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Worker Rights and Jobs

Auto Workers Kick Off Bargaining With ‘Members’ Handshake’

July 22, 2023 Dan DiMaggio and Courtney Smith, Labor Notes. , , ,
Bargaining between the United Auto Workers and Big 3 automakers is looking very different this year. New UAW leaders ditched the public handshake ceremony with company executives that has traditionally kicked off bargaining. “I’m not shaking hands with any CEOs until they do right by our members,” said President Shawn Fain in a Facebook live talk July 11. Instead, officers—recently elected on promises of greater transparency and militancy, in the union’s first-ever direct election for top posts—established what could become a new tradition: “the Members’ Handshake.” Fain and other executive board members spent July 12 greeting workers at the gates of three Michigan assembly plants.

Louisville’s Small Unions Give Boost To UPS Teamsters Strike Prep

July 22, 2023 Molly Shah, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
With the possibility of 340,000 Teamsters going on strike next month at United Parcel Service (UPS) seeming more and more likely, the world will be looking to Louisville, Kentucky, where UPS headquarters and UPS Worldport, the largest sorting and logistics facility in America, are located. With over 25,000 employees, 10,000 of whom are members of Teamsters Local 89, UPS is by far the city’s largest employer. If the Teamsters and UPS do not reach an agreement by July 31, when the current contract is set to expire, the picket line outside these facilities could be the largest the city has seen in decades.

Sierra Club Workers Challenge Leaders’ Greenwashing ‘Apartheid Tours’

July 21, 2023 Jessica Buxbaum, Mintpress News. , , , , ,
In June, members of the Sierra Club unit of the Progressive Workers Union (PWU) passed a resolution pledging solidarity with the Palestinian people as the environmental organization pushes forward with its planned trips to Israel. The workers’ resolution puts its words into action by ensuring union funds aren’t investing in Israel’s settler enterprise and contributing to the oppression of Palestinians. It also calls for establishing a Palestine solidarity committee to foster relationships with Palestinian-led organizations and help educate members on the connections between Palestine and Indigenous struggles in the U.S.

He Tried To Raise The Alarm About Railroad Safety; Then He Got Fired

July 21, 2023 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. , , ,
When we hear the term “whistleblower,” we tend to think of names like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange—people who have risked their freedom, even their lives, to expose government lies, abuses of power, and state secrets that the public needs to know about. But there are a range of federal statutes designed to protect those who blow the whistle on their employers, too, especially when those employers are breaking the law and/or endangering their workers and the public. Michael Paul Lindsey II is a military veteran who has worked for Union Pacific as a trained locomotive conductor and engineer for the past 17 years

UPS Teamsters Are ‘Just Practicing’

July 20, 2023 Alexandra Bradbury and Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
The clock is ticking on the August 1 strike deadline of 340,000 UPS Teamsters. It would be the largest strike at a private employer in decades. “People are actually paying attention,” said delivery driver Kioma Forero, a Local 804 shop steward in New York City. Customers along her route stop her to say, “I hope your negotiations go well.” The hosts are talking about it on Hot 97, the city’s top hip-hop station. A deal could still avert a strike—as we went to press, the Teamsters announced UPS had reached out to resume negotiations. The union bargaining team had dispersed to members’ home locals after talks broke down July 5, for practice picketing that has put on display just how ready to strike UPSers are.

A Good Year’s Pay For A Good Day’s Work?

July 19, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, CounterPunch.org. , , ,
The just-released Good Jobs First analysis — Power Outrage: Will Heavily Subsidized Battery Factories Generate Substandard Jobs? — examines a little-known provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that may end up costing U.S. taxpayers more than $200 billion over the next decade, a sum above and beyond the $13 billion that state and local governments have promised as battery incentives. Lawmakers see all those billions of tax dollars as a generator of good wages, but nothing in the battery subsidy fine-print mandates — or even incentivizes — decent worker paychecks. Ford Motor, for instance, will be eligible for $6.7 billion in federal subsidies for its new $3.5-billion battery plant in Michigan, and state and local officials have already handed Ford $1.7 billion for that plant.

UPS Pilots Won’t Fly If Teamsters Strike

July 19, 2023 Eric Kulisch, FreightWaves. , , , , , ,
The union representing UPS pilots says they will not cross picket lines if Teamsters drivers and package sorters walk off the job when the current contract expires Aug. 1, resulting in the immediate shutdown of the express logistics company’s global air operations. UPS (NYSE: UPS) has 3,300 pilots who are represented by the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), a separate union from the Teamsters. “If the Teamsters are on strike, we will honor that strike and we will not fly,” IPA spokesman Brian Gaudet told FreightWaves. UPS pilots are allowed under their collective bargaining agreement to honor primary picket lines and did that for 16 days during the Teamsters’ strike in 1997.

