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Worker Rights

Workers File Sexual Harassment Class-Action Lawsuit Against McDonald’s

April 16, 2020 Kate Taylor, Business Insider. , , ,
On Monday, Florida McDonald's workers announced they had filed a $500 million class-action lawsuit against McDonald's, alleging the fast-food giant has a "systemic sexual harassment problem."  Jamelia Fairley and Ashley Reddick are the named plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed on behalf of the 5,000 women who worked at the 100 corporate-run McDonald's locations in Florida since 2016. Fairley and Reddick were coworkers at a McDonald's location in Florida, where they say that women faced physical assaults, groping, and sexually-charged comments on the job.  Reddick said she dealt with sexual comments from a male coworker, who said things such as "I didn't know you had boobs like that." The coworker allegedly would rub his groin against Reddick and showed her a picture of his private parts on his phone without her consent.

Amazon Fires Employees Who Spoke Out About COVID-19 And Climate Change

April 16, 2020 Zoya Teirstein, Grist. , , ,
Amazon is trying to establish itself as the most essential of essential businesses during the coronavirus outbreak. But the tech giant is struggling to keep a lid on internal turmoil, both at its warehouses, where workers say they’re not being adequately protected from COVID-19, and at its corporate offices, where a showdown between tech employees and management over the company’s climate policies reached a tipping point last week. Last Friday afternoon, Amazon fired two of its tech employees after they publicly criticized its coronavirus policies. Those employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, both user experience designers with 21 years of service at the company between them, were among the leaders of an internal worker group formed in December 2018 with the aim of pressuring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to commit to more ambitious climate targets.

Hospital Food Workers And Janitors Are Stuck In A “Death Trap”

April 13, 2020 Kari Lydersen, In These Times. , , ,
The hospital where Kim Smith works is supposed to be a “safe haven,” says the patient care technician at Northwestern Memorial in Chicago. But now she feels it has become a “death trap.” Like the nurses and doctors nationwide who are risking their lives to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith says she’s glad to help provide healthcare in such traumatic times. But she’s among the army of frontline healthcare service providers who, while crucial to keeping the system going, are earning much lower wages than doctors and nurses and often lack adequate healthcare and paid sick leave. And like doctors and nurses, these service workers often also lack access to personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, even though they’re put in contact with infected patients.

Red Lines: Amazon On Strike

April 11, 2020 Anya Parampil, The Grayzone. , ,
What Workers Need to Know About Their Rights. Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Kevin Gustafson, an organizer with Democracy at Work and host of the Sensible Socialist Podcast, about the strike sweeping the online shopping industry. On March 31st, workers for Amazon, Whole Foods, and Instacart went on strike to protest unsafe working conditions in light of the coronavirus outbreak. Anya Parampil and Kevin Gustafson discuss their demands as well as what workers should know if they are planning to strike.

Striking McDonald’s Workers Say Their Lives Are More Essential Than Fast Food

April 11, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
The fast food industry has long insulated itself from organized labor by building a legal wall between the parent company and the individual franchised stores. That imaginary separation is being tested by the reality of the coronavirus pandemic, as McDonald’s workers across the country have held strikes and walked out, unwilling to risk their lives for fries with no safety net. The Fight For $15 has found fertile new ground in helping to organize fast food strikes in recent days. McDonald’s workers in Los Angeles, San Jose, St. Louis, Tampa, Raleigh-Durham and elsewhere have staged job actions this week, in a coordinated push for safer working conditions, paid sick leave and hazard pay. Maria Ruiz, who has spent 16 years at McDonald’s, was one of the workers who went on strike yesterday outside of her store in San Jose, California.

From Strike Wave To General Strike

April 10, 2020 Richard Moser, Be Freedom. , , ,
The strike wave is here. The strike wave is real.  Can workers take the next steps toward a General Strike? The current crisis is a rare opportunity for us to build a movement both outside of electoral politics and based on an organizing model. That matters because the biggest shortcoming of the left and the social movements is our lack of organizing. Organizing can do what good intentions or radical theory or electoral campaigns cannot: turn solidarity from a dream into a living thing. But without some serious solidarity, all our hopes for a General Strike will fail to materialize. As we build the solidarity infrastructure needed for a General Strike lets not lie to each other. It’s called “class struggle” for a reason. Strikes are painful with workers pitting their sacrifice and suffering up against the bosses’ profits. Strikes are no party. But, general strikes, while rare, are a good match for the unprecedented interlocking crises we face.

A Pandemic Is No Time For Precarious Work

April 10, 2020 Bama Athreya, Inequality.org. , , ,
The Trump administration and many of its wealthiest allies recklessly floated an end to social distancing, endangering public health to allegedly help “the economy.” I don’t usually take the trouble of responding to right-wing opinions, but the gleeful celebration of the gig economy during a pandemic is further evidence of an empathy deficit among their ranks. The executive class, safe in their bunkers, are considering how they can best take further advantage of a precarious workforce. Need to go out and don’t want to face public transportation? Just order car service from Uber or Lyft. Want to avoid crowded grocery stores? Instacart has you covered! Can’t go to your favorite restaurant? There’s an app for that, too – and a vulnerable worker risking their health and safety to bring everything you need right to your door.

Amazon Retaliation: Workers Striking Back

April 9, 2020 Matt Smith, Counterpunch. , , ,
Last week, my Amazon coworkers in New York took the courageous step of walking off the job to protest our company’s lack of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Amazon workers in Detroit and Chicago have followed suit, demanding that Amazon shut down any warehouse where positive cases of the virus are found, to ensure a thorough cleaning. Out of a selfish concern for their profits, Amazon has refused to take this basic step, despite repeated requests from Amazon workers, including a petition signed last month by over 4,500 of us. Now, Amazon employees have tested positive in at least 19 warehouses around the country, and the situation has become dire. So my coworkers are taking action. But rather than act to protect our health, Amazon’s wealthy executives have chosen to retaliate against employees who speak out.

