US unions

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden rallies with union workers in Philadelphia: ‘You built America’

      by

      At his first political rally since announcing his re-election campaign for president in April, Joe Biden told a crowd of labor union supporters: “Wall Street didn’t build America – you did.”“If the investment bankers of this country went on strike tomorrow, no one would notice,” Biden said on Saturday during a speech which alluded to his blue-collar childhood roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Renewing his longstanding vocal support for labor unions, he continued: “If this room didn’t show up to work tomorrow, the whole country would come to a grinding halt, so tell me – who matters more in America?”Saturday’s rally was hosted by the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 labor unions representing 12.5 million workers in the US, which has endorsed Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, for re-election in 2024.Other unions that have endorsed Biden ahead of his rally included the American Federation of Teachers as well as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.“President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris are the most pro-labor, pro-public education leaders our country has seen in modern history,” the teachers federation president, Randi Weingarten, said.She added: “Joe and Kamala understand in their souls the challenges families face, and how important it is to their dignity to earn a decent living and have a shot at owning a home, or securing a retirement, or affording college. They know union membership can be transformative.”Lee Saunders, the state, county and municipal employees federation president, echoed similar sentiments, saying: “Joe Biden is the most pro-worker president of our lifetime. He respects and protects working people – especially front-line public service workers – and the essential work they do.”Saunders added, “Joe doesn’t just thank us for keeping our communities running; he prioritizes our issues and defends our freedoms – the freedom to organize, to earn a living wage, to build thriving communities and to have a seat at the table. And he will help us solve the staffing crisis that is pushing millions of public service workers to their breaking point.”Biden began the rally by mentioning that his wife, Jill Biden, belongs to the National Education Association union and that she is from the Philadelphia-area community of Hammonton, New Jersey.“There are a lot of politicians in this country who can’t say the word ‘union’,” Biden said. But on Saturday he declared himself the most pro-union president in history.Biden cited the jobs recovery under his administration and affirmed an end to trickle-down economics during his presidency.“All it had done was hollow out the middle class, blow up the deficit, ship jobs overseas, strip the dignity and pride and hope out of community one after another all across America has factories shut down,” Biden asserted.He continued by outlining his efforts to oppose Republican legislative policies such as social security cuts and what he called unfair tax codes and loopholes utilized by the largest corporation and the wealthy, including tax rates for billionaires that are low when compared to those levied on other workers.“Just pay your fair share man,” Biden quipped. “It’s about time the super wealthy start paying their fair share.”He concluded his appearance at the rally by enlisting the support of union members in his re-election campaign to fight against Republican efforts to reinstate tax cuts for the wealthy.“They’re coming for your jobs – they’re coming for your future,” he warned. “It’s time for everyone, no matter how rich or powerful they are, to start paying their fair share, you’ve carried this country on your back long enough, it’s time for millionaires and billionaires and big corporations to pay their fair share. I can get that done, but I need you badly.”Biden’s address Saturday echoed September 2021 remarks in which he said: “I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”During his victorious 2020 presidential run, he had also said: “I’m a union man. Period.”In February, the Biden administration announced a new plan to encourage further union membership across the country. The plan includes 70 recommendations that would make it easier for federal employees to join unions and remove barriers for union organizers to talk with workers on federal property.Biden’s itinerary on Saturday included taking an aerial tour of the interstate 95 bridge collapse during the previous weekend in Philadelphia, according to reports. An elevated section of the bridge collapsed on 11 June after a vehicle caught on fire, prompting transportation officials to warn of extensive delays and street closures. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Americans want to join unions. The supreme court doesn’t like that | Moira Donegan

