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Worker Rights and Jobs

UFCW Local Leads Fight To Win Strongest Tenant Protections

February 13, 2024 Ty Moore, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Grocery and retail workers helped win the strongest tenant protections in Washington state last November for the 100,000 renters in the city of Tacoma. First we had to beat the mayor’s and city council’s attempt to bring a competing watered-down ballot measure. And then we had to overcome a vicious and deceptive landlord opposition that smashed all previous political spending records in Tacoma. “We’ve created incredible goodwill in the community just as we gear up for a tough contract fight,” said Michael Whalen, who helped initiate the campaign as a dairy clerk and shop steward at Fred Meyer.

Minnesota Is Headed For A Workers Vs. Bosses Showdown

February 13, 2024 Amie Stager, Workday Magazine. , , ,
This spring, thousands of workers across Minnesota will have expired contracts all at the same time. Among them are healthcare workers, janitors, security officers, airport workers, construction workers, educators, education support professionals, and public workers. Organizers within Minnesota’s labor movement are making use of this unique moment to exert joint pressure on employers across sectors to meet workers’ demands. Over the past decade, unions and community groups in Minnesota have been creating partnerships with a shared analysis of power, and holding employers and leaders accountable, all while building an alignment strategy that they say grows their organizations and wins more for their members.

New Orleans Nurses Fight For A New Union As Hospitals Merge

February 13, 2024 Jesse Baum, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Heidi Tujague works 12-hour shifts as an emergency room nurse at New Orleans’ University Medical Center (UMC), just outside the Central Business District. The hospital is part of a massive nonprofit, LCMC Health — which held assets of $3.57 billion in 2022 and operated over half of New Orleans’ hospitals in 2023. But despite those resources, Tujague says nurses sometimes have to scramble for supplies to care for patients. Even wheelchairs can be scarce. “You have to ask a patient, ‘Would you mind standing up and shifting to this chair so I can get this wheelchair — while you’re waiting for your X-ray — so I can get someone else to their X-ray?

In Europe, Platform Workers Are Winning Limited Protections

February 12, 2024 Ben Wray, Jacobin. , , ,
As the European Parliament heads toward fresh elections in June, there’s one unresolved file on the desk of Brussels’s politicians and technocrats. The European Union (EU) Platform Work Directive, an attempt to establish a unified set of labor standards for workers on digital platforms like Uber and Deliveroo, has turned out to be a thorny issue. The EU’s various institutions have been banging heads over platform work regulation for years now, unable to bridge conflicting interests and ideologies. If passed, the Platform Work Directive would establish a whole set of new rights relating to algorithmic management.

Strike Threat At Allison Transmission Strips Out Tiers

February 8, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Fifteen hundred auto workers in Indianapolis made their New Year’s resolution public: unless Allison Transmission agreed to eliminate tiers in wages, benefits, shift premiums, and holidays, they would hit the bricks. “The fight plan throughout negotiations was ending tiers,” said Phil Shupe, a 10-year assembler on tier two and bargaining committee member. “We weren't going to accept anything from the company that had any more division. We stood firm that we all needed to be equal.” Workers at Allison make commercial heavy-duty automatic transmissions for fire trucks, school buses, and tanks, as well as hybrid propulsion systems.

Crisis For Javier Milei As Austerity Bill Is Defeated

February 7, 2024 Otto Fors and R. F. Landers , Left Voice. , , ,
This week in Argentina, members of congress voted on the highly repressive Omnibus Bill proposed by far-right president Javier Milei. After a general strike and four days of massive mobilizations, the bill was withdrawn. It’s a huge victory for the working class and the movement in the streets. The bill included a series of anti-worker and austerity measures, including massive privatizations, layoffs, and labor reforms. Much to the satisfaction of international capital — and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which supported the reforms — the bill would have opened the country’s resources up to imperialist plunder.

Food Service Drivers Took Their Strike Nationwide And Won

February 7, 2024 Scott Jenkins, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
While most Chicagoans were bracing for a major snowstorm, 130 truck drivers who deliver food from warehouses to cafeterias and kitchens spent the first weekend in January preparing for another kind of storm: a strike. US Foods had stalled negotiations over wages, health care, and safety provisions. At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, January 8, Teamsters Local 705 picket lines went up at the Bensenville, Illinois, facility. Over the next three weeks, Teamsters extended the Bensenville line nationwide. Rolling pickets hit more than two dozen US Foods distribution centers and drop yards from Los Angeles to Indiana to New Jersey, paralyzing its operations in some of the nation’s highest-volume markets.

