According to figures released by the AFL-CIO, in 2021 343 workers died on the job each day due to hazardous working conditions, a total for the year of 5,190. In addition, an estimated 120,000 workers died from diseases related to their work like exposure to hazardous materials, toxic chemicals and the like and violence at the workplace claimed the lives of 120,000.
AFL-CIO Website, 7/14,https://aflcio.org
Photo: 32BJ SEIU
Hundreds of unionists, members of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, took to the streets June 26 in New York to rally against a new landlord’s action against building workers. The landlord, Fifth City Realty, an affiliate of Empire Capital, had recently purchased the building at 529 5th Avenue at 44th Street in Manhattan.
The new management has proceeded to cut wages of the buildings cleaners nearly in half to the city’s minimum wage of $16 an hour. cancelling worker benefits like family medical insurance and terminating long term employees, including full-time and part-time security officers and a fire safety director.
The rally was joined by building workers throughout the neighborhood in support. “This company is bad on many levels,” said Denis Johnston, executive vice-president of 32BJ. “They’ve been referred to as billionaire bottom feeders. They don’t care about workers’ rights, they don’t care about tenant services, and they have a reputation of not investing in their properties.”
“My wages have been cut almost in half to $16 an hour. They have cut our benefits. How will we survive? They want to take away everything we have fought for. But we are fighting back,” said an 18-year 32BJ member who works at the Fifth Avenue building. Another worker at the building, a security officer, defiantly declared, “We can’t let greed win.”
“Donald Trump’s legacy is chaos and division—and his greatest accomplishment in office was a bloated tax giveaway for the wealthy at the expense of working people who make our country run. He oversaw the largest increase in outsourcing in a decade, put a union-busting lawyer in charge of the Department of Labor and blocked workers from receiving the pay we earned. Trump… would escalate his anti-worker crusade with the radical far-right’s Project 2025 agenda by eviscerating unions and hard-won contracts; slashing millions of union jobs; blocking workers from organizing; and drastically cutting wages, health care and retirement benefits.…
“Unions in our country are on the line in this election—and so are union members’ hard-won contracts. It’s simple: A second Trump term is a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, as quoted by Labor Start, 6/29
UAW STEPS UP DRIVE TO UNIONIZE NON-UNION AUTO PLANTS
After gaining the best contract in decades for auto workers from the US Big Three a few months ago, UAW President Sean Fain announced that the union would be begin an organizing drive among the non-union auto plants in the country.
A second early result this month came in the form of an announcement by the union that more than 30% of the workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, have signed UAW authorization cards to be represented by the union in collective bargaining. The Tuscaloosa workers join workers at the Volkswagen facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in reaching the 30% goal, the first step in their union organizing efforts. If 50% sign up, the union will publicly rally and at 70% the UAW will demand recognition or call on the National Labor Relations Board to organize a vote.
IS THERE A LESSON HERE?
Most national unions elect their presidents at their conventions held every few years. They are chosen by the delegates the locals send to the conventions. This indirect election of its top leaders has produced an undemocratic structure in most unions in which the leadership has only a remote connection to he rank-and-file members.
But developments in two unions may serve to be a harbinger of things to come. In both the Teamsters and Auto Workers unions, the government intervened after a lengthy legal process and compelled an election by direct mail ballot of the entire membership. In the case of the UAW, the old guard leadership was sent to jail for corruption.
The result was leadership closer to workers directly on the production line. UAW President Sean Fain went around the country, holding meetings and sounding out workers on what they wanted in their new contracts. The process produced the best contracts for workers in decades. The Teamsters contract with UPS, signed this past summer, made great gains for UPS drivers without a strike. UAW workers in factories of the Big Three US automakers are enjoying a contract not seen since the early organizing days of the union.
A valuable lesson that greater union democracy often brings greater gains for workers.
ON-THE-JOB INJURIES NOW HIT 10-YEAR HIGH
Almost 5,500 workers in the U.S. died from on-the-job injuries in 2022, the highest number in the past 10 years, according to a report released Dec. 19 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
More than 70% of the victims worked in blue-collar jobs such as construction, driving trucks, and maintenance, and more than 90% were men.”These deaths could be prevented,” said Jessica E. Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health “if employers listen to workers and adopt preventive and comprehensive safety measures.”
