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Worker Rights and Jobs

Dock Workers Refuse To Deal With Weapons Ships Heading To Israel

November 10, 2023 Middle East Monitor, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Workers at the Spanish port of Barcelona announced their refusal to allow any ships carrying weapons to operate inside the port, rejecting the violence practiced by Israel in the occupied territories, and accusing the UN of failing to carry out its role. The workers said in a statement to their association that it is their duty to adhere to and defend the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at a time when the signatory countries have forgotten about it. The statement continued: “We decided within the association not to allow ships containing war materials to operate in our port, for the sole purpose of protecting any civilian population, regardless of their location, as there is no justification for sacrificing civilians.”

Tackling The Problem Of ‘Captive Audience’ Meetings

November 6, 2023 Daniel Perez and Jennifer Sherer, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
Political and religious coercion in the workplace is a growing problem affecting workers from all backgrounds and across the political spectrum. U.S. employers have tremendous power over worker conduct under current federal laws. For example, employers can require workers to attend “captive audience” meetings—and force employees to listen to political, religious, or anti-union employer views—on work time. In the face of this growing threat, legislators in 18 states have advanced bills to protect workers from offensive or unwanted political and religious speech unrelated to job tasks or performance.

How AA Flight Attendants Scored A Huge Strike Vote

November 6, 2023 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
Flight Attendants at American Airlines voted to strike by 99.47 percent at the end of August, with 93 percent turnout. The 26,000-member union, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, has been in negotiations since 2019—and members have seen no raises since then. Understaffing and scheduling are also big issues. American, based in Dallas, is the largest airline in the world by passengers carried. In some cases, said Miami flight attendant Laura Bries, “members wanted to strike yesterday,” but because airlines fall under the Railway Labor Act, they face several more steps before they can strike. The union last struck in 1993. I asked three flight attendants involved in the campaign how they got such an impressive strike vote.

First-Ever Strike For Portland Teachers Tackles Student Needs

November 2, 2023 Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes. , , , ,
The Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) walked out on strike today, closing 81 schools. The 4,500-member union is demanding more counselors, more planning time for teachers, more support for special education students, smaller class sizes, and increased salaries and cost-of-living adjustments. The union’s demands “are a paradigm shift for the state of Oregon,” said ninth grade teacher Sarah Mykkanen. “We aren’t just reacting to something negative, we are demanding a whole new view of what schools do, of how schools give students what they need.” The union represents classroom teachers in the Portland Public Schools.

A Culinary Worker Strike Could Reshape The Nation’s Restaurants

November 2, 2023 Christina Cooke, Portside. , , , ,
In early October, thousands of bartenders, culinary workers, and hotel attendants formed a picket line outside eight casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. It was the largest union demonstration on Las Vegas Boulevard in 20 years. Since April, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and the Bartenders Union Local 165have been negotiating with the city’s three largest companies—MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn Resorts—for a new five-year contract. To no avail, says Ted Pappageorge, who has served as the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer since 2022 and was its president for more than a decade before that.

Minnesota Nurses Win Big, Then Walk Back Winning Model

November 1, 2023 Sarah Hughes, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Last fall, 15,000 nurses were part of a creative coordinated bargaining effort to reshape health care in Minnesota. They won new contract language on safe staffing and substantial raises—things they hadn’t thought possible. But a year later, the Minnesota Nurses Association is riven with conflict. Members are being investigated on charges like “acting against the interests of the bargaining unit.” A candidate for vice president was removed from her elected positions and had her membership suspended, making her ineligible to run for office. How did one of the most exciting rank-and-file union efforts in health care take such a turn?

Women Across Iceland, Including The Prime Minister, Go On Strike

October 31, 2023 Egill Bjarnason, Portside. , , , ,
Schools, shops, banks and Iceland's famous swimming pools shut on Tuesday as women in the volcanic island nation – including the prime minister – went on strike to push for an end to unequal pay and gender-based violence. Icelanders awoke to all-male news teams announcing shutdowns across the country, with public transport delayed, hospitals understaffed and hotel rooms uncleaned. Trade unions, the strike's main organisers, called on women and nonbinary people to refuse paid and unpaid work, including chores. About 90% of the country's workers belong to a union.

City College’s 1940s Fight Against Political Repression: Lessons For Today

October 31, 2023 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. , , , , , , ,
Students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities across the United States and the world are facing an unusually high level of repression for speaking out in support of Palestinians. A city councilwoman brought a gun to a protest outside of Brooklyn College. Billboard trucks displaying the faces and names of pro-Palestine activists are circling the block at Harvard and Columbia. Students are having their job offers revoked. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is trying to ban Students for Justice in Palestine from all Florida schools. Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted a resolution condemning the student protests as “pro-Hamas” and encouraging the U.S. government to “fully and completely support Israel.”

