Labor Rights News Thread

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caltrek
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'Retaliation at Its Worst': Starbucks Fires Worker Who Sparked National Union Movement
by Jake Johnson
April 2, 2023

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Just days after former CEO Howard Schultz appeared before a Senate committee to face questioning over the company's brazen union-busting campaign, Starbucks fired a worker credited with sparking the organizing drive that has resulted in nearly 300 unionized shops across the United States.

Alexis Rizzo worked as a shift supervisor at Starbucks' Genesee St. location in Buffalo, one of the first two U.S. stores to win a union election in late 2021.

"Lexi Rizzo was a seven-year shift supervisor at Starbucks who ignited the Starbucks Workers United movement that took the country by storm," reads a GoFundMe page started by Starbucks Workers United organizer Casey Moore.

The page characterized Rizzo's firing as "retaliation at its worst" and asked for support to help "Lexi pay her bills as we fight for justice and her job back."

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/star ... -movement
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Some Clothing Workers in Los Angeles Earn as Little as $1.58 an Hour, Labor Department Finds
Source: CBS News
Fashionistas who buy garments labeled "Made in USA" may be unwittingly contributing to workers' wage theft, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

A random sweep of 50 garment manufacturers in Los Angeles found that 80% were breaking wage and hour laws, regulators said. The agency also found that 64% didn't keep accurate time and pay records, while more than half either paid workers off the books or falsified or didn't provide such information.

More than half the contractors paid workers off the books and either falsified time and pay records or didn't provide them, according to the agency.

The contractors made clothing for major national brands including Dillard's, Lulus, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Socialite, Stitch Fix and Von Maur, the Labor Department said.

About one-third of the apparel makers paid their workers according to how many items they produced, instead of an hourly rate — something California explicitly outlawed more than a year ago. Paying workers a "piece rate" often leads to sub-minimum wages. One contractor paid workers $1.58 per hour, the agency's investigation found.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/garment-fa ... imum-wage/
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Why the Repeal of Anti-union Laws in Michigan Boosts Workers Nationwide
by Tim Conway
March 28, 2023

Introduction:
(Alternet) The United Steelworkers (USW) mounted tireless battles for fair trade and other lifelines that helped to keep McLouth Steel open during the 1980s, enabling Jay McMurran and thousands of other Michigan workers to raise families and build pensions amid one of the nation’s worst economic crises.

Recognizing that other workers need the same kind of strength behind them, McMurran resolved to fight back when Republicans rammed union-gutting "right-to-work" (RTW) legislation through the state legislature in 2012.

He and other union supporters and their allies worked relentlessly for years to oust the corporate toadies and elect pro-worker lawmakers instead. Their long struggle culminated in victory on March 21, 2023, when new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate voted to repeal the deceptively named RTW laws, restoring workers’ full power to bargain fair contracts and safe working conditions.

Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has since signed the legislation, which represents the latest in a string of victories for workers mobilizing to build strength across the country.

No one in America is ever forced to join a union, and no union wants workers to join against their will. Yet a union is legally obligated to serve all workers in its bargaining unit.

Read more here: https://www.alternet.org/michigan-repea ... on-labor/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Southern California ports shutdown highlights high-stakes contract talks
Source: Los Angeles Times
A dockworker shortage at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports stretched into its second day on Friday, halting cargo traffic at the massive shipping complex while disrupting the local economy and the global supply chain.

The apparently temporary shutdown at the twin ports — a critical entry point for imports arriving from Asia — has exacerbated fears about a logistical infrastructure that has never fully recalibrated since the COVID-19 pandemic delays and shone a stark, national spotlight on the high-stakes labor negotiations playing out at the ports.

The union that represents West Coast dockworkers and the industry group representing maritime shippers are several months into negotiating a new contract, which is focused, in part, on wages and the role of automation. The old contract, covering more than 22,000 workers at 29 ports, expired July 1.

The Pacific Maritime Assn., the industry group representing shippers at the negotiating table, said in a statement Friday that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union had taken a “concerted action to withhold labor.”
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... r-shortage
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Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP want to make it harder for public-sector unions to collect dues — with exceptions for police and firemen

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ron-desantis ... 00835.html
Florida Republicans aren't cracking down on all unions — just the ones that vote for Democrats.

A new bill originally proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and now passed by the Sunshine State's GOP-led Senate would make it harder for teachers to form a union without enough dues-paying members. While it will impact Democratic-leaning teachers' unions, along with most other public-sector unions, Republican-supporting police and firefighters' unions will be exempt.

The main provisions would prevent public employees from paying their dues as salary deductions — the primary way workers pay their dues — and would raise the threshold of dues-paying members needed to avoid union decertification from 50% to 60%. Decertification would mean employees would have to petition for a union again, and the state would have to conduct an election.

Importantly, the bill doesn't apply to police or firefighters' unions, which endorsed DeSantis in his 2022 reelection. Only teachers, bus drivers, janitors, and other public employees will be subject to the anti-union measures.

