US unions

Subterms

    More stories

    • 213 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Congress to take up bill to avert rail strike as Biden and unions clash – as it happened

      by

      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just emerged from the White House to talk about their meeting just now with Joe Biden to talk about legislation in the lame duck session and, most urgently, his request that Congress intervene to stop the looming rail strike.Schumer signaled the Senate would support the move.Pelosi said: “Tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor, it will come up as early as 9am.”Biden wants Congress to impose the agreement tentatively reached in September, but which four unions didn’t sign on to, forcing the president and the labor unions to be at loggerheads.Pelosi said the original elements of the agreement, on pay, etc, would be included in the bill and some “additional benefits” agreed to by Biden and labor secretary Marty Walsh.She said the agreement “is not everything I would like to see, I would like to see paid sick leave – every [leading democratic] country in the world has it. I don’t like going against the ability of a union to strike but, weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike.”Assuming the House votes for the bill, it will then move to the Senate for a vote there.Schumer said: “We will try to get it done … we are going to try to solve this ASAP.”Both leaders warned of job losses and further supply chain problems affecting ordinary goods and essential things such as chlorine for safe public water supplies.Schumer and Pelosi, speaking to reporters call it a “productive meeting,” Finding a solution to rail strike a top priority, they say. “We must avoid a strike,” Pelosi says. pic.twitter.com/cK0HwSCcXy— Myah Ward (@MyahWard) November 29, 2022
      House minority leader Kevin McCarthy emerged from the West Wing a few minutes after Schumer and Pelosi spoke to gathered reporters and indicated that he expected a resolution on the rail strike.Schumer had earlier noted that he had minority leader Mitch McConnell’s support in the Senate.All 100 senators must agree to hold a quick vote like this and it’s unclear yet if all are on board, especially Bernie Sanders.Asked if he will allow a vote on legislation to avert the rail strike to happen by the Dec. 9 deadline, Bernie Sanders just told me:  “We will have more to say about that later.” He criticized the deal for lack of paid sick leave. “That is outrageous.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 29, 2022
      As we wrap up this US politics blog for the day, the US Senate is debating proposed amendments to the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act that seeks to codify in legislation the right to same sex and interracial marriages. A final vote is expected soon and will be covered in a news story. The politics blog will be back tomorrow morning.Here’s where things stand:
      US Senate to vote on legislation codifying federal rights to same-sex and interracial marriage in the US. The upper chamber is debating a bill right now.
      A bill to avert the looming US passenger and freight rail strike will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives early tomorrow, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after a meeting at the White House with Joe Biden and the other congressional leaders.
      Record early voting is happening in Georgia. The number of people casting their ballots during early voting in the run-off election for one of the state’s seats in the US Senate is already on its way to half a million since the process got under way at the weekend. Polls close 6 December.
      Nato foreign ministers pledged to step up support to Ukraine and help repair its energy infrastructure amid a wave of Russian attacks that have repeatedly knocked out power supplies and heating for millions of Ukrainians.
      Joe Biden has urged the US Congress to intervene to prevent the rail strike that is looming across America and could bring passenger and freight trains screeching to a halt as early as next week. This puts the pro-labor president at loggerheads with some of the key rail unions.
      The US Senate is currently debating proposed amendments to the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act that seeks to codify in legislation the right to same-sex and interracial marriages in the US.It’s expected to pass when it comes to a final vote a bit later this afternoon, from whence it will go back to the House, where it is also expected to pass, and speed its way to Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law in December.Earlier this month, 12 Republican senators voted with all Senate Democrats to advance the bill.The bill has Democratic and Republican sponsors and was spearheaded by Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the first openly lesbian or gay senator in the US.The expected passage of the legislation with support from both parties is an extraordinary sign of the shifting politics on the issue and a measure of relief for the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide, the Associated Press writes.The bill has gained steady momentum since the supreme court’s June decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion, and comments from Justice Clarence Thomas at the time that suggested same-sex marriage could also come under threat.Bipartisan Senate negotiations kick-started this summer after 47 Republicans unexpectedly voted for a House bill and gave supporters new optimism.The legislation would not codify the Obergefell decision or force any state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed, and protect current same-sex unions, if Obergefell were to be overturned.It would also protect interracial marriages by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin”.The US supreme court today wrestled with a partisan-tinged dispute over a Biden administration policy that would prioritize deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk, the Associated Press writes.It was not clear after arguments that stretched past two hours and turned highly contentious at times whether the justices would allow the policy to take effect, or side with Republican-led states that have so far succeeded in blocking it.At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety”.The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy that removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.Today, the administration’s top supreme court lawyer told the justices that federal law does “not create an unyielding mandate to apprehend and remove” every one of the more than 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally.Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said it would be “incredibly destabilizing on the ground” for the high court to require that.Congress has not given DHS enough money to vastly increase the number of people it holds and deports, the Biden administration has said.But Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone told the court that the administration violated federal law requiring the detention of people who are in the US illegally and who have been convicted of serious crimes.Chief Justice John Roberts was among the conservative justices who pushed back strongly on the Biden administration’s arguments..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s our job to say what the law is, not whether or not it can be possibly implemented or whether there are difficulties there, and I don’t think we should change that responsibility just because Congress and the executive can’t agree on something … I don’t think we should let them off the hook,” he said.Yet Roberts, in questioning Stone, also called Prelogar’s argument compelling.Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, made clear they believed that Texas and Louisiana, which joined Texas in suing over the directive, weren’t even entitled to bring their case.As Joe Biden is dependent on Congress to avoid a government shutdown on December 16, the president wants a government funding bill passed to provide additional money for the Covid-19 response and to bolster US support for Ukraine’s economy and defense against Russia’s invasion, the Associated Press reports.Lawmakers are months behind on passing funding legislation for the current fiscal year, relying on stop-gap measures that largely maintain existing funding levels, that federal agencies have warned leaves them strapped for cash..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re going to work together, I hope, to fund the government,” Biden told lawmakers, emphasizing the importance of Ukraine and pandemic funding as well.Meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House earlier, Biden sat at the head of the conference table, flanked on either side by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the two smiling brightly at the start of the meeting.Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sat next to Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was next to Pelosi and appeared more reserved.The 2022 election, summed. https://t.co/4ZyxVUcigO— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
      As the meeting began, Biden quipped, “I’m sure this is going to go very quickly” to reach agreement on everything.Lawmakers spent a bit more than an hour with the president, who was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and senior aides.McCarthy is working to become speaker in January, though he must first overcome dissent within the GOP conference to win a floor vote on January 3.All the leaders said their preference was to pass a comprehensive spending bill for the fiscal year, rather than a continuing resolution (CR) that largely maintains existing funding levels.“If we don’t have an option we may have to have a yearlong” stop-gap bill, Pelosi added.McCarthy, who has promised to look more critically at the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine aid, told reporters that, “I’m not for a blank check for anything.”He said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to more funding, but wanted to ensure “there’s accountability and audits.”Schumer and Pelosi popped out of the west wing after the meeting to take questions from reporters and were followed shortly afterwards by McCarthy who did the same.On a spending bill, Pelosi said: “We have to have a bipartisan agreement on what the top line is.”CNN reported that McConnell eschewed such an appearance and returned directly to Capitol Hill.SCHUMER calls the White House meeting among Hill leaders “a very productive discussion about funding the government — we all agreed that it should be done this year.”PELOSI says if they can’t reach a deal, “we may have to have a year-long CR.” She says they don’t want that. pic.twitter.com/fEFiBOiQgY— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
      It’s been a lively morning in US politics and there’s more to come. Joe Biden is en route to Michigan to tour a factory and talk about the economy and the US Senate is poised to vote on a bill codifying same-sex and interracial marriage.Here’s where things stand:
      A bill to avert the looming US passenger and freight rail strike will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives early tomorrow, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after a meeting at the White House with Joe Biden and the other congressional leaders.
      Record early voting is happening in Georgia. The number of people casting their ballots during early voting in the run-off election for one of the state’s seats in the US Senate is already on its way to half a million since the process got under way at the weekend. Polls close 6 December.
      Nato foreign ministers pledged to step up support to Ukraine and help repair its energy infrastructure amid a wave of Russian attacks that have repeatedly knocked out power supplies and heating for millions of Ukrainians.
      Joe Biden has urged the US Congress to intervene to prevent the rail strike that is looming across America and could bring passenger and freight trains screeching to a halt as early as next week. This puts the pro-labor president at loggerheads with some of the key rail unions.
      Joe Biden is on his way to Michigan, aboard Air Force One right now, to tour the SK Siltron CSS semiconductor facility in Bay City, on the shore of Lake Huron.It’s part of his agenda to promote progress in rebuilding the US manufacturing sector.A local ABC channel described how SK Siltron recently completed a $300m expansion. The firm makes semiconductor wafers “used in power system components for electric vehicles and 5G cellular technology,” the outlet reported ahead of the president’s visit this afternoon.The ABC report noted that “local, state and federal leaders hailed the project as an example of the US bringing semiconductor manufacturing back home during a crippling supply shortage of the devices.”He’s due to speak about the US economy a bit later. He’s being accompanied on the factory tour by newly-reelected Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and others.When Mitt Romney compared Donald Trump to a gargoyle …Hats off to Politico for gathering this reporting. The outlet reports that senior Republicans Mike Pence, Bill Cassidy, Marco Rubio, Susan Collins and John Thune all directly or obliquely criticized Trump’s meeting with the far right’s Nick Fuentes last week, as senators returned to Capitol Hill after the Thanksgiving break.But it noted this choice comment, that Utah Republican Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was “particularly sharp” on Trump, in general, and noted that he was not a fan of the former president running for office again, as he intends to in 2024 and said: “I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”Here’s NBC:Romney on Trump: “I voted to remove him from office twice… I don’t think he should be president of the United states. I don’t think he should be the nominee of our party in 2024. And I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”“It’s a character issue.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 28, 2022
