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Worker Rights

Amazon Expects Employees To Operate Like Fast-Moving Machines

October 9, 2020 Michelle Chen and Molly Crabapple, In These Times. , ,
For Sean Carlisle (a pseu­do­nym) a 32-year-old grad­u­ate stu­dent and native of California’s Inland Empire, the last three years at his local Ama­zon ful­fill­ment cen­ter have been an edu­ca­tion. As a stu­dent of urban plan­ning, he stud­ies how built envi­ron­ments shape a community’s behav­ior. As a pick­er, he packs items at a break­neck pace amid stacks of inven­to­ry and snaking con­vey­or belts while del­i­cate­ly prac­tic­ing strate­gies to raise his cowork­ers’ polit­i­cal consciousness.  Amazon’s logis­ti­cal infra­struc­ture is designed to make humans per­form with machine-like effi­cien­cy, but Sean is try­ing to make the work­place a bit more human, advo­cat­ing for stronger work­er pro­tec­tions and cor­po­rate account­abil­i­ty in his community.

Google Contractor Moving Work From Pittsburgh To Poland To Bust Union

October 9, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
Pittsburgh, PA -Today the NLRB charged Google Contractor HCL with moving work from Pittsburgh to Poland, citing that the move was a way to bust the newly formed Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. The NLRB Region 6, based in Pittsburgh, charged HCL with breaking labor law and refusing to negotiate a bargain in good faith with the Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. Most egregiously, the NLRB charged HCL with moving work to lower-paid tech workers in Krakow, Poland. 

Over 44,000 Meatpackers Tested Positive For COVID19

October 8, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
According to a tracker maintained by the Food & Environment Reporting Network, more than 44,000 meatpackers have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 200 have died from it.  Now, a new exposé by the New York Times shows how many meatpacking families have struggled to get compensated for their loved one’s death on the job:  Workers’ compensation has traditionally been used to address on-the-job injuries — not fatalities tied to a pandemic that has disrupted millions of lives and killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. Tracing the exact origins of individual infections can be difficult, which appears to have given JBS an avenue to deny compensation claims on the grounds that the illnesses were not necessarily work related.

Labor Unions File UN Complaint Over ‘Outrageous’ Violations Of Workers’ Rights

October 8, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. , , ,
United States labor leaders representing workers in several trade unions on Wednesday filed a complaint with the United Nations' labor agency, making the case that under the Trump administration, the U.S. has violated numerous international labor laws during the coronavirus pandemic.  The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed the complaint in Geneva, home of the International Labor Organization (ILO), a U.N. institution dedicated to protecting workers' rights related to workplace safeguards and collective bargaining. 

The Way Forward For NYU Graduate Students

October 7, 2020 International Youth and Students for Social Equality at New York University, WSWS.org. , , ,
Since July, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC), which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and has over 2,000 graduate workers as members at New York University, has been involved in contract negotiations with the university administration. The previous contract, negotiated by GSOC and the university in 2015, expired on Aug. 31. GSOC has agreed to a second extension of the contract, which includes a no-strike clause, until Oct. 13. GSOC is affiliated with the UAW Local 2110, an amalgamated union that has repeatedly negotiated concessionary contracts for workers throughout New York City.

Choose Fairtrade: Choose The World You Want

October 7, 2020 Fairtrade America. , , ,
Washington — In honor of October as Fair Trade Month, Fairtrade America is launching a national campaign to generate broader awareness for how a simple action, like purchasing a Fairtrade certified product, can be a powerful way to make a difference in the lives of the almost 2 million farmers and workers participating in Fairtrade across the globe. The ‘Choose Fairtrade: Choose the World You Want,’ campaign features murals in three major U.S. cities — Denver, Los Angeles and Nashville — that connect stories of the people who produce the things we count on every day, such as coffee, cocoa, bananas, tea and more, to the positive impacts of Fairtrade.

Preempting Progress In The South

October 4, 2020 By Hunter Blair, David Cooper, Julia Wolfe, and Jaimie Worker, EPI. , , ,
A new report from the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) at EPI and the Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC) describes the ways in which state interference—in the form of preemption—is impeding local democracy and hamstringing progress on a variety of economic, social, and public health issues for communities throughout the South. The report also describes how this interference is a continuation of long-standing state-imposed policies and practices rooted in anti-Black racism and how modern-day misuse of preemption disproportionately disadvantages workers of color, women, and low-income workers.

