Workers

Muslims And The Working Class: France’s Marginalized And Natural Yellow Vest Allies

April 27, 2019 By Ramin Mazaheri, Mintpressnews.com Strategize! Class Struggle, France, Workers, Yellow Vest

Yellow Vests and Muslims are the two largest groups in France which suffer from socioeconomic marginalization – and there is no doubt that they will be open political allies, eventually. Even though the Yellow Vest anti-government movement is historic in scope, duration and intensity, and even though Muslims comprise 5-10% of France’s population, there has been almost zero media coverage of the interplay between these two forces. Check Google in French or English and you truly find almost nothing. I have been waiting and waiting to do a story on this angle for Iran’s PressTV – I am their Paris correspondent – but there is simply no “news peg” from which we can start any report.

Occupy, Resist, Produce: Inside The Self-Managed Factory Of Vio.Me.

April 27, 2019 Niko Georgiades, Unicornriot.ninja Create! Factories, Workers

Thessaloniki, Greece – Workers have successfully self-managed the production of environmentally-friendly cleaning products for the last six years in the occupied factory Vio.Me. There are no bosses in this factory on the east side of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. Workers have been in full control since occupying the factory in 2013, two years after the workers had stopped receiving paychecks from the business due to the parent company having filed for bankruptcy. Unicorn Riot brings you inside the worker-run Vio.Me. facility in our three part video series.

Macron Offers Tax Cut To French Workers To Quell Anger

April 26, 2019 Sylvie Corbet and Lori Hinnant, Truthdig.com Resist! Class Struggle, France, Reform, Workers

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron announced tax cuts for middle-class workers and plans for a more representative parliament Thursday as part of a promised response to the weekly yellow vest protests that damaged his presidency. In a nationally televised speech followed up by a news conference, the French leader also said France and Europe must do more to fight illegal migration. Macron spoke to the nation from the presidential Elysée Palace after he convened nationwide meetings where communities could debate how to address economic concerns raised by the yellow vest movement...

Let’s Take Health Care Off The Bargaining Table

April 25, 2019 Larry Brown, Portside.org Create! Health Care, Labor Unions, Workers

Union members enjoy some of the best health care that working-class Americans can expect to receive. Unions have fought long and hard to establish and maintain these benefits and they are justly proud of their achievements. In the absence of a national health plan, they have sacrificed much to negotiate a modicum of security for their members and their families. More than half of all Americans still access health care through employment-based benefit plans. There is a myth that Americans love their health plans and want to preserve them at all costs.

On Strike At Stop & Shop: Interview From The Picket Line

April 23, 2019 Staff, Itsgoingdown.org Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Workers

Starting Thursday, April 11th, 31,000 Stop & Shop grocery store workers at over 240 stores throughout New England went on strike to fight for a fair contract— what will be the largest strike in the U.S. since a 2016 walkout by Verizon workers. Stop & Shop workers are members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and are holding the picket line as of this writing. The primary issues are wages and rising health care costs as the parent company of Stop & Shop, Ahold Delhaize, reaped $2 billion in profits last year.

The Farmworkers Who Pick Your Halo Mandarins Just Organized A Massive Labor Strike

April 22, 2019 By Sam Ribakoff, Civileats.com Resist! Class Struggle, Farmworkers, Strikes, Workers

The sun is setting on the east side of Bakersfield, California, as Salvador Calsadillas sits down with his cousins and their kids for a dinner of caldo de mantarraya, a hearty stingray and tomato stew, a specialty of the coastal regions of the Mexican state of Sonora. Calsadillas and his family are from Oaxaca, further south in Mexico, but like many others, they moved to Bakersfield looking for work. Bakersfield is the entryway to California’s 450-mile-long Central Valley, the site of a sprawling $50 billion a year agriculture network that produces more than one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of our nuts and fruits.

Workers Of The World Unite (At Last)

April 18, 2019 Ronaldo Munck, Greattransition.org Strategize! Class Struggle, Labor Movement, Workers

Once seen as the vanguard of a new social order, the contemporary labor movement has been written off by many progressive activists and scholars as a relic of the past. They should not be so hasty. Rather than spelling the beginning of the end for organized labor, globalization has brought new opportunities for reinvention, and a sea change in both trade unions and the wider labor movement. Most notably, globalization has forced unions to think and act outside the state to build transnational solidarity across countries and sectors.

