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  #26  
Old 09-17-2019, 02:50 AM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Key Points About the U.A.W. Strike Against General Motors {warning: metered paywall}
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First, it was teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. Then hotel workers at nearly two dozen Marriotts and grocery employees at Stop & Shop locations in the Northeast.

Now the United Automobile Workers have gone on strike at General Motors, sending nearly 50,000 members at factories across the Midwest and South to picket lines.

U.A.W. leaders in Detroit voted unanimously on Sunday to authorize the strike, the union’s first such walkout since 2007, after the current agreement with G.M. expired.

The strike, part of a recent surge of labor activism, has halted production in the United States. A prolonged stoppage could affect G.M.’s Canadian and Mexican operations, crimping the company’s bottom line and the fortunes of its parts suppliers.
This is the largest strike in the US in more than a decade. One of the big issues is two-tiered pay, where newer employees get paid substantially less; and slowing or reversing plant closures in the US.
Hard to find a single decent article on the subject in a short search engine perusal; labor reporting in the US is mostly dead.

On that same subject, on two search engines all the results on the first page for unionization/ how to form a union/ signing unionization cards are anti-union "workers rights" employer propaganda. Not surprised.
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  #27  
Old 09-18-2019, 12:14 AM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Okay did some digging.
1. UAW did a shitty job of preparing for this strike. Labor Notes discusses the issue, which boils down to whether or not the union involves rank-and-file workers and prepares them in building solidarity and intensity for the strike, with everyone on the same page about the demands, or if it is called for from union management entirely without front-loading and prep.
2. UAW is embroiled in a corruption scandal right now that is being pursued by the FBI. This also makes union leadership look unprepared at best and disconnected and corrupt as all hell.
Quote:
GM was bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $50 billion in 2009. It made over $8 billion in profits last year, while paying no federal income taxes yet gifting CEO Mary Barra $22 million. For GM to demand concessions from its overworked employees now is a sign that it thinks the UAW is an easy foe.

After all, UAW President Gary Jones may be distracted. His house and that of former President Dennis Williams were both searched by the FBI August 28. Jones’ top lieutenant before he became president, Vance Pearson, was charged with using union funds for personal luxuries, and it’s widely believed that Jones and Williams will be next. Pearson was the sixth UAW official to be recently charged or convicted of graft.
GM has also been buying back stocks; they are awash in cash.
GM bought back $10 billion in stock since 2015, double what job cuts will save

On this subject I just finished Jane McAlevey's No Shortcuts, which gives a number of case studies of two broad primary types of unions in the US today: top down deal maker unions and lateral grassroots solidarity unions. Top-down deal maker unions may go to an industry or large employer and gain unionization in return for backing a piece of legislation, finding supply chain cost reductions, agreeing to not unionize THOSE parts, etc. Negotiations are behind closed doors, workers are not involved particularly. Lateral grassroots solidarity unions have an involved rank-and-file; union officers are drawn from the rank-and-file; they engage in solidarity actions and regular participation of membership, including in contract negotiations, and they strike (with lots of prep and training). This second type of union in almost every study is stronger, gains more concessions, but takes involvement from the membership.
The main argument is that the mobilizing model which gained ascendancy in unionizing in the last decades is insufficient; it takes organizing workers and building movement solidarity; mobilizing alone does not sustain.

Oh, and the book was great. Jane McAlevey has a fair number of videos on YouTube as well, discussing labor and unionization today, in concrete terms.
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  #28  
Old 10-18-2019, 11:26 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Labor Notes covers the current negotiations as GM workers vote on the tentative agreement.
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After nearly six weeks on the picket lines, auto workers will make a sobering choice: accept the agreement proposed or vote no and stay out in the hopes of getting something better. In 2015 Chrysler workers rejected their tentative agreement 2-1 and sent bargainers back for more. GM workers, voting later, approved their pact by just 58 percent for production workers; skilled trades voted it down.

