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      To avert election disaster, Democrats need to run a fiercely pro-worker campaign | Steven Greenhouse

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      To avert election disaster, Democrats need to run a fiercely pro-worker campaignSteven GreenhouseYou won’t hear this on Fox News, but Biden did a terrific job lifting America out of the pandemic-induced downturn. The nation added 8.9m jobs during Biden’s first 18 months in office If the Democrats hope to avoid disaster in this November’s elections, they need to do a far better job making their case to working-class voters. Many blue-collar Americans are understandably upset about inflation, but it’s less understandable that they give higher marks on the economy to Republicans than to Democrats, considering that President Biden and the Democrats have done far more to boost the economy and help workers.You will hardly ever hear this on Fox News, but Biden and the Democrats pushed through an emergency rescue plan that did a terrific job lifting America’s economy out of the pandemic-induced downturn. They did such a good job that millions of workers moved to higher-paying employment as the nation added 8.9m jobs during Biden’s first 18 months in office – more than in any other president’s first 18 months.TopicsJoe BidenOpinionBiden administrationDemocratsUS unionsUS politicsWorkers’ rightsUS economycommentReuse this content More

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      Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress finds

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      Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress findsStudy shows unionized workers earn 10.2% more than non-union peers, amid wave of organizing at some of largest US employers Workers represented by labor unions earn 10.2% higher wages than their non-union peers, have better benefits and collectively raise wages industry-wide, according to a report released by the House and Senate committees on Friday and first shared with the Guardian.Joe Biden has pledged to be the most pro-union president in generations, and the report outlining the economic benefits of union membership was released as his administration pushes for legislative and executive-action efforts to support workers’ rights to organize.According to the report, by the joint economic committee of Congress and the House education and labor committee, unionized workers are also 18.3% more likely to receive employer-sponsored health insurance, and employers pay 77.4% more per hour worked toward the cost of health insurance for unionized workers compared with non-unionized workers.Labor unions have also contributed to narrowing racial and gender pay disparities; unionization correlates to pay premiums of 17.3% for Black workers, 23.1% for Latino workers and 14.7% for Asian workers, compared with 10.1% for white workers. Overall, female union workers receive 4.7% higher hourly wages than their non-union peers and in female dominated service industries, union workers are paid 52.1% more than non-union workers.“Unions are the foundation of America’s middle class,” said congressman Don Beyer, chair of the Joint Economic Committee. “For too long, the wealthy have captured an increasing share of the economic pie. As this report makes clear, unions help address economic inequality and ensure workers actually see the benefits when the economy grows.”The Biden administration’s drive to increase union membership comes amid a wave of organizing among workers at some of America’s largest employers, including Amazon and Starbucks.But despite the recent uptick in organizing, union membership has declined markedly in recent decades, from 34.8% of all US wage and salary workers in 1954 to 10.3% in 2021. According to several studies the decline has contributed significantly to increasing wage inequality and stagnation.Corporate practices and legal changes have also eroded workers’ bargaining power, particularly from the 1970s, as employers increasingly attempted to break union organizing efforts and were issued only weak penalties for violating labor laws.The report cites the recent resurgence of the US labor movement, and strong public support for labor unions, as a call to action to improve wages and working conditions and support worker organizing.“As chair of the education and labor committee, I am committed to addressing the decades of anti-worker attacks that have eroded workers’ collective bargaining rights,” said education and labor committee chair congressman Bobby Scott.“With the release of this report, I once again call on the Senate to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would take historic steps to strengthen workers’ right to organize, rebuild our middle class, and improve the lives of workers and their families.”TopicsUS unionsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their sway

