Workers

Striking GM Workers Arrested In Spring Hill, Tennessee For Blocking Scab Truck

September 19, 2019 Tom Hall, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, General Motors, Strikes, Tennessee, Workers

At least five GM workers were arrested on the picket line this morning in Spring Hill, Tennessee for attempting to block a car-hauling truck from leaving the plant with new GM vehicles, presumably built before the strike started. Eyewitness video posted to Facebook shows two pickets, one male and one female, being cuffed by police on the picket line, while several other workers stand in front of a stopped semi-truck at the entrance to GM’s Spring Hill Assembly plant near Nashville. The male was later identified to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter as Tim Stannard, president of UAW Local 1853.

Auto Workers Go On Strike After Years Of Tirelessly Helping General Motors Reach Record-Level Profits

September 16, 2019 Staff, Uaw.org Resist! Class Struggle, General Motors, Strikes, Workers

Local Union leaders from across the nation met Sunday morning after the 2015 General Motors collective bargaining agreement expired Saturday night and opted to strike at midnight on Sunday. The autoworkers are calling on the Big 3 automaker to recognize the contributions and sacrifices that the company’s UAW members have made to create a healthy, profitable, industry. “We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most.

Nearly 1,000 Amazon Workers Will Walk Out And Join Global Climate Strike

September 11, 2019 By Alexandra Jacobo, Nationofchange.org Resist! Amazon, Class Struggle, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Solidarity, Workers

"As a leader, we need to reach zero first and not be a company who slides in at the last possible deadline,” Nearly 1,000 Amazon employees have pledged to join the massive upcoming Global Climate Strike. The employees will walk out on September 20th to demand that the company “makes climate a priority.” The 941 Amazon employees that have signed the internal pledge includes workers at corporate offices, according to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the group organizing the walkout.

While ‘Zombie’ Mines Idle, Cleanup And Workers Suffer In Limbo

September 6, 2019 Mark Olalde and Joe Yerardi, Publicintegrity.org Educate! Colorado, Mining, Workers

PARADOX, COLO. — The sound of metal banging against metal broke the calm on the high mesa separating Colorado’s Paradox and Big Gypsum valleys. An old rusted headframe marked the entrance to an abandoned uranium mine that, from a distance, looked as if its workers were simply off on a lunch break. Jennifer Thurston, a local environmentalist, paused at the edge of the dirt road, wondering what caused the noise. Then she walked closer, finding ample evidence of the site’s long disuse.

Labor Day 2019: Surveys Show Wages NOT Rising & Jobs 500,000 Fewer

September 5, 2019 Staff, Jackrasmus.com Educate! Class Struggle, Jobs and Wages, New Economy, Workers

What’s the condition of the US working class on this Labor Day 2019? Wages and Jobs are of course the best indicators of that condition. So let’s look at wages and jobs today in America. What we see is that—contrary to Trump, US government, and mainstream media hype and reporting—a growing number of independent surveys show that wages have not been rising as they claim. And 500,000 fewer jobs were actually created last year than initially reported.

A Year Of Organizing Freelance Journalists

September 4, 2019 Staff, Organizing.work Organize! Class Struggle, Journalism, Labor Unions, Workers

In March of 2019, the Industrial Workers of the World Freelance Journalists Union unintentionally went public. Having recently settled on a formal name for the organization, committee members were attempting to subtly stake out corresponding web assets, but the IWW FJU’s Twitter account — the social media platform most popular with journalists — immediately exploded. Within 24 hours, the union had received more than a hundred requests from freelancers looking to learn more. The IWW FJU was officially on the map.

Democracy Needs Unions

August 30, 2019 By Christine Owens, Otherwords.org Educate! Democracy, Labor Unions, New Economy, Workers

You deserve to have a say in matters that affect you. Everyone does. That’s democracy. This shouldn’t change when you go to work. Democratic rights in the workplace — including the right to form a union, and the power to speak up about workplace issues — go hand in hand with a democratic society. But for decades now, those rights have been under assault. This Labor Day, it’s time we fight to restore them. Make no mistake: By whittling away at workers’ right to a voice at work, right-wing corporate activists have also been able to curtail workers’ voices at the ballot box, too.

