Tuesday, Sep 27, 2016, 11:02 am · By Mario Vasquez
No Justice, No Peeps! Workers Walk Off the Job At Pennsylvania Peeps Factory
The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has called for a boycott of Just Born products. (Daniel Spiess/ Flickr)
Workers employed by candy manufacturer, Just Born Quality Confections, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, are on strike over the company’s pension plan proposal. The strike, workers allege, hits the company—which makes Peeps, as well as Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales candies—just as next year’s Easter orders are meant to be made.
“This is my livelihood,” says Alex Fattore, a mechanic who has been at Just Born since 1980. “We make Easter happen. I want to go back in there and make Easter happen.”
Roughly 400 workers walked off the job September 7, drawing a hard line against the company’s attempt to switch new hires to a 401(k), instead of the multiemployer pension plan that workers are presently a part of. They are represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Union Local 6.
Friday, Sep 23, 2016, 6:32 pm · By Chris Brooks
VW’s Company Union Can’t Attract Even 15 Percent of Workers
Anti-union workers launched the American Council of Employees after the UAW lost a 2014 vote to represent VW’s entire hourly workforce of 1,500 people. (Thomas Hawk/ Flickr)
This article was first posted at Labor Notes.
Tennessee’s infamous anti-union union is fading away for lack of members. Will Volkswagen’s rationale for keeping out a real union crumble with it?
The American Council of Employees, a business-financed rival to the United Auto Workers at Chattanooga’s VW plant, no longer meets the minimum membership threshold to qualify for meetings with management as part of the company’s so-called “Community Organization Engagement” policy.
Friday, Sep 23, 2016, 11:43 am · By Cole Stangler
Walmart, Nike and Others Decline to Back $40 Monthly Wage Hike in Cambodia’s Garment Industry
This month, labor unions representing hundreds of thousands of garment workers proposed a hike in the industry-wide minimum wage from $140 a month to $179.60. (World Bank Photo Collection/ Flickr)
Major Western retailers sourcing clothing from Cambodia—a country marked by authoritarian rule and regularly ranked as one of the world’s worst countries for workers—are declining to endorse a proposed hike in the garment industry’s minimum wage that amounts to roughly $40 a month.
Like many of its neighbors in Southeast Asia, Cambodia is a popular spot for American and European brands to subcontract production of textiles and shoes. It offers easy market access and, above all, cheap labor. Against that backdrop, garment and footwear exports have more than doubled over the past decade—with suppliers pulling in contracts from top-name corporations like Walmart and Nike.
But the industry is not without conflict. In recent years, its overwhelmingly female workforce has led mass strikes and protests to demand higher wages, and several workers were killed in a police crackdown in January 2014. Further tension looms.
Wednesday, Sep 21, 2016, 12:55 pm · By James Kilgore
Nationwide Prison Strike Against “Slavery in America” Rolls On—Despite Media Blackout
The day chosen to launch the strike, September 9, coincided with perhaps the most famous prison uprising in modern U.S. history—the rebellion in New York's Attica prison in 1971. (Act Out/ Twitter)
This article was first posted at Truthout.
The first national prison labor strike in US history launched on September 9. Billed as a "Call to Action Against Slavery in America," the spark for the action came from the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), a prison-based organization that has been mobilizing across the state since 2012. Alabama has one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the country.
Reports from FAM's base within Holman Prison indicated a universal refusal of the population to go to work on September 9. Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, the chief outside spokesperson for FAM, speaking to Truthout on the day of the launch, said significant strike action also took place within prisons in South Carolina, Virginia and Ohio.
"These men have gone beyond religious barriers and race barriers and most of all, incarceration barriers," Glasgow told Truthout. By Wednesday evening, the Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee (IWOC) estimated that 15,310 people in prisons were on lockdown in facilities where organizing or strikes had been confirmed.
