US unions

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘We’re going to see workers die’: extreme heat is key issue in UPS contract talks

      by

      As a UPS delivery driver in Dallas, Texas, Seth Pacic is intimately familiar with the dangers of extreme heat. After a long day’s work through record-breaking temperatures in summer 2011, he found himself dry heaving in the parking lot, incapable of driving home until he spent an hour and a half in the air-conditioned office.“It was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in my entire life,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I fully recovered for a couple of weeks.”For some, the heat has had even more serious consequences. Last June, Pacic’s friend and coworker had a heat stroke while driving home from work; he is still recuperating, Pacic said. That same summer, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez collapsed and died in California as temperatures soared into the high 90s; his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and later settled with UPS. And the year before that, Jose Cruz Rodriguez Jr, 23, died of a heatstroke while driving a UPS truck in Waco, Texas.It’s a widespread issue. At least 143 UPS employees were hospitalized for heat injuries between 2015 and 2022, according tothe company’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration records obtained by the Washington Post. As the climate crisis pushes up temperatures, the problem could get even worse.At the state level, only California, Oregon and Washington require heat breaks for all outdoor laborers, and during a record-breaking heatwave last month, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, eliminated municipalities’ ability to mandate water and shade breaks for laborers.This summer, amid record-shattering heat across the US, Pacic and some 340,000 other unionized UPS workers have made heat a central issue of their ongoing contract negotiations with their employer.On 16 June, UPS’s 340,000 Teamsters union members said if their demands for improved working conditions – including heat protections – are not included in UPS’s new five-year contract, they will be prepared to hold one of the largest single-employer strikes in US history starting on 1 August.This week, UPS agreed to resume bargaining with the Teamsters, following a collapse of negotiations earlier this month.The union notched a major win last month, when the company tentatively agreed to equip all new delivery trucks in its 94,000-vehicle fleet with air conditioners starting in 2024, and also install new heat shields and fans.The victory showed how worker organization can be a key tool for climate justice, said Mijin Cha, an urban and environmental policy professor at Occidental College who studies labor and climate issues.“We’re seeing a fundamental reshaping of what we consider ‘occupational safety,’” said Cha. “In the extreme heat, any kind of work outside is dangerous … and as more workers organize, they’ll be better able, hopefully, to stay safe.”Driving for UPS is a grueling job in any season, said Matt Leichenger, who works in Brooklyn, New York. On a typical day, he makes up to 150 stops to deliver hundreds of packages, often having to walk long distances and climb up multiple flights of stairs while carrying large items such as mattresses.In the summer, things get even harder. Temperatures in the back of the truck can top 130F (54.4C) as the dark brown steel radiates heat “like an oven”, he said. Because loads are not always well organized, workers must root through piles of boxes that can weigh up to 150lb each.“There are days where you step out of the back of the truck into 95F weather and you feel like you’ve entered blissful, perfect temperatures, but in reality, you’ve just escaped hell,” said Leichenger, who helped organize a rally outside the UPS’s Foster Avenue warehouse in Brooklyn last summer demanding that the company provide air-conditioned trucks.Jim Mayer, a spokesperson for UPS, said the company has taken steps to protect workers from heat this summer, including distributing cooling sleeves and hats and installing fans in some of their delivery vehicles.“The health and safety of our employees is our highest priority,” he said.He also said employees are encouraged to stop working when they’re feeling the effects of the heat.“Our policy is simple: stop work, contact your manager, and when in doubt, call emergency services/911,” he said.Leichenger said workers feel pressure to move quickly. UPS measures efficiency with surveillance cameras and sensors inside trucks, and uses a computer program to calculate how long a route should take.Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate with the nonprofit Public Citizen, said surveillance can also make workers feel less comfortable taking bathroom breaks, causing them to drink less water.“If you add dehydration to heat stress, that’s something that can make you ill very, very quickly,” she said.It’s not just UPS workers who are suffering amid the heat. A Texas United States Postal Service driver last month died of heat exposure amid triple-digit temperatures.Right now, dozens of striking Amazon drivers in California are also demanding better heat protections.“The back of the truck is basically hell,” Rajpal Singh, a striking Amazon delivery worker in Palmdale, California, said. “I’ve been back there to the point where I’ve actually seen spots and started feeling like I was about to pass out.”(Eileen Hards, an Amazon spokesperson, said that the striking laborers work for a third party company called Battle Tested Strategies, with which Amazon terminated its contract last month; the workers said that the company only ended the contract after they formed a union, prompting Teamsters across the country to picket in solidarity.)Because UPS is such a large employer, new official heat protections could spur change across the logistics sector.“Amazon workers, FedEx workers, postal workers are all dealing with similar issues,” he said. “I’m proud of Teamsters for starting to trailblaze.”The new UPS contract language on heat could inspire other workers to push for climate-related protections in their contracts. But the tentative agreement won’t be enacted until a final contract agreement is signed.Even when that happens, the language will leave something to be desired, according to Seth Pacic, the Dallas-based UPS driver. UPS agreed to install ACs in every car purchased after 1 January 2024, dispatching new vehicles to the hottest parts of the country first. But it could still be years before all delivery drivers have access to air conditioned trucks, he said.“Until then, I think we’re still going to see workers die,” Pacic said.Before they reach a final agreement, the UPS union is still holding out for other protections like increased wages, the elimination of a two-tiered employment system, and an end to harassment from managers. These protections could provide additional protection from the heat, Pacic said.Workers who are free from harassment will be more likely to take breaks. And higher wages could ensure workers don’t take second jobs which can increase their heat exposure, and help them to afford equipment like UV cooling sleeves, ice pouches, coolers and pricey electrolyte drinks.Experts say these provisions are all the more necessary in the absence of strong governmental heat protections.Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2021 said it would publish a heat standard to protect workers from high temperatures, but Juley Fulcher, the safety advocate, said it could be years before it’s completed – and that the agency has not initiated an interim heat standard.Actions like Texas governor Abbott seeking to eliminate water and shade breaks showed what workers are facing, said Cha, the urban and environmental policy professor.“It’s part of a larger war on workers. With the dominance of capital in our system, any kind of concession toward workers is seen as a loss – even something as simple and necessary as water breaks,” she said. “The only challenge to capital is labor … so the more workers are able to organize, the better.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Summer of discontent: will US strikes spell trouble for ‘union guy’ Biden?

