Farmwork Is Difficult—But Not Hopeless by Alexander E. Hill
November 7, 2024
Introduction:
(Zócalo) Calling the U.S. farm workforce “critical” is an understatement. Agricultural workers’ labor feeds us. Yet their living and working conditions often do not reflect their immense contributions to society. They face a variety of challenges for at work—difficulties taking leave for sick days or family or personal obligations and harmful working conditions—and outside of work, like securing housing, child care, food, and health care.
Most farmworkers are paid above the minimum wage, and wages, on average, have been increasing in recent years. However, because farmwork is highly seasonal, hourly wage rates provide a misleading indicator of overall earnings. As one example, the average hourly wage rate for California crop workers in 2021 was $17.50. This would translate to annual earnings of $36,000 if these workers were employed full-time and year-round. But farm jobs are seasonal and temporary. Actual average annual earnings for farmworkers were roughly $20,000.
Earnings are just one component of working conditions. Farmwork requires back-breaking exertion, and farmworkers are exposed to harsh environmental conditions—and since most do not have paid time off, they face a difficult decision: Work, and potentially damage their health, or do not work, and do not get paid.
In part because of economic incentives for both employer and employee, outdoor work often continues during high temperatures, pollution, and wildfires; ceasing work at such times can lead to major crop loss, because such environmental conditions damage many fruits and vegetables. During the 2018 California wildfires, the Washington Post reported on strawberry harvesters who felt pressure to continue work through smoke that was thick enough to sting their eyes and throats. From the employer and consumer perspective, getting strawberries off the plants on their normal rotation was crucial to avoid crop loss and supply disruptions.
U.S. Could Rely More On Foreign Ag Workers Under Trump. High Demand is Already Straining the Government. by Sky Chadde
November 15, 2024
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) Key takeaways:
Shifted resources. To keep up with high demand, the U.S. Department of Labor moved staff from processing other visas to reviewing H-2A visas. That has created a backlog in other visas the agency oversees.
Questioned integrity. Because of high demand, the Labor Department performed far fewer audits of H-2A applications in 2023 than it did just a few years ago. That’s because the staff that would perform the audits are busy processing applications. The agency itself has said high demand might affect “program integrity.”
Continued growth? The first Trump administration promoted the use of the H-2A program while performing raids on workplaces suspected of having undocumented workers — a large component of the agriculture workforce.
Farm employers’ increasing use of guest visa farmworkers has strained federal agencies, potentially impairing workers’ rights, a federal watchdog found in a report released Thursday.
The report comes days after Donald Trump was re-elected president. During his first term, Trump championed the use of guest farmworkers — foreign laborers who work temporarily in U.S. agricultural fields — as a legal alternative for farm labor. Many farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented.
Whole Foods Workers File for First-Ever Union, Defying Amazon
Source: In These Times
Workers in Philadelphia say they’re tired of being treated like robots.
Kim Kelly November 22, 2024
With a rich history stretching back to 1682, Philadelphia boasts the nation’s first library, its first hospital, its first daily newspaper, even its first zoo. Now, a tenacious group of grocery store workers wants to earn the City of Brotherly Love another accomplishment: the nation’s first unionized Whole Foods Market.
On November 22, Whole Foods Workers United officially declared its intention to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 1776 and filed papers with the National Labor Relations Board.
Since Amazon bought the company in 2017, Whole Foods has undergone a litany of changes?—?many, workers say, for the worse. The checkout area is heavily surveilled to account for increased self-checkout (which in some stores includes a palm-scanning biometric option) and as demand for delivery orders has skyrocketed, so has the infrastructure to support it, including bringing in an army of delivery drivers and shoppers who compete with workers and regular customers for aisle space. Amazon has also attempted to integrate its own grocery brands into Whole Foods, and is debuting robot-run “mini warehouses” to encourage customers to buy more of its conventional products. Its thirst for profits and quest to dominate the grocery market has led the company to expand at a rapid pace. Meanwhile, workers struggle to keep up.
