Worker Rights

Teamsters Picket MonoSol Plant Over Forced Overtime, 60-Hour Workweeks

December 3, 2022 Joseph S. Pete, NWI.com. Resist! Indiana, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights

LaPorte - Firewood was stacked high outside the MonoSol plant as bundled-up Teamsters huddled around burn barrels and open fires in the frigid chill. The plant that normally cranks out water-dissolvable film for Tide Pods and other single-use detergents and dishwasher soaps sat quietly behind a barbed wire fence, its windows dark and its parking lot empty. Workers picketed outside. They stood in circles in the bitter cold amid the acrid smell of wood smoke, a giant inflatable Scabby the Rat and a Teamsters semi-trailer truck. Passing trucks often blared their horns in solidarity in the industrial park. Their tents were stocked with bottled water and other provisions. They brought in porta-potties and Frisbee golf to pass the time. They're prepared to stick it out for the long haul.

Democrats, Then Republicans Smite Rail Labor

December 2, 2022 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Educate! Congress, National Strike, Railroads, Worker Rights

While Railroad Workers United (RWU) finds it despicable – but not surprising – that both political parties opted to side with Big Business over working people yesterday and vote against the interests of railroad workers - not once, but twice, within hours. We suffered a one-two punch at the hands of, first the Democratic Party; the second served up by the Republicans. First, responding to the wishes of President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House voted to legislate a contract that the majority of U.S. freight rail workers had previously voted to reject. The Senate would quickly follow suit. In effect, their actions simply overrode our voices and desires. Rail workers – like all workers – should have the right to bargain collectively and to freely engage in strike activity if and when the members see fit and when they democratically elect to do so.

Amazon Workers Protest Appearance By Amazon CEO At NYT DealBook Summit

November 30, 2022 Amazon Labor Union, Popular Resistance. Resist! Amazon, Labor Union, New York (NY), Worker Rights

New York – Members of the Amazon Labor Union, joined by local labor and community supporters, will protest outside the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, beginning at 10 a.m., November 30. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is one of the event’s scheduled speakers. “If Jassy comes to New York he should come to bargain a contract with Amazon workers, not bluster or practice union-busting,” said Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls. “It’s time that Amazon and the company’s CEO respect the rights of workers and join ALU in improving working conditions, rather than acting as an uncaring, B.S.-spouting, corporate law-breaker.” During Jassy’s tenure as Amazon’s CEO which began this year, the e-commerce giant has used highly-paid union busters to suppress the rights of its workers, harass organizers and delay bargaining as required by law.

UC Faculty Announce Work Stoppage

November 29, 2022 UC Faculty Pledge of Solidarity. Resist! California, Higher Education, Strikes, Worker Rights

Hundreds of faculty across the system have committed to solidarity with the UAW strike against Unfair Labor Practices by the University of California, recognized by the Public Employment Relations Board. We support the four striking units’ demands for wages adequate to their cost of living, workplace and community safety, disability justice, and other fundamental issues. We recognize that, while education should be the University’s main mission, its core product is accreditation, which means degrees, which means grades. 48,000 academic workers across the UC have been on strike since November 14th, 2022. This includes UAW 5810, UAW2865, and SRU-UAW, representing Postdocs, Academic Researchers, Graduate Student Researchers, Trainees, Fellows, Graduate Student Instructors, Readers, and Tutors.

Over 100,000 Education Workers Strike In The United Kingdom

November 27, 2022 WSWS. Resist! Higher Education, Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights

Tens of thousands of university workers at 150 universities began three days of strikes on Thursday against low pay, intolerable workloads, insecure contacts and pensions cuts. A 48-hour strike by the University and College Union (UCU) members finished Friday, to be followed by a 24-hour strike and day of action on November 30. The strikes are the largest in history of higher education, with workers out at every UK institution. Also striking are support staff, members of the Unison and Unite unions, demanding better pay and conditions. Thursday’s strike was held the same day that up to 50,000 teachers in Scotland walked out in their first national strike since the 1980s against pay restraint by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Scottish National Party devolved government. Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) members rejected—with inflation now running at 14.2 percent—an initial 5 percent pay offer and a revised offer of 6.85 percent for the lowest-paid teachers.

