Worker Rights

Earth Day To May Day Actions Planned

February 27, 2016 Staff, www.globalclimateconvergence.org Organize! Climate Change, Earth Day to May Day, Worker Rights

By the Global Climate Convergence. Earth Day to May Day begins in two months For the third consecutive year, the Global Climate Convergence is bringing together Earth Day and May Day events everywhere for a united movement for people, peace, and planet. If you are organizing Earth Day and/or May Day events (April 22-May 1), please list them here. Due to the tenacity, planning and creative actions of the Global Climate Convergence network during 2014, we were able to support over 200 grassroots events in over 50 cities during 10 days of Earth Day to May Day actions. This “10 Days to Change Course” was a first step in grassroots movement building, linking the environmental movement of Earth Day to the workers movement of May Day. Connecting these two days of global significance with a wave of grassroots action and education was symbolic of the growing unity among movements for social, economic and ecological democracy and justice.

Service Workers Had To Pay To Stay Employed

February 21, 2016 Llowell Williams, www.care2.com Educate! Fight for 15, Labor, Wages, Worker Rights

By Llowell Williams for Care2. On paper, federal law in the United States requires all employers to ensure their employees are paid the minimum wage — $7.25 an hour, as guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Service workers are legally supposed to earn this amount, whether via direct wages (the federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour) or a combination of wages and tips. Simple enough, right? In practice, however, this system is ripe for employee exploitation, as a recent U.S. Department of Labor probe in Michigan shows. The owners of Sophia’s Pancake House, a diner with locations in Kalamazoo and Benton Harbor, Mich., were discovered to have actually required waitstaff to pay $2 per hour from their tips merely to remain employed.

Fight For $15 Update: When Truman Doubled Minimum Wage

February 21, 2016 Giovanna Frank-Vitale, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! #FightFor15, Living Wage, Worker Rights

By Giovanna Frank-Vitale for Fight For $15. A New York Times editorial, Teresa Tritch details what happened with Harry Truman doubled the minimum wage in 1950 from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour: “By December 1950, when the 75-cent minimum had been in place for nearly a year, [the unemployment rate] had fallen to 4.3 percent. By December 1951, it was 3.1 percent and by December 1952, it was 2.7 percent.” In an editorial Friday, the Times criticizes laws that industry-backed legislators are trying to quietly pass through state houses nationwide to nullify local efforts to raise the minimum wage. The editorial board writes on a situation unfolding now: “In Alabama, a pre-emption effort introduced this month seeks to nullify a law passed last year by the Birmingham City Council for a citywide minimum wage of $10.10 an hour by mid-2017. If enacted, the state bill would also torpedo efforts to adopt local minimum wages in Huntsville and Tuscaloosa.

Days Of Revolt: Company Town

February 14, 2016 Chris Hedges, www.therealnews.com Resistance Report Agribusiness, Big Ag, Food and Agriculture, Worker Rights

By Chris Hedges. Welcome to Days of Revolt. We're filming this segment in New York City, and we're going to be discussing the effects of the agricul--the agricultural corporations, in particular in Salinas, California. What they have done to communities, to grassroots democratic movements, and how in this microcosm of Salinas they are reconfiguring the city along the lines of neoliberalism in a way that, of course, communities and cities across this country are being reconfigured. Joining me in the studio is Jose Castaneda. He is an independent radical city councilperson who big business has made war against. And Anthony Prince, an attorney who has been working with groups in Salinas to fight back against the power of big business, and all the ways that they are distorting life within the city, including of course going after what has become a large homeless population. Thank you, Jose, and thank you, Anthony.

More Than 1,000 Longshoremen Walk Off The Job At NY/NJ Ports

January 31, 2016 Staff, www.cbslocal.com Resist! Lobngshoreman, Strike, Worker Rights

By Staff for CBS 2. More than 1,000 longshoremen walked off the job at area ports Friday afternoon. During the walkout, which lasted several hours, overseas shipments stuck at ports in New York City, Elizabeth, Newark and Jersey City. The ports handle a total of 3.3 million containers a year, WCBS 880’s Peter Haskell reported. The Port Authority closed the terminals to incoming trucks, causing heavy traffic backups. One truck driver was able to get into the Bayonne port, but then he wasn’t allowed out, Haskell reported. “The ILA and the New York Shipping Association – our employers, it’s not just the workers, but also the owners of the companies that generate the jobs and generates money for the economy, both sides have been fighting the Waterfront Commission, especially in the last five years, over the right to bring new workers on, the right to operate their ports the way they think they should be operated,” Jim McNamara of the International Longshoreman’s Association told 1010 WINS. “They’ve had enough, they told me they’re taking this action to demonstrate their displeasure.”

