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Worker Rights

Kellogg’s Union Workers Reject New Contract

December 7, 2021 Alex Woodward, Independent. , , ,
Hundreds of striking union workers at four Kellogg’s cereal plants in the US have overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative agreement on a five-year contract negotiated between the union and the company, extending a strike that started in early October. Roughly 1,400 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union “have spoken”, union president Anthony Shelton said in a statement on 7 December. “The strike continues.” The union is “grateful for the outpouring of fraternal support we received from across the labor movement for our striking members at Kellogg’s,” he added. “Solidarity is critical to this fight.” Striking employees in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Tennessee produce products like Rice Krispies, Rasin Bran, Froot Loops, Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes.

The Ivory Tower Is Dead

November 30, 2021 Davarian L. Baldwin And Sam Klug, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
Davarian L. Baldwin’s recent book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, offers an insightful examination—and stirring critique—of the role of universities in the political economy of U.S. cities. In this interview, Baldwin shines a light on how institutions that define themselves as key contributors to the public good have entrenched new forms of urban inequality. Understanding the meaning of higher education in American life today requires seeing the university from the perspective of the workers it exploits, the residents it displaces, and the people it polices. Sam Klug: You claim that many major cities have not just embraced the eds and meds economy but have actually become company towns for large institutions of higher education—what you label “UniverCities.” How do universities exercise this kind of control?

Climate Activists Block Amazon UK Warehouses On Black Friday

November 26, 2021 Associated Press. , , ,
Climate activists are blockading Amazon warehouses across the U.K. on Friday in an attempt to pressure the ecommerce giant on one of its busiest days of the year to improve working conditions and end business practices that hurt the environment. Members of Extinction Rebellion targeted 13 Amazon fulfilment centers in the United Kingdom with the aim of disrupting 50% of the company’s deliveries on Black Friday, which marks the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season. Activists blocked the entrance to Amazon’s warehouse in Tilbury, just east of London, with an effigy of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sitting on top of a rocket. At Amazon’s distribution center in Dunfermline, Scotland, about 20 Extinction Rebellion members strung banners across the entrance road that said “Make Amazon Pay” and locked themselves together, stopping trucks from entering and some from leaving.

New Union-Busting Tracker Debuts Online

November 20, 2021 Steve Wishnia, Labor Press. , , ,
Helena, MT. - On Nov. 6, a group of volunteers launched a Web page called the Union-Busting Tracker to post examples of union-busting. Eleven days later, they’d listed 180 separate cases, naming the employers and the union-busting outfits they’d hired. The project is intended to “embolden” workers, says Bob Funk, who founded the LaborLab.us Website, which opened on May 1. “A shocking amount of young workers think unions are illegal and don’t know their rights,” says Funk, who by day is communications director for a Montana union. “The union-busting industry takes advantage of people’s lack of knowledge.” The group’s volunteers, union members from around the country, combed through LM-20 forms, which union-busting companies are required to file with the Department of Labor when employers hire them.

Support The #MakeAmazonPay Day Of Action

November 18, 2021 Progressive International. , , ,
Amazon’s size and power place the corporation at the very center of the crises of climate breakdown and economic inequality that grip our planet. The growth of CEO Jeff Bezos’s astronomical wealth — up $100 billion since March, now surpassing that of any other human in history — is directly proportional to Amazon’s human and environmental costs: his corporation mistreats its workers, wrecks the climate, and undermines the public institutions underpinning our democracies along the way. Taking on Amazon, therefore, will require more than curbing Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth or calling for corporate social responsibility. It will require a global movement that is organized along every dimension of Amazon’s expanding empire: for workers, for peoples, and for the planet.

‘Tell the Bosses We’re Coming’

November 17, 2021 Eric Dirnbach, Organizing Upgrade. , , ,
The ongoing debate about reviving the U.S. labor movement tries to grapple with the devastating decline in the union membership rate from one-third of the workforce in the 1950s to less than 11% today. In this discussion, occasionally a book comes along that is a great combination of labor history, thoughtful analysis of union organizing, and suggestions for ways forward. Shaun Richman’s Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century is such a book. Richman is the Program Director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies at the State University of New York Empire State College. He brings the unique perspective of a veteran organizer who stepped away from union work to rethink organizing strategy and the legal framework in which unions operate.

Fast-Food Workers Strike Across California

November 9, 2021 Toni Guinyard, NBC News Los Angeles. , , ,
Fast-food workers say they are fed up with their working conditions, and on Tuesday morning, they're walking out. Thousands of employees in the fast-food industry are going on strike across California, walking out for better working conditions, wages and hours and calling on lawmakers to offer them a bigger say in their futures. A McDonald's location on Floral Drive in Monterey Park, where workers allege sewers recently flooded the kitchen, is the SoCal site of the rally employees planned for 9 a.m. Other rallies in the area are planned for 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. By and large, fast-food employees are not represented by a union. But they've found ways to band together, pushing for change within the industry with previous rallies.

Indefinite Strike Hits South Africa’s Engineering Sector

October 6, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
The first day of the indefinite strike in South Africa’s engineering sector on Tuesday, October 5, saw workers in red T-shirts hit the streets in thousands demanding a wage hike. Marches and rallies were witnessed in Kaserne, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Western Cape.  In Johannesburg, thousands marched to the office of the Metals Engineering and Industries Bargaining Council (MEIBC), where the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) delivered a memorandum to all the employer associations in the sector. Representing 155,000 of the estimated total 300,000 workers in the sector, NUMSA is leading the strike, which is also supported by other unions.