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      Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their swayChallenging anti-union rhetoric and pro-union attitudes of younger workers are undermining highly paid consultants The nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”.Logan said anti-union consultants are often no longer as effective because workers and their attitudes have changed: workers, especially younger workers, are braver about speaking out, they’re using social media to outmaneuver the consultants, and they’re embracing highly effective strategies, like worker-to-worker organizing and interrupting so-called captive audience meetings, where consultants discuss the supposed evils of unions. Logan said workers often used to be far more scared to stand up to anti-union consultants, and one reason workers are less frightened is that the low jobless rate makes it easier for workers to find another job if they get fired for supporting a union.“They survived the pandemic, and they’re no longer so fearful,” Logan said. “The pandemic was such a frightening experience that workers have recalibrated their sense of risk about what they’re prepared to do in their lives. They’re more prepared to join a union campaign. They feel they’ve repeatedly been disrespected while their employers were making billions of dollars.”Logan was impressed that workers interrupted several of Amazon’s captive audience meetings. “The fact that they had the courage to do that helps show that something has fundamentally changed,” he said. “The mechanism of the captive audience meeting is much less successful if someone gets up and challenges what they’re saying. It all crumbles away.”Angelika Maldonado, a 27-year-old packer at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, was one of the workers who interrupted a captive audience meeting. She and other workers challenged Amazon’s assertion that workers might see their wages cut if they unionize. She also sought to rebut one of Amazon’s main arguments. “They put out all this propaganda that we were a third party,” Maldonado said. “Once we gained the trust of workers, they would see we are not a third-party union.” Rather, she explained, we are Amazon workers like them who created a union.Some Staten Island worker-organizers outed the anti-union consultants who walked the warehouse floor, urging workers to vote against unionizing. Workers sought to learn their names, and once they did, they tweeted out the consultant’s name and photo and urged workers not to talk to them. They further undermined the consultants’ effectiveness by highlighting that some of them earned $3,200 a day.Maldonado said: “We did some calculations and showed that instead of paying these union busters all this money, Amazon could have given everyone in the building a raise.”Wilma Liebman, chair of the National Labor Relations Board during president Obama’s first term, said anti-union consultants have grown less effective because they haven’t kept up with the changing workforce. “It’s hard to imagine how any of these union busters succeed. Almost all are old white guys,” she said. “They seek to demonstrate control with some intimidation factor. Whether these workers are white, African American or something else, it’s still a culture clash. It’s hard to imagine that the message of these consultants has much resonance.”Liebman added: “One way the consultants seem to be as effective as ever is in convincing employers to buy their services.” Some anti-union lawyers charge more than $1,200 an hour.A longtime management-side labor lawyer in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, said the recent string of union victories doesn’t mean that anti-union lawyers and consultants have become less effective. “More has been made of this than it should be,” he said. “I think it’s very situational.” He noted that unionization drives lost recently at a Hershey’s factory in Virginia and at HelloFresh food-packing facilities. (At those places, the workers didn’t challenge the anti-union consultants nearly as much as they did at Amazon or Starbucks.)The lawyer acknowledged that young workers are “challenging authority” more than their parents’ generation. “I think workers are more skeptical of what people say. They’re more willing to challenge, perhaps, than they were in the past.”A second lawyer, a partner at one of the nation’s leading anti-union law firms, also insisting on anonymity, said that workers’ smart use of social media has undercut union avoidance efforts. “The internet and social media have made employees much more savvy,” he said. “They’ve able to communicate better with each other and see different sources of information. I think social media has changed – and maybe leveled – the playing field.”Rebecca Givan, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers, said: “Young workers are more excited to speak up and counteract them, by, for instance, talking up in a captive audience meeting, challenging the supposed facts in a presentation. These are really new things.”Young workers are too young to remember Ronald Reagan’s busting the air-traffic controllers union. Many have been emboldened by Bernie Sanders and by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Many young workers feel angry and squeezed by large student debt loads and soaring rents.Givan said social media has helped inoculate workers against anti-union consultants: “When workers are rapidly able to share anti-union talking points and see that they use the same arguments at different companies and workplaces, that it’s all cookie cutter, all from the same playbook, it shows how tired their tactics and rhetoric are.”Richard Bensinger, an organizer with Workers United who helped lead the Starbucks’ unionization campaign, said new technologies have helped overcome the union-avoidance consultants. “I don’t think we could have done this without Zoom and virtual meetings and partners talking to partners,” he said. (Partners is the term Starbucks uses to describe its workers.) Thus far, workers have voted in favor of unionizing at 18 of the 19 Starbucks where votes have been counted, and workers at more than 200 Starbucks have petitioned for unionization elections.