Organizing To Resist Corporatization Of Higher Education

January 25, 2016 Malini Cadambi Daniel, www.newlaborforum.cuny.edu Strategize! Adjunct, Corporatization, Higher Education, Wages, Worker Rights

By Malini Cadambi Daniel for New Labor Forum - The once hallowed and secure work life of American university faculty has for the past quarter century been in turmoil. Being a professor was once a respected, stable profession, but is now increasingly characterized by low pay, minimal benefits, and no job security. An expectation of tenure—the permanent status that was once a hallmark of the profession—is replaced by the reality of contingency, which means that college instructors must reapply to teach courses every year, or even every semester. This new contingency is not a temporary employment arrangement, nor is it confined to a sector of higher education such as community colleges.

Judge Orders Walmart: Rehire 16 Workers It Fired For Striking

January 24, 2016 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Our Walmart, Wages, Walmart, Worker Rights

By Dave Jamieson for Huffington Post. Walmart broke the law when it fired 16 workers who went on strike in 2013, a judge ruled on Thursday, January 21st. The judge ordered Walmart to offer the workers their jobs back within two weeks and make them whole for any lost wages. Walmart has the right to appeal the ruling, and a company spokesman told The Huffington Post that the retailer still believes it acted lawfully and will "pursue all of our options." In a lengthy decision, Geoffrey Carter, an administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board, ruled that the strikes were protected by law, and that Walmart had no right to discipline workers for taking part in them. Carter also ordered Walmart to expunge any disciplinary infractions against those employees, and to read a notice in the stores where they worked informing employees of their rights under the law.

Not Too Late For Unions To Win Friedrichs Case

January 14, 2016 Shamus Cooke, www.counterpunch.org Organize! Labor, Supreme Court, Unions, Worker Rights

By Shamus Cooke for Counter Punch. Washington, DC - If the future of labor unions is in the hands of the Supreme Court, the outlook is bleak. Labor’s denial was shattered when Judge Alito signaled that the Court had the votes to decimate union membership nationwide. This specific attack aims at public sector unions, the last high-density stronghold of the labor movement. It also foreshadows that private sector unions will be further attacked, into dust this time. The Friedrichs decision now seems inevitable, but nothing is inevitable in politics. The decision will not be announced until June, and this 5 month delay allows unions time to fully express their power.

Nestle’s Bid To Throw Out Child Slavery Suit Rejected

January 13, 2016 Staff, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Corporatism, Criminal Justice, Human Rights, Worker Rights

By Staff of Reuters - WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by Nestle, the world’s largest food maker, and two other companies to throw out a lawsuit seeking to hold them liable for the use of child slaves to harvest cocoa in Ivory Coast. The high court left in place a December 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Nestle, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co and Cargill Inc filed by former victims of child slavery. The plaintiffs, who were originally from Mali, contend the companies aided and abetted human rights violations through their active involvement in purchasing cocoa from Ivory Coast. While aware of the child slavery problem, the companies offered financial and technical assistance to local farmers in a bid to guarantee the cheapest source of cocoa, the plaintiffs said.

GE Tree Company Guilty Of Defrauding Workers

January 9, 2016 Kip Doyle, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Corruption, Criminal Justice, GE Trees, Worker Rights

By Kip Doyle of Global Justice Ecology Project. New York, NY - Biotech firm ArborGen, a leader in the research and development of genetically engineered trees (GE trees), has been fined $53.5 million in compensation and punitive damages after a court ruled that it acted to use "trickery and deceit" to "defraud" employees. Just before the holidays a judge issued the 180 page ruling (linked below) on the case in favor of ten ArborGen workers, and against the company, as well as its timber company founders, International Paper, MeadWestvaco (now WestRock) and New Zealand-based Rubicon, plus several of their Board members. “It is a shame that this story came out on 29 December, in the middle of a holiday week, and has gone almost completely unreported,” said Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project. “Only two articles have covered this important story in South Carolina papers.

37-Day Strike In View For 8,000 City Of Montreal Workers

January 8, 2016 Staff, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Canada, Labor, Worker Rights

By Staff of CUPE - The 8,000 white-collar workers of the City of Montreal will be on a rotating strike for 36 days from January 25 to February 29. The various services, offices and boroughs of the city will be affected in turn. This wave will culminate in a general strike day on March 1, the deadline for the payment of municipal taxes. In addition, the white collars will not do any overtime work during this period. However, they will provide all essential services prescribed by law.

Crackdowns Show Transit Workers On Right Track

January 7, 2016 Samantha Winslow, www.labornotes.org Resist! Freedom of Speech, Labor, Transportation, Worker Rights

By Samantha Winslow for Labor Notes - Even basic rights like free speech can’t be taken for granted, transit workers are finding out, when your speech makes the boss look bad. Around the country, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union have been threatened with discipline and arrest simply for bringing their message to the public at bus stops, in breakrooms, at public meetings, and on social media. As workers resist budget-crunching, ATU International President Larry Hanley said, “the companies are fighting back using the power of the police and the power of discharge.”

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