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Worker Rights and Jobs

Biden’s Picket Line Visit Doesn’t Mean He Is On Our Side

September 28, 2023 Tatiana Cozzarelli, Left Voice. , , , , ,
Yesterday, Joe Biden became the first sitting president to visit a picket line of striking workers. It is historic. A few hours later, Jacobin published an article entitled “The Militancy of the UAW Strike Forced Joe Biden to Take a Side and Walk the Picket Line,” by Nick French. Jacobin is right that Biden’s visit to the picket line results from the UAW strike’s strength. But Jacobin is dead wrong in its assessment that Biden is “on the side of the working class.” Instead, Biden’s visit is a product of the capitalist crisis in which both Trump and Biden are vying for influence over the working class in a tight presidential race.

Ford And GM Agree To End At Least One Tier; Stellantis Still Holding Out

September 27, 2023 Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes. , , , ,
The Auto Workers announced encouraging progress in their negotiations with Ford and General Motors September 22, including an end to one of the many concessionary tiers in the union’s contract. In 2015 workers at Chrysler (now Stellantis) voted down a tentative agreement 2 to 1 because it continued an onerous two-tier wage system—and even introduced new tiers. UAW President Dennis Williams (later jailed for corruption) was pissed. At a meeting of local officials called to present that deal, Williams spluttered, “Ending two-tier is bullshit.” The UAW still has other tiers to address, but it looks like Williams was wrong. Both Ford and GM have agreed to put workers at certain parts plants back on the same wage scale as assembly plant workers.

Workers Around The World Stand With Striking US Autoworkers

September 27, 2023 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. , , , , , , , , , , ,
As the first-ever simultaneous strike at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis continues, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is being cheered on not only by a majority of Americans, but also by much of the international labor movement. Over the past two weeks, the UAW has received messages of solidarity from worker organizations in multiple countries, including a letter from the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and an email from Malaysia’s National Union of Transport Equipment & Allied Industries Workers — both of which represent autoworkers in their respective countries. “The world is watching, and the people are on our side,” UAW President Shawn Fain said last Friday.

Scolding Striking Auto Workers In Advance For Wrecking Economy

September 27, 2023 Paige Oamek, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , , , ,
The first person quoted in the New York Times’ rundown (9/19/23) on the United Auto Workers strike was a lawyer representing management from Littler Mendelson, the go-to firm for big corporations’ union avoidance. “Right now, unions are cool,” said Michael Lotito of Littler Mendelson. But they “have a risk of not being very cool if you have a five-month strike in LA and an X-month strike in how many other states.” The article, “Strike Is a High-Stakes Gamble for Autoworkers and the Labor Movement” highlights the “real pitfalls” of a so-called prolonged strike against the big three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (which absorbed Chrysler).

Scabs Deployed At GM Parts Distribution Centers

September 26, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Auto workers at the Big 3 expanded their strike last Friday to a key vulnerability: parts distribution centers that supply dealerships with everything from water pumps to brake drums and spark plugs to replacement bumpers. On Tuesday morning, General Motors began bringing in temps hired for $14 an hour to attempt to keep some of the parts and accessories flowing. Parts distribution centers ship after-sales spare parts and accessories to car dealerships on a just-in-time basis. “If there is anything that could possibly break down that you need to get replaced, it probably came from a Customer Care and Aftersales (CCA) facility,” said strike captain Devon McKenzie

Hollywood Writers Secure Tentative Deal After 146 Days Of Strike

September 26, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
After nearly five months, striking writers have secured a tentative agreement with Hollywood studio bosses. In a statement released on Sunday, September 24, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA), which has been organizing the strike, announced that “an agreement in principle on all deal points” have been arrived at by the bargaining team. The deal comes after the latest round of talks between the bargaining team of the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), while writers completed 146 days on strike. As per reports, the latest round of talks reached a major impasse on Saturday, but the AMPTP relented on a mutually agreeable deal on Sunday.

Auto Workers Strike Spreads To 38 Parts Depots

September 23, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon and Lisa Xu, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
The clock has ticked and tocked for two of the Big 3 automakers. At noon 5,000 more members of the Auto Workers (UAW) at 38 parts distribution centers for Stellantis and General Motors walked off the job. The facilities are spread across 20 states. They join 13,000 workers at assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri who have been out for a week—for a total of 18,000 Big 3 auto workers on picket lines nationwide. (See a map of all struck facilities here.) The escalation adds a new type of facility to the mix. Parts distribution centers (PDCs) supply after-sales spare parts and accessories to dealerships, a very profitable part of the companies’ business.

Musician Cooperativism At Groupmuse

September 23, 2023 Mosa Tsay, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , ,
I am a cellist and worker-owner of a cooperative. As an ICDE fellow, I hop out of my usual action-oriented work to reflect on why cooperativism is an alternative to the status quo for freelancing musicians. As a professional cellist, I witnessed the infrastructural fractures that musicians in the United States have to navigate. In 2020, I returned to the U.S. from a year of studying in France, after contemplating during quarantine about the economics of working as an artist. One important question I wanted to solve: Rather than competing with my colleagues for limited paid gigs, how can I generate new opportunities and resources with them?