“As far as inoculation, we get Samantha from the New York Roastery, which just voted to unionize, to speak to people at the Starbucks in Austin, Texas, telling them what to expect from the anti-union folks,” Bensinger said.Some Amazon and Starbucks workers have used TikTok to get out their pro-union message and WhatsApp and Telegram to spread the word and answer workers’ questions.Bensinger said the anti-union consultants and lawyers are still plenty effective, but often fall short. He noted that at one Buffalo Starbucks, 100% of the workers signed pro-union cards, but the union won there just 15 to 9. He said the solidarity and activism of the young workers was key to defeating the anti-union lawyers and consultants.“Young workers will only take so much,” he said. “A worker in Montana told me, ‘I’m making just $11 an hour and making Howard Schultz rich.’ Unions today are their big hope.”TopicsUS unionsAmazonStarbucksUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment

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      ‘The model is listening’: union’s win at Amazon hatched in a small apartment A suburban two-bedroom apartment was the HQ from which Amazon’s multimillion-dollar anti-union effort was defeatedThe living room of the small two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island – sometimes called New York City’s “forgotten borough” – is overflowing with office supplies, mail, red union stickers, and flyers with information about unions.It seems almost unbelievable that amid this chaos, and armed with just $120,000 that they raised on GoFundMe, its occupants, Amazon workers Brett Daniels and Connor Spence, helped successfully unionize workers at the nearby gargantuan 855,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse – the first of the company’s warehouses in the US to vote for a union.‘The revolution is here’: Chris Smalls’ union win sparks a movement at other Amazon warehousesRead more“This is a monstrous win for the working class,” said Daniels. “The Amazon Labor Union showed what seemed impossible is possible.”The apartment in a two-floor suburban house was the headquarters from which Amazon workers pulled off one of the biggest wins for US unions in decades. Beating Amazon’s multimillion-dollar efforts to stop them organizing involved tireless organizing, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and a lot of free homemade food. But most of all, said 29-year-old Julian Mitchell-Israel, an Amazon worker and one of the original organizers with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), they listened.“It’s not that we’ve established a new model of organizing here,” said Mitchell-Israel. “The model is listening and highlighting people’s stories, and when we build a platform, using it to lift up their stories, because that’s what’s been compelling for the workers, that’s what’s gotten people to vote yes.”Amazon Labor Union defied the odds without any affiliation to national labor unions and precious little support from the political class which has seen other efforts to organize at Amazon rebuffed.The surprise victory has been hailed as historic in the US media, and its organizers have been bombarded with interview requests from around the world. Elected officials and prominent figures have issued public declarations of support, including Joe Biden and several members of Congress, all attention that had been lacking leading up to the vote as most media outlets and elected officials, including ostensible supporters of labor unionizing efforts, ignored the ALU’s efforts.The union has also received inquiries from Amazon workers at warehouses and delivery stations around the US and internationally, requesting assistance and asserting interest in organizing unions at their own work sites. There are meetings scheduled with New York elected officials in Albany and with Sean O’Brien, president of the powerful Teamsters union, who has also pledged to unionize Amazon.For Mitchell-Israel the noise is distracting attention from how ALU achieved its victory. “There’s just so much talk about this union in a way that, I think, abstracts it and makes it into a phenomenon that it’s not. It’s just people and stories and love and necessity, and that’s what it comes down to,” he said. “You go and you listen and rather than telling them they should vote yes, telling them here’s how you organize, you just ask them the right questions, and people will come up with their own answers to it. People have different answers, and because they’re the workers, they’re the ones being affected, it’s going to be the right answer.”With more than 1 million employees in the US, Amazon is the country’s second largest private employer. The company has faced public scrutiny for years over workers reporting abhorrent working conditions, high injury rates, and immense productivity pressures, which have contributed to annual turnover rates of about 150%.On Staten Island the Covid-19 pandemic brought the clash between Amazon and its workers to a head. ALU founder Chris Smalls, then as assistant manager at Amazon, helped lead a walkout in March 2020 over lack of Covid-19 protections and was fired shortly after. Leaked memos showed Amazon executives denigrating Smalls as “not smart or articulate” in a meeting with the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and suggesting it would be a win for them if they made him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement”.“Welp there you go!” Smalls tweeted last week.@amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go! @JeffBezos @DavidZapolsky CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 @amazonlabor We worked had fun and made History ‼️✊🏾 #ALU # ALUfortheWin welcome the 1st union in America for Amazon 🔥🔥🔥🔥— Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) April 1, 2022