Strike Votes Continue As Autoworkers Gear Up For Contract Fight Against GM, Ford, And Chrysler

August 26, 2019 Staff, Wsws.org Resist! Cars, Class Struggle, Strikes, Workers

Autoworkers at GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler (FCA) are continuing to vote on strike authorization. Balloting will conclude Wednesday, and the official totals are expected the following day. The balloting is taking place under conditions in which the United Auto Workers union (UAW) has been widely discredited by its role in forcing through sellout contracts over the past thirty years and because of the expanding corruption scandal, which has revealed that top union executives at FCA and GM took millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for enforcing contracts favorable to the auto bosses.

Red States Cut Worker Pay By $1.5 Billion

August 17, 2019 By Negin Owliaei, Otherwords.org Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Last month, the House voted to incrementally raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If the Senate passes the bill, it would be the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade — far too long for residents of the 21 states that don’t have their own higher minimum wage. Here’s another sad truth: Plenty of cities in those states have tried to raise their minimum wage, only to be stymied by state lawmakers. That’s thanks to state preemption laws that keep localities from adopting all kinds of policies, from paid sick leave to local fracking bans to wage increases.

CEO Compensation Has Grown 940% Since 1978

August 16, 2019 By Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, Epi.org Educate! Bosses, Inequality, New Economy, Wages, Workers

What this report finds: The increased focus on growing inequality has led to an increased focus on CEO pay. Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages. Average pay of CEOs at the top 350 firms in 2018 was $17.2 million—or $14.0 million using a more conservative measure. (Stock options make up a big part of CEO pay packages, and the conservative measure values the options when granted, versus when cashed in, or “realized.”) CEO compensation is very high relative to typical worker compensation...

The Tech Employee Backlash, Whole Foods Edition

August 15, 2019 Staff, Technology Review Resist! Immigration, Whole Foods, Workers

A group of anonymous Whole Foods employees is calling out Amazon (which bought the supermarket chain in 2017) for working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). An open letter, posted via the group’s Twitter account, criticizes Amazon for providing cloud computing services to Palantir, a data analytics company that works for ICE, which has been cracking down on undocumented immigrants. The group, called Whole Worker, also asks Amazon to stop selling its facial-recognition technology, Rekognition, to law enforcement and demands that it stop business with “any other company involved in the continued oppression of marginalized groups.”

The Fight For A Green New Deal Can Start With Your Union Contract

August 10, 2019 Jared Odessky, Inthesetimes.com Organize! Class Struggle, Green New Deal, Reform, Unions, Workers

News coverage of the Green New Deal portrays organized labor as a major obstacle to its enactment. But our new report for Data for Progress paints a different picture. In a poll conducted for the think tank by YouGov Blue, union members overwhelmingly favored the proposed reforms, with 62 percent in support and 22 percent against. In a memo for Data Progress, where I am a legal fellow, I show how union contracts can be an effective way to fight for a Green New Deal.

“Cheap And Exploitable Labor”: New Report Shows Food Companies Use Cultural Exchange Program To Recruit Foreign Workers

August 10, 2019 By H. Claire Brown, Newfoodeconomy.org Educate! Exploitation, Fast Food, Workers

Imagine you’re a foreign student entering the United States on a summer work visa. You’ve been promised an ice cream-drenched summer filled with opportunities for travel, plus a job that pays enough to fund your next year of college. You get a glowing letter from the Department of State welcoming you to the country. This is the first time anyone has ever compiled a list of the employers that use the program most often. “As a summer work travel participant, you are part of a U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program in which you, like thousands of other summer work travel participants...

Walmart Retaliates Against Worker Who Urged Employee Walkout Over Gun Sales

August 10, 2019 Bryan Menegus, Gizmodo.com Resist! Class Struggle, Guns, Walkout, Walmart, Workers

Following a pair of deadly mass shootings over the weekend, including one at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a Walmart e-commerce category specialist, Thomas Marshall, posted two memos widely within the company, urging mass action by employees to pressure management to cease the sale of firearms. Now, Marshall claims he and one of his colleagues are unable to access their internal accounts. “Walmart has completely deactivated our access and accounts.

Surviving Amazon

August 9, 2019 Sam Adler-Bell, Logicmag.io Resist! Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Technology, Workers

It is human to resist even when our resistance is barely registered by those in power. In her memoir of working in an Amazon warehouse in Leipzig, Germany in 2010, Heike Geissler recalls these lines from Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek: “Anyone alive disrupts.” Speaking to herself or perhaps to the reader — the book is written almost entirely in the second person — she adds, “You ought to prove to your employer that you’re alive.”Geissler imagines various disruptive tactics for doing so. One could hide products to “remove them from the...

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