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Worker Rights and Jobs

Politically Corrupt And Morally Bankrupt

December 27, 2024 Helen Mercer, Portside. , , , , ,
Jeff Schuhrke's book is a history of the collaboration between trade union leaders and the US state through the Cold War up until the 2000s. It provides a detailed account of the dealings of key figures in the leadership of the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) with the US political establishment and the CIA, earning the name “AFL-CIA.” Schuhrke exposes the labyrinth of personal contacts, committees, and associations through which the US government channelled funds and shaped labour organisations across the world.

How The LA Tenants Union Fights Displacement With Community

December 26, 2024 Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, In These Times. , , , ,
The first LA Tenants Union meeting was a ​“renter’s rights workshop.” Soon, we realized, all three parts of that framework had to go. “Renter,” because we had to broaden our understanding of the populations who live in antagonism to rent, including people who live outside. ​“Workshop,” because we couldn’t just offer resources to individual tenants and send them on their way. ​“Rights,” because what few tenants had weren’t easy to use and didn’t stop landlords from acting otherwise. And the right we want to win, the human right to housing, will take another kind of housing system, another kind of state, and another kind of world.

Two Major Retailers Close, Terminate Workers

December 25, 2024 Otis Grotewohl, Workers World. , , ,
One week before many of their workers were planning to celebrate the winter holidays with loved ones, two major retailers announced they were officially closing all store locations. The Columbus, Ohio-based discount department store Big Lots! publicly revealed Dec. 19 they were officially closing all their shops, while Party City made a similar revelation the very next day. Most store employees learned about the news either while at work or through media coverage on their day off. Big Lots! started closing many of its locations earlier in the year. According to an article in USA Today on Dec. 20, more than 400 stores already closed in 2024, and the company also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Starbucks Workers Begin Five Day Strike In Seattle

December 25, 2024 Mathieu Chabaud and Clio Jensen, Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Seattle, Washington – On Friday, December 20, Starbucks workers at five stores in Seattle went on strike. Anchored by the 24 hour picket line at the Reserve Roastery, one of Starbucks’ premiere stores, workers on these picket lines are planning to strike through December 24. Baristas are on an unfair labor practice strike after the company has continually stalled negotiations and engaged in bad faith bargaining. Starbucks workers say the company has not been willing to agree to pay that meets workers’ needs. “We make our store so much money, we make Starbucks so much money,” said Bruce Halstead, a striking worker at the Reserve Roastery.

Amazon Unleashed Flood Of Water On Striking Workers

December 24, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times. , , , ,
Queens, New York — On the cold afternoon of Saturday, December 21, Amazon Teamsters and allies were walking in a circle in front of the entrance to the delivery station DB4K, holding pre-printed signs demanding ​“Amazon Obey the Law,” when striking workers were flooded by a torrential outpouring of water from the building. ​“This was just like a fire hydrant on full blast,” said Amazon driver Danny Batista. Christian Santana, another driver on the scene, said he had seen water trickle out of the fire suppression system but never a torrent like this.

Marathon Negotiations Bring Key Breakthroughs For VW Workers

December 24, 2024 Ana Vračar, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Volkswagen workers in Germany secured major breakthroughs in their fight against the company’s planned cost-cutting measures. The agreement, finalized during the week of December 16 after marathon-length negotiations, preserves jobs, protects plant operations, and ensures long-term collective bargaining agreements, representing a significant departure from management’s initial proposals of plant closures, salary cuts, and mass redundancies. “No site will be closed, no one will be made redundant and our in-house collective bargaining agreement will be secured in the long term,” said works council chair Daniela Cavallo in the follow-up to the negotiations.

How Union Democracy Builds Labor’s Strike Power

December 24, 2024 Alex Press, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
Scott Houldieson had some questions. He had worked at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 551, since 1989, but in the late 2000s the company was in a financial hole following the Great Recession, and the leaders of the UAW told him and his fellow coworkers that they were going to have to give up some of the benefits that had long made auto work a good blue-collar job. Houldieson understood that times were hard; he’d seen the quarterly reports showing gigantic losses for the company, even if it wasn’t facing bankruptcy like its competitors, but something still didn’t compute.