      by

      Their contract had expired, so the local teamsters, drivers of concrete-mixing barrel trucks for a firm called Glacier Northwest, in Washington state, decided to walk off the job. Like all strikes, the point of the work stoppage was to inflict financial consequences on a recalcitrant management side: to show the bosses that their employees were united in shared interest and mutual protection and that it would cost them less money to negotiate in good faith and agree to the workers’ demands than to continue to fight the union for less favorable, more exploitative conditions. When the teamsters began their strike, 16 of the barrel mixing trucks were full. They drove them back to the Glacier Northwest lot and left them there.But if you don’t mix concrete, it hardens, and becomes useless. If this happens in a barrel truck, sometimes that can cause damage to the truck, too. When Glacier Northwest realized that their teamster employees had gone on strike, non-union workers were able to remove the concrete over the course of five hours, averting damage to the trucks. But they lost the use of all the concrete that had been mixed in those 16 barrel trucks that day.This injury – the loss of 16 trucks’ worth of concrete to a regional construction supplier in the north-west – is the pretext that the US supreme court used this week to weaken the National Labor Relations Board and deal a blow to the right to strike.In the case, Glacier Northwest v International Brotherhood of Teamsters, eight of the court’s nine justices found that management could sue the union for the damage caused to their property during the strike. Only Justice Jackson dissented. In addition to encouraging companies to sue their workers over strikes and ensuring that unions will pre-emptively avoid strikes or adopt less effective tactics to protect themselves from liability, the ruling also opens a wide new avenue for union-busting litigators to evade the authority of the National Labor Relations Board – the federal body that was created by Congress specifically to handle such conflicts and enforce workers’ rights.The decision, then, furthers two of the supreme court’s major long-term projects: the erosion of labor protections, and the weakening of administrative agencies, whose expertise the court routinely ignores and whose authority the justices seem determined to usurp for themselves.It might risk reinforcing the dramatically low standards for the supreme court’s behavior to note that the majority opinion, authored by Amy Coney Barrett, did not represent the worst of all possible outcomes. Barrett included some limiting language in her writing that preserves the possibility of binding NLRB oversight in these lawsuits. She clarified that unions do have some right to time their strikes in order to maximize financial damage to management – a move that would protect, say, the right of Amazon workers to initiate work stoppages during the holiday shipping rush, as they did last year. The gestures toward a continued right to strike appear designed to secure the votes of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the majority, and to dilute the power of Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, who wanted to gut NLRB authority over strike-related litigation entirely.But it is important to consider Glacier Northwest in context: in recent years, the court has made it easier for companies to bar their employees from bringing class-action lawsuits, made it harder for public-sector unions to collect dues and struck down a California law that allowed unions to recruit agricultural workers on farms. The new ruling, which finds that strikes are often illegal when they lead to damage to employers’ property, only furthers their long project of making it harder for workers to join a union, easier for employers to break one up, and more legally risky for workers to take the kinds of action that can actually elicit concessions from the boss.It will get worse. If they get their way – a less procedurally complicated case, a more amenable vote from Roberts, Barrett or Kavanaugh – the court’s most extreme conservatives will shape a bleak future for American labor. Their aim is to all but eliminate rights to organize and strike that are enjoyed by people in the most important, foundational and meaningful part of their public lives: the workplace.“Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master,” Jackson wrote in her dissent. But that is the labor settlement that at least three members of the extremist conservative wing hope to enact. There is only one direction that this court’s labor jurisprudence is going.The ruling comes at a moment when the American labor movement, long dormant and defeated, is experiencing something like a small resurgence, however timid and sporadic. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of unionized workers grew last year in both the public and private sectors, with the biggest increases in sectors like transportation and warehousing, arts and entertainment and durable goods manufacturing.This growth has been accompanied by highly visible, media-savvy worker organizing drives among journalists, fast-food workers and graduate student instructors, and comes on the heels of high-profile strikes by groups ranging from Oakland teachers to Hollywood writers. Since 2021, this union resurgence has been aided in no small part by the Biden NLRB, which has been unusually hospitable to labor’s claims, even for a Democratic administration.More and more workers are saying that they want to be a part of a union – and more and more of them are finding ways around the many and onerous obstacles designed to prevent them from forming one. Given the growing power of American unions, maybe the anti-worker court is right to be scared.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Bernie Sanders unveils plan for $17-an-hour US minimum wage