“The store operates chronically understaffed,” says Piper, who has worked as a customer service operator at Whole Foods for the past three years and asked that her last name be withheld for fear of employer retaliation. “I can only speak for my team specifically, but we’re exhausted from trying to meet these unrealistic productivity metrics, especially the Items Per Minute quota for cashiers. We’re told to ring as fast as possible to get customers in and out?—?as if we’re robots.”
Unions Note Labor Secretary Nominee Chavez-DeRemer's Record by Jessica Corbett
November 23, 2024
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Amid a flurry of Friday night announcements about key roles in the next Trump administration, one stood out to union leaders and other advocates for working people: Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican, for labor secretary.
Chavez-DeRemer, who lost her reelection bid to Democrat Janelle Bynum earlier this month, "has built a pro-labor record in Congress, including as one of only three Republicans to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and one of eight Republicans to co-sponsor the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler in a statement.
"But Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States—not Rep. Chavez-DeRemer—and it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as secretary of labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda," she stressed. "Despite having distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, President-elect Trump has put forward several Cabinet nominees with strong ties to Project 2025. That 900-page document has proposals that would strip overtime pay, eliminate the right to organize, and weaken health and safety standards."
"The AFL-CIO will work with anyone who wants to do right by workers, but we will reject and defeat any attempt to roll back the rights and protections that working people have won with decades of blood, sweat, and tears," added Schuler, whose group endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and developed a guide detailing how the right-wing initiative would be catastrophic for working people. "You can stand with working people, or you can stand with Project 2025, but you can't stand with both."
Seth Harris, a Northeastern University professor who served as acting secretary of labor under former President Barack Obama, told Bloomberg that "the president-elect has nominated a unicorn: a genuine pro-labor Republican."
Kentucky Battery Plant Workers Launch Union Drive with UAW by Luis Feliz Leon
November 21, 2024
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) A majority of the 1,000 auto workers at the car battery park Blue Oval in Glendale, Kentucky, have signed union cards to join the United Auto Workers.
The battery park, a joint venture between Ford and South Korea’s SK On, is expected to ramp up hiring to 5,000 hourly workers by 2030. It has twin battery plants. But the second one is on hold due low demand for electric vehicles. At the first plant, workers are testing battery module packs from facilities in Georgia, as the plant prepares to become fully operational next year.
Since he started last year, Chad Johnson has seen co-workers suffer mild heart attacks and respiratory problems, apparently from exposure to chemicals. He has seen workers carried out on stretchers with broken pelvises from tripping on exposed wiring, because they are working in what is still an active construction site.
The organizing “has moved more quickly than expected,” said Johnson, a quality control technician and a former UAW Local 3047 member at a nearby Ford supplier. “There were originally six of us. That grew to about 15. Now there’s an organizing committee of about 70.”
Workers announced their public campaign on November 20 with a video that compared their organizing to the 2023 Stand-Up Strike, when Ford UAW Local 862 members in nearby Louisville walked off the job at the Kentucky Truck Plant.
University of California Workers Say They Are Being Squeezed As Contract Talks Stall by Mark Kreidler
November 25, 2024
Introduction:
(Capital and Main) On one hand, last week’s massive two-day strike by nearly 40,000 University of California workers was exactly what it appeared to be. Employees are falling further behind the skyrocketing cost of living in many areas where UC campuses are located, and they are pressuring UC officials to resolve months-long contract negotiations.
But behind that basic negotiating tactic lies a harder truth: Across multiple unions over the past several years, bargaining sessions with the massive University of California system have consistently reached toxic levels of conflict before they’ve really moved. And there’s no sense that that system is about to change.
The walkout was called by workers affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME. AFSCME Local 3299 says it represents more than 37,000 University of California workers in the service and patient care sectors.
The union and UC have been in talks for nearly a year on new contracts. The hospital group’s most current deal expired July 31, while the service sector — including custodial, transportation, food and other workers — saw its contract end Oct. 31.
But an unfair labor practice charge filed by the union in October with the state Public Employment Relations Board claims the university has taken a baffling approach to negotiating that has stymied talks for months. University officials dismiss the charge as meritless.