      House Republican leader and would-be next speaker Kevin McCarthy has spoken out for the first time to condemn the meeting between Donald Trump and blatant white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes last week.McCarthy spoke about several topics as he emerged from the west wing of the White House a little earlier, following a meeting called there by Joe Biden with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to talk about urgent legislative business before the year end.“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes. He has no place in this Republican Party,” McCarthy told reporters at the White House.McCarthy is the latest GOP figure to speak out, following a series of senior Republicans and pressure group leaders condemning the fact that Trump had dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who is in deep controversy for antisemitic remarks, and Fuentes, who accompanied Ye.As the Guardian’s Edwin Rios noted it was just the latest in a long line of incidents involving the former US president and the far right.McCarthy did stumble though. He said that Trump had four times condemned Fuentes and did not know who he was.Reporters on the scene immediately pounced to note, accurately, that Trump has not condemned Fuentes and his racist views.McCarthy responded: “Well, I condemn.”On Sunday, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said the meeting between Trump, Ye and Fuentes “was not accidental.”Moments earlier, when asked if it was appropriate for Trump to meet with Ye, McCarthy said Trump could have meetings “with who he wants.” Then went onto criticize Fuentes.WATCH: Kevin Mccarthy Denounces Trump Meeting With Kanye Literally Two Seconds After Saying Kanye Fine, Fuentes Bad https://t.co/hnT6lpKWc1— Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 29, 2022
      But also Ye, sort of?McCarthy: “The president can have meetings with who he wants. I don’t think anybody though should have meetings with Nick Fuentes. And his views are nowhere within the R Party or within this country itself.”And Kanye?”I don’t think he should have associated with him as well.”— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 29, 2022
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just emerged from the White House to talk about their meeting just now with Joe Biden to talk about legislation in the lame duck session and, most urgently, his request that Congress intervene to stop the looming rail strike.Schumer signaled the Senate would support the move.Pelosi said: “Tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor, it will come up as early as 9am.”Biden wants Congress to impose the agreement tentatively reached in September, but which four unions didn’t sign on to, forcing the president and the labor unions to be at loggerheads.Pelosi said the original elements of the agreement, on pay, etc, would be included in the bill and some “additional benefits” agreed to by Biden and labor secretary Marty Walsh.She said the agreement “is not everything I would like to see, I would like to see paid sick leave – every [leading democratic] country in the world has it. I don’t like going against the ability of a union to strike but, weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike.”Assuming the House votes for the bill, it will then move to the Senate for a vote there.Schumer said: “We will try to get it done … we are going to try to solve this ASAP.”Both leaders warned of job losses and further supply chain problems affecting ordinary goods and essential things such as chlorine for safe public water supplies.Schumer and Pelosi, speaking to reporters call it a “productive meeting,” Finding a solution to rail strike a top priority, they say. “We must avoid a strike,” Pelosi says. pic.twitter.com/cK0HwSCcXy— Myah Ward (@MyahWard) November 29, 2022
      House minority leader Kevin McCarthy emerged from the West Wing a few minutes after Schumer and Pelosi spoke to gathered reporters and indicated that he expected a resolution on the rail strike.Schumer had earlier noted that he had minority leader Mitch McConnell’s support in the Senate.All 100 senators must agree to hold a quick vote like this and it’s unclear yet if all are on board, especially Bernie Sanders.Asked if he will allow a vote on legislation to avert the rail strike to happen by the Dec. 9 deadline, Bernie Sanders just told me:  “We will have more to say about that later.” He criticized the deal for lack of paid sick leave. “That is outrageous.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 29, 2022
      Despite the extensive efforts of progressive organizers in Georgia, the state’s early voting operation has run into some significant issues.Many voters reported long lines at polling places over the weekend, as they tried to cast ballots in Georgia’s Senate runoff election.One of the candidates in that race, Democrat Raphael Warnock, the incumbent, waited in line for about an hour on Sunday to cast his vote.A coalition of progressive groups has launched a massive canvassing operation to help ensure that voters know how and when they can cast their ballots.Hillary Holley, executive director of the progressive group Care in Action, said that canvassers have encountered a lot of misunderstanding among voters as they knock on doors.“Every time basically our canvassers reach a voter at their house, they’re saying, ‘Thank you so much because we are so confused about when we can go vote,’” Holley said on a Monday press call.Part of that confusion stems from a judge’s last-minute ruling that counties could allow early voting to occur on the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday.Georgia election officials had initially said that early voting could not take place on that day, but the Warnock campaign won a legal challenge to expand voting hours.Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director of the progressive group New Georgia Project, said: “Our call is for counties to continue the fight to get more locations open, to continue the fight to keep your counties open late, and for our voters to stay in line.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strike