“Transportation incidents” accounted for more than 2,000 fatalities, about two-thirds of them in vehicle crashes. Falls, most commonly to a lower level of a structure, accounted for 865 deaths, and 839 came from exposure to poisons, electricity, or extreme heat. Older workers were most vulnerable, with 35% of those killed 55 or older.
3 UNIONS COOPERATING TO UNIONIZE DELTA AIRLINES
In what is a novel partnership, three unions are collaborating to organize workers at Delta Airlines, the company that, until now, has been the least unionized of all the air carriers. At Delta, only 20 percent of its work force is unionized (mostly the pilots) compared with about 80 percent at other airlines.
The unions, the Association of Flight Attendants – CWA, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, were former competitors over the right to organize flight attendants and other employees. The collaboration is a sign, not only of growing union militancy but also a sign of union solidarity and cooperation in the mutual interest of all workers. If successful, it could usher in cross union efforts to organize Amazon and other giant corporations spread out around the country.
Capital & Main, 8/30, courtesy Locker Associates, New York
LATEST NLRB RULING ‘A SEA CHANGE’ FOR WORKERS
In perhaps its most momentous decision in decades, the National Labor Relations Board on Aug. 25 restored to labor the rights for workers that had been stripped down piece by piece over the years. It ruled in a party-line vote that when a majority of a company’s employees file union affiliation cards, the employer can either voluntarily recognize their union or, if not, ask the Board to run a union recognition election. If, in the run-up to or during that election, the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as illegally firing pro-union workers (which has become routine in nearly every such election over the past 40 years, as the penalties have been negligible), the Board will order the employer to recognize the union and enter forthwith into bargaining.
The ruling followed a previous day’s decision that required NLRB supervised elections to be held promptly. It sharply limited the frequent stalling tactic that companies use to indefinitely delay elections while they employ all sorts of union-busting tactics to prevent collective bargaining to take place. As one labor attorney put it, “This is a sea change, a home run for workers.”
Since the Biden administration appointed two new members of the board and a new chair, it is restoring its proper role in defending labor’s rights instead its practice for decades of siding with employers and undermining the rights guaranteed to workers by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
The American Prospect, 8/28; The New Republic, 8/25
NY ENACTS LAW BANNING MANDATORY ‘CAPTIVE AUDIENCE’ MEETINGS
Earlier this month, NY Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill banning employers from forcing workers to attend closed-door meetings, under threat of dismissal, to hear anti-union harangues. The meetings, usually called when workers are trying to organize a union in the workplace, are filled with misinformation about unions, designed to scare workers without allowing the union access to the workplace to counter the deceptions.
Today in New York, “Workers can no longer be forced to listen to anti-union rhetoric in the workplace,” declared Tom Quackenbush, President of Teamsters Joint Council 46 in Buffalo. The New York law follows similar ones enacted in Oregon, Minnesota, Maine, and Connecticut.
MISSOURI AMAZON WORKERS CHARGE UNSAFE WAREHOUSE CONDITIONS
Amazon workers at a warehouse in St. Peters, Missouri, have filed a complaint with OSHA that their workplace, STL8, is filled with health and safety violations. In addition to the unsafe conditions, the complaints also charge that workers injured on the job are deliberately discouraged from receiving medical care from a doctor when they are injured.
Typical of the problem, they say, is the case of a worker who tripped and fell face-down over a piece of equipment that should not have been in her path. She fell on the concrete floor, nose bleeding, with head and leg injuries. She requested seeing a doctor many times but was denied. Instead, she was given an ice pack and was sent back to work after 30 minutes. The next day, when she was able to see a doctor on her own, her leg was very badly swollen. She has suffered long term effects of the injury.
Subsequent journalist interviews with on-site Amazon medical representatives have found that management pushed them to keep injured Amazon workers on the job and away from doctors. One former medical representative said that they were told by management that high injury rates made the company look bad.
POWELL BOOK CHAIN WORKERS STAGE ONE-DAY STRIKE
Charging its employer with unfair labor practice before the National Labor Relations Board, workers at all Powell Books locations staged a one-day strike Sept. 4. The book store chain operates several stores in the Portland, Oregon, area. The biggest complaint is the wage structure which starts at $15.45 an hour, the area’s minimum wage, not enough for the cost of living there, which is $21.85.