      “The workers that I organize with are like my family now,” Smalls told the Guardian. “To bring this victory to them is the best feeling in the world next to my kids’ birth.”Smalls’s story proved a powerful one on Staten Island. “When I do talk to workers, I tell them I was fired wrongfully because I tried to protect workers’ health and safety, and that can happen to you,” Smalls said after helping to form the group. “You can complain or submit a grievance, and they could just terminate you or target you to be terminated, or retaliate against you. And there’s no protection, so the only way we’re going to be protected is by forming that union.”The ALU’s fight is far from over. Organizers are currently bracing for the upcoming union election at the LDJ5 sorting center in Staten Island, which begins on 25 April, and cementing resources, such as finding office space, ahead of the fight to negotiate a first union contract with Amazon, which continues to vehemently oppose unions.The tech company may have lost this battle but it continues the fight. “We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees,” said Amazon in response to the union win. “We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and US Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election.”Shortly after the union victory, internal documents leaked to the Intercept revealed a planned internal messaging app for employees would block the use of words or phrases such as “union”, “pay raises”, “living wage” or “representation”.Amazon has a record of firing workers involved in organizing activities and automatically terminating workers for minor infractions, including Jason Anthony, a picker at JFK8 on Staten Island and a labor organizer and founding member of ALU.In the summer of 2020, Anthony was automatically fired from Amazon when his unpaid time off went in the red. He had run out of his prescription medications and transportation to the warehouse was limited due to Covid-19 restrictions and staffing issues with public transit.Anthony had to wait over a year to be able to get rehired, but currently has a case being investigated with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about Amazon’s alleged lack of accommodations for workers with mental disabilities. He is currently on short-term disability leave from a back injury sustained at Amazon during peak season in December 2021.He has known Chris Smalls from long before Smalls emerged as a celebrity in the US labor movement. “Chris was the best person you could work with. He cared about his employees from a human perspective, not just as a manager,” said Anthony, “When he got fired in 2020, I went to the building to support him and when I got fired several months later, I called him and asked him for his support, so since then, we developed a brotherhood that will never ever be broken. We could argue, have internal disagreements here and there, but at the end of the day we always come together.”Now the ALU will begin its negotiations with Amazon with the aim of improving working conditions, pay, breaks and their lives as workers. The union plans on building out these efforts in the US and abroad at Amazon.New York is a union town and replicating the Staten Island victory may prove difficult across the US. Another effort to organize in Alabama hangs in the balance with Amazon currently ahead in the votes. But Anthony is convinced change is coming. “This victory is only the beginning of a global revolution,” he said.TopicsAmazonThe ObserverUS unionsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracy

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracyLabor leaders view this year’s elections – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy Many union leaders used to pooh-pooh talk about saving democracy, according t0 Shane Larson, the Communications Workers of America’s director of government affairs. All that changed after the January 6 assault on the Capitol and after many Republicans pushed to overturn Biden’s victory in several states.The latest threat to democracy? A Trump-backed candidate willing to ‘find extra votes’Read more“Just a few years ago, some union leaders would complain, ‘Why are we focusing on these do-good democratic issues?’ They’d say we need to focus exclusively on labor rights and jobs, jobs, jobs,” Larson said. “Now no one is complaining about this at all. There’s a real recognition that the entire labor movement has to be involved in this effort, that we have to do something for our democracy or we can lose it.“January 6 was a real wake-up call,” Larson said. “Part of our effort is to hold accountable a number of insurrectionists running for some of these offices.” He mentioned the Arizona and Georgia secretary of state races in particular.With their ability to mobilize tens of thousands of union foot soldiers, unions are one of the nation’s most powerful political forces, and labor leaders view this year’s election – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy.Traditionally focusing on presidential and congressional races, unions this year plan to focus far more than usual on state and local races – for instance, to prevent the election of secretaries of state and election commissioners who have embraced Trump’s “big lie” and signaled they might overturn their state’s 2024 vote results if the Democratic presidential nominee is ahead.Unite Here, the hotel workers’ union, is known for being one of the nation’s most politically active unions, and this year it has expanded