‘Labor Shortage’ Is Being Used As A Pretext To Harm Workers

November 23, 2022 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. Educate! Jobs, Labor, Worker Rights, Working Class

A so-called “labor shortage” in the United States has quickly become a catch-all justification for policies that prevent workers from gaining too much power on the job, or collectively organizing by forming unions. Not enough applicants for low-paid jobs packing meat, or working the cash register at Dairy Queen? Better crank up the Federal Reserve’s interest rates (a policy explicitly aimed at spurring a recession and putting people out of work), so that we have a larger reserve of the desperate unemployed. Pandemic-era social programs ever-so-slightly redistributing wealth downward? Better shut them down, lest we eliminate the supposed precarity needed to incentivize work.

Michigan Nurses Just Won A Groundbreaking Contract

October 9, 2022 Eva Rosenfeld, Jacobin. Resist! Michigan, Nurses, Unions, Worker Rights

In the spring of 2021, as the national COVID-19 vaccine rollout promised to lift the burden of overwhelmed hospitals, nurses at the University of Michigan were working harder than ever. Understaffing has been a problem for University of Michigan nurses since the 1980s, but it worsened during the pandemic, as patient surges met with hospital-wide cost containment measures that further thinned staff and resources. Over the first year of the pandemic, University of Michigan nurses filled gaps in staffing mainly by volunteering for overtime. As elective procedures resumed, management turned to mandatory overtime — a mechanism written into the union’s 2018 contract as an emergency measure — to staff the hospital. If a unit was short-staffed, supervisors called off-duty nurses.

Chris Hedges Report: Dystopia, Octopus Intelligence And What Makes Us Human

October 8, 2022 Chris Hedges, The Real News. Resistance Report Chris Hedges, climate crisis, Global South, Worker Rights

Ray Nayler’s novel The Mountain in the Sea asks the kinds of questions about us, our future and our interaction with other living beings that are raised by many great works of science fiction. In his book the marine habitat of a hyperintelligent species of octopus, endowed with its own language and culture, is seized by a global tech corporation determined to harness this non-human intelligence for profit in new systems of artificial intelligence. This dystopian future world is one of total surveillance, vast polluted dead zones, climate breakdown, a pervasive alienation, frequent targeted assassinations by governments and corporations against those who resist bondage as well as the brutal enslavement of workers, especially those from the Global South.

Coal Workers In Australia Are Taking Their Destiny Into Their Own Hands

October 7, 2022 Léo Roussel, Equal Times. Organize! Australia, Coal, Just transition, Worker Rights

The coal industry is to Australia what the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (granting citizens the right to bear arms) is to the United States: it would be hard to imagine the country without it. With fossil fuels still accounting for 92 per cent of Australia’s energy mix, including 29 per cent for coal in 2021, the industry is still vigorously defended by lobbies, even in parliamentary circles and the corridors of ministries. Australia’s conservative former prime minister Scott Morrison famously held up a piece of coal in Parliament in 2017, when he was finance minister, admonishing his colleagues not to be afraid of it. When he became prime minister, he also directly surrounded himself with lobbyists like John Kunkel, former vice-chairman of the Minerals Council of Australia, who he appointed chief of staff in 2018.

Labor Against Empire: Voices From The Honduran US Embassy Strike

October 6, 2022 Popular Resistance. Resist! Honduras, Labor Unions, US State Department, Worker Rights

For the last 3 months, more than 1,000 Honduran construction workers building the new United States embassy in Tegucigalpa have been striking against Alabama-based mega-prison contractor B.L. Harbert and their ultimate employer, the U.S. State Department, to demand safe working conditions, job security and fair compensation in compliance with Honduran labor law. Join the DSA International Committee and DSA Labor for a bilingual webinar to hear directly from the striking workers in Honduras, co-sponsored by US- and Honduras-based solidarity organizations. We seek to create opportunities for relationships to grow between the striking workers, Honduran civil society, and solidarity organizations around the Americas, and for workers in Honduras and the United States to hear directly from each other.