Amazon Workers Launch Largest Strike Yet: 'It Doesn't Feel Like a Job That Should Be Legal' by Natascha Elena Uhlmann
December 19, 2024
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers at seven facilities in the metro areas of San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Southern California, and New York City are out on strike today, in what the union says is the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history. Unionized workers at Staten Island’s JFK8 fulfillment center have also authorized a strike and could soon follow.
Workers in all these locations—five delivery stations and two fulfillment centers—have already shown majority support and demanded union recognition. The Teamsters set Amazon an ultimatum: recognize the unions and agree to bargaining by December 15, or face strikes. Amazon hasn’t moved.
“They are skirting their responsibility as our employer to bargain with us on higher pay and safer working conditions,” said Riley Holzworth, a driver who makes deliveries from the DIL7 delivery station in Skokie, Illinois.
At the DBK4 delivery station in Queens, New York, cops swarmed and arrested an Amazon driver who stopped his van in support of the strike. In anticipation of a possible strike at JFK8, police had camped out by the facility in advance. Nonetheless, for six hours picketers slowed the flow of traffic out of the facility to a trickle, letting only one truck through every two minutes.
The Teamsters have made organizing Amazon a priority; the New York Times reported that the union has committed $8 million to the project, plus access to its $300 million strike fund.
After Six Tense Years, Montréal Port Workers Have One Last Chance to Reach a Deal by Liam O’Toole
December 19, 2024
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) At the Port of Montréal, nearly 1,200 longshore workers have been ordered into binding arbitration by the Canadian government following a 10-day lockout.
There’s still one final chance to reach a consensual agreement. The Syndicat des Débardeurs (Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 375) and the Maritime Employers Association have entered a 90-day period of mediation. During this period,
they are to refrain from making any public statements.
If the mediated negotiations fail, a new contract will be imposed by the federal government.
Longshore workers at the port have been working without a contract since December 31, 2023. Their biggest concerns are scheduling, workplace rules, and forced overtime. Over the last 15 months, CUPE and the MEA held 35 meetings to reach an agreement, but to no avail.
Union members voted to strike after rejecting the MEA’s “final offer” by a whopping 99.7 percent—and were met by a 10-day lockout. Then Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon imposed binding arbitration November 12, ending the lockout and bringing both parties to the bargaining table.
Planned Starbucks Strike in Three Cities Could Spread Nationwide December 21, 2024
Introduction:
(CBS) Workers at Starbucks stores plan to go on a five-day strike starting Friday to protest lack of progress in contract negotiations with the company.
The strike, which would come a day after online retail giant Amazon was also hit by a walkout in the crucial final shopping days the season, are scheduled to begin in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle and could spread to hundreds of stores across the country by Christmas Eve.
Starbucks Workers United, the union that has organized workers at 535 company-owned U.S. stores since 2021, said Starbucks has failed to honor a commitment made in February to reach a labor agreement this year. The union also wants the company to resolve outstanding legal issues, including hundreds of unfair labor practice charges that workers have filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
The union noted that Starbucks' new Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol, who started in September, could make more than $100 million in his first year on the job. But the company recently proposed an economic package with no new wage increases for unionized baristas now and a 1.5% increase in future years, the union said.
"Union baristas know their value, and they're not going to accept a proposal that doesn't treat them as true partners," said Lynne Fox, president of Workers United.
Starbucks Strike Expands on Christmas Eve by Rebecca Falconer
December 24, 2024
Introduction:
(Axios) The Starbucks baristas strike is spreading to more cities, leaving dozens of stores shut on Christmas Eve — the last day of the five-day walkout.
Why it matters: The escalating strikes are taking place during one of the coffee giant's busiest periods.
• Starbucks Workers United, the union representing baristas, said some 300 stores closed as 5,000 workers went on strike across 43 states Tuesday.
• Starbucks disputes the union's closure figure, saying only 170 stores shut on Tuesday, with 60 closed on Monday.
State of play: The strike that began in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle last Friday had expanded to cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas and Los Angeles by Monday.
• Starbucks Workers United said Atlanta and Buffalo will on Tuesday be among the cities joining the biggest-ever strike against the company, per the Washington Post.