its political ambitions – not just to elect worker-friendly candidates, but to help preserve America’s embattled democracy.For this year’s elections, Unite Here intends to build on its performance in 2020 when it had 500 full-time canvassers going door to door in Arizona, helping Joe Biden win that state. It also had an army of union members canvassing in Philadelphia, helping deliver Pennsylvania to Biden. That 300,000-member union later sent 200 canvassers to Georgia to help Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win, giving Democrats control of the Senate.Unite Here has broadened its effort this year, with a stepped-up focus on protecting voting rights – and democracy itself. It is already educating voters in Arizona and Georgia about how to navigate around newly enacted voter restrictions. Like many other unions, it hopes to provide a flock of poll watchers to help ensure that voters, especially voters of color, are not intimidated by the promised army of Trumpist poll watchers. To help Democrats retain control of the Senate, Unite Here plans to deploy hundreds of canvassers to help Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and other Democratic senators win re-election.“Our goal is to get back to what we had in 2020, a steady ramp-up to have 500 people moving around, going door to door, reigniting people to vote,” said Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s secretary-treasurer. “The work of democracy is labor-intensive, is people-intensive.”Union leaders see two parallel strategies to preserve American democracy – one is to battle against efforts that roll back voting rights, reduce the political voice of minorities and enable hyper-partisans to skew, even overturn vote counts. The other strategy is to ensure that Democrats win key battleground states, especially longtime union strongholds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“There is no way that Donald Trump or the next Donald Trump or any anti-worker candidate can win the White House without winning those states,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation.Rosenthal said that if union households accounted for 25% to 30% of the vote in those states, as they did a quarter-century ago, instead of 15% 20% as they do now, Trump could not have won those states in 2016, nor win them in 2024. Rosenthal has founded a group, In Union, that is reaching out to hundreds of thousands of former union members in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – they perhaps lost their jobs and union membership when their factories closed. In Union seeks to explain to these voters which candidates are pro-worker and which aren’t. Thus far In Union has communicated with 1.2 million voters in those three states (including many non-union members who support unions) — and hopes to get funding to reach out to another 3 million.Backed by unions and foundations, In Union seeks to build trust with those voters and explain, for instance, how Joe Biden would do more for blue-collar workers than Trump would. “What these voters are yearning for is a place they can go to to get information they trust,” Rosenthal said. “There’s a huge role for unions to play in this right now.”Many labor leaders say Democratic lawmakers have hurt their party’s cause by doing little in recent decades to stop union membership from declining – a trend Joe Biden seems eager to reverse and many Republicans seem eager to accelerate. Unions often help Democrats by explaining to workers which party will do more for them. Unions have also helped prevent workers from growing resentful and embracing rightwing populists like Trump by helping assure economic gains for workers and by reducing racial resentment among white workers.“Unions remain the only set of organizations in the US that can help prevent working-class whites from going conservative,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University.Paul Spink, the head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Wisconsin, said one way to help save democracy would be to re-elect Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor. Spink said Republicans have so gerrymandered Wisconsin’s legislature that they are close to having a veto-proof supermajority even though Republicans often win less than 50% of the statewide vote.“In recent months, there’ve been at least five or six bills the legislature passed to limit voting rights and undermine elections,” Spink said. “We’re trying very hard to keep a Democratic governor in this state to block those.”Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, says her union fights to protect democracy in many ways, for example, by opposing book bans and defending teachers who face punishment for teaching about racism.“In many countries, labor unions have been a bulwark against authoritarianism,” Weingarten said.She said her union might endorse some non-Trumpist Republicans like Lynn Cheney, who oppose the “big lie” and undermining fair elections. That way, in places where Democrats have scant chance of winning, her union might help elect Republicans who oppose many Republicans’ increasing embrace of authoritarianism.Labor’s pro-democracy efforts have taken many forms. The Service Employees International Union ran internet ads that criticized Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and Home Depot for donating to GOP lawmakers who backed new voting restrictions. Unite Here co-sponsored a “freedom ride” of buses to Washington to urge senators to enact new voting rights legislation.