Worker Rights

The Amazon Union Vote Is Ending In Bessemer

March 29, 2021 Luis Feliz Leon, The New Republic. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Union, Worker Rights

The Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, is 885,000 square feet of shiny new construction. Signs painted on the windows in bursts of green, red, yellow greet workers at the main entrance with the words: Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. Under these slogans, the silhouette of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s face adorns yellow placards reading, The Dream Is Alive. Workers on break outside lean their elbows on their knees or pace around the entrance, the sleeves of their pants rolled up to their kneecaps in the hot sun. It is a March day, the usual balmy 74 degrees. People are too tired to talk shit and wait in silence to return to their shifts, staring at shadows on the pavement or eyeing their phone screens. The facility, called BHM1, opened this time last year, just as the pandemic was bearing down on the United States.

Support Grows For Striking Columbia University Graduate Students

March 29, 2021 Josh Varlin, WSWS. Resist! Higher Education, New York (NY), Solidarity, Worker Rights

Today marks the beginning of the third week of the Columbia University graduate workers strike. The courageous struggle by over 3,000 graduate student-workers for improved wages, benefits and working conditions continues to receive support from workers at Columbia and more broadly throughout the US. Last Thursday, rank-and-file members of the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC), which is affiliated with the UAW, defied an attempt by the union bargaining committee to shut down the strike with a deal that would have signified a de facto pay cut for the graduate students, taking into account inflation and union dues. Now, the university, whose president Lee Bollinger takes home $4 million every year, is significantly ramping up pressure on the graduate students to force them to give in.

Supreme Court Case On Farmworker Protections Could Harm All Regulation

March 24, 2021 Sam Knight, Truthout. Educate! Farmworkers, Regulation, US Supreme Court, Worker Rights

The legacy of Cesar Chavez has been getting another look in recent months. In January, President Joe Biden placed a bust of the 20th-century labor leader in the Oval Office, giving journalists the opportunity to reexamine how Chavez fought for farmworkers, while commentators on social media noted that Chavez’s treatment of undocumented immigrants, at certain points during his life, complicates his image as a tireless champion of migrant laborers. But a sinister reexamination of Chavez’s legacy is also happening. A California labor regulation that resulted from his campaigning is under threat from the Supreme Court at the urging of dark money-funded right-wing think tanks.

When Rank And File Postal Workers Whipped Bosses, Union Leaders, And Richard Nixon

March 24, 2021 Patrick Murfin, Heretic, Rebel, A Thing to Flout. Resist! Strike, US Postal Service, Wages, Worker Rights

The day after St. Patrick’s Day in New York City was often little more than an intense, city-wide hangover. But on March 18, 1970 residents of the Big Apple awoke to more than just a headache. Thousands of local Postal workers were on the picket line in defiance of both Federal Law which prohibited strikes by government employees and their own union leadership. Within days business in the commercial and financial center of the nation ground to a halt in those pre-electronic communications days and the strike spread to more than 30 cities with 200,000 off the job. It was a big deal. A very big deal.

Garment Workers Have Won Billions In Stolen Wages

March 24, 2021 Loretta Graceffo, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Fashion Industry, Wages, Worker Rights

In March 2020, Amanda Lee McCarty was laid off from her job. For years, she had been working in the fashion industry as a buyer and product developer. But as COVID-19 cases surged and lockdown orders were implemented across the world, retailers were faced with a dramatic plummet in consumer demand for clothing. McCarty, who had been the sole breadwinner in her family for most of her life, was left without a steady income or health insurance. McCarty wasn’t the only one in the global apparel industry whose future was thrust into uncertainty. Thousands of miles away, in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, apparel factories had just received catastrophic news from retailers in the West. In order to offset the financial losses of the pandemic, executives had made a swift and nearly universal decision: They were going to steal $40 billion from their most vulnerable workers.

Teamsters Spent Seven Years Fighting For Their Pensions

March 16, 2021 Jeff Bollier, Green Bay Gazette. Resist! Labor Union, Retirement, Wisconsin, Worker Rights

Green Bay, WI - For the first time in seven years, thousands of Wisconsin Teamsters don't have to worry about their pensions being cut in half. The American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday, included the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021. The act directs the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corp. to allocate billions of dollars to avoid the drastic cuts. The act will shore up the Central States Pension Fund, a multi-employer fund for 1.3 million retired Teamsters, 23,500 of whom live in Wisconsin. About 3,400 members live in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes Green Bay and Appleton. Failure to act would have dealt a huge blow to those retirees who gave up wages to keep their retirement funds, and who have come to depend on payments to survive, said Brad Vaughn, a member of the Wisconsin/Green Bay Committee to Protect Pensions.

Amazon Workers In Italy To Go On First Strike

March 12, 2021 Rory Sullivan, Independent. Resist! Amazon, Italy, Strike, Worker Rights

Amazon’s workforce in Italy will go on its first collective strike later this month, trade unions have confirmed. All 8,500 employees in the country are expected to hold a 24-hour walkout on 22 March after negotiations between their representatives and the online retailer broke down. The three national unions supporting them accused Amazon of showing an “unwillingness to positively address” issues including working hours and results-based bonuses. They also claimed that the online giant was “chronically unavailable” for meetings and was opposed to “a system of fairness”. A spokesperson for the company called the allegations “false”, adding that Amazon had met unions twice in January. The trade unions’ announcement of industrial action comes two months after the US retailer said it would open two more logistics centres in Italy at the cost of 230 million euros (£197m).

