Workers

5 Ways The Economy Is Stacked Against Young People

August 8, 2019 By Josh Hoxie, Otherwords.org Educate! New Economy, Wages, Workers, Youth

Today’s rising generation earns 20 percent less than their parents did at their age, despite being better educated and more productive. In fact, millennials are on track to become the first generation in modern American history to make less money than their parents did. The federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, is lower than the cost of living in every city in the country — and hasn’t gone up in 10 years. It’s hard to save when the money coming in doesn’t come close to covering the basics.

More Money, Fewer Jobs

August 5, 2019 By Nia Harris, Cassandra Stimpson, and Ben Freeman, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Military, Profit, Workers

A Marilyn has once again seduced a president. This time, though, it’s not a movie star; it’s Marillyn Hewson, the head of Lockheed Martin, the nation’s top defense contractor and the largest weapons producer in the world. In the last month, Donald Trump and Hewson have seemed inseparable. They “saved” jobs at a helicopter plant. They took the stage together at a Lockheed subsidiary in Milwaukee. The president vetoed three bills that would have blocked the arms sales of Lockheed (and other companies) to Saudi Arabia.

Journalist Who Took Job At Amazon: We Got 18 Minutes Total Break Time For 11.5 Hour Shift

July 27, 2019 Sahid Fawaz, Labor411.org Educate! Amazon, Exploitation, Jeff Bezos, New Economy, Workers

“I took a job in an Amazon fulfillment center in Indiana over a few weeks–along with a call center in North Carolina and a McDonald’s in San Francisco–to investigate the experience of low-wage work. I wasn’t prepared for how exhausting working at Amazon would be. It took my body two weeks to adjust to the agony of walking 15 miles a day and doing hundreds of squats. But as the physical stress got more manageable, the mental stress of being held to the productivity standards of a robot became an even bigger problem.

Mother Jones Is Failing Its Namesake

July 26, 2019 Naomi LaChance, Fair.org Educate! Class Struggle, Media, Propaganda, Workers

Kevin Drum, a political columnist forMother Jones, wrote in a blog post (6/26/19) last month that he did not understand why workers do not want their employer to work with the government agencies carrying out President Donald Trump’s brutal immigration policies, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). When workers at home goods website Wayfair staged a walkout because their company was supplying bunk beds and mattresses for a child detention camp in Texas, Drum could not fathom their insubordination.

‘Drop Rockwool’: Retailers Urged To Boycott Insulation Maker

July 22, 2019 By Anne Meador, Dcmediagroup.us Resist! pollution, Protest Demonstrations, West Virginia, Workers

Several Jefferson County, W.Va., residents demonstrated at home improvement retailers in Gaithersburg, Md., in an effort to pressure them to ban Rockwool insulation products from their shelves. They object to Rockwool North America, a division of the Danish Rockwool Group, siting a mineral wool factory in their county–one which will burn coal and gas in close proximity to public schools. This was the first in a series of demonstrations at Lowe’s and Home Depot stores regionally, organizers of Resist Rockwool say.

Israeli Forces Arrest 102 Palestinian Workers

July 22, 2019 Staff, English.palinfo.com Educate! Israel, Nationalism, Occupation, Palestine, Repression, Workers

The Israeli occupation forces on Sunday morning detained 102 Palestinian workers who allegedly were not holding permits to work in the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli media sources said that the Israeli forces arrested 102 Palestinian workers at al-Dahiriya checkpoint, south of al-Khalil, while they were attempting to enter the 1948 occupied territories for work without having the necessary licenses. The West Bank Palestinian citizens who work in the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories always face the risk of being shot or arrested by the Israeli forces under the pretext of lacking the necessary work permits which Israel rarely issues.

‘It Puts You Into A Process That Hugely Favors The Employer’

July 13, 2019 Janine Jackson, Fair.org Resist! Class Struggle, Unions, Wages, Workers

At the same time, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy describes the disturbing rise of a particular constraint on workers’ voices and their power. The press release for the report contains a quote that presents the problem clearly. Brenda Rojas, a college student in Oregon, says: While working at Buffalo Wild Wings, my coworkers and I experienced wage theft regularly, and worked in an environment of constant sexual harassment. Complaining about these working conditions was pointless...

Unions Call For A Just Transition

July 13, 2019 Marianne Brooker, Theecologist.org Create! Class Struggle, Unions, Workers

The TUC has published A just transition to a greener, fairer economy – a roadmap to meeting the needs of working people in the transition to a low-carbon economy. The launch event included speakers such as the Shadow Environment Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey and Deputy Chair of the Committee on Climate Change Baroness Brown. The roadmap sets out proposals for a Just Transition Commission, a cross-party national commission including business, consumers and unions to plan a clear and funded path to a low-carbon economy.