      by

      Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strikeCiting ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.How a potential US rail strike could affect the economyRead moreIn a statement referring to the president’s request, Pelosi said that Democrats were “reluctant to bypass” negotiations but “we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt”.The agreement that would be imposed if passed by both congressional chambers comes from negotiations that were made in September between the rail companies, several unions and the Biden administration. It would entail a 24% raise by 2024, $1,000 in annual bonuses and a cap on healthcare premiums.Four unions – including the largest rail union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (Smart), which represents more than 28,000 rail workers – rejected the agreement and had been negotiating with rail companies over the last several weeks. Smart turned down the tentative deal with rail management on 21 November, inching closer to a potential strike in December.The dozen rail unions, including those who voted in favor of the September deal, agreed to strike if just one union rejects any agreement and takes the dispute to the picket line. The rail industry has estimated a strike would cost the economy $2bn a day as key ground transportation for goods and passengers would be halted.Congress has the ability to impose an agreement on to the rail workers to avert a strike, something Democrats have been holding off on doing to give more room for unions to negotiate with management.The deadlock between management and the unions is mostly over paid sick leave. The union argues that workers should get at least six days of paid sick leave. They are currently expected to use vacation time if they call out sick and are penalized if they take time off without using vacation days. The agreement Congress is considering does not include a sick leave provision.On Monday, Biden said that he was “a proud pro-labor president” but that the effects of a strike would be too severe on the US economy.“Where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal,” the president said in his statement. “Some in Congress want to modify the deal to either improve it for labor or for management. However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown.”The Railroad Workers Union on Tuesday issued a statement responding to Biden, saying that the president “blew it”.“He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers,” the statement said.In her statement, Pelosi said that the House will take up the agreement “with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms” and will soon send it to the Senate if passed.TopicsUS unionsUS CongressRail industryNancy PelosiJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Teachers’ union head accuses Pompeo of stoking hate with ‘filth’ comments

      by

      Teachers’ union head accuses Pompeo of stoking hate with ‘filth’ commentsRepublican ex-secretary of state called Randi Weingarten ‘most dangerous person in the world’ and said teachers taught ‘filth’ Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has denounced the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for calling her “the most dangerous person in the world” and asserting that the nation’s schoolteachers teach “filth”.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreSpeaking to the Guardian Weingarten said Pompeo’s remarks were not just demagogic, but also dangerous, warning that they could incite violence. She said Pompeo, who also served as Donald Trump’s CIA director, attacked her because she is “Jewish, gay, teacher and union” and was clearly stoking rightwing hate as he considers a presidential run.“This is initially directed to the Republican donor class so he can tap into the boatloads of money that billionaires have given to wage this culture war,” Weingarten said, adding that Pompeo – widely expected to run for president in 2024 – was “trying to garner money from that donor base that gave $50m for anti-trans ads, during the recent election”.“Separate and apart from that,” she continued, “it’s also an attempt to pull away the Maga Republican base from Trump and [the Florida governor, Ron] DeSantis, to show he’s an even more extremist Maga than they are.”In an interview with Semafor this week, Pompeo said: “I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”Weingarten, who has been president of the AFT since 2008, told the Guardian she thought Pompeo was attacking her because she is “Jewish, gay, teacher and union”.“It’s all of the above,” Weingarten said. “It’s an anti-public school strategy. The antisemitic tropes are there. The anti-gay tropes are there. It’s anti-union. It’s anti-teacher. It’s all of the above. But the effect is it really hurts what teachers are trying to do to help kids every single day.”Weingarten was especially upset about Pompeo’s assertion that the nation’s educators were teaching “filth” to children. She saw that as a dangerous smear that built on QAnon conspiracy assertions that teachers were grooming children. Her union, the AFT, has more than 1.5 million members and is the second largest teachers’ union, behind the National Education Association.“I’m really concerned about his use of the word ‘filth’ to talk about what teachers do,” Weingarten said. “It’s not just the new code for groomers and all the other lies they tell about what teachers are doing at school. But it is intended to worry and divide parents. It is intended to create danger and chaos. How do you call teaching The Diary of Anne Frank or teaching about Ruby Bridges or helping kids be who they are or helping ease their anxieties or teaching math, or science or social studies or English, how dare he call that filth?“For him to call what teaches do filth is pathetic,” Weingarten continued. “It’s politically expedient for him, but it’s dangerous to teachers across the country. He’s a guy who clearly knows better.“Words really matter. There’s a lot of people who are starting to talk about stochastic terrorism and what the effect of that is,” she said. (Stochastic terrorism is the public demonization of a person or group that incites an individual’s violent act against the demonized group.) “I am really worried with every passing day about this extremist rhetoric. It has a real chance of turning into violence. Look at what just happened in Colorado Springs. Look at what happened in the Buffalo grocery store in a primarily black neighborhood.”After Pompeo’s attack, Weingarten has received plenty of public support.The MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said Pompeo’s comments were “truly deranged”. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, said Pompeo’s remarks were “outrageous, dangerous and asinine”. He added, “Radical Republicans hate education, because it cripples their lies and fearmongering.” Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, said, “@rweingarten is a national treasure, representing the voices of millions of educators who are essential for the wellbeing of our families.”Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said Pompeo’s statement that Weingarten is the most dangerous person in the world shows that Pompeo “is the most clueless person in the world”. “This is just a stunt by a politician desperate to get attention for a long-shot presidential run,” Saunders said. “While Pompeo continues to bluster, Randi will keep working for safe, vibrant schools that enrich our children and strengthen our communities.”Weingarten said that Pompeo resorted to such extreme rhetoric because he realizes that his potential candidacy can only work if he attracts some billionaire donors who will give to him rather than Trump or DeSantis. “The donor class that he’s looking for are the ones that are anti-public schools, anti-teachers, anti-teachers’ union,” Weingarten said. “They’re using fear and divisiveness in the culture wars to drive a wedge, a wedge between teachers and parents. The fact that he [Pompeo] would do this shows just how demagogic people like him are in their pursuit of power.”TopicsMike PompeoUS unionsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘The success is inspirational’: the Fight for $15 movement 10 years on