Monday, Sep 19, 2016, 4:40 pm · By Jacob Denz
We Are Workers: The Case Against Grad Student Exceptionalism in the UAW
The division between UAW leadership and the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU) could perhaps best be described as a difference between unionists who want to make academic activism more like a union and academics who want unions to function more like campus activist groups. (GSOC-UAW Local 2110/ Facebook)
Unionization is surging among faculty, staff, and graduate student workers at public and private universities. In part, that’s thanks to the United Auto Workers (UAW). The union has emerged as an essential ally in some of the most successful campus campaigns, including a recent National Labor Relations Board decision that said graduate student assistants at private universities have the right to unionize.
The relationship, however, between some graduate student activists and experienced leaders in the UAW has not always been easy. Achieving union recognition and strong contracts requires strategies and tactics that are different from those many students are familiar with.
Barry Eidlin’s article on graduate student worker unionism, first published by Jacobin and re-printed by In These Times, illustrates the one-sidedness with which some self-proclaimed radical academics have caricatured the UAW. Eidlin presents a struggle between graduate student workers committed to “democracy,” especially those affiliated with the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union (AWDU), and an otherwise monolithic UAW bureaucracy haunted by the ghost of Walter Reuther. This has been the basic narrative about the UAW that has emerged from AWDU caucuses at the University of Washington, New York University (NYU) and the University of California system, where Eidlin himself was a founding member of AWDU (though he failed to identify himself as such in the Jacobin piece).
Once every conflict between activist graduate students and other leaders in the UAW can be attributed to “Reutherism,” there is no need to consider the facts of a given situation to know that the graduate students are in the right. Unfortunately, when the reality does not fit the image of shining young radicals democratizing an otherwise moribund union, AWDU supporters have had a tendency to resort to creative mythmaking and a distinct political “branding” strategy.
Saturday, Sep 17, 2016, 12:19 pm · By Kate Aronoff
AFL-CIO Backs Dakota Access Pipeline and the “Family Supporting Jobs” It Provides
This week has shown a stark divide between parts of American labor and today’s social movements. Progressive unions face an uphill battle on many issues, within and outside of organized labor. (Peg Hunter/ Flickr)
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) came out this week in support of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the construction of which was delayed last week by an order from the Obama administration—a decision that itself stemmed from months of protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux.
In a statement, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, said, “We believe that community involvement in decisions about constructing and locating pipelines is important and necessary, particularly in sensitive situations like those involving places of significance to Native Americas.”
But it “is fundamentally unfair,” he added, “to hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay. The Dakota Access Pipeline is providing over 4,500 high-quality, family supporting jobs.
“(Trying) to make climate policy by attacking individual construction projects is neither effective nor fair to the workers involved. The AFL-CIO calls on the Obama Administration to allow construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue.”
Friday, Sep 16, 2016, 3:10 pm · By Edna Bonhomme and Emily Drabinski
Anatomy of a Lockout
The 12-day lockout ended Thursday, with faculty and staff returning to class after students missed seven days of classes. The faculty refused to accept the concessionary contract the administration tried to force them to accept, leading the union to declare victory. (Long Island University Faculty Federation/ Facebook)
This article was first posted at Jacobin.
On August 31, the Long Island University Faculty Federation Union contract expired. Faculty and management began negotiations over a new contract, and on September 6, the faculty met to discuss a proposed agreement.
Faculty voted 226 to 10 not to accept the contract that was provided by the administration. Rather than renegotiate the agreement, however, management decided to lock out the university’s four hundred professors.
Lockouts are often confused with strikes—under both, workers aren’t working. But whereas strikes are offensive measures taken by workers against bosses, lockouts are a boss’s tool used to break unions. Such was the case in this lockout.
The twelve-day lockout ended yesterday, with faculty and staff returning to class after students missed seven days of classes. The faculty refused to accept the concessionary contract the administration tried to force them to accept, leading the union to declare victory.
To discuss the lockout, the future of the union, and corporatization of higher education, Edna Bonhomme spoke with Emily Drabinski, library coordinator at LIU and secretary of the Long Island University Faculty Federation.
