Workers Rights and Jobs

In West Virginia, Historic Statewide Teacher Walkouts To Head Into Fourth Day

February 27, 2018 Andrea Germanos, Alternet.org Resist! Protests, Teachers, West Virginia, Workers Rights and Jobs

Thousands of teachers and other school personnel rallied outside in the West Virginia Capitol on Monday, where union officials announced that the first-ever statewide walkout underway would continue for a fourth day. "Our teachers and our public employees are getting less in pay per year every year, and people are fed up and fired up about it," said Morgantown High School art teacher Sam Brunett at a candlelight vigil Sunday outside the Capitol. The strike, which began Thursday, is indeed historic. (A nearly statewide strike took place in 1990.) The current action is taking place throughout the state's 55 counties, which means roughly 20,000 teachers are taking part.

Global Capitalism Is New Colonialism For Workers, And They Are Resisting

February 27, 2018 Mark Karlin, Truth-out.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Labor, Workers Rights and Jobs

The ravages of neoliberalism have not been subtle. And they have been truly global. Essential services have been privatized. Since the dawn of the 21st century, free public schools and health care, safe, drinkable water [and] publicly controlled power grids have disappeared around the world -- especially in poorer nations. And those who have fought for restoration have often been met with violence. We in the US have also seen public schools starved of funds and replaced by corporate-run charters, community clinics replaced by corporate for-profit medical facilities and natural water sources privatized for the commercial use of corporations. It is no longer so simple as to say that the worst labor abuses -- the worst predations of neoliberalism -- take place abroad while American workers have it better. We may have it better, but US workplaces are more dangerous than they have been in more than 70 years.

Worker’s National Day Of Action For Unions #UnrigTheSystem

February 25, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. Resist! Labor Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

Workers protested across the country because, on Monday, the Supreme Court will consider Janus vs. AFSCME — a case that could weaken public employee unions by challenging a longstanding precedent that protects the ability of public employee unions to represent their members and even nonmembers and to speak out on matters of public interest. The challenge to an Illinois law that allows government employee unions to collect fees from workers who choose not to join could affect more than 5 million government workers in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Public sector union members make up close to half of all U.S. union members.

West Virginia’s Public Schools Closed Due To Teacher Walk-Out Over Pay

February 23, 2018 Staff, Wtvr.com Resist! Labor, Protests, Schools, Teachers, West Virginia, Workers Rights and Jobs

Public schools across West Virginia are closed Thursday as teachers and other school employees hit the picket lines, demanding higher wages and better benefits. According to Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, teachers in all of the state’s 55 counties are participating in the planned two-day walk-out, and a group will march Thursday morning to the capitol building in Charleston. Organizers expect thousands of teachers to participate. The work stoppage comes after Gov. Jim Justice signed legislation late Wednesday night granting teachers a 2% pay increase starting in July, followed by 1% pay increases over the next two years. But union officials have said that’s not a sufficient fix. Teachers are also requesting better healthcare and benefits packages. “We need to keep our kids and teachers in the classroom,” Justice said in a statement after signing the pay raise bill.

Workers VS The Environment: The Fraying Of The Blue-Green Alliance

February 21, 2018 Steve Early, Laprogressive.com Strategize! Environment, Labor, Workers, Workers Rights and Jobs

Nothing ignites a local environmental justice campaign more quickly, in California, than a refinery fire or explosion affecting down-wind neighbors. Three years ago, an Exxon-Mobil facility was rocked by a huge explosion in Torrance, a city of 145,000 just south of Los Angeles. According to a Justice Department lawsuit, the blast catapulted a 40-ton piece of equipment perilously close to a tank containing 50,000 pounds of hydrofluoric acid, a highly toxic and volatile chemical, used, with additives, in only two California refineries. If released in the air in large enough quantity, Modified Hydrofluoric Acid (MHF) can form a ground-hugging cloud, able to drift for miles. Anyone exposed to it would suffer choking, searing of the eyes and lungs, internal organ damage or possible death.

How Black Lives Matter Breathed New Life Into Unions

February 18, 2018 Mike Elk, The Guardian. Organize! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

After decades of decline unions have found a new champion in efforts to organize workers: the Black Lives Matter movement. Unions have suffered as manufacturing has moved south away from their old strongholds in the north of the US. Membership rates were 10.7% in 2016, down from 20.1% in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time the shift from manufacturing to service industry jobs has hurt them too. But as the Black Lives Matter and other social justice campaigns increasingly focus on economic justice, unions see a new opportunity.

Austin Becomes 1st City In Texas To Mandate Paid Sick Leave

February 17, 2018 Philip Jankowski, Statesman.com Create! Austin, Cities, Class Struggle, Texas, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Austin City Council voted early Friday to make paid sick leave a mandatory requirement for all non-government employers, making Austin the first city in Texas to regulate sick leave. The highly anticipated vote came after more than 200 people testified at City Hall, with a large majority in favor of the ordinance. It passed 9-2 with council members Ora Houston and Ellen Troxclair against. “For me, so much of this is about widening inequality and our fight against it,” said Council Member Greg Casar, the author and lead proponent of the ordinance. The vote was greeted with thunderous applause and singing as the council adopted a compromise ordinance Casar offered Thursday that addressed many concerns brought forward by Council Member Jimmy Flannigan and others earlier this week.

