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Worker Rights

Google Workers To Form Global Union Alliance

January 26, 2021 Sommer Brokaw, UPI.com. , , ,
The new alliance called Alpha Global, in recognition of Google's parent company Alphabet, was formed in coordination with Union Network International Global Union, a global union that brings together 20 million workers from various sectors in the service economy, according to a UNI Global Union post. Alpha Global comprises 13 different unions representing workers in 10 countries, with the United States, Britain and Switzerland, being among them, The Verge reported. It seeks to make Google live up to its ideals. "[Google] is a place where many workers came to change the world -- to make it more democratic -- only to find Alphabet suppressing speech and cracking down on worker organizing while consolidating monopolistic power," a joint statement announcing the alliance said.

The Labor Movement Has A Game Plan For The Biden Era

January 26, 2021 Jeff Schuhkre, In These Times. , ,
As the Democrats take control of the White House and both houses of Congress amid overlapping national crises, labor leaders say it is now more critical than ever that Washington deliver significant material gains for the working class. Democrats partly owe their recent electoral victories in places like Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia to the extensive get-out-the-vote efforts of unions like UNITE HERE and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which reached millions of Black and Latino voters.  After defeating Donald Trump and the Republicans at the polls, the labor movement does not intend to rest on its laurels.

Building Class Power By Fighting For The Common Good

January 13, 2021 Stephanie Luce, Organizing Upgrade. , , ,
As activists orient to the post-election landscape, we’re having lots of conversations about building power for the long term. We’re taking stock of the types of power we need and how they can reinforce each other – narrative, organizing, mobilizing, and electoral power, to name a few. And despite the decline in union membership and strength, workers’ collective bargaining power also offers a means of making gains for broader communities. “Bargaining for the Common Good” (BCG) makes this real. Unions that adopt a BCG framework incorporate community demands alongside their workplace demands in contract bargaining.

Driver Lawsuit Says Uber And Lyft’s Proposition 22 Is Unconstitutional

January 12, 2021 Dara Kerr, CNet. , , ,
A trio of ride-hail drivers filed a lawsuit in California's Supreme Court on Tuesday alleging Proposition 22 is unconstitutional. The proposition was voted into law by California residents in November and ensures gig workers in the state are classified as independent contractors, rather than employees. Proposition 22 was authored by gig economy companies, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, which spent more than $205 million to get the ballot measure passed. It exempts the companies from a state law requiring that they treat their workers as employees. The proposition has only been in effect for one month and already it's facing challenges.

University Of Michigan Strike Showed The Power Of Student Organizing

January 7, 2021 Kalena Thomhave and Matt Sehrsweeney, Waging Nonviolence.  , , ,
As the winter university semester is set to begin, the coronavirus is surging. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, like many universities reliant on tuition dollars, tried to reopen in September with a “public health-informed” semester, as the university called it. That meant a mix of in-person and remote classes and dormitories operating at about 70 percent capacity. Throughout the summer, the graduate workers union at the University of Michigan, the Graduate Employees Organization, or GEO, and Local 3550 of the American Federation of Teachers, had also been preparing for the fall semester by organizing against an unsafe campus opening in the face of a global pandemic.

40% Of Chicago Teachers And Staff Didn’t Report To Schools As Ordered

January 6, 2021 By Nader Issa and Stefano Esposito, Chicago Sun Times.  , , ,
About 40% of Chicago Public Schools teachers and staff who were expected to report to schools Monday for the first time during the pandemic didn’t show up for in-person work, officials said Tuesday, accusing the Chicago Teachers Union of pressuring its members to defy the district’s orders. In all, about half of teachers and three-quarters of school-based support staff in preschool and special education cluster programs returned to classrooms as expected, accounting for 60% of those 4,400 employees scheduled to go back to specific schools, the district announced. Officials didn’t immediately provide data on another estimated 1,400 employees that were supposed to return but work at more than one school.

Vons, Pavilions To Fire ‘Essential Workers’

January 6, 2021 Mike Dickerson, Knock LA. , , ,
When Dylan’s grocery delivery arrived a few days before New Years, it came with some bad news. The delivery driver who brought his groceries from Vons mentioned that drivers across the state are getting fired by Vons, Pavilions, and other California stores owned by Albertsons Companies in late February. Stores will instead turn to a third-party delivery service using independent contractors. “I was disturbed and disappointed that Vons would eliminate these jobs. I felt like they were the only remaining company that treated delivery drivers ethically but no longer,” said Dylan. After publication, an Albertsons representative sent the following statement...

The ABC’s Of Google’s New Union

January 4, 2021 Clarissa Redwine, Collective Action in Tech. , , ,
Google workers have organized for pay equity, opposed unethical uses of machine learning, protested sexual assault, and more. Our small team at Collective Action in Tech has been archiving these organizing events for years. Now the workers of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are building worker power through a non-contract union they’ve named The Alphabet Workers Union. This isn’t the first time Google workers are unionizing. In 2017, Security guards at Google and Facebook had their union recognized and fought through a long contract negotiation. In 2019, Google cafeteria staff employed by vendor Bon Appetit won their union election.