“I feel that work for democracy should be year-round,” said Unite Here’s Mills. “We try to keep a drum beat year in and year out: do democracy at work, do democracy at the doors, do democracy at the polls, do democracy in the capital.”Unite Here trains hotel workers to become leaders, with one winning a seat on the Phoenix city council. It pushed lawmakers to slam the Cyber Ninjas’ much-derided election review in Arizona. United Here says its canvassers knocked on 1m doors in Arizona in 2020 and talked with 125,000 infrequent voters, many of whom voted for Biden. It boasts that that helped assure Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state.“I want other unions to have more people canvassing in these races, to do it in every state,” said Susan Minato, co-president of Unite Here Local 11 in Arizona and southern California. “That would be huge.”TopicsUS unionsUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Teamsters president vows to pressure Amazon after New York votes for union

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      Teamsters president vows to pressure Amazon after New York votes for unionSean O’Brien says it’s vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has ‘total disrespect’ for its workers The Teamsters’ new president has pledged his powerful union will step up the pressure on Amazon and mount its own efforts to unionize the company after workers in New York voted to form the company’s first US union.In an interview with the Guardian Sean O’Brien said it was vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has “total disrespect” for its workers and was putting downward pressure on standards for unionized warehouse workers and truck drivers across the US.“You have an employer like Jeff Bezos taking a joyride into space, and he bangs on his workers to be able to fund his trip,” said O’Brien, who was inaugurated as Teamsters president on 22 March. He asserted that Amazon workers would benefit greatly from joining the Teamsters, saying that Amazon’s drivers and warehouse workers are treated and paid considerably worse than their unionized counterparts at other companies.“They’re awful, they’re disrespectful the way they treat their employees,” O’Brien said of Amazon.On Friday, a final vote count showed that Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize, 2,654 for a union, 2,131 against. Another vote to organize workers in Alabama hangs in the balance. Amazon beat off the union drive by 118 votes but the final tally is awaiting a review of 416 challenged ballots.O’Brien said he applauds any organization that seeks to take on Amazon: “I commend anybody who tries to take on a schoolyard bully like Amazon.”The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, while a new, independent union, the Amazon Labor Union, was behind the organizing at two Amazon facilities on Staten Island.O’Brien said that no union is better positioned than the Teamsters to organize Amazon because his 1.3-million-member union has decades of experience in unionizing and winning good contracts for warehouse workers and truck drivers. “This is the only union that has the proven track record of organizing workers in these industries,” O’Brien said.He said the Teamsters needed to organize Amazon as an obligation to “our members” and “our largest employers”, most notably United Parcel Service and DHL. Concerned that Amazon’s lower pay is undercutting Teamster employers and Teamster contracts, O’Brien said he didn’t want Amazon to threaten the livelihood of Teamsters or “diminish the standards established by collective bargaining agreements”.“We have to organize Amazon,” he said. “We have to have a plan in place. We have to execute that plan and not be scared to change that plan if it doesn’t work at times. Even a world champion team doesn’t win all the time. Hopefully we will have a favorable win-to-loss ratio.”Before winning a five-year term as Teamsters’ president, O’Brien headed a large Teamsters local in the Boston area for 15 years. He succeeded James P Hoffa, who stepped down after 23 years as Teamsters president.“We the Teamsters have the best resources out there, not just financially” to unionize Amazon, O’Brien said. “We have the ability to utilize our members who work in the industry, who know the benefits of working under a collective bargaining agreement and having dignity and respect in the workplace.“We have a lot of work to do,” he continued. “We have a plan to focus on the big metro cities,” where he said the likelihood of winning unionization elections would be greatest. He said that the Teamsters would mount “non-traditional campaigns” that include up lining politicians’ support and extensive community support behind unionization. He stressed the importance of worker-to-worker organizing: “We need to utilize our best organizers: our worker members who work in these industries.”Amazon officials say their company’s pay levels are competitive – $18 for a full-time entry-level worker in Staten Island and nearly $16 in Alabama. The company notes that its benefits, including health coverage, begin for full-time workers the day they join the company.Amazon officials have repeatedly said they are committed to maintaining an environment where its employees can thrive and feel appreciated and respected.News of the Staten Island victory comes as union activity is experiencing a resurgence in the US. Joe Biden has positioned himself as the most pro-union president in generations.