Higher Education, Job Training For No Jobs And Massive Debt

February 13, 2018 By Julian Vigo, Truthdig.com Educate! Higher Education, Labor, Workers Rights and Jobs

I have been in academia since the mid 1980s—first as a student, then as a university professor. I have seen higher education shift radically over the past three decades: from being a place of learning where intellectual debate, particularly in the humanities, was based on a direct engagement with texts and cultural artifacts, to today, where it is the site of emotional and moral exorcisms and where many humanities departments now discourage reading. Not only have curricula and course syllabi been sterilized by this move to banish unpopular ideas from university halls, but much academic rigor has been lost, in part because the focus of higher education is dictated by an increasingly reactive and conservative student body, one which demands safe spaces and which “no-platforms” unpopular speakers and ideas.

Thousands Of Low Wage Workers Walk Off Jobs In Protest

February 12, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! Fight for 15, Labor Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Fight for $15 held protests calling for a $15 per hour wage and a union. Thousands walked off their jobs in two dozen cities. The protests, which were joined by the Poor People's Campaign, are part of a campaign by fast food and other low wage workers. The protests on February 12 are being held on the 50th anniversary of the day when the famous Memphis sanitation workers strike began. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. participated in that strike which demanded safety of workers, a living wage and recognition of their union. King was organizing the Poor People's Campaign at the time of his assassination in Memphis. According to the compensation research company PayScale, fast food workers make an average of $8.28 per hour. The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour leaves workers unable to afford a two-bedroom rental apartment in any U.S. state. The organizers of today's protests are planning six weeks of "direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience" starting on Mother's Day.

Trump’s Home Town Shows How To Resist Immigration Crackdown

February 4, 2018 Michael Arria, Working In These Times Resist! Immigration, Workers Rights and Jobs

The Tom Cat campaign can also serve as a blueprint for activists and workers fighting workplace raids around the country. “I want to demonstrate resistance to Trump's immigrant-hating policies and Tom Cat's complicity, and I want to give sympathizers something concrete to do that would actually make a difference,” she says. “If Tom Cat Bakery wakes up to the moral and economic imperative to find ways to publically stand by their immigrant workers, it will represent a model for business everywhere. If a few high-profile businesses get it, that's leverage. That's a movement. That's resistance.”

Workers Plan Massive Wave Of Civil Disobedience This Spring

February 4, 2018 Staff for Fight for $15, Popular Resistance Resist! Fight for 15, Labor Unions, Poor People's Campaign, Workers Rights and Jobs

Thousands of fast-food cooks and cashiers announced Thursday they will walk off their jobs and protest nationwide Feb. 12 – the 50th anniversary of the historic Memphis sanitation strike - carrying on the fight for higher wages and union rights led by hundreds of black municipal workers whose 1968 walkout became a rallying cry of the Poor People’s Campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Workers in the Fight for $15 declared they will participate in six weeks of direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience beginning Mother’s Day as part of the new Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, uniting two of the nation’s most powerful social movements in a common fight for strong unions to lift people of all races out of poverty.

Biggest Gains In Union Membership In 2017 Were For Younger Workers

January 29, 2018 By John Schmitt, Epi.org Create! Labor, Unions, Workers, Workers Rights and Jobs

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data on changes in union membership from 2016 to 2017. It was good news for workers, as the total number of union members grew by 262,000 in 2017. Three-fourths of these gains (198,000) were among workers aged 34 and under, who account for less than 40 percent of total employment. Historically, younger workers have been less likely than older workers to be a member of union. In 2017 about 7.7 percent of workers 16–34 were members of a union, compared with 12.6 percent of workers age 35 and older. But last year, of the 858,000 net new jobs for workers under age 35, almost one in four (23 percent) was a union job.

The Invention of Capitalism

January 22, 2018 Yasha Levine, Sustainable Human Minds. Educate! Capitalism, Democracy, Poverty, Workers Rights and Jobs

Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I’d recommend checking a book called The Invention of Capitalism, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who’s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial The Wealth of Nations fairy tale

Day Of Typical CEO Pays More Than Year For Typical Worker

January 16, 2018 By Leo Gerard, Alternet.org Educate! CEO, New Economy, Wages, Workers Rights and Jobs

Fat Tuesday is Mardi Gras, a day of revelry, gluttony, intoxication and showers of shiny plastic beads. It is the party to end all parties because it’s followed by Ash Wednesday, when Lenten sacrifices commence. Fat Cat Tuesday is the day – Jan. 2, 2018 – on which the boards of directors of America’s biggest corporations handed their CEOs more money than those same CEOs would deign to pay their workers for an entire year of labor, 260 days. It was a day of revelry, gluttony and private jets for CEOs and worthless shiny plastic beads for workers. The occasion is commemorated in Britain as well. There, though, it took CEOs three days to accrue more compensation than the total annual wages of the typical worker. That’s because American CEO pay takes the cake – and we’re not talking Mardi Gras King Cake containing a tiny plastic baby Jesus figure because no Son of God would be associated with U.S. CEOs’ sinfully gluttonous pay packages.

Labour Unions Protest Against Tim Hortons’ Reaction To New Minimum Wage

January 13, 2018 Staff, Labour-reporter.com Resist! Labor, Minimum Wage, New Economy, Unions, Workers Rights and Jobs

TORONTO (CP) — Protesters rallied outside Tim Hortons locations across Ontario Wednesday to show support for employees after some franchisees made benefits and break cuts after a minimum wage increase — but many gatherers stopped short of committing to a boycott. Some, but not all, of the chain's franchisees have said employees will have to cover a larger share of their dental and health-care benefits as well as take unpaid breaks in order to offset the added costs of the province's hourly minimum wage rate increase to $14 an hour on Jan. 1. But labour groups who gathered outside stores in cities including Toronto, Ottawa and Coburg, Ont. Wednesday describe the company as “wildly profitable” and argue Tim Hortons and its parent company can afford to pay employees at the new rate without taking away previous perks.

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