UAW leaders decided that workers will remain on strike during the ratification vote. Voting will end Friday, October 25 by 4:00 p.m.
One of the biggest issues is regarding the tiers of workers, with workers hired after 2007 having significantly lower pay and benefits than those hired before 2007. The new contract being offered does little to resolve this large and important issue.

ALSO!

Chicago teachers are striking, to force the Democratic machine running politics in Chicago to actually address major issues.
Quote:
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago Public Schools classes are canceled again Friday as the Chicago Teachers Union remains on strike for a second day.

There are signs of movement toward a deal, but thousands of CPS teachers returned to the picket lines Friday morning. Twenty-six thousand CPS teachers and 8,000 support staff workers including custodians, special education assistants and bus aides are on strike. It is the first CPS teacher strike since 2012.
Labor Notes on the teacher's strike:
Quote:
This time, 25,000-member CTU is joined on strike by Service Employees (SEIU) Local 73, which represents 7,500 classroom assistants, bus drivers and aides, security guards, and other support staff.

This time the union has extended its demands: it wants to tackle student homelessness and affordable housing for low-income Chicagoans.

And this time it is up against a new mayor—not the blatant corporate shill Rahm Emmanuel but liberal Lori Lightfoot, whose election platform promised support for the Chicago Public Schools. In spite of these promises, Lightfoot chose the same bargaining team that served Emanuel and is holding firm against the unions' demands.
...>snip<...
Many SEIU members work with students with special learning, developmental, or emotional needs. The average salary for custodial workers is $35,000 a year and for special education classroom assistants $36,000. That puts these workers below the Housing and Urban Development measure of “very low income.”

Isaac Krantz-Perlman, a substitute special education classroom assistant, describes a colleague who works with students all day, leaves to drive for Uber, works as a night-shift custodian, goes home to care for his elderly mother, sleeps, and heads back to work with students the next day. He says this is what the unions mean when they say “our working conditions are students' learning conditions.” Students need well-rested staff.

Local 73 is demanding pay raises, access to health benefits and paid vacations, an end to outsourcing, and more training for educators working with high-needs students.

Class-size caps, and the opening of a new classroom when numbers go over that cap, are central to CTU’s demands. The union is calling for more counselors and social workers, with lower caseloads, nurses in every school, and an expansion of the number of Sustainable Community Schools from 20 to 75. These are schools that give students a full array of wrap-around social services.
The teachers in Chicago reorged their unions internally before the 2012 Strike that they won, to become stronger with much more rank-and-file participation and solidarity and militancy, as opposed to top-down union structures that preceded it.
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  #29  
Old 11-03-2019, 04:15 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

The 11-day teachers strike in Chicago paid off
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Teachers returned to school Friday after going on strike for 11 days. They had picketed in the snow and rain until union leaders and city officials struck a deal to raise teacher pay and to put a social worker and nurse in each school. Some of the teachers’ most ambitious proposals, such as requiring the city to expand affordable housing, didn’t make the cut.

“Did we accomplish every single little thing? No. But I can say that we moved the needle on educational justice in the city,” Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said in a press conference Thursday.

The district also committed to spending $35 million to shrink oversized classrooms and to prioritize schools that serve the most at-risk students. The deal includes a 16 percent pay raise for teachers over five years, and a remarkable 40 percent raise for teaching assistants, clerks, and other lower-paid workers. The new, five-year contract will also boost investment per pupil and reduce the number of students in each class.

Teachers had wanted more, though. They also wanted more affordable housing in the city for students and teachers. That’s something no teachers union has demanded in recent contract negotiations.

These kinds of broad demands are part of a growing movement, led by teachers and labor unions, focused more on social justice issues affecting their communities than simply pay. It’s known as “bargaining for the common good.”
This is a big deal; the Chicago machine bends the knee to the teacher's union because that union knows how to build, organize, fight, and win. Good on the teachers, janitors, teaching assistants, and support staff for their solidarity and determination.