      by

      Bernie Sanders on Thursday announced a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour, saying the potent inflation Americans have faced over the past two years makes it necessary for the government to institute higher wages for workers.Sanders intends to next month formally introduce legislation raising the minimum wage over a five-year period to a level $2 higher than the $15 an hour Joe Biden and many Democrats have pushed for in recent years. But there is no sign of Republicans wavering in their opposition to the proposal.“As a result of inflation, $15 an hour back in 2021 would be over $17 an hour today,” said Sanders, an independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats. “In the year 2023, in the richest country in the history of the world, nobody should be forced to work for starvation wages. That’s not a radical idea. If you work 40-50 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty. It is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”Congress has not approved a minimum wage increase since raising the level to $7.25 an hour in 2009, where it remains for workers in 20 states. Voters in several states and cities across the country have approved raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, but progress on a national increase has remained elusive.In 2021, Democrats attempted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of a large spending bill intended to help the US economy recover from the Covid pandemic, but the effort failed, in part due to the defections of eight Democratic lawmakers.Biden later that year signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, which affected as many as 390,000 workers, but the president has not said if he supports the increase to $17 an hour. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.In the two years since, Americans have faced the highest inflation since the 1980s, with consumer price increases hitting an annualized peak of more than 9% in June 2022, though they have moderated in recent months. While workers’ wages also increased over that period in part because of a tight labor market, the pace has not kept up with inflation.“As a home healthcare worker, I make just $12 an hour. I worked in fast food for over 30 years and I never, never made $15 an hour. And now $15 isn’t even enough for what we’re going through today,” said Cookie Bradley, a founding member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, who joined Sanders in the announcement.Although Sanders was supported by the heads of major labor groups the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), he said little about how he planned to overcome objections both from Republicans and reluctant Democrats.He said: “This is a popular issue. I don’t think there’s a state in the country where people do not believe we should raise the minimum wage. I would hope that every member of Congress understands that and there will be political consequences if they don’t.”Republicans, who took control of the House of Representatives this year, have shown at best lukewarm enthusiasm for a minimum wage rise, and have instead focused on trying to convince Americans that Biden is to blame for the rapid inflation. In 2021, Republican senators introduce two proposals, one that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, and another that would give a tax credit for workers who make less than $16.50 an hour. Neither went far in the Senate, which Democrats currently control.The SEIU president, Mary Kay Henry, said her millions of members would be keeping an eye on which lawmakers support Sanders’s proposal.“We are going to be watching any congressperson, senator or in the House, that dares to say that they are not going to vote yes for Senator Sanders’ bill, because they need to be held accountable at the ballot box,” Henry said. More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      US workers deserve a break. It’s time for a 32-hour working week | Bernie Sanders

      by

      In 1938, as a result of a massive grassroots effort by the trade union movement, the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted by Congress to reduce the work week to 40 hours. Back then, the American people were sick and tired of working 80, 90, 100 hours a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They demanded change and they won a huge victory. That’s the good news.The bad news is that despite an explosion in technology, major increases in worker productivity, and transformational changes in the workplace and American society, the Fair Labor Standards Act has not been reformed in 80 years. The result: millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, with the average worker making nearly $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Further, family life is suffering, as parents don’t have adequate time for their kids, life expectancy for working people is in decline, and increased stress is a major factor in the mental health crisis we are now experiencing.Compared with other countries, our workplace record is not good. In 2021, American employees worked 184 more hours than Japanese workers, 294 more hours than British workers, and 442 more hours than German workers. Unbelievably, in 2023 there are millions of Americans who work at jobs with no vacation time.It’s time to reduce the work week to 32 hours with no loss in pay. It’s time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It’s time to make sure that working people benefit from rapidly increasing technology, not just large corporations that are already doing phenomenally well.Think about all of the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past several decades. When I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, there were no computers in city hall. There were no chatboxes, no printers, no emails, no calculators, no cellphones, no conference calling or Zoom.In factories and warehouses, robots and sophisticated machinery did not exist or were only used in primitive forms.In grocery stores and shops of all kinds, there were no checkout counters that utilized bar codes.As a result of the extraordinary technological transformation that we have seen in recent years, American workers are now 480% more productive than they were in the 1940s.In addition, there are far more workers today. In the 1940s, less than 65% of Americans between 25 and 54 were in the workforce. Today, with most families requiring two breadwinners to pay the bills, that number is over 83%.Yet despite all of these incredible gains in productivity, over 40% of US employees now work more than 45 hours per week; 12% work more than 60 hours a week; and the average worker now works 43 hours per week. Many are on their computers or answering emails seven days a week.Moving to a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32. The work week in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours.Recently, the United Kingdom conducted a four-day pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies. Not surprisingly, it showed that happy workers were more productive. The pilot was so successful that 92% of the companies that participated decided to maintain a four-day week, because of the benefits to both employers and employees.Another pilot of nearly 1,000 workers at 33 companies in seven countries found that revenue increased by more than 37% in the companies that participated and 97% of workers were happy with the four-day workweek.Studies have shown that despite working fewer hours, workers are either more, or just as, productive during a four-day work week. One study found that worker productivity increased 55% after companies implemented a four-day week. A trial of four-day work weeks for public-sector workers in Iceland found that productivity remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces. In 2019, Microsoft tested a four-day work week in Japan and reported a 40% increase in productivity.In addition, 57% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week have indicated that they are less likely to quit their jobs.Moreover, at a time when so many of our people are struggling with their mental health, 71% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week report feeling less burnout, 39% reported feeling less stress and 46% reported feeling less fatigued.As much as technology and worker productivity has exploded in recent years, there is no debate that new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics will only accelerate the transformation of our economy. That transformation should benefit all, not just the few. It should create more time for friends and family, more time for rest and relaxation, more time for all of us to develop our human potential.Eighty-three years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a 40-hour work week into law, it’s time for us to move to a 32-hour work week at no loss of pay. More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Many of us are struggling’: why US universities are facing a wave of strikes

