Workers

Wayfair Employees Plan Walkout To Oppose Furniture Sales To Migrant Detention Facilities

June 26, 2019 By Janelle Nanos, Bostonglobe.com Resist! Class Struggle, Detention Centers, Immigration, Undocumented, Walkout, Workers

Employees of the online housewares giant Wayfair announced Tuesday that they would stage a walkout at the company’s Back Bay headquarters on Wednesday to protest its decision to sell furniture to the operators of facilities for migrant children detained at the southern US border. Last Wednesday, they learned that a $200,000 order of bedroom furniture had been placed by BCFS, a government contractor that has been managing camps at the border. More than 500 employees signed a letter of protest sent to company executives. When the company refused to change course, employees organized the walkout.

The United States Has A Permanent Temp Worker Problem

June 19, 2019 David Van Arsdale, Indypendent.org Educate! Class Struggle, Employment, Labor, Workers

In the waiting room of an employment agency in Queens, laborers gather to be dispatched to warehouses and factories in New Jersey and upstate New York. Only their names are recorded before white vans arrive and the workers step in, cramming into seats and crouching on the floor to be transported to the day’s job. The job might last a day or two, and the agency acts as the workers’ employer. It deducts transportation costs and the fees it charges for the job from their paychecks, which they provide.

This Is The Longest The Federal Minimum Wage Has Ever Gone Without Being Raised

June 17, 2019 Dave Jamieson, Huffpost.com Educate! Minimum Wage, Wages, Workers

Lawmakers set a new record Sunday by leaving the federal minimum wage untouched since July 24, 2009, the first year of former President Barack Obama’s first term. The rate hasn’t been increased from $7.25 in a whopping 3,615 days, making it the longest dry spell since the federal minimum wage was enacted under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938. That surpasses a previous milestone set between 1997 and 2007, when then-President George W. Bush signed minimum wage legislation.

Retail Workers Nationwide Are United For Respect

June 12, 2019 By Andrea Dehlendorf and Ann Marie Reinhart, Inequality.org Resist! Class Struggle, New Economy, Retail, Workers

Toys ‘R’ Us workers won a crucial severance pay victory last year after the company closed its US stores. Private equity firms KKR, Bain, and Vornado had bought up the legendary toy store just a decade before, saddled the company with debt, and left the 33,000 laid-off employees without access to the millions they were owed in severance. But rather than letting private equity vultures enrich themselves on the backs of employees who’d been with the store for decades, workers fought back, taking creative actions across the country and pushing legislators and pension funds to get on board...

U.S. Workers Are Standing Up For Their Rights. A New Law Would Back Them Up.

June 4, 2019 By Alan Barber and Liz Watson, Inequality.org Create! Class Struggle, New Economy, Reform, Workers

More workers engaged in collective action last year than in any other year in the past three decades. In 2018, 485,000 people participated in work stoppages — from teachers to hotel workers to workers in the telecommunications industry and more. In 2019, working people’s appetite for collective action shows no signs of slowing down. And they’re getting results. In April, workers at Stop & Shop ended the largest retail strike in nearly two decades, when their employer finally agreed to back off of proposed cuts to their paychecks and pensions.

Communication Workers Union Stop Off-Shoring Of Call Center Jobs

June 4, 2019 Staff, Cwa-union.org Resist! Class Struggle, Service Industry, Unions, Workers

This week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed the Monitoring Colorado Call Center Job Losses Act, HB19-1306, into law. The bill will require the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to keep a list of Colorado call center jobs, including those which have been replaced by overseas call centers, and require the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to issue an annual report to state lawmakers on those call center job losses. "I've seen first-hand how companies harm working families in Colorado by laying off call center jobs and moving operations overseas.

American Airlines Mechanics Are Threatening The “Bloodiest, Ugliest Battle” In Labor History

June 1, 2019 Michael Arria, Inthesetimes.com Resist! Airlines, Class Struggle, Labor, Unions, Workers

Mechanics at American Airlines are threatening to strike if a new contract isn’t negotiated, and the union president has declared that employees are prepared for the dispute to erupt into “the bloodiest, ugliest battle that the United States labor movement ever saw.” The statement comes just one day after the airline sued its union workers, claiming that they had engaged in an illegal work slowdown to strengthen their hand at the bargaining table. American Airlines merged with US Airways in 2013 to become the largest airline in the world.