      by

      Analysis‘The success is inspirational’: the Fight for $15 movement 10 years onSteven GreenhouseFederal lawmakers failed to increase the minimum wage, but US workers made other gains, and they are setting their sights on new goals Ten years ago next week, 200 fast-food workers walked out at 20 New York City restaurants, demanding $15 an hour in pay. At the time, many observers scoffed at $15 as an absurd, pie-in-the-sky demand. As the movement’s anniversary approaches, the Fight for $15 movement has proven the naysayers wrong.‘$15 an hour is not enough’: US domestic workers rally on eve of midterms Read moreTopicsMinimum wageUS unionsUS politicsMcDonald’sStarbucksnewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers

      by

      AnalysisRepublicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workersSteven GreenhouseGOP courts blue collar voters but most favor anti-union ‘right to work’ laws and reject laws that would protect right to organize After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party seeks to rebrand itself as the party of the working class, its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers, museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.Congressional Democrats – seeing the surge in unionization drives along with the aggressive anti-union campaigns by Starbucks, Amazon and other companies – say there is increased urgency to enact the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (Pro Act), which would make it easier for workers to unionize. The Pro Act passed the House last year – with 205 Republicans voting against and five in favor – but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, largely because of a GOP filibuster, and will almost certainly fail to pass if Republicans gain Senate seats in the midterms.The Pro Act remains the Democrats’ overwhelming legislative priority for helping unions – it would, among other things, ban employers’ captive audience meetings and create substantial penalties for corporations that break the law when fighting unionization. Republicans denounce the legislation, vigorously opposing a provision that would override the right-to-work laws enacted in 27 states, laws that allow workers to opt out of paying union dues. The Senate Republicans’ policy committee has slammed the Pro Act, saying it would undermine worker freedom, “heavily tilt the scales in favor of labor” and “curb workers’ choices, threaten jobs and increase costs on employers”.It wasn’t always this way. Two decades ago, there were 30 union-friendly Republicans in the House, but that number has dwindled to a handful, partly because many of the party’s billionaire and corporate donors frown on pro-union Republicans. These donors see unions as bothersome institutions that favor Democrats and reduce corporate profits. Indeed, many Republican lawmakers treat unions and their leaders as enemies.Virginia Foxx, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, scoffed at the idea that there is a union resurgence and said Democrats “are in the pocket of Big Labor”. “Unions are hitting the panic button and praying that Democrats can gin up a PR campaign to cover up the declining numbers and lack of interest in union membership,” Foxx told the Guardian, noting that union membership has sunk to just 6% of the private-sector workforce. Foxx, who often serves as Congress’s chief spokesperson on labor matters, belittled unions’ recent gains, saying that only a tiny percentage of Starbucks and Apple stores have been unionized.Foxx, a nine-term House member from North Carolina, said: “If Democrats genuinely believe that union popularity is soaring and that union campaigns and strikes are resonating with American workers, then they truly have a tortured relationship with both math and reality.”Even as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported a 53% jump over the past year in the number of workplace petitions for union elections, Foxx and many other Republicans are backing bills that would make it harder to unionize. With corporations prohibiting union organizers from setting foot on company property to speak with workers, unions rely on NLRB rules requiring employers to give them workers’ home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses so they can communicate with them. But the Employee Privacy Protection Act, a Republican-sponsored bill re-introduced last March, shortly after the recent union surge began, would limit unions to obtaining just one of those three ways to contact workers. Foxx said workers should “never have to hand over their personal contact information” to “a union to which they object”.Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main union federation, said he has seen no sign of Republicans warming up to unions despite their increased popularity – 71% of Americans approve of unions. “I haven’t seen any change” among Republicans, Samuel said. “There’s been no outreach. We haven’t been getting calls from Republicans asking, ‘How can we help workers organize?’”Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the House education and labor committee, agreed, adding: “Republicans are pretty much as hostile as ever toward unions – pretty much down the line.”Scott said Democrats should rush to enact the Pro Act in light of the many daunting obstacles that workers face in seeking to unionize at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies due to intense corporate opposition and a flurry of alleged illegalities by management. In Scott’s view, especially important is a provision that would for the first time allow the NLRB to impose substantial fines against companies that violate the law when battling union drives. “The biggest improvement we need is to have some meaningful sanctions for unfair labor practices,” Scott said. “Right now, there is no meaningful deterrent.”Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a thinktank for conservative economics, said that many Republicans have grown more interested in worker issues. Cass acknowledged, however, that most Republican lawmakers remain hostile to organized labor because “unions are predominantly financing mechanisms for the Democratic party.”He said some Republicans are open to the idea of increasing worker power, but only if it’s done largely outside the framework of traditional unions. Nevertheless, whether with or without unions, hardly any Republicans are pushing to expand worker power – an idea that would irk corporate Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers instead emphasize worker choice and worker freedom – part of their decades-long effort to enact state right-to-work laws that allow workers to opt out of paying any dues or fees to the unions that represent them.Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina are co-sponsoring the National Right to Work Act, which would let workers in all 50 states opt out of union dues. Wilson told the Guardian that the bill would “eliminate forced-dues clauses” and “allow workers to choose for themselves”. He said Joe Biden and the Democrats were on “a mission to force unionization” on “workers by eliminating employee choice”. Senator Paul said their bill would “put bargaining power where it belongs, in the hands of American workers”. Unions assert, however, that workers have far more bargaining power by bargaining collectively, rather than as individuals.Cass, who worked in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, supports steps to give workers more power and said it’s a good time for Republicans to push to increase worker power. Their “constituents are significantly and increasingly working class”, Cass noted, adding that Republicans might be more willing to distance themselves from corporations now that more business executives “are on the other side”, having endorsed Democrats.For years, most Republicans lawmakers have opposed any increase in the NLRB’s budget; that agency oversees private-sector union elections and cracks down on employers that break the law in fighting unions. The labor board’s budget hasn’t increased since 2014, a budget freeze that has angered union leaders because they say it hampers the board’s ability to move quickly against law-breaking, anti-union employers.“The NLRB has been flat-funded for a long time,” said Scott, chair of the House labor committee. “With the popularity of unions increasing, the work of the NLRB has increased. In order to get their work done, the board needs significant increases in funding.”But Foxx called increasing NLRB funding “an inherently stupid idea”, asserting that the labor board tilts in favor of unions, just as Democrats asserted that President Trump’s labor board was far too anti-union.The AFL-CIO’s Samuel voiced dismay that many Republicans seem implacably opposed to anything that would help unions expand. “All this,” Samuel said, “illustrates their hostility to make it easier for workers to enjoy what is supposed to be their basic right under the law: to come together to form a union.”TopicsUS unionsUS politicsStarbucksAmazonanalysisReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Tired of trickle-down economics’: Biden calls for expansion of unions in Labor Day speech