The GM strike has officially ended. Here’s what workers won and lost.
Quote:
The longest auto workers’ strike in 50 years is officially over.

General Motors employees voted overwhelmingly in favor of a deal struck by the United Auto Workers union and company executives. Nearly 48,000 workers who were on strike will return to work on Saturday.

The vote ends a painful work stoppage that has lasted six weeks, costing GM nearly $2 billion in lost production and employees nearly $1 billion in lost wages.

“Our members not only joined together in solidarity but felt the support of their whole community throughout this important stand,” Terry Dittes, the lead UAW negotiator at GM, said in a statement.

The final deal isn’t terrible for workers, but it’s hardly a victory. In fact, the tentative four-year contract would give striking workers four small wins and one major loss.
The four small wins: pay increases (same as last contract) but with a lift on the cap on profit sharing; $4 billion in US factory investments that keeps at least one plant open that was slated for closure; some small gains for temporary and transitional workers (the tier system that workers hate is still in place); And no health care cost bump (prior to strike these were set to increase).
The big loss was the Lordstown Ohio plant is being closed by GM; the company was unwilling to have the labor footprint wanted by the union and instead are moving this kind of production (what hasn't already been moved, that is) to maquiladoras in Mexico.
Turns out jobs in the maquiladoras and the supposed Mexican unions that represent them, are shady as fuck.
How Mexico’s Unions Sell Out Autoworkers
The article lays out how in Mexico unions negotiate contracts years before the plants are even built and workers in the plants do not know they are represented by a union, have no say in negotiations, and the deals brokered often do not benefit workers whatsoever, locking in pay rates well below the national average or industry standard in Mexico in many instances.

Quote:
Since 2010, automakers have announced $24 billion in investments through 2019, while parts makers have committed another $3 billion, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. Companies often cite the trade agreements Mexico has signed with 45 countries as a key reason they want to locate their plants there. Auto executives will rarely say they chose Mexico because its workers are among the cheapest in the world.

Mexican assembly-line workers earn about one-tenth of what their U.S. counterparts make. Adjusted for productivity, base wages for workers in plants that make transportation equipment rose 20 percent in Mexico between 2006 and 2016, according to calculations by Boston Consulting Group Inc.; in China, they climbed 157 percent over the same period.

Alejandra makes about $1.45 an hour working at a factory in Guanajuato state owned by Hirschmann Automotive GmbH, an Austrian parts maker. The machine operator, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation, says she has no idea if she and her co-workers are represented by a union.
So the GM strike was indicative of a company awash in cash, tied to a global supply chain, and using neoliberal globalism to break much of the leverage labor might have in the US auto plants. It was also indicative of a union that got sloppy and did not build rank-and-file power and solidarity in the last decades; and one that has the FBI breathing down their neck for internal corruption issues.
UAW president to take leave of absence amid federal corruption probe of union's leadership
Quote:
The surprising development Saturday follows the latest criminal charges in the UAW corruption probe. Edward Robinson, a union official in Missouri, was accused Thursday in a criminal information of conspiracy to embezzle union funds and to defraud the United States. Robinson's regional office was the same one Jones had once led. Vance Pearson, the current director of that office, Region 5, is on leave facing his own charges in the scandal. A dozen people — union and auto company officials — have been charged to date.
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  #30  
Old 12-13-2019, 04:56 AM
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Default Re: Labor Day

An hour ago at Grand Central Bakery in Portland Oregon, with 29 yes votes 9 no votes counted by the NLRB on site- a clear and strong mandate- the Bakers and Dishwashers have formed a union. I organized them and then they took the lead as it should always be- the workers must lead- and I work for them to get them a strong contract in 2020 and to always be more organized and more prepared to fight than the boss.