The bill comes after DeSantis signed universal school vouchers into law, which would divert funding from cash-strapped public schools to private ones. And teachers' unions, which have been one of the governor's biggest foes since they sued the state for reopening schools during the pandemic, say that the bill is political retribution.
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Arturo S. Rodríguez: Improving the Lives and Livelihoods of Farmworkers
by Cecilia Hernandez, Designated Federal Officer
March 31, 2023

Introduction:
(U.S. Department of Agriculture) March 31 marks César Chávez Day and serves as a reminder to all Americans of the importance of service, community, education, and commitment to advocating for farmworkers and their families. Chávez was a champion of farmworkers’ rights, calling for fairer wages and improved working conditions and helping open the door for better opportunities for farmworkers across the country.

Farmworkers are essential, frontline workers who often work long hours in unpredictable weather to ensure the food we eat every day reaches store shelves and dining room tables. No one understands this more than Arturo S. Rodríguez, who co-chairs the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Equity Commission. Rodríguez is President Emeritus of the United Farm Workers (UFW) organization, an organization he served for 25 years as President. At the time of his retirement, Rodríguez was only the second president in the organization’s history, succeeding UFW co-founder César Chávez following his death. Rodríguez has been active in UFW for 50 years.

Rodríguez continues Chávez’s legacy by bringing attention to the issues that impact the nation’s nearly 2.5 million farmworkers and ensuring these key stakeholders are part of important policy conversations.

Through the USDA Equity Commission, Rodríguez is working to create an improved environment for farmworkers and their families. He offered some perspective on what this work means to him in a video recorded at a recent Equity Commission event at the USDA Headquarters building.

Read more here: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2023/0 ... workers

Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Why Rutgers Faculty Are Striking for the First Time in 257 Years
by Noah Lanard
April 13, 2023

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) On Thursday morning in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Martin Gliserman, a silver-haired English professor wearing his cap and gown, looked to be an elder statesman of the picket line. But despite having taught at Rutgers for more than 50 years, this was all new to him.
For the first time in Rutgers’ 257-year history, the faculty is on strike.

The story of why 9,000 faculty members represented by three unions decided to go on strike on Monday is a familiar one. “Buildings. A lot more buildings. Administrators. A lot more administrators. Poorly-paid faculty. A lot more of that,” Gliserman said about the changes that led to the strike. “That’s the direction in which it’s going.” The last time he saw the campus so energized was during Vietnam War protests in 1972, his second year on campus.

Faculty members are bargaining and striking together as they try to not only secure across-the-board pay increases but fix the systemic issues that impact their most vulnerable members. Like schools across the country, Rutgers now relies on poorly paid adjuncts and graduate students to teach many of its classes. The strike is showing what can happen when a relatively privileged group—tenured professors—unite with colleagues who lack the protections they enjoy.

Rutgers’ faculty members have gone more than nine months without a contract. A strike authorization vote passed last month with 94 percent support. Union leaders announced the strike after they failed to secure a new contract.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... adjuncts/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Rutgers Faculty Unions Suspend Historic Strike After Securing Major Victories
by Noah Lanard
April 15, 2023

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Three unions representing 9,000 faculty members at Rutgers University are suspending their strike after reaching a tentative framework on Friday night with Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and his staff.

After more than nine months without a contract, faculty unions and the Rutgers administration worked out the deal in marathon negotiations in Trenton. The framework secures major pay increases for union members, along with improvements in job security, working conditions, and other areas. Classes will resume on Monday.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ictories/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes -- but they can work in tobacco fields
José Velásquez Castellano started working in agriculture when he was 13 years old. Ten-hour days, five or six days a week, in North Carolina's summer heat. It was sometimes blueberries, sometimes cucumbers — but mostly, it was tobacco.

"Its prime hits right at the peak of summer," Castellano told NPR, and the tobacco created a greenhouse effect. It would be 90 degrees outside, "but inside those fields, it feels like well over 100 degrees."

He'd go home dehydrated and exhausted and then wake up at 4 a.m. the next day and do it again.

For children 12 and older in the United States, difficult, low-paying and dangerous work in tobacco fields for unlimited hours is legal, as long as it's outside school hours. Child labor laws are more lenient in agriculture than in other industries, and efforts to change that have repeatedly failed, leaving growers and companies to decide whether to set the bar higher than what's legally required of them. In the meantime, kids work, often trying to help their families make ends meet.

Today, Castellano is a sophomore at Tufts University. But when he worked, he felt "this sense that working in those fields was going to be the rest of my life, that I had nothing else going for me."
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/11688240 ... -dangerous
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Hollywood Writers Approve of Strike as Shutdown Looms
Source: NY Times
The unions representing thousands of television and movie writers said on Monday that they had overwhelming support for a strike, giving union leaders the right to call for a walkout when the writers’ contract with the major Hollywood studios expires on May 1.

The unions, which are affiliated East and West coast branches of the Writers Guild of America, said more than 9,000 writers had approved a strike authorization, with 98 percent of the vote.

W.G.A. leaders have said this is an “existential” moment for writers, contending that compensation has stagnated over the last decade despite the explosion of television series in the streaming era. In an email last week to writers, the lead negotiators said that “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation.”

With two weeks to go before the contract expires, there has been little sign of progress in the talks. In the email, the negotiating committee said the studios “have failed to offer meaningful responses on the core economic issues” and offered only small concessions in a few areas.
-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/busi ... -vote.html
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