The Fight For Women’s Rights Is A Fight Against Capitalism

March 8, 2021 Rachel Hagan, Tribune Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, International Women's Day, Worker Rights

International Women’s Day was founded after 15,000 women marched through New York City in 1908 to demand three things: better hours, better pay, and voting rights. In most of the world, the last of these has been cemented – but the pandemic has thrown the former two into jeopardy. In summer 2020, the McKinsey Global Institute reported that around the world, women were at 1.8 times the risk of Covid redundancy compared to the risk facing men. Research from the University of Exeter also found that women in the UK were twice as likely to have lost their job during the first wave of the pandemic. Around 133,000 more women were furloughed during the first wave, too, meaning more are likely in line for redundancies when the scheme ends. In the UK, as redundancies have proliferated, men’s employment has now fallen more than women’s – but that women were often first in the firing line indicates qualitative divisions in work.

Support Keeps Building For #BAmazon Union Drive

March 8, 2021 Martha Grevatt, Workers.org. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Union, Worker Rights

Some three dozen organizations loaned their names to a letter urging President Joe Biden to come out on the side of the Amazon workers fighting for a union. Biden had angered unionists and progressives for publicly taking a “neutral” stance on the representation election taking place now through March 29. Signers included UNITE HERE and Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) unions, Maine AFL-CIO, the National Employment Law Project and the Working Families Party. Feeling the pressure, on Feb. 28 Biden came out against Amazon’s union busting, affirming the right of every worker to choose union representation. Solidarity has been growing since the Feb. 20 National Day of Solidarity. Renowned actor and activist Danny Glover stood outside the Bessemer facility Feb. 22, holding a sign that read “Remember Mail Your Yes Ballot.”

Amazon Workers On Why They Need To Unionize

March 4, 2021 Left Voice. Resistance Report Alabama, Amazon, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

In the biggest unionizing struggle in Amazon’s history, nearly 6,000 workers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are voting on whether to join a union. The union drive has met fierce resistance from the company, desperate to stop it. Last month, the union talk radio show The Valley Labor report interviewed union organizing committee members Darryl Richardson, a picker at the fulfillment center, and Jennifer Bates, a Learning Ambassador, about working conditions at Amazon, the union drive, the response from bosses, and why they need a union. The union drive at Bessemer deserves support and solidarity from workers everywhere. If the workers win the union, it would be an inspiration for workers around the world, in addition to the 1.2 million workers currently being exploited by Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

Educators’ Safety Struggle Rekindles Collective Workplace Action

March 4, 2021 James Kerr, Labor Notes. Organize! COVID-19, Teachers, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights

United Kingdom - Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously said that “a week is a long time in politics.” In early January, even a week was too long, as current Prime Minister Boris Johnson performed a dramatic 24-hour U-turn on the question of schools reopening after the Christmas break. On Sunday, January 3, Johnson told journalists “there is no doubt in my mind that schools are safe,” part of a media campaign to get schools open and people back to work. But by the next day, he described those same schools as “vectors of transmission” for Covid. He included their closure in the nationwide lockdown, except for the children of key workers (the British term for essential workers) and those designated “vulnerable.” What spurred this sudden conversion? Had Johnson finally seen sense and prioritized lives over the profits of corporations? Were the nearly 100,000 Covid deaths in the United Kingdom playing on his mind?

Amazon Workers: ‘Everyone In The Community Is Cheering Us On’

March 3, 2021 Steven Greenhouse, The American Prospect. Organize! Alabama, Amazon, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

As lead organizer in the potentially historic effort to unionize 5,800 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, Josh Brewer heads a small army of organizers for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Brewer recognizes that it’s a high-stakes campaign—it’s the first time a union has sought to unionize all the workers at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham, was once a thriving union community, with steel mills, coal mines, and a Pullman railcar factory. Brewer, 33, is an ordained minister who gravitated from the pulpit to union organizing because he saw it as a more effective way to lift struggling Americans. The National Labor Relations Board mailed out the unionization ballots on February 8; they are due on March 29, and only then will the ballots be counted.

It’s Time To Make Large Corporations Pay Living Wages

February 28, 2021 Phil Mattera, DC Report. Organize! Amazon, Minimum Wage, Walmart, Worker Rights

Landing a job in the ’80s with a large corporation was, even for blue-collar workers, a ticket to good wages, generous benefits and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones. All this began to unravel in the 1980s. Big business used the excuse of global competition to chip away at the living standards of the domestic workforce. Assault on unions, which were key in bringing about job improvements, proliferated. Meatpacking, for instance, what had been high wage and high-density union, turned into a bastion of precarious labor.

What Future For Farmworker Families In The United States?

February 26, 2021 David Bacon, Oakland Institute. Educate! Farmworkers, Immigration, Joe Biden, Worker Rights

Oakland, CA — As the Biden administration begins dismantling Trump's anti-immigrant legacy and contemplates reforms to US immigration policy, it will have to take the crucial decision of whether to continue or terminate the H-2A “guest worker” program. A new report by the Oakland Institute, Dignity or Exploitation — What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?, documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.

Build New Infrastructure For A Broader Movement

February 25, 2021 Jeff Ordower, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Direct Action, Gig Workers, Labor Unions, Worker Rights

The huge upswing in worker organizing in 2020 often had union support, but with an experimental twist. Over the first few months of the COVID-19 epidemic, workers from bridal shops to pizza places to supermarkets were organizing to get Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and winning. They used tools like the coworker.org site, which helps anyone start up a petition in their workplace and make demands. Groups like the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a project of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) supported those workers taking independent action. EWOC provides a sophisticated intake system combined with veteran labor movement coaches to support workers winning their demands.

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