The previous union contract expired on June 7 and the union, in its filed complaint, charges that the company has been stalling in negotiations. The workers have been represented since 2000 by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
UNION MEMBERS AT BARNES & NOBLE STORE STAGE 3 HOUR WALKOUT
Union workers at Barnes & Noble in Hadley, Mass., walked out last Friday protest staffing issues. The union says the store is understaffed. The walkout lasted from 2 PM to 5 PM. Staff members at the Hadley store voted to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1459 last May.
Publishers Lunch, 8/28
APPROVAL OF UNIONS REMAINS AT ALL-TIME HIGH
Public approval of labor unions continues to remain at the highest level in the past 60 years, according to the latest Gallup poll. Even though the large number of recent strikes have inconvenienced some, the public today looks to unions as a a means of leveling the playing field with powerful corporations who have registered record profits over the past two decades. Below is a chart released by Gallup illustrating the point.
Courtesy Locker Associates, New York
OHIO AFL-CIO A KEY FACTOR IN DEFEAT OF GOP ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY
The news last week was filled with stories about the defeat of Ohio Republicans’ attempt to make it harder for citizens to amend the state constitution. A referendum introduced by Republicans in the legislature on a strictly partisan vote would have made it necessary for future attempts at amendment to garner 60 percent of the vote instead of the current simple majority. Republicans weren’t keeping their motives secret. Several top GOP leaders in the legislature conceded that their aim was to prevent the success of a referendum scheduled for November that would have protected women’s abortion rights in the state.
What was very sparsely reported was the fact that the Ohio labor movement played an important role in the vote to defeat it. The AFL-CIO state federation, along with central labor councils across the state, worked with affiliates and allies to execute a comprehensive voter outreach campaign in a very short period of time. Through canvasses, mailings, phone banks, worksite actions, postcard writing and more, labor activists and volunteers provided much of the muscle for the campaign and, in the end, it showed.
“We are grateful for the union members and activists who over the last nine months exposed the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the proponents and their fraudulent issue, and turned-out working people in massive numbers to protect the principle of one-person, one-vote,” said Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga (USW) after the issue was defeated.
NYC HOSPITAL W0RKERS WIN BIG PAY RAISES
The New York City Nurses Association, in an announcement July 1, said that nurses at public hospitals in the city will make big gains in their new contract.
The contract, to run for five-and-a-half years, was decided by an arbitrator. Under it, the nurses will receive a $16,006 raise the first year and another &5,551 raise the second year. In the final three years of the contract they will get raises of 3%, 3%, and 3.25% respectively. It brought them closer to their goal of achieving pay parity with nurses at private hospitals, the nurses union said.
AMAZON DRIVERS DEMAND: RECOGNIZE OUR UNION AND BARGAIN
Amazon delivery drivers and dispatchers in Palmdale, Cal, are striking to demand that the company recognize the Teamsters Union as their bargaining agent, reinstate workers unlawfully fired for union activities and bargain in good faith with the union. Among the major issues the union raises are the low pay and unsafe working conditions that force drivers to make deliveries in extreme heat with no air conditioning in their vans and limits the amount of water they can take with them, said a striking worker.
NORTHSTAR AEROSPACE WORKERS OK NEW 4-YEAR CONTRACT
Workers at Northstar Aerospace, members of International Unon of Electrical Workers-Communication Workers of America Local 14430, ratified a new collective bargaining agreement July 27 after striking for almost two months. The new four-year contract includes an 18 percent wage increase over the life of the agreement, no change in medical cost premium shares, and improvements to safety and benefits, including vacation and short-term disability. In addition, the workers successfully fought back against the company’s attempt to adversely change the attendance policy.
TSA WORKERS WIN BIG PAY RAISE
Among federal workers, the ones employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been just about the lowest paid. They are the people who checks you in before you board a plane and are responsible for security and safety at airports. But the union that represents them, the American Federation of Government Employees announced this month the first major pay raise since the agency was established 21 years ago. TSA workers have received a 31 percent pay increase effective immediately.
