Workers

GE Workers Protest, Demand To Make Ventilators

April 15, 2020 Katie Ferarri, Labor Notes. Resist! COVID-19, General Electric, health, Strike, Workers

Last Wednesday union members at General Electric plants across the country protested to pressure the $88 billion company to shift production to ventilators and ensure safe working conditions during COVID-19. Actions at plants in Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, and New York were coordinated by the Industrial Division of the Communications Workers (IUE-CWA)—the latest in an escalating pressure campaign. GE workers are facing a two-fold threat under COVID-19: dangerous working conditions and job loss. On March 23 the company announced that GE Aviation would cut 10 percent of its total U.S. workforce and that half the company’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul employees could be furloughed for the next three months. GE could avert the layoffs, the union said, by accepting funds from the recent stimulus bill or by shifting the impacted GE Aviation shops to ventilator production.

The Pandemic Is A Portal

April 13, 2020 Arundhati Roy, Information Clearinghouse. Educate! COVID-19, India, Solidarity Economy, Workers

Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at least — submitting to science? And even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies?

Most Workers And Businesses At The Heart Of US Economy Can’t Meet Financial Needs

April 10, 2020 Popular Resistance. Educate! Class war, COVID-19, Economic collapse, Small Business, Workers

A survey of small businesses and workers conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management published on April 1 finds that small businesses and workers are being hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. Their findings reveal the real class divide in the United States in that those workers who are essential, such as those who work in construction, manufacturing, transportation, education, and food, have the highest rates of not being able to meet their basic needs because of the shutdown while professionals are less affected. This poll highlights the need to demand financial security for everyone during this time of necessary physical distancing. We need a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, full coverage of health care by the government, higher pay for essential workers and adequate unemployment benefits for those who are unable to work.

Workers Walk Out, Building Momentum Toward General Strike

April 4, 2020 Candace Bernd, Truthout. Resist! COVID-19, health, Strike, Workers

Essential workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, Amazon and General Electric are staging protests and walking off the job in droves across the U.S., demanding increased protections and pay as they continue to face disproportionate risks and increasingly perilous working conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of workers for the San Francisco-based Instacart, a popular U.S. grocery delivery service app, went on strike Monday for better pay and health protections as they face soaring demand to deliver groceries and other essentials to people on lockdown amid shelter-in-place orders. As Instacart orders in many parts of the country are backed up by as much as a week as demand has spiked, many of the company’s full-service shoppers — who are classified as independent contractors — say they are not being provided with adequate paid sick measures, hazard pay or supplies to meet challenging delivery schedules while staying safe.

St. Louis Fed Warns 32.1 Percent Unemployment Possible By End Of June

April 1, 2020 Miguel Faria-e-Castro, St. Louis Fed. Educate! COVID-19, Recession, Unemployment, Workers

As state and local governments implement social-distancing measures to suppress and contain the spread of COVID-19, many businesses are faced with a large decrease in sales and revenue. This slowdown of economic activity could inevitably lead to solvency and liquidity problems that result in workers being laid off. This negative shock does not equally affect all businesses, sectors or occupations. Many workers in professional services, for example, are able to work from home and continue their activities with minimal disruption. Others—who work in occupations that involve direct physical contact with customers, such as restaurant waiters—are likely to see their jobs affected by social-distancing measures. In this blog post, we combine different types of statistics on industry and occupation composition to try to arrive at a back-of-the-envelope estimate for what the unemployment rate may be at the end of the second quarter of 2020.

On Strike Now For Three Years, Spectrum Workers Are Demanding Public Ownership

March 31, 2020 Amir Khafagy, Truthout.org Create! Public ownership, Strikes, Telecommunications, Workers

Cable technician Troy Walcott, along with 1,800 of his fellow members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3, has been striking for three years, and there’s still no end in sight. Local 3 first walked off the job in March 2017 when their employer, Spectrum/Charter Communications — the largest provider of cable TV, internet and telephone service in New York State and the second-largest cable provider in the country...

Italy Calls General Strike: ‘Our Lives Are Worth More Than Your Profits’

March 31, 2020 La Izquierda Diario Argentina, Leftvoice.org Resist! Class Struggle, COVID-19, Italy, Strikes, Workers

Italy is the global epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 64,000 cases of infection and almost 7,000 deaths, half of which occurred in the last week. This is the result of both neoliberal austerity measures that defunded healthcare in Italy and the criminal negligence of the EU. In the context of the pandemic, a quarantine was imposed throughout the country. Not only have nearly all shops been closed, but people are not allowed to stray too far from their homes. Just this week, videos of mayors yelling at their constituents to go home went viral. Yet, non-essential production has still not been shut down in Italy. Millions of workers continue to go to work every day, exposing themselves to infection in public transport, in factories, workshops, and offices. At the same time, the workers’ rebellion is growing.

It Didn’t Have To Be Like This

March 31, 2020 Stephanie Luce, Labornotes.org Create! COVID-19, Depression, wealth inequality, Workers

We have been forced to choose between two terrible options: 1. Lock ourselves down to prevent the spread of the virus, resulting in massive job loss —while many vulnerable workers are still forced to work in unsafe conditions, or 2. Maintain some business as usual, stemming the economic impact but putting tens of millions of people at risk. It didn’t have to be like this. We could not have prevented the virus itself, nor the resulting loss of life altogether. But imagine if: Instead of cutting public health budgets and access to health care for decades, we had expanded it by enacting a single-payer health care system—an improved Medicare for All. We had community health centers that did low-cost preventive care, giving people the education and resources to stay healthy to begin with and making a much smaller share of the population at risk for dangerous disease.