Workers At Kellogg’s Cereal Production Plants Are On Strike

October 6, 2021 BCTGM. , , , ,
Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) President Anthony Shelton issued the following statement in support of 1,400 BCTGM members in Battle Creek, Mich. (Local 3G), Omaha, Neb. (Local 50G), Lancaster, Pa. (Local 374G) and Memphis, Tenn. (Local 252G) who are on strike against the Kellogg Company: “The BCTGM International Union stands in unwavering Solidarity with our courageous Brothers and Sisters who are on strike against the Kellogg Company.  “For more than a year throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kellogg workers around the country have been working long, hard hours, day in and day out, to produce Kellogg ready-to-eat cereals for American families. 

A New Deal For Eds And Meds

October 6, 2021 Ian Gavigan and Jennifer Mittelstadt, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
Now, organizers who have built power at the local level are beginning to unite nationally. Earlier in the pandemic, higher education workers had to struggle for survival mostly on their own. The battles, even when successful, took place in isolation; each group of workers in each separate institution, system, or state focused on its own specific setting, even though the problems are national phenomena demanding national solutions. In recent months, organizers have shifted their attention. They recognize that to reconstruct higher education as a public good—one that converts adjunct, outsourced, part-time, and precarious jobs into full-time, well-paid, dignified, stable positions at scale; one that ends the student and institutional debt crises; and one that rebuilds in the interests of students, workers, and communities—they must fight and win at a national scale.

Workers Have Leverage

October 5, 2021 By Luis Feliz Leon and Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. , , ,
The capitalist vultures are wheeling low, but they’re finding slim pickings to choose from these days. “No one wants to work!” The bosses whine about a worker shortage—though it’s one they brought about. Eighteenth-century British economist Adam Smith noted how common it is to hear complaints about workers coming together to fight for their interests, and how rare it is to hear about all the scheming the bosses do to plunder workers’ labor. “Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate,” Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations. That scheming is the background to the current labor shortage.

Green Mountain Spinnery And Flat Iron Cooperative

October 5, 2021 Ebony Gustave, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
Green Mountain Spinnery is a 40 year old cooperative based in rural Vermont. They mill high quality yarns made in the U.S., support regional sheep farming, and develop ways of producing natural fibers that are environmentally friendly. Flat Iron Cafe is a cooperatively owned coffee shop based in Vermont. They are still in the developmental stages but intend to create a model that integrates coffee, community driven events, and supports local food entrepreneurs within the space. In this episode I speak with worker-owner Larisa Demos about the inspiration behind Green Mountain Spinnery and Flat Iron’s development. Initially this interview was just going to be about The Spinnery but I decided to ask Larisa to share a bit about a new co-op she is helping to develop.

IATSE Authorizes Strike With ‘Yes’ Votes Totaling 98 Percent

October 4, 2021 By Chris O'Falt and Chris Lindahl, IndieWire. , , ,
IATSE members have overwhelmingly voted in favor of a strike authorization, the union announced Monday morning. Ninety-eight percent of all votes cast were in favor of a strike, and 90 percent of all members turned out to vote. But production won’t grind to a halt, at least not yet. The results give IATSE President Matthew Loeb the power to call a strike for IATSE members working under two expired contracts: the Hollywood Basic Agreement, which covers the approximately 40,000 to 45,000 members of 13 West Coast locals, and the Area Standards Agreement, which covers some 10,000 to 15,000 members employed on productions in places like Georgia, New Mexico, and Louisiana. Negotiations between IATSE and the AMPTP reached an impasse last month, prompting Loeb to call the vote.

Entire Staff Of A Burrito Restaurant In Georgia Quit

September 17, 2021 Grace Dean, Business Insider. , , ,
The staff of a burrito restaurant in Georgia quit by posting a sign claiming they had worked seven days a week for a month with "barely any time off." Employees at the Barberitos restaurant on New Street in Macon, central Georgia, said they quit over "pay" and "lack of appreciation," per a photo of the sign shared on Facebook that was first reported by WGXA News.   "We have worked 7 days a week for the past month and barely any time off. We are so sorry and love you all! old Barbs family, out," the sign read. A spokesperson for Barberitos, which has 50 branches across southeastern states, confirmed the sign's existence to WGXA, and said the staff's claim that they'd worked seven days straight for a month was "simply not true."

Update On Strikes And Walkouts

September 9, 2021 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
Earlier this week in Savannah, Georgia, 54 of the 200 bus drivers in the Savannah-Chatham’s school district went on a wildcat “sick out” strike over pay and other issues.  Workers said they were upset with their low pay and with the district who maintains that bus drivers must keep allowing students who don’t wear masks on buses — a rule that bus drivers contend with.  The wildcat action wasn’t sanctioned officially by the bus drivers’ union, the Teamsters. So, the union then formally sanctioned its shop steward, Kendrick Banks for participating in the unsanctioned, possibly illegal, action and removed him from his position as the union’s shop steward.  Several union members, including Banks, resigned from the union as a result of his removal, according to the Savannah Morning News. 
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