A Nurse Buys Protective Supplies For Colleagues; The Hospital Suspends Her

April 9, 2020 Marshall Allen, ProPublica. , , ,
Olga Matievskaya and her fellow intensive care nurses at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey were so desperate for gowns and masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus that they turned to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money. The donations flowed in — more than $12,000 — and Matievskaya used some of them to buy about 500 masks, 4,000 shoe covers and 150 jumpsuits. She and her colleagues at the hospital celebrated protecting themselves and their patients from the spread of the virus. But rather than thanking the staff, hospital administrators on Saturday suspended Matievskaya for distributing “unauthorized” protective gear. Across the country, front-line medical providers and hospital administrators are butting heads about precautions against the coronavirus pandemic.

Nurses Unions: ‘Our Members Are Dying. We Demand Protections Now!’

April 9, 2020 National Nurses United. , , ,
As COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket in the United States, unions representing 230,000 nurses across the country have joined forces to demand hospitals and the government act now to give nurses optimal personal protective equipment (PPE)—including N95 respirators or higher—a demand made more dire due to the fact that nurses are beginning to die of COVID-19. National Nurses United (comprising the California Nurses Association, the D.C. Nurses Association, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and National Nurses Organizing Committee— including RNs in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, and Veterans Affairs facilities in a dozen other states,) along with the New York State Nurses Association, (NYSNA) the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) are calling on employers and the government to stop treating nurses as if their lives are expendable. 

Target Workers Call For A Boycott Of Shipt On April 10

April 9, 2020 Shipt Shoppers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
We’ve demanded that Shipt HQ offer us hazard pay for choosing to risk our health to deliver groceries to those who are self-quarantining. The Shipt spokesperson said that they are essentially using promo pay as a substitute. This is not the case. Promo pay has been around for a long time. It is used as an incentive for Shoppers to pick up orders that are close to the delivery window, so that orders would not be further delayed or cancelled altogether. This is not the same as “hazard pay,” as it does not address the risk Shipt Shoppers are taking on due to the coronavirus. It is simply something that has always been in place. The spokesperson also said that the company is paying up to four times the amount of normal promo pay.

Cambodian Garment Workers Strike Over Unpaid Wages During Pandemic

April 8, 2020 By Saut Sok, Global Voices. , , ,
Nearly 1,000 garment workers protested outside a Phnom Penh factory on March 25, 2020, after the owner failed to pay their regular wages, which the company said was due to declining payments from buyers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Factory workers employed by Canteran Apparel (Cambodia) Co. Ltd. protested after the company failed to pay their full wages for the most recent two-week pay period, worker Sann Sopha told VOD. The factory owner refused to sign an agreement promising to pay workers their outstanding wages at the beginning of next month, as workers had asked, Sopha said. Workers will continue their strike to force the company to respect the condition to pay workers regularly from today onward. Workers asked the company to make a written promise with them but the company did not dare to make a contract with us. The company just gave excuses for this and that.

How Nurses Got Masks

April 8, 2020 Elizabeth Lalasz, Labor Notes. , , ,
I am a registered nurse at Cook County Hospital, the safety-net hospital in Chicago and the busiest hospital in the state. The people who come to this hospital are some of the most underserved patients, mainly people of color, immigrants—many undocumented, the uninsured and underinsured, the homeless, and the incarcerated. Our emergency room denies no one care and about 300 people per day come there for treatment. We have yet to become a COVID-19 “hot spot” but my co-workers all know it’s coming. Nurses know our patients will be some of the hardest hit. Already my hospital has changed drastically. We now have a whole section of the emergency room for COVID-19 patients, with isolation rooms. The critical care areas (for the severely ill) and the medical surgical units (for the less ill), where I work, also have COVID-19-only areas.

Shipt Shopper Walk-Off

April 6, 2020 Shipt Shoppers, Medium.com. , , ,
For the past several weeks, Shipt has been ignoring its Shoppers’ pleas for hazard pay, PPE, and denied 14 days of sick pay for those of us too sick to work. Earlier this week, they issued a pay cut drastically lowering the payout for canceled orders. For some, this was the second unannounced pay cut this year. Shipt is a gig economy company that Target acquired at the end of 2017. We shop and deliver orders from Target as well as many grocery stores. While the company has always kept a low profile, their shady ways are starting to come to light. You may have read about their bizarre culture or their latest massive pay cut that’s already hit several markets. Because of the cult-like environment they’ve created, they’ve censored and intimidated shoppers into staying quiet, out of fear of retaliation.

250 Organisations Demand Red Lines For Aviation Bailouts

April 6, 2020 the Stay Grounded Network, Popular Resistance. , , ,
6th of April 2020 - Today, 250 organisations from 25 countries published an open letter directed to governments, urging them to resist any aviation lobby attempts to rush into unfair bailouts of the industry. Instead, governments are implored to use this moment to embed social and environmental conditions, with proper protection for workers and a planned transition towards climate-just mobility. From today onwards, individuals are expressing their support for these demands by signing a rapidly growing petition. “For decades, the aviation industry has avoided contributing meaningfully to global climate goals and resisted the merest suggestion of taxes on fuel or tickets. Now, airlines, airports and manufacturers are demanding huge and unconditional taxpayer-backed bailouts.
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