CORNELL ENDS PARTNERSHIP WITH STARBUCKS OVER UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES
Cornell University has announced that it is terminating its partnership with Starbucks with the expiration of its current contract in June, 2025. The contract has allowed the company to operate cafes and sell its products in dining halls on campus. Cornell has acted in the wake of a decision by the NLRB that Starbucks punished pro-unionization Cornell students who were Starbucks employees by denying them leave over Cornell’s academic breaks during the unionization process at Ithaca’s three locations, among other violations. The university is currently working with the Student Assembly’s dining committee to find suitable alternatives for Starbucks.
WHERE DOES LABOR GO FROM HERE?
How can labor unions successfully organize workers under present conditions? How can union activists reach people when scores of new obstacles are in the way. Take Starbucks, for instance. Starbucks Workers United, the union started its drive just a year ago. In this one year, it has organized 330 stores around the country. But Starbucks has over 9,000 shops. At this rate, it would take over 170 years to organize them all.
Add to this the hundreds of federal and state laws and rules that have been enacted over the past decades by labor unfriendly administrations in the service of industry’s well-paid lawyers and lobbyists. Everything from dragging out appeals that delay union elections until the union activists are gone and the workers give up in disgust, to firing union activists on flimsy pretexts to spying on employers at the workplace.
What new strategy and tactics can labor develop in light of these conditions? An interesting article on this appeared in the New York Tumes Sunday Opinion section on July 23. Entitled “This is How the Boses Win” in the print edition and “Inside Starbucks Dirty War Against Organized Labor” in the online edition, it recounts how Starbucks has used all the tactics in the book, both legal and illegal to fight the union’s effort. sWe recommend that you read it. It gives a glimpse of the problem workers are up against in this current situation.
Unfortunately, we have been unable to link directly to the article.It can be accessed by going to the NY Times website and doing a search for the author of the article, Megan K. Stack
THEY’RE NOT ACTING, THIS IS FOR REAL
By now, everyone who follows the news or turns on a TV knows that 160,000 movie and TV actors are on strike, joining over 11,000 striking writers on picket lines in New York and Hollywood. In addition to pay, the issues are whether the new technology will exist just to profit a few big moguls at the top of the industry or for those working in the industry to share in the benefits.
In the case of the actors, they want guarantees that Artificial Intelligence will not be used to create likenesses of themselves for screening without their consent or the benefit of residuals. There is also the issue of streaming where residuals have been cut back, reducing their income. Writers have a similar issue with streaming and severely reduced residual payments.
We recommend that you view the video below of the speech of Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, the actors unions announcing the start of the actors strike. It is an inspiring call to action, not only of writers but of all working people, effectively saying, “We’re not going to take this anymore!”
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4SAPOX7R5M[/embedyt]
Memo to movie & TV moguls:” Don’t mess with the nanny. Fran Drescher, star of the popular 1990’s TV series The Nanny, and now head of SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, addressing a meeting announcing the start of the actors strike.
LAW NOW REQUIRES EMPLOYERS TO ACCOMMODATE PREGNANT WORKERS
A new law, passed quietly in December now requires employers to accommodate women workers who are pregnant including pregnancy and childbirth related medical conditions, and conditions related to post-partum recovery. Passage of the law came after about 10 years of advocacy.
The law covers workplaces with 15 or more employees. And covers a host of requirements the employer mut meet to accommodate pregnant workers. The law was part of an omnibus pending bill that passed Congress in December and went into effect June 27.
CHILD LABOR MAKING BIG COMEBACK IN THE U.S.
We previously carried items about some states loosening child labor laws, including in jobs that are hazardous and often interfering with their schooling. But over the past few months the practice is spreading as employers consistently seek out low wage workers they can exploit. During the past two years, 14 states have introduced or passed laws that rolled back rules that regulated restrictions on hazardous work for minors, the number of hours they can work and the legalization of paying them substandard wages.
In Iowa, for example, a new law permits `14-year-olds to work in industrial laundries. Sixteen year-olds can work in construction, roofing, excavation, and demolition industries as well as operating power-driven machinery. Kids of 15 can work on assembly lines and 14-year-olds can work night shifts, all activities long prohibited. Spearheading the drive to weaken or repeal child labor laws are several right wing think tanks funded by wealthy conservative donors like the DeVos family and Koch Industries.
WAFFLE HOUSE WORKERS STAGE 3-DAY STRIKE
Workers at the Waffle House in Columbia, South Carolina, went on a three day strike earlier this month over low pay, staffing shortages, and safety issues. “ “We are working for scraps and pennies,” said one employee. “We can barely buy the basic necessities that we need to live off of, we can barely take care of ourselves.”