Friday, Sep 16, 2016, 1:11 pm · By Mario Vasquez
California Farmworkers Win Equal Overtime: “This Bill Corrects 78 Years of Discrimination”
Nationwide, almost all farmworkers are exempt from overtime thresholds thanks to agricultural worker exemptions in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. (United Farm Workers/ Twitter)
California just approved the strongest overtime pay legislation in the nation for farmworkers, long exempt from overtime standards mandated for most other occupations.
The legislation, known as AB 1066, was signed into law this week by Gov. Jerry Brown and will eventually result in time-and-a-half pay for farmworkers who work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.
“This bill corrects 78 years of discrimination, not just in the state but in the country,” says Juan Garcia, an internal coordinator with the United Farm Workers (UFW). “Most of the people that I’ve talked to here in Sonoma that have worked 30, sometimes 40 years—they’ve been waiting for something like this.”
Wednesday, Sep 14, 2016, 12:25 pm · By Cole Stangler
French Workers Step Up Labor Strikes: “With This Law, We’re Going Toward a Catastrophe”
Labor’s gripes with the Loi Travail are many: At the top of the list is a provision that undermines large-scale collective bargaining agreements. (Force Ouvrière/ Flickr)
PARIS—France takes its summer vacation seriously: Families enjoy weeks of paid time off. Major cities empty out. Students go on break. This year, it’s also when the ruling Socialist government approved a deeply unpopular and sweeping set of labor reforms—arguably, the most significant rollback of workers’ rights since the nation’s welfare state rose from the ashes of World War II.
From March to July, hundreds of thousands of workers, students, unionists and sympathizers protested against the so-called Loi Travail. With the country back from its collective break—and the hotly-contested law starting to take effect—rabble-rousers are ready to hit the streets again. This Thursday, opponents have called for another round of strikes and protests against the reforms, demanding the government withdraw the law.
“The objective is the same,” says Eric Beynel, spokesman for Solidaires, one of several unions to endorse the latest round of protests. “We thought the law was bad before it was adopted. Just because it was adopted, moreover in a completely undemocratic way, doesn’t mean we should stop the mobilization. It’s only logical to continue.”
Tuesday, Sep 13, 2016, 6:53 pm · By Shaun Richman
The Fight to Save UMass Labor Center Is a Fight for Worker Power
Founded in 1964, the Labor Center is one of about 30 labor centers around the country. (Save the Labor Center/ Facebook)
The Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) at Amherst is in turmoil. Its director, Eve Weinbaum, says she was abruptly pushed out of the position. In an alarming e-mail to alumni, students and allies, she protested funding cuts to teaching assistants and part-time instructors and, more troublingly, threats to the “Labor Studies faculty’s autonomy to make programmatic decisions and to designate a Director.”
Founded in 1964, the Labor Center is one of about 30 labor centers around the country. Most are rooted in the extension programs of land grant public universities. In addition to its extension work—providing trainings for unions and worker centers—the Labor Center runs undergraduate and graduate degree programs in labor studies.
These days it is most renowned for its limited residency Union Leadership and Administration (ULA) program, in which union leaders, staff and rank-and-file activists meet for intense 10-day periods of instruction every summer and winter and can earn a graduate degree in three years if they keep up with readings and assignments from home (or in the field). As you might have guessed, I’m a proud alum of the program.
The response to Weinbaum’s letter produced nearly 500 letters of protest in a few days, according to organizers for a Save the Labor Center campaign. Local union leaders, heads of other labor centers, alumni and current students also expressed alarm about the situation in a prominent article in The Boston Globe. According to Jeff Schuhrke, another UMass alum and writer for In These Times, an organizing committee of at least 30 alumni is holding regular conference calls to plan the next steps of the campaign. The upheaval there has many worried about the future of labor education at public universities nationwide. Changes in the way education programs are funded are setting off a kind of labor center “Hunger Games,” where some programs grow while others die.