Restaurant Workers Are Building Solidarity Amid The Pandemic

October 2, 2020 Alice Herman, In These Times. , , ,
Boise, Idaho - It was rain­ing light­ly June 29 when Geo Eng­ber­son, own­er of the Pie Hole pizze­ria, con­vened an emer­gency staff meet­ing. He had intend­ed a quick con­fer­ence in the park­ing lot behind the restau­rant, known for its steady stream of week­end bar-goers. Giv­en the weath­er, Eng­ber­son fer­ried the hand­ful of work­ers into his trailer.  Ear­li­er that month, work­ers at the piz­za joint peti­tioned for an hourly wage bump. Wor­ried that Pie Hole was pre­pared to replace them, for­mer employ­ee Kiwi Palmer says, she and her cowork­ers refused to train new hires. This refusal trig­gered a conflict. 

Six Reflections On The Abolitionist Strike At The University Of Michigan

October 1, 2020 Black Ink. , , ,
Both within and outside of the frameworks of “permissive” bargaining, the desire and urgency to create a world centered around care cannot be granted by a university or union bureaucracy. Throughout the GEO strike, GEO’s demands, and especially the anti-policing demands, were criticized for their “impossibility.” It was impossible for a graduate workers union to demand cuts to a campus police budget, it was impossible to negotiate over campus police’s role in making workplaces unsafe, it was impossible to ask a university to cut ties with local police and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Workers’ Rights In Globalised Industry

September 26, 2020 Ben Chacko, Morning Star Online. , , ,
The Covid-19 crisis and the lockdowns imposed as a result hit the garment industry hard, causing order cancellations and job losses in producer countries. What can trade unions do to press brands to shield suppliers from the risk of a sudden loss of income that they pass onto their workers? “This problem emerged early in the pandemic. In April many brands endorsed a call to action, a tripartite initiative led by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) with a commitment by brands to pay for finished goods and goods in production.

Twenty Days Of Underground Protests

September 23, 2020 Olesya Orlenko, Struggle La Lucha. , , ,
Ukraine - “This is not a strike, but a protest action.” Yuriy Samoilov, chairperson of the Krivoy Rog (Kryvyi Rih) organization of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, prefers to clarify this point when talking about the underground protest of local miners. Workers of the privatized Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant (KZhRK) are afraid to officially call their actions a “strike” because of pressure from the Ukrainian authorities. Protesters remember the sad experience of striking uranium miners when the leaders of the movement were put on trial.

Groups Applaud Introduction Of Philippine Human Rights Act

September 22, 2020 Communication Workers of America. , , ,
Earlier this year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte signed the Anti-Terrorism Act—a law that Amnesty International has called “yet another setback for human rights.” The law is clearly aimed at expanding the government’s ability to target political opponents and activists. It allows suspects to be detained by the police or military without charges for as long as 24 days and placed under surveillance for up to 90 days.  “CWA is proud to support the introduction of the Philippine Human Rights Act to protect the working people in the Philippines who are suffering greatly under the Duterte regime.”

Schools Reopen — And Teachers Fight For Their Lives…

September 18, 2020 Sarah Jaffe, Rethinking Schools. , , ,
As schools begin to reopen, within teacher unions around the country, teachers have been coming together to discuss the risks they’re willing to take — both to protect public health in the short term, and to protect public education in the long run.  The starting place for the unions, noted Stacy Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, is that the push to reopen schools as if they could wish the pandemic away, whether it was coming from President Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos or from Chicago’s mayor Lori Lightfoot, “was wrong and dangerous.”

Meet Students Organizing The First Campus-Wide Undergraduate Union

September 16, 2020 Indigo Olivier, In These Times. , , ,
On August 31, stu­dents at Keny­on Col­lege, a pri­vate lib­er­al arts col­lege in Gam­bier, Ohio, announced their intent to union­ize with the Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal, Radio and Machine Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (UE) in an open let­ter to the school’s pres­i­dent and board of trustees. Stu­dents have request­ed vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion through a card-check neu­tral­i­ty agree­ment with the school’s admin­is­tra­tion. If suc­cess­ful, the Keny­on Stu­dent Work­er Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee (K‑SWOC) will become the first union to orga­nize its entire under­grad­u­ate work­force, which will include all 800 stu­dent work­er posi­tions avail­able on campus.

Striking In The Coronavirus Depression

September 15, 2020 Jeremy Brecher, Labor Sustainability Network. , , ,
In response to COVID-19 and the COVID-19 Depression, workers have developed unique strategies and forms of organization to protect their lives and livelihoods. We saw in “Fighting the Great Depression — from Below” how in the early years of the Great Depression conventional trade union strikes became a rarity, but workers organized themselves in community-based, “horizontal” ways to fight for their survival. This commentary and the next describe the emergence of strikes for protection against COVID-19.
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