      by

      Thousands of workers at universities have gone on strike in 2023 amid new union contract negotiations in demand of pay increases that align with the effect high inflation rates have had on the cost of living.The strikes are a continuation of wave of industrial action in higher education in the US last year. In late 2022, 48,000 graduate workers and post-doctoral researchers went on strike throughout the University of California system, the largest strike in US higher education history. There were 15 academic strikes in the US in 2022, the highest number of strikes in academia in at least 20 years.This uptick in strikes coincides with a surge in union organizing at US academic institutions. Since early 2022, graduate and undergraduate workers at 20 private academic institutions, representing over 25,000 workers, have won union elections filed with the National Labor Relations Board.This strike surge has continued into 2023. Around 700 graduate workers at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, went on strike on 31 January before reaching a new union contract agreement in March 2023. And 1,500 faculty members at University of Illinois Chicago went on strike in January 2023, winning a new contract after several days on strike.Over 9,000 faculty staff, adjunct lecturers, and graduate workers represented by Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union and AAUP-BHSNJ went on strike at three campuses of Rutgers University in New Jersey starting on 10 April. The unions reached an agreement to end the strike on 15 April, which was the first strike in the school’s 257-year history as union contract negotiations stalled after 10 months of bargaining without a contract.The unions criticized Rutgers’ role in soaring rent costs in the area given the university is the largest landlord in the New Brunswick, New Jersey, area. The university system has also been criticized for poor investments of endowment funds and overspending on sports programs.“At the core of our fight is privileging just contracts for the most vulnerable workers and for us, this contract fight is the graduate students and the adjunct track, they are the lowest paid,” said Donna Murch, an associate professor of history and New Brunswick chapter president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.Murch estimated around 70% of the university had shut down due to the strike. She cited the strike and picket protests have received an outpouring of support from the community, students and local unions.“We’re committed to a vision of intersectional organizing, where we figure out how to bring together a broad spectrum of people that how to organize, come together to fight for a broad spectrum of the workforce,” added Murch.The Rutgers University administration threatened to take legal action in response to the strike through a court injunction over claims the strike was illegal but has held off on the action as the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, has intervened and encouraged both sides to reach an agreement at the bargaining table. The president of Rutgers, Jonathan Holloway, called the strike “deeply disappointing”.An open letter from hundreds of scholars around the US was written in response to Holloway’s threat of an injunction to halt the strike and asking him to reconsider his support of David Cohen as the university’s lead negotiator, who has a poor relationship with labor unions following his tenure as former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s head of labor relations.On 11 April, about 280 faculty and staff at Governors State University in Illinois went on strike, joining around 100 faculty at Chicago State University and 300 faculty at Eastern Illinois University who began striking earlier this month in demand for fair pay increases.The University of Michigan recently lost an attempt to obtain a court injunction against 2,300 graduate workers who began striking on 29 March, after a judge denied the request to issue an injunction to halt the strike.“We feel this a really precedent setting decision because public sector workers don’t have the right to strike in the state of Michigan, it’s illegal here, but the judge said injunctive relief is not appropriate and we hope it will strengthen the resolve for other workers and make them more willing to go on strike,” said Amir Fleischmann, contract committee chair for Graduate Employees’ Organization 3550, which represents graduate workers at the University of Michigan.The workers are pushing for wage increases to $38,000 a year for graduate workers, additional support services for international students, parents, and students with disabilities, and stronger sexual harassment protections.“Many of us are struggling,” added Fleischmann. “We are on strike for a better university. This is a public institution that is supposed to serve the public. We’re putting forward a vision of this university where no matter your economic class, no matter your social identity, you will come here and thrive as a graduate student.” More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      American children are working hazardous jobs – and it's about to get worse | Robert Reich