As Trump Policy Changes Loom, Nearly Half of Farmworkers Lack Legal Status December 30, 2024
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) The nation’s agriculture sector, which relies heavily on undocumented workers, could face a significant challenge when President-elect Donald Trump takes office this month amid promises to enact stricter immigration policies.
The percentage of undocumented farmworkers — those without legal status — dropped from 54% in 2020 to 42% in 2022, according to the USDA and the U.S. Department of Labor.
Trump said his mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would start with the “criminals,” but that “you have no choice” but to eventually deport everyone in the country illegally, according to a December interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, emphasized the potential consequences of such policies, telling Investigate Midwest, “If we lost half of the farmworker population in a short period of time, the agriculture sector would likely collapse.”
“There are no available skilled workers to replace the current workforce should this policy be put into place,” she said.
Longshoremen reach tentative agreement with ports, shippers, averting a potential strike
Source: ABC News/AP
January 8, 2025, 7:01 PM
U.S. longshoremen reached a contract agreement with ports and shippers Wednesday, averting a potential strike that could have damaged the American economy. The International Longshoremen's Association union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance of ports and shipping companies said they had reached a tentative agreement for a six-year contract, a week ahead of a Jan. 15 deadline.
In a joint statement, the two sides said the agreement protects union jobs and allows ports on the East and Gulf coasts to modernize with new technology, " making them safer and more efficient, and creating the capacity they need to keep our supply chains strong.''
They said they were not releasing details of the agreement publicly to give union and alliance members a chance to review and approve the document.
The longshoremen staged a three-day strike in October, suspending the walkout after agreeing to a 62% pay increase over six years. But that truce was contingent upon reaching an agreement over automation: The union worried that machines — especially semi-automated cranes — would replace human workers. The agreement came a day after the two sides resumed negotiations.
SEIU Rejoins AFL-CIO After Splitting Off 20 Years Ago by Dave Jamieson
January 8, 2025
Introduction:
(Huffington Post) One of the largest and most powerful U.S. unions is rejoining the AFL-CIO, giving the country’s leading labor federation a boost as it prepares for another Donald Trump presidency.
The 2 million-member Service Employees International Union announced Wednesday that it had decided to re-affiliate with the federation after a nearly 20-year absence. The SEIU will immediately become the biggest union within the AFL-CIO.
…
“You know that we always say ‘stronger together,’ right?” Shuler told HuffPost. “This is an incredible time for us to be amassing our power, uniting and building our muscle together and really showing the power of solidarity. Because we want to make sure that workers continue to have their voices heard as we are about to enter into this new administration.”
The reunion comes at a critical moment for the U.S. labor movement.
Union membership has been declining for decades and now hovers near a historic low of just 6% in the private sector. And that trend is unlikely to improve: The incoming Trump administration will probably seek to reverse the labor-friendly reforms under President Joe Biden, while a Republican-controlled Congress won’t make it any easier for workers to form unions.
New Perspective Highlights Urgent Need for U.S. Physician Strike Regulations January 11, 2025
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Key Takeaways:
• A new Perspective piece in The New England Journal of Medicine led by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute examined the increasing frequency of physician strikes around the globe.
• The piece is one of the first to provide international lessons on balancing physician collective bargaining rights with patient protections in the U.S.
• The findings underscore the urgent need for regulatory reforms to address the increasing frequency of physician strikes and ensure the sustainability of the healthcare system.
Additional extract:
To address the challenges posed by physician strikes, the authors propose several actionable solutions:
• Address Regulatory Gaps: Despite the growing risk of strikes, the U.S. lacks comprehensive regulations to manage them. Policies mandating minimum staffing levels during strikes are critical to ensuring patient safety, as demonstrated by successful models from countries like France and Italy.
• Reduce Legal Challenges: Current U.S. labor laws exclude many physicians from unionizing. Modernizing these laws can empower more physicians to negotiate better working conditions without compromising patient care.
• Prevent Punitive Actions: Protecting striking physicians from punitive actions to align with International Labor Organization guidelines can protect employee–employer relations, public confidence in the medical system, and physicians’ working conditions.
• Engage Stakeholders: Involve key stakeholders such as hospitals, healthcare systems, the American Medical Association, and State Medical Boards in developing and implementing these policies.