American Airlines Flight Attendants Move Closer To Strike

July 19, 2023 Nick Robertson, The Hill. , , , ,
American Airlines flight attendants will hold a strike vote starting this month, their union announced Tuesday. The vote will begin July 28 and end August 29, with the result announced the next day. More than 26,000 flight attendants are seeking wage increases in a new contract with the airline. “Flight Attendants are ready for an agreement that respects our contributions to the success of this carrier,” Association of Professional Flight Attendants President Julie Hedrick said in a statement. “Our contract became amendable in 2019, and American’s Flight Attendants have not received cost-of-living increases or any other quality-of-life improvements."

Michigan Amazon Workers Stage Largest Delivery Station Strike Yet

July 18, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , ,
In the middle of Amazon’s Prime Day promotional sales rush, 60 warehouse workers walked out for more than three hours at its delivery station in Pontiac, Michigan—bringing the facility to the brink of a total shutdown. A delivery station is the last warehouse an Amazon package passes through before it is loaded into a truck or van en route to the customer. This year’s “Prime Day” shopping bonanza July 11 and 12 set a record for the largest sales day in Amazon’s history. The crush of Prime Day puts even more pressure on workers to keep up with conveyor belts overflowing with boxes that can weigh as much as 50 pounds.

Workers Shut Down Hollywood

July 15, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Hollywood is shut down now that workers organized with the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which include actors, singers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, stunt performers and voiceover artists hit the picket lines on strike for the first time in 43 years on July 14. This strike is occurring simultaneously with the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike of 11,500 entertainment writers, who have ceased labor since May 2. This is the first time the two unions have struck simultaneously since 1960.

Hundreds Of Chicago Teamsters Stand Up To UPS Greed

July 15, 2023 Eliza Schultz and Haden Kersting, Fight Back News!. , , , , , ,
On July 14, 300 workers turned out for the latest practice picket and rally at the UPS Jefferson Street Hub on the Near West Side of Chicago. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 705 and Local 710 organized this event, which was the largest of many practice pickets in the Chicago area that occurred throughout the week. Flyers promoting the event read, “Chicago Teamsters stand up to UPS greed!” The event comes as contract negotiations between the IBT and United Parcel Service remain halted. The Teamsters already negotiated a major win for full-time drivers with the end of the two-tier classification system, known as 22.4.

Amazon Teamsters’ Rolling Pickets Hit Facilities Nationwide

July 14, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Brandi Diaz was at a customer’s door in Palmdale, California, delivering stuff for Amazon, when the customer asked her, “What’s the difference between you and UPS drivers?” “He said the difference is UPS is union, Amazon is not. He referred to us as ‘Jeff’s Bozos.’ “I am no longer Bezos’ Bozo!” Diaz said over honks and chants from 200 Teamsters from six different locals and some labor allies at a picket line outside an Amazon warehouse in northern New Jersey July 6. Diaz and her co-workers voted to join Teamsters Local 396 in April. They are Amazon delivery drivers, but they were nominally employed by an Amazon contractor, the Southern California company Battle-Tested Strategies.

Namibian Workers Protest ‘Slave Labor’ At Shop Rite

July 14, 2023 Namupa Shivute, The Real News Network. , , , ,
Shoprite Holdings, the largest supermarket retail chain in Africa, is under fire from workers organizing against grueling work conditions. The current surge in organizing follows the suicide of Shoprite worker Fabiola Zondjembo, a Walvis Bay woman who ended her life by drowning after enduring constant abuse at her job. For workers and organizers confronting brutal conditions at the retail giant, the current struggle is also part of Namibia’s long history of colonialism and neocolonialism. Shoprite, a South African multinational, has more than 3,000 stores across the African continent.

Workers Shut Down Hollywood In Historic Two-Union Strike

July 14, 2023 Zak Norton, Liberation News. , , , ,
The Screen Actors Guild is going on strike. Today, the union’s national board of directors voted unanimously to launch a nationwide strike against the studios after contract negotiations collapsed Wednesday night. In an emotional press conference, union leaders revealed shocking details about the studio’s counter-proposals that in the words of SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher were “insulting” to their members. This strike announcement comes only a day after the AMPTP strategy to “allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses” as “a cruel but necessary evil” was leaked to Deadline.

Workers At The Trevor Project Unionize

July 14, 2023 Sara Van Horn, In These Times. , , ,
A majority of workers at The Trevor Project, a widely-praised nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, decided to come together this spring and unionize as Friends of Trevor United. About a month later, they celebrated when management at the nonprofit agreed to voluntarily recognize their union. The Trevor Project has grown exponentially over the past few years, leading to what one union organizer describes as difficult workloads for crisis counselors dealing with increasing numbers of distress calls. Amy Solar-Greco, an organizer with Communications Workers of America — the union representing Friends of Trevor United — says Trevor’s rapid growth was ​“unsustainable and burdensome” for employees who are tasked with ​“performing intense, highly stressful and lifesaving work.”
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