      by

      When I was secretary of labor 30 years ago, one major goal was to crack down on companies that employed children, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. I remember being horrified to discover that even in the early 1990s, children who should have been in school were working, often in dangerous jobs.We made progress. Child labor declined in the United States. But it was a hard slog. By law, the highest fines I could levy against companies that put children to work were relatively small. Some firms treated them as costs of business.Other businesses dragged their feet. The US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbying groups argued that almost any minimum standard of decency at work – whether barring child labor, setting a minimum wage, or requiring employers to install safety equipment – was an intrusion on the so-called “free market” and therefore a “job killer”.My argument was that the nation’s goal was not just more jobs; it was more good jobs, safe jobs, jobs that allowed kids to go to school, jobs that upheld minimum standards of decency.In the years since then, I’ve assumed that progress was continuing on eliminating child labor in America. Sadly, I was wrong.Serious child labor violations are once again on the rise, including in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs. Children are working with chemicals and dangerous equipment. They are also working night shifts.In just the last year, the number of children employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.You might think that in the face of this mounting problem, lawmakers around the country would rush to protect these children.You’d be wrong. In fact, state legislatures are rushing in the opposite direction, seeking to weaken child labor protections.This month, after young children were found working at a factory owned by Arkansas’s second-largest private employer, Tyson Foods, the Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed legislation making it easier for companies to employ children – eliminating a requirement that children under 16 get a state work permit before being employed.In the past two years, 10 states have introduced or passed legislation expanding work hours for children, lifting restrictions on hazardous occupations for children, allowing children to work in locations that serve alcohol, and lowering the state minimum wage for minors.Already in 2023, bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites.Across the country, we’re seeing a coordinated effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations to protect children from abuse – regulations that had been in place for decades.Why is this going on now? Four reasons.Since the surge in post-pandemic consumer demand, employers have been having difficulty finding the workers they need at the wages employers are willing to pay. Rather than pay more, employers are exploiting children. And state lawmakers who are dependent on those employers (such as Tyson) for campaign donations have been willing to let them.A second reason is that the children who are being exploited are considered to be “them” rather than “us” – disproportionately poor, Black, Hispanic and immigrant. So the moral shame of subjecting “our” children to inhumane working conditions when they ought to be in school is quietly avoided, while lawmakers and voters look the other way.Third, some of these children (or their parents) are undocumented. They dare not speak out. They need the money. This makes them vulnerable and easily exploited.Finally, we are witnessing across America a resurgence of cruel capitalism – a form of social Darwinism – in which business lobbyists and lawmakers justify their actions by arguing that they are not exploiting the weak and vulnerable, but rather providing jobs for those who need them and would otherwise go hungry or homeless.Conveniently, these same business lobbyists and lawmakers are among the first to claim we “can’t afford” stronger safety nets that would provide these children with safe housing and adequate nutrition.Yet when it comes to handouts from the government in the form of tax loopholes, subsidies and bailouts, these same business lobbyists and lawmakers claim that the nation can easily afford them and that businesses need and deserve them.Obviously, the Department of Labor needs more inspectors and authority to levy higher fines. But that’s not all that’s needed.America seems to be lurching backward to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when workers – including young children – were treated like cow dung and robber barons ruled the roost. The public must demand that child labor once again be relegated to the dustbin of history. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Half a million kids out of class as LA school workers strike for better pay