Teamsters Launch Largest Strike Against Amazon In American History

December 19, 2024 Daniel Moskowitz, International Brotherhood of Teamsters. , , ,
The Teamsters launched the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history beginning at 6 a.m. EST on Thursday, December 19. The nationwide action follows Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters. “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible."

Denver Flight Attendants Rally For Higher Pay

December 19, 2024 Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Denver, Colorado – On December 11, members of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) at Frontier Airlines held a rally outside of the Frontier headquarters in Denver. Flight attendants have been in mediation with the companies that refused to meet members' demands. American and Southwest Airlines flight attendants got their contracts, while Alaskan Airlines attendants voted down their proposed contract. Frontier and United have been in mediation with the AFA for more than six months. There were two chief demands raised at the rally: increased wages, and a shift back to the old business model.

Ten Inequality Victories In 2024

December 19, 2024 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. , , , , , , , , , , ,
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers, a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region.

UFCW Locals Block Kroger-Albertsons Mega-Merger

December 18, 2024 Lisa Xu, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
In a victory for labor—and in particular, for a coalition of United Food and Commercial Workers local unions—judges in Oregon and Washington state have separately ruled against the proposed mega-merger of Kroger and Albertsons, effectively blocking it and leading Albertsons to terminate the merger agreement. On December 10, a federal district court in Oregon upheld a preliminary injunction on the merger requested by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). On the same day, a court in Washington also ruled against the merger in a separate suit brought by the state’s attorney general.

Threat Of Amazon Workers’ Strike Spreads During Peak Holiday Season

December 17, 2024 Michael Sainato, Portside. , , , , , , , ,
Thousands of workers at Amazon are threatening to strike at the company after giving the company a deadline of 15 December to agree to begin negotiating a first contract with the union representing employees. The strike threats, which started in New York, have now spread to Chicago and Atlanta. They come during Amazon’s peak holiday season and after the company experienced record sales during its 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. The workers at the company’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island became the first Amazon warehouse in the US to win a union election in March 2022.

Teamsters: Government Should Stay Out Of The Bargaining Process

December 17, 2024 Bill Stephens, Trains. , , , , , , ,
Toronto – Teamsters Canada union leaders are urging federal officials in Ottawa to stay out of the collective bargaining process and back railway workers’ right to strike. “The transportation industry’s most powerful chief executives have developed a way to sidestep union negotiations,” Francois Laporte, national president of Teamsters Canada, and Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, wrote in an op-ed in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper this week. “Here’s their playbook, as we see it: Make unreasonable demands, accuse unions of being unreasonable for refusing to accept them, instigate job action, lock workers out to disrupt supply chains, and use the resulting outcry to press Ottawa to impose binding arbitration. We believe this to be bad faith bargaining.

Jeff Bezos Thinks He’s Invincible; Amazon Workers Are Striking To Prove Him Wrong

December 17, 2024 Sarah Smith and M. Carlstad, Left Voice. , , , , ,
As the holiday shopping season ramps up, Amazon workers across the country are escalating their efforts to secure union contracts. The Teamsters Union had given Amazon until December 15 to agree to dates for formal contract negotiations, warning that failure to come to the table would result in labor action, including a potential Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike. Workers, who have been battling Amazon’s aggressive union-busting tactics for years, are showing increased determination for their demands to be met. Warehouse workers and delivery drivers are coming together to demand better pay, safer working conditions, job security, and union recognition.

Kaiser Strikers Say When Therapists Burn Out, Patients Suffer

December 16, 2024 Adriana Webb, Labor Notes. , , , ,
I work as a medical social worker in the infectious diseases clinic, working primarily with patients who have been diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. I help my patients navigate Kaiser’s complex health care system, get access to needed resources, and figure out how they can afford a life-sustaining medication that often costs thousands of dollars per month. I see firsthand how Kaiser’s mental health system is failing these patients. It’s nearly impossible for them to get access to timely mental health care, and because Kaiser treats its therapists like assembly-line factory workers, so many therapists get burned out and leave.
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