      by

      It became known as the winter of discontent. After the Labour government tried to freeze wages to stem inflation, Britain was convulsed by labour strikes and disruptions in public services. Rubbish piled in the streets, bodies went unburied – and a fierce political backlash swept Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives into power.Forty-five years later a summer of strikes is roiling industries from coast to coast in America.Unions have launched or are threatening stoppages that could affect everything from airline travel and parcel deliveries to car manufacturing and film and TV production. They could also disrupt the economic growth that Joe Biden wants to campaign on in 2024.“It takes him off message because strikes are visual, strikes are hot video, and they’re a focal point for media,” said John Zogby, an author and pollster. “It becomes lame trying to explain, ‘But the numbers are good, but the numbers are good, but the numbers are getting better,’ when the video just doesn’t appear to show it.”The coronavirus pandemic had many aftershocks and labour turmoil may be among them. Hollywood production is shut down as the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild are striking, partially over concerns about streaming revenues as well as artificial intelligence taking away jobs from creative workers. The action has put films and TV shows in limbo and could cost the economy an estimated $3bn.There is also the prospect of a United Auto Workers strike as contract talks get under way and the industry wrestles with a transition toward electric vehicles. The Teamsters union said its drivers might walk off the job as they struggle to reach a new contract with UPS (United Parcel Service). And more than 26,000 flight attendants at American Airlines are set to hold a strike vote over the coming weeks.Among other examples mushrooming across the country, thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles have also been striking this month while healthcare workers at a major Chicago hospital are planning to do likewise in a dispute over wages and lack of staffing.And last month there were localised walkouts at Amazon, McDonald’s and Starbucks, while hundreds of journalists across eight states went on strike to demand an end to painful cost-cutting measures and a change of leadership at Gannett, the country’s biggest newspaper chain.Drexel Heard, a public affairs strategist based in Los Angeles, said: “This is what I believe is the start of a trend that was inevitable post-pandemic: workers knowing and understanding that things cannot go back to normal. We all work hybrid now, for the most part.“People are understanding that their need for healthcare is something that’s critical. Their need for better pay and better work hours is essential, especially when we have things that happen like a pandemic, and people want to feel safe. The only people who are fighting for workers’ rights are unions.”Scenes of industrial strife heading into winter would provide fodder for rightwing media who already accuse Biden of embracing the leftwing ideas of Senator Bernie Sanders. It might also create a headache for a president who is focusing much of his re-election campaign on the strength of the economy.On Thursday he was at the Philadelphia Shipyard in Pennsylvania to promote “Bidenomics”, a recently adopted slogan. The president said: “We have a plan that’s turning things around pretty quickly. ‘Bidenomics’ is just another way of saying ‘Restore the American Dream’.”But that message is still struggling to break through with voters. In a CNBC All-America Economic Survey released this week, 37% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and 58% disapprove. In a Monmouth University poll, only three in 10 Americans feel the country is doing a better job recovering economically than the rest of the world since the pandemic.There is a baffling disconnect between these opinions and data that shows America defying predictions of recession and curbing price rises faster than other major economies. Inflation has fallen from 9% to 3% and is now at its lowest point in more than two years.Indeed, Biden may have helped create the very conditions that make strikes more likely. White House officials say that unions are empowered to press for more benefits and better pay because of the strong job market. Unemployment is just 3.6% and job openings are relatively high.This is one reason why Robert Reich, a former labour secretary under President Bill Clinton, does not believe that the current wave of strikes and potential strikes will overwhelm Biden’s effort to highlight economic growth.He explained in an email: “(1) the strikes and potential strikes still represent a tiny segment of the American workforce, (2) overall job gains and wage gains continue to roar, (3) a big reason workers feel able to strike is that the labor market continues to be tight, which is another good sign for Biden.”Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a Guardian US columnist, added: “The potential problem for Biden isn’t the wave of strikes and potential strikes but the seeming determination of the Fed to continue to raise interest rates, thereby risking a recession before Election Day.”Widespread industrial action would pose a fresh test for Biden, a self-proclaimed “union guy” born in blue-collar Scranton, Pennsylvania. Past attempts to intervene in such disputes have not always gone smoothly.Last year his administration helped forge a tentative agreement between rail companies and their unionised workers to avoid a strike that could have rocked the economy before the midterm elections. The tentative deal prevented a strike but failed to appease workers, and Congress ultimately had to intervene by imposing an agreement.Biden, who is pushing the Senate to confirm Julie Su as his new labour secretary, has already expressed support for the striking Hollywood actors and writers, insisting that all workers deserve fair pay and benefits. Such an approach could work to his advantage against Republicans seeking to rebrand themselves as the party of the working class.Faiz Shakir, chief political adviser to Sanders, who met with Biden and young labour organisers at the White House this week, said: “When you think about some of the working-class people who are in the swing voter category, they tend to carry an anger and frustration about an economy that hasn’t been working for them.“It would be wrong to go back to them and tell them, ‘Hey, everything is much better since I was president.’ I think you want to say, ‘I’m fighting for you and I’m improving the situation for you. However, there’s way more work to do and the people who are standing in the way are these corporate bosses, and I’m taking them on from you.’In the UPS dispute, Shakir argues, Biden should make clear he stands with the workers. “Stand boldly with those workers. Say, ‘I stand with you. You want to go on strike? That’s fine. Yes, there will be costs to consumers, yes, there will be some challenges in the economy, but your work is essential and important and you deserve your fair share.’“What I think will end up happening is you usually get some criticism from the business elite who are going to say, why is the president of the United States siding with these workers and making it even harder for these people to reach a negotiated outcome? To that, I say that is good for politics, because when working people see that you’re sticking your neck out for them, they will reward you. They see you taking arrows for them.”Shakir also believes that the dispute will be resolved in a few weeks with a positive outcome for labour, and that Biden will be able to justifiably claim that he helped improve the lot of hundreds of thousands of workers.In his remarks in Philadelphia on Thursday, Biden was again careful to align himself with workers and unions against Wall Street and companies that made record-high profits during the pandemic. If a disruptive wave of strikes comes to pass, this is likely to be the least risky strategy.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank, said: “It’s my distinct impression that support for labour unions has gone up significantly so we’re not talking about [British miners’ leader] Arthur Scargill in the 1970s. We’re talking about an extended period during which a lot of Americans believe that workers have got the short end of the stick.“They’re much less worried about ‘big labour’ than they used to be, in part because labour isn’t as big as used to be, especially in the private sector where labour unions have weakened enormously. There’s a basic sense of fair play operating to increase support for not just working people but organised labour, so I don’t think this is a bad time to strike and I don’t think that will necessarily redound to Joe Biden’s discredit.” More