      by

      Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles unified school district, accompanied by teachers, walked off the job on Tuesday over stalled contract talks for higher pay and better working conditions, shutting down the nation’s second-largest school system.The strike, which is expected to last three days, upended the lives of more than 500,000 students and their families from schools in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers demanded more support at a time when educators in the city and elsewhere are struggling to afford to live where they work.The latest strike comes years after a swirl of educator activism swept across the country, from Oklahoma to Chicago to Los Angeles itself, as teachers take more aggressive labor action to compel districts to improve working conditions during contract negotiations. In 2019, tens of thousands of teachers walked out of Los Angeles schools for six days and demanded higher wages, smaller class sizes, and more support staff.This time, the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 30,000 teachers’ aides, special education assistants, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff, led districtwide demonstrations. Support workers, who earn, on average, $25,000 a year, with many living in poverty and working limited hours, have demanded a 30% pay raise and more staffing.In what Los Angeles schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho called a “historic” offer, the district has proposed a pay increase of more than 20% over multiple years, with a 3% bonus and “massive expansion of healthcare benefits”, he said on Fox 11.Despite last-minute efforts to avert the strike, talks failed. The district’s support workers, who bring students to and from school, clean schools and feed students every day, have been working without a contract since June 2020.The strike started on Tuesday morning from a bus yard, with workers chanting for better wages and increased staffing in a steady rain before dawn. Some held signs that read: “We keep schools safe, Respect Us!”The district has more than 500,000 students from Los Angeles and all or part of 25 other cities and unincorporated county areas. Nearly three-quarters are Latino.Parent Danielle Peters rallied with union members outside Hancock Park elementary school, along with her children, Jack, 10, and Ella, seven. She said it was wrong that school workers earn as little as $15 an hour, a wage Peters remembers earning for babysitting.“They are underappreciated, they are underpaid, and they have the most important job in the world,” she said of support staff. “We care about them, and this is the least we can do.”Leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing 35,000 educators, counselors and other staff, pledged solidarity with the strikers.The union’s 2019 strike resulted in a contract settlement, but teachers continue to negotiate with the district after that contract expired in June 2022. Teachers are asking for a 20% pay increase over two years, more targeted support for Black students, and more housing aid for low-income families, as they frame their demands around meeting the rising cost of living in Los Angeles county and the need for increased support in the years of the Covid-19 pandemic.On Friday, the teachers union informed the district that it was terminating its contract, allowing teachers to strike alongside SEIU workers and adding pressure on ongoing negotiations.“These are the co-workers that are the lowest-paid workers in our schools and we cannot stand idly by as we consistently see them disrespected and mistreated by this district,” the UTLA president, Cecily Myart-Cruz, told a news conference.Myart-Cruz was joined by Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat and Senate candidate, who said the strikers were earning “poverty wages”.“People with some of the most important responsibilities in our schools should not have to live in poverty,” Schiff said.On the picket lines, Danielle Murray, a special education assistant, told KABC-TV working conditions had been declining every year.“We’re very understaffed,” Murray said. “The custodial staff is a ghost crew, so the schools are dirty. They’re doing the best they can.”She added: “Some people are saying, ‘If you want more money, get a better job.’ Well, some of us have bachelor’s degrees, but we choose to work with a special population that some people don’t want to work with. We want to make a difference to these students.”Superintendent Alberto M Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said that he was prepared to meet at any time day or night. He said on Monday a “golden opportunity” to make progress was lost.“I believe this strike could have been avoided. But it cannot be avoided without individuals actually speaking to one another,” he said.Local 99 said on Monday evening that it was in discussions with state labor regulators over allegations that the district engaged in misconduct that has impeded the rights of workers to engage in legally protected union-related activities.“We want to be clear that we are not in negotiations with LAUSD,” the union said in a statement. “We continue to be engaged in the impasse process with the state.”Those talks would not avoid a walkout, the statement said.During the strike, about 150 of the district’s more than 1,000 schools are expected to remain open with adult supervision but no instruction, to give students somewhere to go. Dozens of libraries and parks, plus some “grab and go” spots for students to get lunches also planned to be open to kids to lessen the strain on parents now scrambling to find care.“Schools are so much more than centers of education – they are a safety net for hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles families,” the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Monday. “We will make sure to do all we can to provide resources needed by the families of our city.”Workers, meanwhile, said striking was the only option they had left.Instructional aide Marlee Ostrow, who supports the strike, said she was long overdue for a raise. The 67-year-old was hired nearly two decades ago at $11.75 an hour, and today she makes about $16. That isn’t enough to keep pace with inflation and rising housing prices, she said, and meanwhile her duties have expanded from two classrooms to five.Ostrow blames the district’s low wages for job vacancies that have piled up in recent years.“There’s not even anybody applying because you can make more money starting at Burger King,” she said. “A lot of people really want to help kids, and they shouldn’t be penalized for wanting that to be their life’s work.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Hard to ignore Julie Su’: Biden’s labor secretary pick fights for confirmation