LOMA LINDA RESIDENT DOCTORS VOTE TO UNIONIZE
In another one of those historic labor events involving people you don’t often link to unions, resident physicians at Loma Linda University Health voted 361-to-144 to unionize. The June 22 vote came after months of challenges from management. The medical facility is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist religious denomination.
The vote for the resident physicians to join the Union of American Physicians and Dentists was held by the National Labor Relations Board. The union originally filed the requited number of signatures to hold a union election in February but the vote was postponed by lawsuits. One of management’s claims was that as a religious education institution, it was not required to negotiate with a union. It still has vowed to pursue legal options to avoid union bargaining.
Recent trends across the country have preceded the Loma Linda vote. Residents and fellows at Massachusetts General Brigham in June voted for their 2,500 residents to form a union. And the largest union in the field, the Committee of Interns and Residents claims an additional 10,000 members in the past two years.
LA HOTEL WORKERS WALK OFF JOB
Citing their inability to make financial ends meet in a city where the cost of housing has hit record highs, hotel workers walked out on pocket lines July 2. The strike, just before the July 4th holiday signaled the beginning of the summer tourist season, is being conducted by Unite Here Local 11.
“Workers have been frustrated and angry about… the inability to pay the rent and stay in Los Angeles,” a union spokesman said. The strike is one more labor action across Los Angeles and southern California as the high cost of living in the area have prompted demands for wages to match the costs,
NYC RAISES MINIMUM PAY FOR FOOD DELIVERERS
In a milestone for the fight for fair treatment of the lowest paid workers, New York City will become the first place in the country to raise the minimum pay for food delivery workers to something approaching a decent standard. These workers, who deliver meals to our doors when we don’t feel like or are otherwise unable to do our own cooking, average a shameful $7.09 an hour in wages plus the few dollars they can collect in tips. The city has now raised their minimum to $17.96 an hour, going up to $19.96 an hour in two years. They will still be able to collect tips. The two large companies that employ these workers, Uber Eats and DoorDash, are, expectedly, protesting the new law, claiming facetiously that it harms workers when all it really does is to make a small dent in both companies’ big profits.
IOWA ENACTS HUGE ROLLBACK IN CHILD LABOR LAWS
The trend among some states to exploit the labor of children took another step forward in Iowa May 26 when the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, signed a bill that conflicts with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s prohibition of “oppressive child labor.” The federal statute outlaws teen-agers working under hazardous conditions or excessive hours that interfere with their schooling or health and well-being.
Among the Iowa act’s provisions are:
The Iowa law is the latest in a series of similar laws enacted or proposed by Republican dominated state governments in the past few months. It follows an Arkansas’ law in March signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Trump’s former press secretary, that loosened child labor protections.
The attack upon a century of steps protecting children from being exploited is part of a big effort by many companies around the country to gain access to low wage labor and weaken worker protections.
Economic Policy Institute, 5/31
WORKING AT DOLLAR GENERAL IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR SAFETY
Dollar General, is a retail chain with 18,000 stores in 47 states. It is also at or near the top of the list of places with the most safety violations in the country, violations that put its workers and customers in daily danger. Over the past six years, the chain has been cited for fines that total more than $21 million for “systemic hazards.”
“Fred Wright cartoon courtesy of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)”.
These hazards, cited by the US Labor Department as “severe violations,” include aisles, emergency exits, fire extinguishers and electrical panels blocked by merchandise and unsafe stacking of boxers. In addition to the looming fines, the company has paid out millions of dollars to settle lawsuits involving injuries sustained as a result of unsafe conditions in is stores.
“Dollar General continues to expose its employees to unsafe conditions at its stores across the nation,” declared OSHA’s assistant secretary Doug Parker. Workers at the store report Dollar General’s general disregard for its workers in the form of low wages and poor working conditions while the company registered a profit of $3.3 billion last year. Its CEO raked in $16.6 million while the median wage of its employees was less than $20,000.
STARBUICKS FIRES ANOTHER UNION ACTIVIST
In his testimony before a congressional committee in March, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz asserted that the company did not fire any employee for union activity. Yet, just two days later, a shift supervisor at a Buffalo store and one of the first members of the union, Starbucks Workers United, was fired from her job.