    • 225 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Americans are hungry to be part of unions. So why is US labor so timid? | Hamilton Nolan

      by

      At a splashy event in Philadelphia last weekend, the AFL-CIO, America’s largest union coalition, announced its endorsement of Joe Biden for president in 2024. You may notice that the election is still 17 months away. This was the earliest endorsement in the AFL-CIO’s history, amounting to an all-in bet by organized labor that the interests of the Democratic president are identical to its own. The problem with this is not so much that labor might have decided to endorse a Republican – whoever that party’s candidate is, they are sure to despise the concept of working-class empowerment – but rather the fact that the endorsement is an implicit acceptance of the status quo.These union leaders believe that the Biden White House as currently constituted is the best they can hope to get. Indeed, they are overjoyed by what they have gotten already. It is this lack of ambition that is the labor movement’s biggest flaw. They have been beaten down for so long that they have lost their ability to believe that the world they deserve will ever be real. This is a sort of trauma, induced by a decades-long decline in union power. By settling for what they have, unfortunately, they have forsaken their leverage to ask for more.At his speech accepting the endorsement, Biden declared himself “the most pro-union president in American history”. That may be a bit much – a few generations ago, even Republican presidents supported unions, so the standards were much higher – but it is certainly true that Biden is the most pro-union president of the past half century.He signed a $36bn bill to save union pensions; his Covid relief and infrastructure bills were boons to union workers; his nominee for NLRB general counsel has been tirelessly pushing invaluable labor law reforms; and he has, to a degree not seen before in my lifetime, used his bully pulpit to speak out in favor of union drives, in ways that Clinton or Obama never would have. The AFL-CIO feels that its voice is being listened to in the White House more than they can ever recall.On the other hand, the single biggest labor issue of Biden’s first term was the potential national rail strike, which he dealt with by crushing the workers’ right to strike and imposing a contract on them that they didn’t want. But hey, what’s the occasional knife in the back between friends?Seventy-one percent of Americans say they approve of labor unions. Only 40% of Americans say they approve of Joe Biden. Unions are more popular than the president, by a long mile. In fact, the popularity of organized labor is at a 60-year high. This is due not to the AFL-CIO, nor to the White House, but to a realization that swept working people across the nation as the Covid pandemic paralyzed society: your job does not care if you live or die. Your boss will not save you from disaster. There is no safety net, except for unions. That’s it.The wave of interest in labor organizing that has swept through coffee shops, warehouses and college campuses is fueled by a widening, bone-deep understanding that solidarity is the only shield against capitalism’s scorching rays. I can attest, from years spent traveling America as a labor reporter, that this grassroots enthusiasm is real. It is the job of the labor movement’s institutions to turn that enthusiasm into the maximum possible gain. That’s where the malfunction is. We have an army ready to fight the class war led by generals who have been trained to assume that it is unwinnable.Unions do not have to endorse the Biden agenda. Unions can set the agenda. Now is not the time to settle. Now is the time to demand. The labor market is strong, the appetite for unions is high and the discontent with inequality is everywhere. This is a time to push the president, not bow and scrape and thank him for what he has done. Working people are begging to become a part of a strong labor movement.If the AFL-CIO and its unions could find within themselves the ambition to take advantage of current conditions to organize 10 or 20 million new union members, they could quite literally reverse the post-Reagan inequality crisis. Labor’s early endorsement of Biden is meant to enable unions to start mobilizing their political operation now – but that mobilization is also their leverage. They could demand that Biden commit to federal funding for union organizing and to abolishing the filibuster so that the labor law reforms of the PRO Act might actually have a chance to pass, rather than just serving as a campaign slogan. In short, they could make the building of the labor movement itself their central political demand.Biden will be out of power in a few years, but a labor movement with 10 million new union members would transform the entire American political landscape for decades to come.Instead of taking this tack, the AFL-CIO has committed to organize only a paltry 100,000 new union members a year (which would ensure the continuing decline of union density) and handed its support to Biden in exchange for the gifts he has already given. It is not a strategy that will ever be mistaken for a master class in boldly seizing the initiative.History’s greatest labor leaders have not been conservative pragmatists in search of marginal gain. They have been people whose outrage over the injustices of the present fueled them to accomplish things that others dismissed as unrealistic. Too much time spent inside of existing institutions seems to extinguish this spirit. The next generation of working-class heroes is out in the world right now – working. It will be up to them to force the labor movement to thrive in spite of itself, long after the “most pro-union president in history” is gone.
      Hamilton Nolan is a labor journalist based in New York More

    • 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