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.
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.
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.
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 recommendthat 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!”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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,
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.
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:
It allows employers to hire teens as young as 14 for previously prohibited hazardous jobs in industrial laundries or as young as 15 in light assembly work;
It allows state agencies to waive restrictions on hazardous work for 16–17-year-olds in a long list of dangerous occupations, including demolition, roofing, excavation, and power-driven machine operation;
It extends hours to allow teens as young as 14 to work six-hour nightly shifts during the school year;
It allows restaurants to have teens as young as 16 serve alcohol; and
It limits state agencies’ ability to impose penalties for future employer violations..
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.
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.
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.
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.
AUGUST BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsOHIO 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.
Portside, 8/9
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.
Work Bites, 8/3
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.
Teamsters Union website, 8/1
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.
CWA Website, 7/27
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.
AFL-CIO Website, 8/2
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.
Portside, 8/16
JULY BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsWHERE 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.
Portside7/7
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.
Portside, 7/7
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.”
Columbia Post & Courier, 7/8
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.
Spectrum, 6/23
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,
NY Times/ 7/2
JUNE BITS AND PIECES
Labor BriefsNYC 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.
Labor Press, 6/15
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.
The Guardian, 5/31
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.
Portside, 6/5
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.
Portside,6/7
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.
Labor Press, 6.9