Alexis Rizzo, an employee for seven years was fired for her alleged tardiness, twice for being one minute late, once for four minutes and once for five minutes. Before she was involved in the union campaign, there was never any problem between her and the company.
Starbucks Workers United has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board, in addition to the hundreds already pending.
BEN & JERRY’S BUCKS THE TREND OF EMPLOYERS FIGHTING UNIONS
In a modern exception to the traditional hostility that employers have toward unions, Ben & Jerry’s recognized the union in its Burlington, Vermont, flagship store after its 39 workers voted for it. During the union’s organizing campaign, the company, unlike Starbucks, maintained strict neutrality. It did not conduct forced meetings to lecture workers on the “evils” of unionism or threats to move its facility or intimidate union activists or any of the other tactics that are the standard operating procedure of anti-union employers. Instead, it allowed the union, Scoopers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, to have time to talk to workers and space to post union material in the store. The company has committed itself to bargaining with the union. “We look forward to a sweet and collaborative future,” said a company statement.
SOME LIRR WORKERS ARE DOING 24 HOUR SHIFTS
The Office of New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Inspector General released a report finding that over 4,000 LIRR employees were working 24 hours or more at a time. These workers are not covered by Federal Railroad Administration hours-of-service regulations. The crucial roles of engineering department workers, especially track workers, fall into this category. The accompanying fatigue leads to an increased risk of accidents.
STARBUCKS TRYING TO DECERTIFY 3 UNION STORES
Starbucks, which has been using all kinds of tricks, legal, borderline, and down-dirty, to combat the union organizing drive in its stores, now is possibly involved in a new one. At three Starbucks locations where workers have voted for the Starbucks Workers United union, a worker has filed a petition to decertify the union.
The three stores are all in New York State, two in Buffalo where the union first took hold, and one in New York City. In NYC, the petition filer is represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an outfit connected to right-wing, anti-union financiers.
The union expects that the decertification will be dismissed in light of the charges of unfair labor practices filed by the union against the company now pending before the National Labor Relations Board. In cases like this, the NLRB can bar decertification elections from being held until the allegations are adjudicated on grounds that company actions cannot guarantee that a fair election can take place. But it is part of a Starbucks strategy to delay bargaining with the union among its other tactics of firing union activists and providing benefits to workers at its non-union stores.
Restaurant Dive, 5/12; Courtesy Locker Associates, New York.
FLAGSHIP BARNES & NOBLE STORE WORKERS FILE FOR UNION
Workers at the Barnes and Noble flagship store in Union Square, New York City, have filed for a representation election after they announced the formation of a union. They have affiliated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The election filing came after the union said that the company had refused to voluntarily recognize the union. The store employs over 100 workers. The union says a majority of them have signed union authorization cards.
The Villager, 4/28, Publishers Weekly, 5/1
STARBUCKS UNION MARKS 300th STORE
In the face of the stiffest company opposition, workers at Starbucks continue their organizing drive. A store in Sacramento, CA has become the 300th Starbucks facility to win a union election.
Starbucks United website, 4/28
YOUNG WORKERS ARE SPARKING MOST UNION DRIVES
According to a Gallup poll, the new spark in union organizing has come from young workers, many of them college educated. The poll reveals that 77 percent of people under 35 approve of unions and form the backbone of people joining and organizing labor unions. The New York Times has referred to the development as “the revolt of the college-educated working class while others call them “Generation U).
FORDHAM GRAD SCHOOL WORKERS STAGE 3-DAY STRIKE
A three-day strike beginning April 23 at the two campuses of New York’s Fordham University has resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of classes on those three days. The strike was called by the Fordham Graduate Student Workers Union after a series of fruitless negotiating sessions.
The union is affiliated with Local 1104 of the Communications Workers of America. The union is demanding significant pay increases, more administrative support for international students, adoption of a “just cause” standard for disciplinary actions, university-provided computers, a ban on non-disclosure agreements, and $4,000 in annual child care subsidies for workers with children under the age of 5.
WORKERS AT NYC FARMERS MARKETS ORGANIZING UNION
In the face of sometimes dangerous and unsafe conditions, workers at New York City’s outdoor farmers markets are forming a union. The move comes in the face of several incidents at the Union Square and Tompkins Greenmarkets in which workers faced incidents of harassment and racial threats by passersby and an out-of -control car crashed across the curb nearly killing workers and customers at Tompkins Square.