      by

      ‘Tired of trickle-down economics’: Biden calls for expansion of unions in Labor Day speechPresident again pledges to be ‘most pro-union president’ in history during speech in Milwaukee Joe Biden used a Labor Day speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin to endorse the expansion of unions, reiterating his election promises to be the “most pro-union president” in American history.The US president argued in Milwaukee that a skilled, unionised workforce would help the US regain its place as a world leader in infrastructure and manufacturing.Drawing on Franklin D Roosevelt’s explicit support for unions during the New Deal, Biden said: “I am encouraging unions … we need key worker protections to build an economy from the bottom up and middle out. I am sick and tired of trickle-down economics.”Biden’s comments come amid a major resurgence for the labor movement in the US, with more support for unions than at any time in the past 60 years, especially as low-paid workers across a range of industries try unionising.Biden warns US democracy imperiled by Trump and Maga extremistsRead moreEarlier on Monday, Biden came out in support of a proposed law in California, the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act – currently on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk – that would make it easier for farmhands to organise.“The least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union,” Biden said.The Labor Day holiday in an election year typically marks the start of the final sprint before the November vote. With so much at stake in this year’s midterm elections, Biden and Republican leaders are revving up the rhetoric.There is also fevered speculation about whether Donald Trump will announce, before the election, a fresh run for the Republican nomination to recapture the White House in 2024, while he is embroiled in a host of criminal and civil investigations, from New York to Georgia.In Wisconsin, Biden again attempted to distinguish between the type of mainstream Republicans whom he has previously worked with and the “extreme right, Maga Republicans, Trumpies”, he said, who “pose a threat to democracy and economic security, and embrace political violence”.His use of the word “Trumpies” lit up social media. Biden in office has largely avoided referring to his predecessor by name in public or taking direct aim at his loyalist voter base.But last month he referred to the phenomenon of extremist Republicans hewing unshakably to Trump’s “Make America great again” nationalist agenda amid encouragement of “political violence” as “semi-fascism”, then last week said the US was in a battle for the soul of the nation.Biden refers to MAGA republicans as “The Trumpies” pic.twitter.com/I49hQZRzIe— Acyn (@Acyn) September 5, 2022
      On Monday he said: “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy,” referring to defenders of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters hoping to overturn Biden’s victory. Biden continued on the campaign trail from Milwaukee to Pittsburgh for his third visit to Pennsylvania in a week – underscoring the importance of the swing state, which the president, a Pennsylvania native, won back for the Democrats in 2020. Trump, who won Pennsylvania in 2016, rallied there on Saturday.After months of dire polling, the signs are more positive for Biden and the Democrats after a spate of legislative and policy wins, including getting a historic bill to tackle the climate crisis and healthcare costs over the line.Could unexpected Democratic gains foil a midterm Republican victory?Read moreThe US supreme court’s decision in June to overturn the right to abortion also seems to be galvanising the Democrat base, independent and swing voters, especially women, which could hurt Republicans at the polls.In Wisconsin, Biden listed some of his administration’s key victories for workers and ordinary Americans through last year’s American Rescue Act (Arpa) and most recently the Inflation Reduction act (IRA) – without any Republican support.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsWisconsinMilwaukeeUS unionsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      You might think Starbucks is a ‘progressive’ company. You’d be wrong | Hamilton Nolan