The Stop & Shop Strike Is Showing There’s Still Power In A Union

April 17, 2019 Michael Arria, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Class Struggle, Labor Unions, Strikes, Workers

Roughly 31,000 employees of the northeastern grocery chain Stop & Shop have been on strike for nearly a week across more than 240 stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The workers, represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW), walked out on April 11 after voting to authorize the strike in March. During what is reportedly the largest private sector strike in three years, talks continued Tuesday, with neither side able to make an agreement. Stop & Shop is owned by Ahold Delhaize, a retail company based in The Netherlands.

US Workers Are Paying High Taxes. But Without Any Of The Benefits.

April 15, 2019 Matt Bruenig, Jacobinmag.com Educate! Taxes, Workers

Comparing labor tax rates across countries is a tricky endeavor. Some countries rely mostly on income and payroll taxes charged to workers, others on payroll taxes charged to employers, and still others on compelling workers and employers to pay private parties who provide pension and health insurance products. To get an apples-to-apples comparison, you have to normalize all of these various schemes into a single labor tax concept that actually reflects just how much labor compensation is being put towards compulsory payments of one sort or another.

Third Time’s The Charm? UAW Announces New Election At Volkswagen

April 15, 2019 Chris Brooks, Labornotes.org Organize! Labor Unions, Tennessee, Workers

For the third time in five years, auto workers will vote on whether to form a union at the country’s sole Volkswagen plant, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. On Tuesday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) filed for an election to represent all 1,709 of the plant’s hourly employees, requesting that the election be held on April 29 and 30. The union’s first attempt in 2014 failed after a slim majority of workers voted no, following a barrage of threats by politicians and business-backed anti-union groups. In the second attempt, a group of 160 skilled-trades workers in the plant in 2015 voted to join UAW Local 42.

Amid Declining Membership, Unions Attempt To Expand The Appeal And Benefits Of Organizing

April 12, 2019 By Martin Daks, Njbiz.com Strategize! Class Struggle, Labor Unions, Workers

Unions face a host of challenges in New Jersey and across the nation from declining membership to concerns about members’ jobs being replaced by technology. At the same time, they’re also confident, reaching out to potential members like minorities and millennials with a variety of programs. Thanks to a number of issues, including the decline of manufacturing and some states’ resistance to unions, organized labor’s numbers “have declined since the mid-1950s,” noted Paul Roldan, business manager of Building and General Construction Laborers Local 3...

Thousands Strike At Five UC Hospitals Today, Alleging Unfair Labor Practices

April 12, 2019 Cathie Anderson, Sacbee.com Resist! Class Struggle, Hospitals, Strikes, Unions, Workers

Thousands of unionized workers statewide will hit the picket line Wednesday at five University of California hospitals in a one-day strike over what they allege is a coordinated campaign of unfair labor practices designed to discourage labor participation and mute protesters. “As UC’s employees have worked to voice concerns over outsourcing and income inequality over the last several months, the University of California has worked even harder to unlawfully silence those voices,” said Kathryn Lybarger, the president of AFSCME Local 3299, in a prepared statement.

Thousands Of Stop And Shop Union Workers Go On Strike, Walk Off Job

April 12, 2019 Staff, Wcvb.com Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Unions, Workers

BOSTON — Thousands of Stop & Shop union workers walked off the job and are on strike Thursday amid an ongoing contract dispute. WCVB crews at stores report the doors were locked. Several viewers tell WCVB they were "kicked out" or told to check out immediately. Five locals of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union representing 31,000 Stop & Shop workers in New England have been negotiating a new contract with Stop & Shop representatives since Feb. 14, the UFCW said. The workers’ last contract with the company expired on Feb. 23...

US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

April 11, 2019 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Taxes, United States, Workers

Scapegoating Unions For The Postal Service’s Phony Crisis

April 9, 2019 By Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org Educate! Post Office, Unions, Workers

Blame it on the unions. When corporations, governments, or public agencies are facing financial challenges, this is often the default explanation. We saw this knee jerk response at a recent Senate hearing on the U.S. Postal Service. The Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs called the March 12 hearing to discuss recommendations from a task force appointed by President Trump that include cutting or privatizing various postal services, increasing delivery prices, and — you guessed it — eliminating employees’ rights to collective bargaining.

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