Workers Strike In The US And Honduras Against Capitalist Exploitation

October 3, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Honduras, Low Wage Workers, Unions, Worker Rights

Last week, more than 1,000 fast food workers at San Francisco International Airport went on strike for three days over low wages, health benefits and pensions. They had not received a raise in more than three years and many worked multiple jobs. Workers building the new US embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras have been on strike off and on since early July over a new contract that deprives them of fair compensation and violates Honduran labor laws. They are being fired and police are violently repressing their pickets. Clearing the FOG speaks with Ted Waechter of UNITE-HERE Local 2 in San Francisco and Honduras expert Adrienne Pine about worker struggles in the US and abroad and the need for solidarity and greater militancy to fight an economic system that values profits more than people.

Modeling The New USPS Delivery Network

October 3, 2022 Steve Hutkins, Save The Post Office. Educate! Privatization, USPS, Worker Rights

This month the Postal Service will begin implementing a massive initiative to change how the mail is delivered. Instead of working out of the back of post offices, letter carriers will be relocated to large, centralized facilities called Sorting & Delivery Centers. These S&DCs will be housed in currently operating processing centers, large post offices, and eventually one of the new multi-functional mega-plants the Postal Service plans to create over the next few years. Spaces are already being prepared in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Charlotte, where the Postal Service has leased a 620,000 square foot facility almost adjacent to a large Amazon warehouse. The effects on postal employees will be significant, as discussed in this previous post.

Nurses At LGBTQ-Affirming Healthcare Provider Are Planning To Strike

October 2, 2022 Hannah Faris, In These Times. Resist! Health Care, LGBTQ Rights, Strike, Worker Rights

Unionized nurses at Howard Brown Health, a Chicago network of LGBTQ-affirming healthcare clinics, are set to go on strike Monday, Oct. 3 after what workers say are months of stalled contract bargaining negotiations. The union is comprised of 30 nurses across 10 clinics, who are bargaining for their second contract, the first of which expired in August. The nurses’ union, the Illinois Nurses Association, says that since June they have been negotiating with management on a weekly basis and have reached tentative agreements on more than 30 items, including staffing levels and a commitment to vaccinate workers against monkeypox. But, the union alleges, these conversations — now daily — have failed to progress to securing workers’ chief demands: Increased pay competitive with other nurses in the city, and retention bonuses.

New Rail Deal May Still Be Doomed Over Scheduling Issues

September 27, 2022 Jordan Barab. Educate! Health Care, Railroads, Strike, Worker Rights

Does this seem like a good way to attract loyal, dedicated, satisfied workers? Come work for the railroad. It’s a great job, decent pay. Hours may be a bit long. You’ll spend weeks at a time away from home in cheap motels and miss important family events, kids sports games, birthdays, recitals and vacations, weddings and funerals. You can get called up at any time, so don’t even try to make plans. Stay healthy because you’ll be punished or even fired for an unexpected medical event. Also, great pension…if you live that long. Aaron Hiles, a locomotive engineer, for BNSF didn’t live that long. Aaron Hiles, a locomotive engineer, told his wife he “felt different,” though he couldn’t say exactly how. He made an appointment to see a doctor, his family said. But then his employer, BNSF, one of the largest freight rail carriers in the nation, unexpectedly called him into work.

New ‘Striketober’ Looms As US Walkouts Increase

September 27, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! #Striketober, Labor Unions, Strikes, Worker Rights

Thousands of workers around the US are going on strike or threatening to do so heading into October, amid a recent surge of labor action activity in America and just one month before crucial midterm elections. Support for labor unions in the US has grown over the past year, as a surge in organizing has resulted in workers winning union elections at major corporations including Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, Google, REI and Verizon. Union election petitions increased 58% in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2022, compared with 2021. Public support for labor unions is at its highest point since 1965, according to the most recent Gallup poll, with a 71% approval of labor unions in the US. According to the labor action tracker at Cornell University, strikes in 2022 so far have significantly outpaced strike activity in 2021, with 180 strikes involving 78,000 workers in the first six months of 2022, compared with 102 strikes involving 26,500 workers in the first six months of 2021.

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