Mexican Auto Parts Workers Face Blacklist After Union Campaign

September 22, 2023 Charlie Saperstein and Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. , , ,
In August 2022, auto parts workers at VU Manufacturing won a landmark election to gain recognition for a new independent union, the Mexican Workers’ League (La Liga). A year later, after refusing to negotiate a new contract, the company has shut down, leaving 400 workers jobless—and 71 workers without their legally-mandated severance pay. VU is located in the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, where politicians brag about maintaining “labor peace” in the foreign-owned factories known as maquiladoras. This “peace” is largely mediated by the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), a powerful company-friendly union notorious for signing contracts behind workers’ backs and preventing them from organizing genuine, democratic unions.

Construction Companies Exploit Agricultural Visas To Underpay Workers

September 22, 2023 Sky Chadde and Ryan Murphy, In These Times. , , , ,
Jose Ageo Luna Vanegas first worked for Signet Builders in the early 2000s. Hired on a temporary labor visa, he traveled from Mexico to U.S. job sites. The hours were long, but he was paid overtime. Years later, around 2017, Signet hired him again. This time, he received no overtime pay. That’s when he ​“started asking questions,” his attorney, Jennifer Zimmermann, said.  The work was largely the same. His visa was different. Originally, Luna Vanegas was hired on an H-2B visa. Various industries use the visas to fill labor shortages. A hotel facing a busy summer might hire foreign maids, for instance. But, when Signet hired him for his second stint with the company, he was on an H-2A visa. It’s reserved for agriculture work.

Half A Million California Workers Get A Raise And A Seat At The Table

September 21, 2023 Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect. , , , , ,
In the realm of burgers and fries, California’s hot labor summer is sizzling. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the state’s fast-food worker movement, created and steered by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has compelled the giants of the fast-food industry (both national stalwarts like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and local legends like In-N-Out) to withdraw their opposition to raising their workers’ wages and establishing a statewide labor-business board to deal with industry issues. Last year, after the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that established such a council to raise those wages, the industry announced it would put $200 million behind a ballot measure it had devised to overturn that law.

To Beat The Heat, We Can’t Rely On Management

September 21, 2023 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. , , ,
The death of UPS driver Chris Begley, 57, who collapsed in August while making a delivery in 103-degree Texas heat, was no isolated incident. Monitoring co-workers for signs of heat exhaustion has become a routine feature of the job, says fellow driver Seth Pacic, a shop steward in Begley’s union, Teamsters Local 767. Pacic has learned to discern over the phone when a co-worker needs to find air conditioning ASAP—and when they’re deteriorating so badly that he should call paramedics and brave management’s wrath.

Workers In The South Aren’t Letting Anti-Labor Laws Stop Them

September 21, 2023 Mindy Isser, In These Times. , , , ,
Even though strikes are illegal for public sector workers in North Carolina, the difficult and sometimes dangerous work — coupled with low wages and the rising cost of living — led Perry and his co-workers to refuse to get in their trucks to pick up trash on September 6. The action reflects growing labor agitation in the South — a region where union organizing and striking are exceptionally challenging, but workers are nevertheless coming together to improve their working conditions. The day before the action, on the evening of September 5, sanitation and other city workers packed the Durham City Council meeting to present a petition demanding an immediate $5,000 bonus, payment for all work done outside job titles, and hiring all temporary workers as permanent.

Joe Biden Is Afraid Of The UAW Strike; That’s A Good Thing

September 21, 2023 Enid Brain and Jason Koslowski, Left Voice. , , , , ,
At midnight on September 15, the UAW began its strike at three plants of the the Big 3 — GM, Ford, and Stellantis. While limited, this strike immediately sent shockwaves across the nation with every bourgeois news outlet turning to cover the strike. Indeed, the strike is proving very popular: 75 percent of Americans side with the UAW in their fight. This strike is part of what some have dubbed a “Hot Labor Summer,” characterized by an averted strike at UPS and the on-going entertainment industry strikes amongst many smaller strikes and labor actions, like Blue Cross Blue Shield workers also represented by the UAW. It’s placed the working class at the center of the national agenda.

UAW Continues To Fiercely ‘Stand Up’ Despite Company Attacks

September 20, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Entering the fifth day of the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike, 13,000 out of 146,000 UAW workers continue to walk the picket lines in front of three auto plants in Missouri, Michigan, and Ohio, belonging to each of the three largest automakers in the country, GM, Stellantis, and Ford. This partial strike has the potential to build up to a strike of all 146,000 members depending on how the auto companies respond to contract negotiations. The UAW has dubbed this strategy, which keeps the union a step ahead of the automakers at all times, the “Stand Up Strike”. UAW President Shawn Fain appeared on MSNBC Sunday to talk about updates in negotiations.
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