January 25, 2023 Half Past Capitalism, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Resist! Cooperatives, Privatization, Worker Rights

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Kevin Harding, one of the organizers of a spirited hail-mary attempt to save Mountain Equipment Co-op from being sold off to a US private equity firm. Kevin is a public policy professional who works with cooperatives and community enterprises. In this episode, he shares about how tens of thousands of members mobilized to stop MEC's sale, and came very close to being successful. Dru and Kevin also discuss the situation that led to the co-operative's demise, what could have prevented it, and what became of the effort to save MEC.

Harper Collins Debut Authors Won’t Work With Strikebreaking Editors

January 20, 2023 Alexandra Martinez, Prism. Resist! Harper Collins, Labor Unions, Strikes, Worker Rights

Workers at the HarperCollins Union have been on strike for over two months, braving the fierce New York City winter and picketing outside the company’s offices. Now, sources say their labor is being outsourced to temporary workers. While some authors are crossing the picket line and continuing to work with “scab”—or strikebreaking—editors, many are holding the line in support of the union and say they won’t work with any temporary workers while their editors strike for a livable salary. “I don’t want publishing to continue to be a place that’s only feasible for people who come from means,” said Kasey LeBlanc, who has a young adult novel publishing with HarperCollins in 2024. For over 80 years, HarperCollins has held a reputation as being one of the largest unionized publishing houses, with over 250 employees represented by Local 2110 of the UAW.

Inside The Supreme Court Case That Could Chill A Strike Wave

January 7, 2023 Steve Wishnia, Work Bites. Educate! NLRB, Strikes, Supreme Court, Worker Rights

The Supreme Court is about to consider whether employers can sue unions for perishable goods lost during a strike by claiming they’re intentional property damage. On Jan. 10, the Court will hear oral arguments in Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 174, in which a Seattle concrete company is seeking to overturn a Washington Supreme Court decision dismissing its suit against Local 174 for the costs of several truckloads it had to throw out after drivers walked out in 2017. The state court held that Glacier had to wait until the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] ruled on whether the damage was “incidental” to strike conduct protected under the federal National Labor Relations Act.

US Child Care Deficit Impacts Multiple Sectors of the Country

January 6, 2023 Diego Ramos, Scheer Post. Educate! Austerity, Child Care, Pentagon Budget, Worker Rights

As Congress delivers nearly a trillion dollars for military spending through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in fiscal year 2023, one of the country’s most vulnerable sectors is in the midst of financial turmoil, with lingering effects across the country’s workforce. Within the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March 2021, a mere $39 billion was allocated towards child care relief funding, an amount proven to not be enough with funds already drying up. The shortage of money sets up a house-of-cards style effect on child care and the workforce as a whole. With the onset of the funds, “teachers at the [child care] center have gotten a more than 40% pay bump over the past two years, from $14 an hour before the pandemic to $20 an hour now,” reports Bloomberg.

The First Big Strike Of 2023 May Happen Behind Prison Walls

December 31, 2022 Kim Kelly, Truthout. Resist! Pennsylvania, Prisoner rights, Strikes, Worker Rights

All in all, 2022 was a banner year for organized labor. Thousands of workers in a wide variety of industries unionized; they pushed back against union-busting campaigns from oligarchs and corporate hit men; they went on strike and protested unfair treatment, from California to Alabama and everywhere in between. Public support for unions shot up to 71 percent, and the worryingly under-resourced National Labor Relations Board was inundated with more union election petitions than it could handle. Members of Gen Z, the youngest generation of workers, are even more pro-union than their millennial parents, and they aren’t shy about speaking up. All of that combined momentum isn’t slowing, either. The coming year is already poised to be another big moment for the working class.

2022 Saw Historic Strikes In The United Kingdom

December 31, 2022 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Resist! Economic insecurity, Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights

Even as 2022 is drawing to a close, the strike wave that swept the UK this year, with hundreds of thousands of workers in the public and private sector downing tools to fight for better conditions, is showing no signs of slowing down. On Saturday, December 31, over 1,000 members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) who are working on contract as cleaners in the railways are set to walkout in the first national strike of its kind. Workers at private companies including Atalian Servest, Churchill, and Mitie are fighting for a £15 ($18.04) per hour wage, company sick pay, good pensions, and “decent holidays.” They will join ISS cleaners on Docklands Light Railway (DLR), who will enter their second day on strike on Saturday over issues including over pay, working conditions, and imposed rosters.

ER Doctors Call Private Equity Staffing Practices Illegal, Seek To Ban Them

December 23, 2022 Bernard Wolfson, Wisconsin Examiner. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, Private Equity, Worker Rights

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the years, critics say, companies have successfully sidestepped bans on owning medical practices by buying or establishing local staffing groups that are nominally owned by doctors and restricting the physicians’ authority so they have no direct control. These laws and regulations, which started appearing nearly a century ago, were meant to fight the commercialization of medicine, maintain the independence and authority of physicians, and prioritize the doctor-patient relationship over the interests of investors and shareholders.

The Pandemic Exacerbated A Long-Standing National Teacher Shortage

December 13, 2022 John Schmitt and Katherine deCourcy, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! COVID-19, Teacher shortage, Teachers, Worker Rights

For more than a decade, academics and education policy experts have raised concerns about a widespread shortage of teachers in the United States.1 The first wave of warnings came in response to the drastic cuts in state and local spending on education following the Great Recession. But teacher shortages remained a significant challenge for the nation’s public education system long after the immediate effects of the Great Recession wore off. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic ignited a new round of concerns. In this report, we use data from a wide range of sources to document the size and scope of the teacher shortage. The data show that the teacher shortage is both widespread and acute across several dimensions, from subject matter specialties to school poverty status. We also review data that point to the two most important drivers of the shortage.

New York City: Sick Days Are A Human Right

December 9, 2022 Workers World New York Bureau, Workers.org. Resist! Paid Sick Leave, Railroad Workers, Solidarity, Worker Rights

A coalition of unions, activists and workers’ rights groups protested Dec. 7, outside and inside Grand Central Station in New York City, to demand full sick pay and labor rights for the 115,000 rail workers who transport essential goods. Their 11 unions were denied the constitutional right to strike by a bill passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden Dec. 2. Coalition organizers called out Biden for his assistance to Wall Street and the rail corporations, which loot billions in profits from rail workers’ labor, while endangering their health and safety. “If Biden wants to avoid disrupting the economy during the holidays,” said Larry Holmes, a leader with Workers Assembly Against Racism, one of the coalitions calling the action, “with the stroke of his pen, he can extend Obama’s legislation requiring paid sick leave for employees of companies with federal government contracts to rail workers.

Biggest Academic Strike In US History Continues

December 4, 2022 Surangya, People's Dispatch. Resistance Report Higher Education, Strike, Unions, University of California, Worker Rights

After over two weeks of the largest higher education strike in US history, postdoctoral employees and academic researchers at the University of California have reached a tentative agreement with the UC system. The agreement will lead to significant wage increases, one of the key demands of the striking workers. However, these university employees will continue the strike action in solidarity with the 36,000 graduate student employees whose demands are yet to be met.After over two weeks of the largest higher education strike in US history, postdoctoral employees and academic researchers at the University of California have reached a tentative agreement with the UC system. The agreement will lead to significant wage increases, one of the key demands of the striking workers. However, these university employees will continue the strike action in solidarity with the 36,000 graduate student employees whose demands are yet to be met.

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