      by

      You might think Starbucks is a ‘progressive’ company. You’d be wrongHamilton NolanRarely in modern history have we seen a company that so exquisitely cultivates an image as a caring, progressive employer while actually acting like a bullying, union-busting gangster Corporate hypocrisy is as old as corporations themselves. But there are levels. It is important to recognize astounding achievements in business insincerity. So let us send a note of congratulations today to Starbucks: rarely in modern history have we witnessed a company that so exquisitely combines a cultivated image as a caring, progressive employer with the well-documented, large-scale behavior of a gangster who expects to rule employees through bullying and fear.The $100bn coffee-and-flavored-syrup chain meticulously refers to its employees as “partners”. What does it mean to be a partner to someone? Reasonable people might say that a partnership is a relationship in which you treat the other person as an equal, zealously uphold their basic rights, and deal with them in all cases as fully formed human beings deserving of respect. Luckily for Starbucks, they’ve had a great chance to exhibit these values over the past year, as thousands of employees at more than 230 of their stores across the country have voted to unionize. The historic union wave has offered the company an unprecedented opportunity to respect their “partners’” right to organize; to listen to their concerns and requests for change; and to bargain contracts with them in good faith, as partners, of course, should.To say that Starbucks has failed to live up to their progressive reputation would be far too polite. It’s more like the union is Scooby-Doo, and they have yanked off the company’s pleasant mask to reveal Tony Soprano lurking underneath.This week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said that Starbucks had illegally withheld raises and other benefits from its unionized workers. This is one of the oldest pseudo-friendly union busting tactics in the book – a company in the midst of a union campaign will hand out goodies to its non-union employees and then shrug theatrically and say: “Gee, we’re not allowed to give these things to the union people!” (which, as the NLRB has affirmed, is a lie).And that giant, illegal ripoff is not even the worst part. The union, Starbucks Workers United, says that the company has fired more than 85 workers for organizing. The company has begun permanently closing stores that recently unionized or were in the process of doing so. The NLRB still has hundreds of charges of illegal labor practices against Starbucks that it has yet to rule on. There were so many GoFundMe campaigns floating around for fired Starbucks workers that the union finally had to set up a national Solidarity Fund to try to help them all. In the midst of all of this brash intimidation, Starbucks has complained that the NLRB has unfairly favored the union, which is akin to a bank robber complaining that the police are unfairly favoring the bank.What accounts for the hubris of a company that so boldly risks its own reputation to flout labor law and treat its “partners” like so many automatons who must be whipped back into submission? I’m no psychoanalyst, but I imagine that it flows from the same source as the hubris that made the billionaire Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz imagine that he could get elected president as an independent. It seems that none of Schultz’s sycophants were brave enough to tell him up front that he is, perhaps, the single worst presidential candidate you could ever imagine: Conservatives hate him because he pretends to be progressive; progressives hate him because he is, in fact, a cutthroat billionaire businessman who slathers himself in symbolic liberalism to ward off accurate criticism; and his own employees hate him because he treats their request for labor rights like an act of war.Schultz, who returned to Starbucks as CEO this year for the express purpose of fumbling the company’s response to unionization, seems to imagine himself as some sort of kindly Stewart Brand figure who will redeem capitalism, but acts in practice like just another irate union-buster – Andrew Carnegie with an espresso machine. (A monstrous bit of Democratic party trivia: Hillary Clinton reportedly considered Schultz as labor secretary in her presidential administration, something that the next reporter to interview Clinton should absolutely ask her about.)It may be that the very idea of a “progressive corporation” is, given the realities of American capitalism, an oxymoron. But anyone who has ever held a job understands what a good employer is. It is someone who treats workers as humans. When you get right down to it, the demands of the many Starbucks workers who have unionized are downright modest. They have asked the company to sign a pledge to simply allow workers to choose to organize “without fear of reprisal”. The company has not only refused to sign, but has dedicated itself to instilling fear of reprisal in the hearts of every single employee. That is not how a good boss treats his workers. That is not how a genuine progressive treats anyone. And it is certainly not how you would treat a “partner”.In Boston, recently, I stopped by a unionized Starbucks store where workers have been on strike for more than a month. Through scorching days and lonely nights, these young workers, who could have spent the time doing anything more fun, have maintained a 24/7 picket line. That is not something people do if they do not care – about their co-workers, about their rights, and about the company itself. Schultz, who sits in his $30m mansion and sends out messages exhorting his employees to show “collective courage”, has not been there. He should pay it a visit. I bet they could teach him a lot about what real progressive values look like.
      Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS unionsStarbucksCorporate governanceFood & drink industrycommentReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      If Democrats want votes, they should rain fury on union-busting corporations | Hamilton Nolan