      by

      ‘Hard to ignore Julie Su’: Biden’s labor secretary pick fights for confirmationSupporters fear Su, the deputy labor secretary, might have a hard time getting the needed Senate votes as some business groups oppose her nominationJulie Su has come a long way since she first made headlines in 1995 when she, then just 26 years old, was lead lawyer for 72 Thai workers who were essentially kept in slavery, toiling 18 hours a day at a sweatshop just outside Los Angeles.Last week Joe Biden nominated Su to be secretary of labor, the government’s top labor position, a move that many labor, immigrant and women’s groups vigorously cheered, while a few business groups – but not many – opposed the nomination. Now some supporters fear that she might have a hard time mustering the needed votes in the Senate to be confirmed.Starbucks fired a union organizer. New York City got him rehiredRead moreSu, the 54-year-old daughter of immigrants, has served as deputy labor secretary since 2021, having been narrowly confirmed 50 to 47. “I’m a huge fan,” said Liz Schuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation. “I can’t imagine someone more prepared. She’s been working hand in glove with Marty Walsh,” the current labor secretary, who is leaving to head the National Hockey League Players’ Association.“She has the expertise,” Shuler added. “She’s a hard worker. She’s creative. We know that she will defend workers, especially the most vulnerable. This pick is a home run.”When Biden nominated her, Su explained “my mom came to the United States on a cargo ship” from China because she couldn’t afford a passenger ticket. Born in Madison and growing up outside Los Angeles, Su went to Stanford and Harvard Law School, and then became a lawyer for an LA-based advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.“At Harvard, we were taught to think like lawyers, but we did not learn to think like human beings,” Su often says. In 2001, Su, who is fluent in Mandarin and Spanish, won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for her innovative work as a workers’ rights advocate.Immediately before becoming deputy secretary, she headed California’s labor and workforce development agency under Governor Gavin Newsom, and before that she oversaw California’s labor enforcement under Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown. She was known for aggressively cracking down on restaurants, garment factories and car washes that cheated workers out of wages. She also went after trucking companies that improperly classified their drivers as independent contractors in part to deny them minimum wage and overtime pay protections.Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said: “She did extraordinary work in reaching out to unions and community partners, in strengthening enforcement of wage laws and in really identifying the pernicious problem faced by so many low-wage workers of color who were routinely becoming victims of wage theft.”As California’s top labor official, Su expanded apprenticeship programs to train workers without college degrees and helped run the business/labor Future of Work Commission. That panel proposed ideas to help the workforce of the future, such as creating a “California Job Quality Index” to define high-quality jobs and help workers know who are good employers offering good benefits.When Su was under consideration to be deputy secretary of labor, Allen Zaremberg, president of the California chamber of commerce, praised her “professionalism” and said: “Julie Su has always been open to the views of employers and is willing to listen to the concerns of the business community.”So far the US Chamber of Commerce and most other business groups have not taken a position on Su’s nomination. But the International Franchise Association was quick to oppose her.“Deputy Secretary Su has been consistently hostile to small businesses throughout her career,” said Michael Layman, the franchise association’s senior vice-president of government relations. He faulted her for supporting California law AB5, which made it harder for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors, a law that upset Uber and Lyft.Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, said she had long been impressed with how Su maintained good communications and relations with business. “She brought a perspective that labor law enforcement isn’t just good for workers, it’s also good for high-road businesses that are doing things right.”In 2017, when Su was California’s labor commissioner, she told me in an interview: “I passionately believe that our enforcement is good for employers. The legitimate businesses that are complying with the law are frustrated with the bad guys that aren’t complying.”Su was widely criticized over the billions of dollars that California’s unemployment insurance paid out due to fraud during the pandemic. But Su’s defenders noted that other states also experienced plenty of such fraud, that California’s unemployment insurance system was a mess long before Julie Su and that the nationwide rush to keep the pandemic-induced unemployed from going hungry made unemployment screening less rigorous than usual.The Franchise Association said that “based on her record, she does not deserve a promotion from a largely operations role to the [department’s] principal policymaker”. It urged the Senate to reject her just as it rejected David Weil, Biden’s nominee to head the labor department’s wage and hour division.Weil, who headed that division under President Barack Obama, was voted down 53 to 47. Business groups lobbied hard against Weil because he had pushed to stop gig companies, like Uber and Lyft, from what he said was improperly classifying their drivers as independent contractors.“From my own experience, I know what a razor’s edge the Senate is right now,” Weil said in an interview. “It’s all about two senators’ willingness to support her,” in a reference to Joe Manchin and Kysten Sinema, senators who were elected as Democrats but have voted with Republicans against progressive actions.Weil said Su would have a lot to do as labor secretary, although if the Senate fails to confirm her, she would remain as acting secretary of labor. “There are two or three major rules that have to be finalized,” Weil said, “and that gets harder and harder as you get closer to an election.”He mentioned rules to make it harder to misclassify workers as independent contractors and to increase the threshold, currently $35,500, below which employees would have to be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours a week.Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, praised Su for being innovative. “She’s been on the cutting edge of trying new stuff,” Smiley said. “She has an appetite for experimenting with policies that will benefit everyday people.”Normally the National Labor Relations Board – which is independent from the labor department – handles cases in which companies are accused of illegally shutting stores or operations in retaliation for unionization efforts. Pointing to Amy’s Kitchen’s decision and close its food prep operation in San Jose and lay off 331 workers as that facility faced a union drive, Smiley suggested that Su have the labor department provide emergency assistance to workers who lose jobs in such situations, just as other federal agencies provide disaster relief. She urged Su to speak out against companies like Starbucks that she said were engaged in aggressive union-busting.Biden and Congress have enacted three far-reaching laws that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs – on infrastructure, semiconductor investment and transitioning to clean energy. Many worker advocates are looking to Su to use her sway as secretary to make sure the bulk of those new jobs are good, middle-class jobs, and many hope they’re unionized jobs, too.One of Su’s biggest champions is Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and someone Senator Bernie Sanders urged Biden to nominate as labor secretary. Right after Su was nominated, Nelson tweeted: “Fantastic news for the country.”“I was very clear from the very beginning that we already had someone eminently qualified for this position,” Nelson said. “She’s way more qualified for this job than I would be, depending on what you think the job should be, in terms of understanding policy and how to use it as a tool to help average Americans. She wants to be a strong adviser to a president who wants to be the most pro-worker president ever.“This is not about one person filling a position,” Nelson added. “It’s about all of us working together to lift standards for the American people. I know that she will be fighting the good fight from the inside, and I’ll be fighting the good fight from the outside.”Some worker advocates voiced concern that Su is not a White House insider the way Walsh was and the way former labor secretary Tom Perez was under Obama. That could make it harder for Su to get the White House’s and Office of Management and Budget’s blessing to finalize important regulations.But the AFL-CIO’s Shuler voiced confidence: “She’s very persuasive, relentless and persistent. It’s hard to ignore Julie Su.”TopicsBiden administrationUS politicsUS unionsfeaturesReuse this content More