“The Biden administration has done a great job for unions right out of the gate,” O’Brien said. “An administration that’s not afraid to endorse unions is great.” He praised, in particular, a 2021 law that Biden backed that helped secure the pensions of millions of union members and retirees, including many Teamsters whose pension plans were seriously underfunded.O’Brien said the Teamsters and other unions need to do a far better job explaining to Americans how unions lift workers and the nation as a whole. He said many Americans view the Teamsters favorably despite the movie The Irishman about scandals inside the Teamsters a half-century ago. “During the worst pandemic we’ll ever face people saw that we delivered packages, did trash pick-ups, did food and grocery deliveries,” O’Brien said. “We’ve proven our worth providing goods and services to keep this country moving.”He talked at length about the importance of holding politicians accountable, especially when they fail to back workers and unions. “I can’t remember people’s birthdays. But I can remember the last person that screwed me. That’s how we’re going to deal with those politicians who vote against us. We’ll run people against you. We’ll campaign against you.”TopicsAmazonUS unionsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Unions benefit all of us’: new Biden plan encourages federal workers to unionize

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      ‘Unions benefit all of us’: new Biden plan encourages federal workers to unionizeTaskforce sets recommendations ‘to promote my policy of support for worker power, worker organizing and collective bargaining’ The Biden administration set out 70 recommendations to encourage union membership in the US on Monday, including making it easier for many federal employees to join unions and eliminating barriers for union organizers to talk with workers on federal property.The report, compiled by the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, reiterates Biden’s robust backing of unions. “At its core,” the report says, “it is our administration’s belief that unions benefit all of us.”Traffic, tickets, gas: rideshare and delivery app workers fight to unionizeRead moreIt adds: “Researchers have found that today’s union households earn up to 20% more than non-union households, with an even greater union advantage for workers with less formal education and workers of color.”The report comes amid a surge in interest in unions in the US and follows a wave of high-profile industrial actions last year.The taskforce, which includes 13 members of Biden’s cabinet and is chaired by Vice-President Kamala Harris, calls for stepping up enforcement to ensure that money going to federal contractors – whether manufacturers, food-processing companies or other contractors – is not spent on anti-union campaigns.The taskforce calls for requiring disclosure of any instances when federal contractors use anti-union consultants or lawyers to persuade employees working on a federal contract not to unionize.While corporations typically prohibit union organizers from setting foot on company property – as Amazon has done recently in Alabama – the taskforce recommends removing many barriers that block union organizers from being able to talk with employees on federal property about the benefits of unionizing. This applies not just to federal employees, but also to employees of private contractors on federal property, such as a grocery store on a military base or in a national park.Biden said the taskforce’s charge was to identify executive branch policies, practices and programs that could be used “to promote my administration’s policy of support for worker power, worker organizing, and collective bargaining”.The taskforce said the range of policies and programs “that can be leveraged is significant”.Its recommendations include making the federal government a model employer in terms of shaping jobs, ensuring that federal employees know their labor rights, and improving labor-management communications. The federal government is the nation’s largest employer, with more than 2.1 million non-postal employees. Of those, 1.2 million are represented by unions, but only 33% of those workers pay union dues – that small percentage limits the power of federal employee unions.Noting that screeners for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are largely excluded from having the collective bargaining rights available to other non-military federal employees, the taskforce instructed the Department of Homeland Security to issue expanded bargaining rights for TSA’s screening workforce.The report is likely to strengthen the notion that Biden is the most pro-union president since Franklin Roosevelt – and perhaps the most pro-union president in US history. That might help Biden when he seeks to persuade and mobilize union members to vote for Democrats this November. At the same time, the report’s pro-union tone and substance might result in more opposition from business.In its first sentence, the report says: “The Biden-Harris administration believes that increasing worker organizing and empowerment is critical to growing the middle class, building an economy that puts workers first, and strengthening our democracy.” The report catalogues several executive orders and other pro-union steps by the president and his administration.It reads: “Unions have fought for and helped win many aspects of our work lives many of us take for granted today, like the 40-hour work week and the weekend, as well as landmark programs like Medicare.”The report adds that research has shown that increased economic inequality, growing pay gaps for women and workers of color, and the declining voice of working-class Americans in the nation’s politics “are all caused, in part, by the declining percentage of workers represented by unions”.The taskforce calls on the Department of Labor – whose secretary, Martin Walsh, is the taskforce’s vice-chair – to become a resource center that provides materials on the advantages of union representation and collective bargaining.TopicsUS unionsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Fed is about to raise interest rates and shaft American workers – again | Robert Reich