      by

      If Democrats want votes, they should rain fury on union-busting corporationsHamilton NolanWe supposedly have the most pro-union US president of our lifetimes. Let’s see him act like it In June, workers at a Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine, became the first in the company’s history to file for a union election. Less than a month later, the company closed the store. In shutting down a location that was set to unionize, Chipotle was keeping company with Starbucks, which has suddenly undertaken a campaign to shut down several unionizing locations from coast to coast due to “safety” issues, and the health food company Amy’s Kitchen, which last month closed an entire factory in California where workers were organizing. It is, of course, impossible to “prove” that these companies closed these locations to try to crush the union drives, in the same sense that it is impossible to prove that a schoolyard bully meant to punch you in the face: he claims that he was merely punching the air while you happened to walk in front of his fist. Who’s to say what’s true in such a murky situation?Delta flights attendants race to unionize: ‘We’re the people behind the profits’Read morePlausible deniability aside, this is an extremely serious problem. Not just for the underpaid, overworked employees at all of these low-wage jobs, desperately hanging on to financial survival by their fingernails, but for all of us. America is mired in a half-century-long crisis of rising inequality that has been fueled, above all, by the combined erosion of labor power and the growth of the power of capital. The American dream enjoyed by the lucky baby-boom generation – buying a home and sending your kids to college on one income – is dead and gone, replaced by a thin crust of the rich sitting atop a huge swamp of once-middle-class jobs that no longer offer enough to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.The power of workers relative to the power of the investment class must be rebalanced. Rebuilding the power of unions is the only way out of this trap, unless you are credulous enough to believe that we will all be rescued by the sudden radicalization of the tax policymakers on the House ways and means committee. If you ever want to live in a country where the American dream is more than a cruel, tantalizing joke, you have a stake in the revival of organized labor.So when you see a big company closing down operations because workers there want to unionize, you should be pissed. Such coldhearted retaliation against people exercising a fundamental right on the job goes to the very heart of how we got all this inequality in the first place. It is meant not just to derail one union drive, but to strike fear in all the other workers who see it happen: if you ask for what you’re worth, this could happen to you. Shut up and eat your gruel, and be happy that the kindly billionaire CEO is allowing you to earn enough not to starve today. Even if you don’t work at a fast-food outlet or a factory, this should enrage you, as a human being. It is an assault on human dignity.America’s convoluted and hostile labor laws actually do allow a business to shut down in response to unionization, unless (and this is important) the company is doing so in order to scare its remaining employees out of unionizing – in other words, exactly what big employers like Chipotle and Starbucks would be doing by closing stores where workers have organized, as workers at many other stores across the country looked on. (Government regulators have not yet ruled on the legality of the recent closures by those companies.) Unfortunately, the evil, high-priced union-busting attorneys these companies hire are well aware that the gears of justice in labor law grind so slowly that even on the off chance that they were found to have closed the stores illegally, it would be far too late for it to mean anything to the workers who were laid off and forced to go find other jobs. The scary, unsubtle message to the company’s workforce would have already been sent.That’s why this stuff is not really a question of law, but of power. The working class, galvanized by the near-death experience of the pandemic, is busily organizing in new industries across the country; the labor movement today is as energized as it has been in two generations. Corporate America is determined to stop this. In the mid-1950s, one in three Americans was a union member; today, that figure is one in 10. Companies know that their ability to extract excess profits will go down as union density goes up. This is going to be a hard, nasty fight. As all of those recently laid-off Chipotle and Starbucks and Amy’s Kitchen workers know, it already is.It is also a golden opportunity for a Democratic party that has spent the last six years wringing its hands about losing working-class voters to the pseudo-populist (and racist) appeal of Trumpism. Want to get working people enthusiastic about Democrats again? Then the Democrats should help working people. National Democratic politicians should be holding press conferences decrying the greedy chief executives closing these stores just because workers tried to stand up for themselves. Joe Biden should be screaming his head off about billionaire Starbucks chief Howard Schultz’s disgusting union-busting at the same volume that Ron DeSantis is blathering about “woke corporations”.Republicans are insincere ghouls who want to harvest working-class votes while their policies stab working-class people in the back – but Democrats are ceding the terrain to these scumbags by failing to match their fervor. We don’t need our politicians making anodyne statements about how unions are nice. We need a rain of zeal and fury emanating from Washington, to terrify companies away from closing down their union stores with threats of merciless retributions from the state.History shows that organized labor thrives when it has the government’s support, and suffers without it. We are supposedly living under the most pro-union president of our lifetimes. So? Let’s hear some damn fire, man. The only reason companies feel so free to abuse their workers is that they don’t believe anyone will make them pay for it.
      Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionUS unionsUS politicsJoe BidenStarbuckscommentReuse this content More