Trump’s New Union-Busting Rule Will Wallop Home Health Workers

May 29, 2019 Staff, Talkpoverty.org Educate! Class Struggle, Health Care, Trump Administration, Unions, Workers

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized an obscure rule that could have huge implications for an estimated 800,000 independent home health providers paid directly by the state for Medicaid-funded services. Under the rule, these workers will no longer be able to assign deductions from their paychecks to cover things like insurance premiums, retirement contributions, and union dues. The rule singles out the most isolated home health workers who are not employed or paid via agencies; those who are can assign deductions at will.

Unchecked Corporate Power

May 28, 2019 By Kate Hamaji, Rachel Deutsch, Elizabeth Nicolas, Celine McNicholas, Heidi Shierholz, and Margaret Poydock, Epi.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Corporations, Workers

One year ago, in Epic Systems v. Lewis, the Supreme Court ruled that employers can use forced arbitration clauses that strip workers of their right to join together in court to fight wage theft, discrimination, or harassment. Unchecked Corporate Power, a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) forecasts that by 2024, more than 80 percent of private-sector, nonunion workers will be covered by forced arbitration clauses.

Unionizing The World’s Largest Slaughterhouse

May 28, 2019 By Russell Hall, Monthlyreview.org Strategize! Books, History, Unions, Workers

Capitalism has many victims, but few fare as badly as slaughterhouse workers. Every day, meatpacking workers risk life and limb to provide cheap meat for consumers. Yet, meatpacking workers are not glorified by the state. They are not given medals for bravery or celebrated in our movies, books, or video games. Instead, they are often vilified. Political scientist Timothy Pachirat once described slaughterhouse work as a form of labor “considered morally and physically repellent by the vast majority of society that is sequestered from view rather than eliminated or transformed.”1

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

May 24, 2019 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot Create! Factories, Greece, 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.

‘We Will Not Be Complicit’: Protesting Assault On Yemen, Italian Dock Workers Refuse To Load Saudi Weapons Vessel

May 23, 2019 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org Resist! Italy, Protests, Saudi Arabia, weapons, Workers, Yemen

"No EU state should be making the deadly decision to authorize the transfer or transit of arms to a conflict where there is a clear risk they will be used in war crimes." In an act of defiance against Saudi Arabia's brutal assault on Yemen—which is being carried out with the support of the United States and European nations—Italian union workers on Monday refused to load a Saudi vessel reportedly filled with weapons that could be used to fuel the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Amid Declining Real Wages, Strikes In US Escalate

May 21, 2019 Jerry White, Wsws.org Resist! Class Struggle, Strikes, Wages, Workers

In the midst of an intensifying political crisis in Washington and the Trump administration’s virulent attacks on immigrants, trade war measures and war threats against Iran and Venezuela, the working class in the United States is stepping up its struggle against austerity, declining living standards and social inequality. Despite the lowest official unemployment rate in a half-century, real wages fell by 0.8 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019, according to the PayScale Index. This is the fifth straight quarter of negative real wage growth.

The Yellow Vests Of France: Six Months Of Struggle

May 21, 2019 By Richard Greeman, Socialistproject.ca Resist! Class Struggle, France, Workers, Yellow Vest

I am writing you from Montpellier, France, where I am a participant-observer in the Yellow Vest (Gilets jaunes) movement, which is still going strong after six months, despite a dearth of information in the international media. But why should you take the time to learn more about the Yellow Vests? The answer is that France has for more than two centuries been the classic model for social innovation, and this unique, original social movement has enormous international significance.

Labor In Algeria’s Revolt

May 17, 2019 Rachid Malaoui, Jacobinmag.com Educate! Africa, Algeria, Class Struggle, Labor, Regime Change, Workers

Algeria is in the midst of a historic popular uprising. Protests began in February of this year, as Algerians revolted against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s plans for a fifth term in office. Coming to power in 1999, Bouteflika suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013, after which he made few public appearances and was widely understood to be the puppet of a clique of high-ranking military figures. Protests intensified over the course of February and March, drawing millions to the streets of the capital Algiers and elsewhere, calling on Bouteflika to stand down before presidential elections originally slated for April 18.

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