The markets that sell produce, organic baked products and eggs from farms in the NYC metropolitan area are run by GrowNYC, a non-profit group. Market employees are hourly employees earning about $20 an hour with no benefits or job security. They sometimes have to work 12-hour shifts with erratic schedules under various weather conditions. They seek to improve their wages, benefits and safety conditions.
On April 26, 200 workers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking for a union election after management did not respond to their earlier request for voluntary union recognition. They are being represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
NY Times print edition, 4/27
TEAMSTERS BEGIN TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS WITH UPS
With the Teamsters Union set to begin bargaining sessions with United Parcel Service, some major obstacles have popped up in the opening stance of the company.
UPS now says that it will not discuss economic questions with the union, which complicates the bargaining process set to begin April 17. Economic questions are the heart of any collective bargaining agreement. Union contract proposals were advanced earlier this month. They included more holidays and ick days, improvements in the grievance procedures, more full-time jobs, along with payroll issues. They have rejected concessions and what the company calls “cost-neutral” bargaining.
The current contract is set to expire in August.
500 MAUI HEALTH CARE WORKERS END TWO MONTH STRIKE
After striking for nearly two months, frontline health care workers at Kaiser’s Maui Health System in Hawaii ratified a three-year contract that provides a 10.5 percent pay raise for all, pay scale adjustments for all job classifications and a one-time lump sum payment. More specific details of the new contract have not been widely circulated. The workers are represented by United Public Workers Local 646, AFSCME.
The striking workers included licensed practical nurses, nurses aides, respiratory therapists, cooks, housekeepers, and other employees at Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital, and L’ana’i Community Hospital.
STARBUDKS FIRES THREE MORE UNION ACTIVISTS
Two days after the Starbucks chairman and former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled during a Senate committee hearing on the company’s response to union organizing at its stores, and after he vehemently denied firing workers for union activity, Starbucks fired three union organizers and disciplined another organizer in the Buffalo, New York, area where the union campaign began. (See item on Starbucks below.)
Among those to lose their jobs was Lexi Rizzo, a shift supervisor for seven years in Buffalo at one of the first stores to unionize and a leading founder of the union campaign. The union has characterized the actions as retaliation.
WORKERS AT TV’S FOOD NETWORK FORM UNION
Amid a years-long wave of unionization in the hospitality industry, the workers behind two of Food Network’s most popular television shows have formed a union. According to the anWriters Guild of America, East, “overwhelming majority” of workers of BSTV Entertainment, the studio that produces The Kitchenand Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, have signed cards to form what organizers say is the first nonfiction food television union.
DANGERS MOUNT FOR CHILD LABOR PROTECTION
In recent months the illegal use of chid labor has increased, often under wraps, as a recent NY Times expose revealed. Corporate lobbyists have been at work trying to get state legislatures to cancel the protections for child labor that have been in place for about a hundred years. In the most extreme recent case, a bill under consideration in Iowa, pushed by the state’s Restaurant Association would allow children as young as 16 to work in very dangerous meatpacking facilities, high-volume soda bottling plants and demolition construction sites where more than 5,000 workers nationwide died last year. Is this the 21st century or the world of Charles Dickens?
More Perfect Union, 4/3
STARBUCKS GRILLED ON UNION-BUSTING ACTIVITIES
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz came under sharp questioning March 29 at a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Democrats on the committee, led by its chairman, Sen.Bernie Sanders, cited incidents of illegal union busting including, among other things, firing workers for union activities, threatening workers who want to join the union, denying workers at unionized stores the benefits and pay raises at other stores and refusing to bargain with workers at stores that have chosen the union. Schultz’ insisted he had done nothing illegal. The hearing, called to highlight and correct lapses in the country’s labor laws and their enforcement, was attended by a contingent of members of the union, Starbucks Workers United, who wore shirts prominently displayed with the union logo.
By contrast, committee Republicans were effusive in their praise for Schultz for leading a billion dollar business and getting people to pay a big price for a cup of coffee while they ignored the issue of union busting around which the hearing was based.
For a view of the hearing, followed by and the testimony of Starbucks workers , you can watch the video below.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NCe_BHsCQQ[/embedyt]