How A Transit Union Triumphed In An Anti-Union Stronghold

July 11, 2019 John Ertl, Labornotes.org Strategize! Class Struggle, Transit, Unions, Workers

Transit in the Washington, D.C., area is heavily unionized. But until recently there was one stubborn holdout—the DASH bus system in Alexandria, Virginia. The city debuted DASH 35 years ago to create a cheaper, nonunion alternative to the regional MetroBus service. It was set up as a nonprofit corporation owned by the city so that it would technically be privately run, disqualifying workers from receiving the city pension. Over and over since then, drivers at DASH reached out to Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 to organize. They wanted what union members in the region already had—decent wages and benefits.

PLEDGE: Solidarity With Amazon Workers Striking On Prime Day!

July 11, 2019 Staff, Solidaritycenter.ourpowerbase.net Resist! Amazon, Class Struggle, Strikes, Workers

On July 15 — 'Prime Day' — Amazon warehouse workers in Shakopee, Minnesota will stage a six-hour strike on a range of issues, including low pay, poor working conditions, increasingly heavy workloads, safety issues, among others. The strike is being built in collaboration with the Awood Center, an East African workers organization. Many of the workers who are leading the strike are Somali or other East African migrants, who have previously organized work stoppages at the warehouse around these and other issues.

A Primer On The Different Types Of Labor Unions

July 11, 2019 J. Meeks, Peoplespolicyproject.org Organize! Class Struggle, Unions, Workers

Craft unions appeared in the United States and the United Kingdom before the industrial revolution, emerging out of the feudal guild system. These unions are made up of organized workers who have been trained to do a specific type of work (e.g., carpentry, painting). Craft unions typically are composed of workers who have been hired to do a specific piece of work with a definitive endpoint. Because craft workers, at least in the past, weren’t employed perpetually, but were hired to do specific types of work, craft unions originally collectively bargained over prices for the completion of a job, not wages or benefits.

CBO Report Shows Broad Benefits From Higher Minimum Wage

July 10, 2019 By Heidi Shierholz, Epi.org Create! Class Struggle, Inequality, Minimum Wage, New Economy, Workers

This afternoon, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report assessing the economic impact of raising the minimum wage to $15 in 2025 in six steps (this is a similar policy to the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase the minimum wage to $15 in 2024). The key fact coming out of the report is that CBO finds that the benefits to low wage workers of a $15 minimum wage far exceed the costs. The report finds that a $15 minimum wage would increase the wages of millions of low wage workers, increase the average incomes of low and lower-middle-income families...

Death At Howard Industries Of Laurel, Mississippi, A Company Showered By Media Love And Political Largesse Despite Its Horrible Record

July 8, 2019 Joseph B. Atkins, Laborsouth.blogspot.com Educate! Capitalism, Investigation, Safety, Workers

Controversy still hangs over Howard Industries in Laurel, Mississippi, as the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration continues its investigation into the March 15 death of a 36-year veteran worker at the company. Sixty-three-year-old Larry Moffett died as a result of what the company called a “crush incident” when a heavy piece of equipment fell on him. Details are sketchy beyond that point, but Moffett was a tank regulator and leak tester and only two years away from retirement. In a subsequent blog post on the incident, the Grossman Law Offices in Dallas, Texas...

How Working-Class Movements Are Moving Beyond The Confines Of Capitalism

July 5, 2019 Celina della Croce, Toward Freedom. Strategize! Capitalism, Globalization, New Economy, Workers

Between the fall of 1999 and April of 2000, hundreds of thousands of factory workers, peasants, retirees, students, professionals, and everyday people took to the streets in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to fight the privatization of their water. A foreign-led consortium of private corporations had taken control of the city’s water supply, increasing water prices by as much as 300 percent. With the skills and experience of organized movements such as the Federation of Factory Workers, working people were able to defeat a multibillion-dollar corporation around a shared interest: the right to water. In the face of a well-organized global elite that has gutted the power of workplace organizing, Cochabamba shows us that organizing the working class around a common interest and moving beyond the confines of the workplace provides an opening to push for—and win—a future that centers people over profit.

Pilots Sue Boeing For Putting Profits Over Safety

June 29, 2019 Alan Weedon, Mobile.abc.net.au Resist! Boeing, Lawsuit, Profit, Safety, Workers

Boeing's 737 MAX series— first announced in 2011 and put to service in 2017 — is the fourth generation of its 737 aircraft, a widely popular narrow-body aircraft model that has been a mainstay of short-haul aircraft routes across the globe. By March 2019, the entire global fleet was suspended by a US presidential decree, following the second fatal crash involving a 737 MAX that killed 157 people in Ethiopia. The first crash involving the 737 MAX jet happened off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, killing 189 people. In the time since the two fatal crashes, some of the families of the 346 people killed have sought compensation, while aircraft carriers — such as Norwegian Air...

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