‘Without Us, Instacart Will Grind To A Halt’: Delivery Workers Threaten Strike Over Hazard Pay, Safety Measures Amid Outbreak

March 30, 2020 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Resist! Class Struggle, COVID-19, Strikes, Workers

Contract workers for Instacart, the Silicon Valley startup that employs 175,000 people to deliver groceries nationwide via its online platform, plan to walk off the job Monday if the company does not immediately provide them with hazard pay and increased safety precautions to protect them from the deadly coronavirus now ravaging the nation. "Instacart has been busy crafting a rather heroic public image as the saviors of families sheltered-in-place, and as the economic saviors of laid off workers. In truth, Instacart is providing no protection to its existing [gig workers]."

Another Tourism Is Possible

March 30, 2020 Ranjan Solomon, Popular Resistance. Create! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Ecosystems, Exploitation, Tourism, Workers

The members of the Tourism Alert and Action Forum come from organizations around the world that have joined in solidarity to oppose exploitative forms of tourism and to act in solidarity with communities against such practices. We are watching the pandemic crisis with great concern, grounded in the knowledge that such crises: impact the most vulnerable communities disproportionately; that such crises are used to enact authoritarian policies and surveillance that long outlasts the crisis; and that corporate sectors and elites stand set to take advantage of this crisis. The corporate tourism, hospitality and events sectors have been brought to their knees by efforts to curtail and control the pandemic. Borders have been shut, travel has been banned, social activities have been curtailed and people told to stay in their homes.

The Danger We’re Facing: A Grocery Worker Speaks Out

March 28, 2020 Chris Brooks, Labornotes.org Resist! Class Struggle, COVID-19, Service Industry, Workers

The coronavirus crisis is spurring record-breaking sales for grocery store chains, straining supply chains and exhausting employees. While many businesses are having employees work from home or are closing down to mitigate the spread of the virus, grocery stores have been designated a “critical industry” by federal agencies. This means they can largely continue with business like normal—and normal was bad enough. Grocery chains have long embraced a lean production model, with stores reliant on ever-smaller numbers of predominantly part-time workers who stock shelves with a constant stream of just-in-time inventory that isn’t warehoused but moves to the floor and then out the door as quickly as it arrives.

Healthcare Workers Are At War With The Pandemic And The Economic System

March 28, 2020 Mike Pappas, Leftvoice.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health Care, Pandemic, Workers

A NYC physician gave this speech about the war against the coronavirus and the ongoing war against for-profit health care, Trump and capitalism itself. The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying capitalism’s complete inability to foster overall health and well being. We don’t just need a new healthcare system, but a new economic system altogether. With over 390K confirmed cases and more than 17K deaths at the time of this writing, the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc across the globe, with Italy surpassing China in deaths and Iran in shambles, a situation made worse by the U.S. government’s absolutely genocidal sanctions. In the U.S., there have been over 46K confirmed cases and 583 deaths. This number of confirmed cases is clearly a gross underestimate as the U.S. was delayed in testing and has only tested a small proportion of the population.

The Coronavirus Crisis Led To A Record-Breaking Spike In Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims

March 27, 2020 By Aaron Sojourner and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Epi.org Educate! Coronavirus, COVID-19, Unemployment, Workers

A greater share of Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the week ending March 21 than in any prior week in American history, according to our analysis of news reports. Many states reported initial claims growth of over 1,000%. Our model predicts that 3.4 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance this past week, although we believe that number could be as low as 3 million or could be substantially higher. This will dwarf every other week in history, as can be seen by comparing the projection against the trend in initial claims back to 1967. For scale, consider that 3.4 million Americans moving from employment to unemployment would raise the number of the unemployed from 5.7 million to 9.1 million.

Norway’s Workers Insisted They Shouldn’t Pay For Coronavirus — And They Won

March 27, 2020 Ellen Engelstand, Jacobinmag.com Resist! Class Struggle, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Norway, Workers

At the start of the coronavirus epidemic, Norway’s government said it would help businesses by making it easier for them to get rid of workers. But trade unions and left-wing parties fiercely denied that these measures were “inevitable” — and they won a bailout to serve working people, not just their employers. Like most of Europe, Norway has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. After several weeks of dragging its feet, on March 13, the government moved into action, following its neighbor Denmark in closing schools, kindergartens, and then the border. It made a list of those exercising “critical functions in society,” like nurses, transit workers, cleaners, and people working in grocery stores, who can still work and have daycare for their kids. Like most of Europe, Norway has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. After several weeks of dragging its feet, on March 13, the government moved into action, following its neighbor Denmark in closing schools, kindergartens, and then the border. It made a list of those exercising “critical functions in society,” like nurses, transit workers, cleaners, and people working in grocery stores, who can still work and have daycare for their kids.

Boston School Bus Drivers Win Emergency Full Pay During School Closure

March 25, 2020 By Steve Gillis, Workers.org Resist! Boston, Bus Driver, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Workers

On March 16, elected officers of United Steelworkers Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, conducted mass meetings in the bus yards over loudspeakers with hundreds of drivers, monitors, dispatchers and support staff. They presented a multipart agreement reached with Transdev — a division of the Paris-based transnational conglomerate Veolia, which employs over 170,000 workers in 104 countries and specializes in contracting with neoliberal governments to privatize water, waste, energy and transportation.

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