Are Europe’s Farmers Protesting Green Reforms? It’s Complicated

February 7, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. , , , , , , ,
Across France, Italy and Belgium last week thousands of farmers descended on capital cities to express their deep discontent with the European food system. The scenes were dramatic. Parked tractors brought traffic to a standstill in Paris, and on Thursday burning piles of hay and debris sent up huge, dark plumes of smoke in Brussels. The protests show no sign of slowing down and are expected this week across Italy, Slovenia and Spain. Farmers’ demonstrations have been portrayed as a revolt against net zero, by the media and far-right groups. This is the message received by governments – and they are acting on it. So far, the farmers have won key concessions.

Amid Union-Busting, Starbucks Workers Just Keep Organizing

February 6, 2024 The Stand. , , , ,
If Starbucks executives thought the company’s aggressive and illegal anti-union efforts would eventually wear down employees and that enthusiasm would wane for joining together in a union, they were wrong. On Monday, employees at yet another local Starbucks store in Renton Village demanded a union election, saying “business has repeatedly been prioritized over partners’ physical and mental health.” Amid management’s union-busting campaign, Starbucks workers just keep organizing. There are now 483 Starbucks stores in 46 states that have filed to unionize. Of those, 385 Starbucks stores in 43 states have won union elections, a nearly 80 percent win rate.

The South, Where Automakers Go For A Discount

February 6, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
In 1978, Volkswagen became the first foreign-owned company to manufacture cars in the United States since Rolls-Royce in the 1930s, setting up shop in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. “This is one of the most important organized victories in years for the UAW,” said United Auto Workers President Doug Fraser after VW workers voted 865 to 17 to join the union. “We believe that there will be other foreign automakers deciding to open plants in the U.S. and we intend to organize those workers as well.” Since then, some 35 shiny new engine and assembly plants have been installed along I-75 and I-55, forming an automotive corridor from the Midwest to the South that today employs about 150,000 workers

Hyundai Workers Roll The Union On In Alabama

February 4, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Auto workers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, have signed up more than 30 percent of their nearly 4,000 co-workers in an ambitious drive to unionize. The Auto Workers (UAW) announced the organizing breakthrough with a new video, “Montgomery Can’t Wait,” where workers link the labor and civil rights movements: “Montgomery, the city where Rosa Parks sat down, and where thousands of Hyundai workers are ready to Stand Up.” “There’s something about our fight to unionize being homegrown that makes it just that much sweeter,” said Quichelle Liggins, a 12-year quality inspector at Hyundai.

Tech Workers Deserve A Union

February 2, 2024 Peter Olney, The Stansbury Forum. , , ,
Many of us have tried to follow the recent kerfuffle involving Sam Altman’s leadership of the company he founded, OpenAI. In mid-November 2023 he was abruptly fired, then returned to power just five days later. The business press highlighted the implications of this power struggle for the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence and the future influence of investors like Microsoft. It appears, however, that the pivotal moment in the power struggle came when 738 out of OpenAI’s estimated 770 workers said they would resign if Altman remained ousted. Even if it only resulted in putting a CEO back in power (and to a company that represents a real threat to the labor movement), the revolt by OpenAI workers was nevertheless “one of the most successful collective actions taken to date in the tech industry,” writes Ethan Marcotte, and a reminder to tech workers of the power they have at work.

The UAW Strike Saved Their Shuttered Plant

February 1, 2024 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. , , , ,
Belvidere, Illinois — It’s been almost five months since JC Bengtson, an autoworker for 24 years, lost his job. ​“I miss working,” says the 55-year-old father of three daughters, all adults. ​“Right now I am unemployed and waiting to hear back.” We are sitting in the union hall of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1268, in Belvidere, Ill., not far from the sprawling Belvidere Assembly Plant. Bengtson worked there for 10 years before he was officially laid off in September 2023, right before his union went on strike. The auto giant Stellantis announced in December 2022 that it would permanently idle the facility that assembled the widely popular Jeep Cherokee, and by February 2023, the majority of jobs at the plant had disappeared.

Argentine Court Invalidates President Milei’s Labor Reform

February 1, 2024 TeleSUR English. , , , ,
On Tuesday, the National Chamber of Labor Appeals declared the constitutional invalidity of the labor reform included by President Javier Milei in the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) signed in December. During a press conference at the Pink House, Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni said that Milei will appeal this decision at all necessary levels, including the Supreme Court. "The reform is essential to create employment, for companies to hire, and to have a much more friendly labor market for both parties," he said, attempting to justify a pro-corporations proposal that has been strongly rejected by the population on the streets.

The Landless Workers’ Movement At 40

January 29, 2024 Liam Crisan, Counter Punch. , , , , ,
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the largest social movement in the Americas: Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, or MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Portuguese). What began as a group of displaced farmers has evolved over decades into a mass movement — with as many as two million members and a presence in 24 of Brazil’s 26 states. Today, the movement is the largest producer of organic food in Brazil and the largest producer of organic rice in all Latin America. While Brazil remains one of the world’s most unequal nations, the MST has made incredible progress during their 40 years of existence
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