UAW Wins Tentative Contract Deal With Final Big Three Holdout

October 31, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , , , , , ,
The United Auto Workers on Monday secured a tentative agreement with General Motors that reportedly includes a 25% general wage increase over the life of the four-and-a-half-year contract as well as cost-of-living adjustments. According to Bloomberg, the UAW's agreement with GM has similar economic terms as the historic tentative deal the union reached with Ford last week and a subsequent agreement with Stellantis over the weekend. With the GM deal, the UAW has now reached a tentative contract agreement with each of the Big Three U.S. automakers, putting an end—at least for now—to the union's historic six-week strike that involved nearly 50,000 workers.

UAW Strikes Massive Ram Truck Facility

October 24, 2023 Chris Isidore and Vanessa Yurkevich, Portside. , , , , , ,
The United Auto Workers union sent 6,800 Stellantis employees to the picket line Monday morning in a surprise, targeted strike at the company’s Ram truck facility. The Sterling Heights Assembly Plant is Stellantis’ “largest plant and biggest moneymaker,” UAW said in a statement Monday. The plant, about a half-hour north of Detroit, in Sterling Heights, Michigan, produces the Ram 1500 pickup. The union said the company, which makes vehicles under the Dodge, Ram, Jeep and Chrysler brands, has “the worst proposal on the table” in its negotiations on pay, converting temporary workers to full time and cost-of-living adjustments.

Auto Workers’ Strike Strategy Is Forcing The Big 3 To Pony Up

October 21, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
For the first time in recent history, the union is playing the automakers against each other—departing from its tradition of choosing one target company and patterning an agreement at the other two. And its gradually escalating Stand-Up Strike strategy has multiplied the pressure that can move the companies off the dime. Every Friday for four weeks, the CEOs waited with bated breath for UAW President Shawn Fain to announce strike targets. Two Fridays in a row, one company moved on major bargaining issues just minutes before workers were scheduled to walk out.

Starbucks Is Exploiting Violence In Gaza And Israel To Attack Its Union

October 21, 2023 Lynne Fox, In These Times. , , , , ,
My grandmother and aunt were murdered at Treblinka, one of the deadliest Nazi concentration camps. Six months before liberation, my grandfather died in Nordhausen. My father, John, spent seven years between the ages of 11 and 17 in nine different concentration camps. Czech partisans rescued him and his brother, Harry, from a forced march, during which my father had become gravely ill. After the war ended in 1945, my dad landed in Windermere outside of London and was taught to socialize and eat with a knife and fork. He learned to be a tailor. He met my mother. They moved to the United States seeking a better life, and he started working and soon became a member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

To Live And Strike In Hollywood

October 20, 2023 Gary Phillips, The Stansbury Forum. , , , ,
In the seminal book The Hollywood Writers’ Wars by Nancy Lynn Schwartz, completed by her mother Sheila Schwartz upon her daughter’s untimely death, the internal and external battles of Writers Guild of America, WGA, formed in 1933, were chronicled.  The Schwartz’s note of this then bourgeois gig: It was a great time to be prosperous, young, and progressive in the movie kingdom. You could live better than nine-tenths of the nation yet remain, through political activity, intimately connected to the pulse of humanity. That connection would prove to not just be blue-collar lives put to paper and screen by a bunch of lefties and their hardcore red buddies. By the 1940s, writers were seeking to better their working conditions.

How A California Child Care Workers’ Union Fought For Living Wages

October 18, 2023 Daisy Nguyen, KQED. , , , ,
Organizing isn’t easy for home-based workers because they work independently, but Harvey said she felt a duty to speak up for her industry because many providers were in the same situation she was in, but were too busy to effect change. It took two decades of organizing — a lot of it done during nap time — before Child Care Providers United won the right in 2019 to collectively bargain. The union represents 40,000 home-based child care providers. It is a partnership between two chapters of the Service Employees International Union locals and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Kaiser’s Massive Mental Health Care Settlement Sends Strong Message

October 15, 2023 Mark Kreidler, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Kaiser Permanente’s $200 million settlement with the State of California for its repeated failures to provide patients with adequate and timely mental health care was a long while coming. The deficiencies themselves? Kaiser’s own employees say they’ve been hiding in plain sight. “Years and years of banging our heads against the wall have finally paid off,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a therapist at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center. “This has the potential to make Kaiser a leader in mental health care, rather than a serial violator of mental health care laws.” The settlement, announced late Thursday by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, includes a $50 million fine.
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