Here's a link to a podcast interview with a member of the organizing committee, the first 17 minutes.
SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
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  #31  
Old 12-13-2019, 02:04 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

:yes!:

Great work Comrade!
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  #32  
Old 02-09-2020, 03:43 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

National Labor Relations Board sues Oregon, wants judge to nullify state’s workplace meeting law
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The National Labor Relations Board wants a federal judge to throw out an Oregon law that prohibits employers from disciplining workers who refuse to attend mandatory meetings on politics, religious matters or unions.

The board filed a complaint against Friday in U.S. District Court in Portland, saying federal law preempts the state law.

The board argues that mandatory meetings called by an employer to discuss the employer’s views about unions have long been permitted under the National Labor Relations Act, provided they aren’t held within 24 hours before a union election.

From an article in local paper The Skanner, 2009, when the bill was proposed:
Quote:
“This Act will protect workers from being intimidated on the job due to their positions or beliefs on deeply personal issues and decisions,” said Rep. Michael Dembrow, the bill’s co-sponsor, during the emotional floor debate on the bill. “The Worker Freedom Act is about helping to remove fear, intimidation, and retaliation from the workplace and telling working Oregonians: ‘We care about you. We value you. You are not a servant or a slave. You are a worker — and you deserve to be treated with justice and with dignity.’”
The Trump NLRB’s Anti-Labor Day Sept 2, 2019:
Quote:
Employee rights advocates say this Labor Day's family barbecues and union solidarity picnics will take place in the shadow of a Trump administration that has quietly stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor members. The federal agency is far less well-known than the IRS or EPA, but its five presidential appointees issue rulings with often far-reaching consequences for America's working men and women. The NLRB was created in 1935 to oversee collective bargaining and protect labor standards; the majority of its current board have worked for years with pro-employer firms and worked on behalf of industry.
Interestingly we just used the Oregon law and posted it in the bakery when the bosses set three mandatory meetings for bakers and dishwashers back in December.
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  #33  
Old 02-09-2020, 05:17 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Eight Thousand Hospital Workers Strike in Seattle
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After nine months of fruitless negotiations, 8,000 hospital workers in the Swedish Medical Center chain in Seattle walked out January 28 on a three-day strike.

The strikers include everyone from nurses and medical assistants to orderlies and janitors. They are represented by SEIU 1199NW.

The strike was over unfair labor practices. The union alleges that Swedish management has fired workers for union activity and has failed to engage in good-faith bargaining.
They have over 900 vacancies on staff positions, forcing the rest of them to work overtime; management claims it's the national nursing shortage, but seemed able to find scab nurses to hire just fine.
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  #34  
Old 02-09-2020, 07:06 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Jesus Fucking Christ. Last I checked, there was all of one state (yours) with a captive audience law that actually benefited union organizing, and now they're going after it.

It is a sad, sorry, jacked up state of affairs when a 1953 opinion from five dudes in federal agency, sitting as an adjudicative body, trumps the collective will of a state legislature, the elected representatives of the state's citizens, but there it is. Federal preemption gave us Miranda and the exclusionary rule in state criminal proceedings, but it also gave us tort "reform" on a scale even the craziest pro-business state legislatures couldn't imagine, along with the deaths of multiple state efforts to reform banking regulation.

It'll be interesting to see how your state's attorney general defends the lawsuit. Back in December, the AG's office apparently told the NLRB to go pound sand, so they must have something in mind. Seems to me the proper party to bring this challenge is an Oregon employer that wants to hold a captive audience meeting in advance of a unionization vote but can't because of the law. The current NLRB members have no injury beyond possible Scrooge McDuck butthurt, which generally doesn't confer standing to sue in federal court.

Even if the Board succeeds, the state law retains some teeth. The preemption argument goes to captive audience unionization meetings. O.R.S. § 659.785 would still prohibit employers from holding mandatory-attendance MAGA rallies or Prosperity Jesus revival meetings.
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  #35  
Old 09-04-2023, 07:14 PM
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Default Re: Labor Day

Happy "Labor" Day, 'Merkins

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