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      The Fed is about to raise interest rates and shaft American workers – againRobert ReichPolicymakers fear a labor shortage is pushing up wages and prices. Wrong. Real wages are down and workers are struggling The January jobs report from the US labor department is heightening fears that a so-called “tight” labor market is fueling inflation, and therefore the Fed must put on the brakes by raising interest rates.This line of reasoning is totally wrong.Trump and his enablers unwittingly offer Democrats the best hope in the midterms | Robert ReichRead moreAmong the biggest job gains in January were workers who are normally temporary and paid low wages: leisure and hospitality, retail, transport and warehousing. In January, employers cut fewer of these workers than in most years because of rising customer demand combined with Omicron’s negative effect on the supply of workers. Due to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “seasonal adjustment”, cutting fewer workers than usual for this time of year appears as “adding lots of jobs”.Fed policymakers are poised to raise interest rates at their March meeting and then continue raising them, in order to slow the economy. They fear that a labor shortage is pushing up wages, which in turn are pushing up prices – and that this wage-price spiral could get out of control.It’s a huge mistake. Higher interest rates will harm millions of workers who will be involuntarily drafted into the inflation fight by losing jobs or long-overdue pay raises. There’s no “labor shortage” pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good jobs paying adequate wages to support working families. Raising interest rates will worsen this shortage.There’s no “wage-price spiral” either, even though Fed chief Jerome Powell has expressed concern about wage hikes pushing up prices. To the contrary, workers’ real wages have dropped because of inflation. Even though overall wages have climbed, they’ve failed to keep up with price increases – making most workers worse off in terms of the purchasing power of their dollars.Wage-price spirals used to be a problem. Remember when John F Kennedy “jawboned” steel executives and the United Steel Workers to keep a lid on wages and prices? But such spirals are no longer a problem. That’s because the typical worker today has little or no bargaining power.Only 6% of private-sector workers are unionized. A half-century ago, more than a third were. Today, corporations can increase output by outsourcing just about anything anywhere because capital is global. A half-century ago, corporations needing more output had to bargain with their own workers to get it.These changes have shifted power from labor to capital – increasing the share of the economic pie going to profits and shrinking the share going to wages. This power shift ended wage-price spirals.Slowing the economy won’t remedy either of the two real causes of today’s inflation – continuing worldwide bottlenecks in the supply of goods and the ease with which big corporations (with record profits) pass these costs to customers in higher prices.Supply bottlenecks are all around us. Just take a look at all the ships with billions of dollars of cargo idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, through which 40% of all US seaborne imports flow.Big corporations have no incentive to absorb the rising costs of such supplies – even with profit margins at their highest level in 70 years. They have enough market power to pass these costs on to consumers, sometimes using inflation to justify even bigger price hikes.“A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” the chief executive of Kroger said last June.“What we are very good at is pricing,” the chief executive of Colgate-Palmolive said in October.In fact, the Fed’s plan to slow the economy is the opposite of what’s needed now or in the foreseeable future. Covid is still with us. Even in its wake, we’ll be dealing with its damaging consequences for years: everything from long-term Covid to school children months or years behind.Friday’s jobs report shows that the economy is still 2.9m jobs below what it had in February 2020. Given the growth of the US population, it’s 4.5m short of what it would have by now had there been no pandemic.Consumers are almost tapped out. Not only are real (inflation-adjusted) incomes down but pandemic assistance has ended. Extra jobless benefits are gone. Child tax credits have expired. Rent moratoriums are over. Small wonder consumer spending fell 0.6% in December, the first decrease since last February.Many people are understandably gloomy about the future. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey plummeted in January to its lowest level since late 2011, back when the economy was trying to recover from the global financial crisis. The Conference Board’s index of confidence also dropped in January.Given all this, the last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further. The problem most people face isn’t inflation. It’s a lack of good jobs.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsFederal ReserveOpinionUS economyEconomicsUS unemployment and employment dataUS unionsUS domestic policyUS politicscommentReuse this content More