Alabama Prisons Are On Strike

January 2, 2021 Devin Cole, Workers.org. , , ,
Occupied Muscogee Creek / Cherokee / Yuchi / Choctaw / Shawnee / Chickasaw land - As of Jan. 1, 2021, incarcerated workers in Alabama’s odious prison system are on strike!  Led by the Free Alabama Movement, incarcerated workers throughout the state of Alabama have put down their work tools and refused to go to work from now until Jan. 31. The inhumane conditions of Alabama Department of Corrections, their negligence around COVID-19, and their implementation of video visitation equipment in prisons that ADOC claims is “due to COVID,” but is really a front for eliminating in-person visitation, has contributed further to the psychological warfare against everyone incarcerated in Alabama prisons and has fueled this strike.

Federal Judge Blocks Strike By Union Pacific Railroad Workers

December 31, 2020 Steve Filips, WSWS. , , ,
A federal judge in Nebraska issued a temporary restraining order last week to block a December 28 strike by thousands of Union Pacific Railroad (UP) workers over unsafe conditions, the lack of protective gear and the failure to pay workers who are quarantined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A strike by 8,000 members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED)—a division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—would have quickly disrupted the operations of the second largest railroad in the US, which employs a total of 32,000 workers. The judge’s restriction lasts until January 8 and will be reviewed for extension on January 5.

New Organizing Model Helps Build Worker Power

December 28, 2020 Erin Dirnbach, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns started in March, a new class of “essential workers” continued to go to work across the United States under new dangerous conditions. As stories came out about workers lacking personal protective equipment, or PPE, and working in crowded workplaces, union workers began to take action. They stopped work, organized sick-outs, won hazard pay, protested employer COVID-19 policies that left them unsafe and negotiated for improvements. Unions have made workplaces safer, as research has shown that unionized essential workers have had better COVID-19 workplace practices during the pandemic.

Unions Call For L.A. County Shutdown In January

December 23, 2020 Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times. , , ,
In a move that reflects the desperation of teachers, nurses, healthcare, grocery and hotel employees, their influential unions are calling for a strict month-long Los Angeles County shutdown in January to control the raging COVID-19 pandemic, save lives and ultimately allow for a quicker reopening of schools and the economy. Evidence of mounting frustration and anxiety has also emerged in newly released surveys of teachers and parents as most campuses across L.A. County remain closed to in-person classes. The union coalition called for what it described as a “circuit breaker” in a letter Wednesday night to the county Board of Supervisors and in an online petition.

Fast-Food Workers Demanded — And Won — COVID Protections

December 18, 2020 Sophia Kasakove, Report for America. , , ,
Durham, NC - In early September, Jamila Allen led a group of 18 co-workers out the front doors of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers to protest the lack of safety measures taken by management in dealing with COVID-19. A coworker had tested positive for COVID-19, but the restaurant had refused to pay workers for time to quarantine. The strikers demanded a professional deep cleaning of the store, two weeks paid leave to self-quarantine, and $15 per hour hazard pay. Outside the eatery in West Durham, workers at the national fast-food chain were joined by dozens of supporters from the Fight for $15, the Poor People’s Campaign, and other local groups, who joined in chants of “I believe that we will win” and “Put some respect on my check.” 

Workers Should Run The World

December 16, 2020 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. , ,
We chat with Erek Slater, a bus oper­a­tor for the Chica­go Tran­sit Author­i­ty, where he’s been work­ing for the past 15 years. Erek is a fam­i­ly man, a father, and a three-term elect­ed shop stew­ard and exec­u­tive board mem­ber of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union, Local 241. We talk about his work­ing life and all that goes into being a bus oper­a­tor, all the things that pas­sen­gers nev­er see — even though we depend on work­ers like Erek every day to live our lives. We also talk about Erek’s expe­ri­ence as a shop stew­ard and about his unshake­able com­mit­ment to hon­or, jus­tice, and empow­er­ing the work­ing class. In fact, it was because he stood up for these things that he was unjust­ly dis­missed from his job in May. 

Resisting Amazon Is Not Futile

December 14, 2020 Jonathan Rosenblum, The Bullet. , , ,
It seems eons ago, the youth-led climate strike of September 20, 2019 that brought four million people onto the streets worldwide. I was on the sidewalk outside Seattle City Hall, watching thousands of school-skippers march by. And then behind the teens came waves of exuberant people, no more than a decade or two older, their homemade signs held aloft: tech workers, including hundreds of Amazon workers who had stepped out of their comfortable cubicles and palatial glass towers to join the global walkout. They had every right to step lightly. Just a day earlier, the budding Amazon Employees for Climate Justice had forced CEO Jeff Bezos into an extraordinary concession, pledging to move the company to 100 per cent renewable energy and net-zero carbon emissions.
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