Labor Rights News Thread

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I’m a Striking TV Writer. Here’s Why We’re Doing This.
by Rafael Augustin
July 20, 2023

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) By now you’ve seen the scenes of young and middle-aged Americans wearing cargo shorts and Patagonia Baggies Brimmers in front of movie studios holding ironic picket signs, such as “Chat GPT doesn’t have childhood trauma!” As the battle grinds into its 12th week, with no end in sight—and the actors’ union now part of the strike too—it’s easy to think that a fight between a bunch of “rich Hollywood writers” and the big studios and networks may mean nothing to you, but it’s quite the opposite. This is the labor fight of our generation.

While in the broader labor force, the share of union members has fallen from 34 percent in the 1950s to 10 percent today, Hollywood remains a devout union town. Except for reality TV and some indie films, the majority of all personnel involved in film and TV production are part of organized labor. And tech companies, now dominating the Hollywood landscape, hate that.

Before we dive into why that is, let me explain the life of a Hollywood writer.

Issues further discussed include:

Writing for broadcast television versus writing for episodes that are utilized by streaming media.

How residuals are (unfairly) calculated.

AI replacing human creativity.

Conclusion:

On the picket line, I’ve heard people scream at us to go back to work, police officers reprimand us for being too loud, and in one case, a white dude yelling, “Illegals are going to take your jobs!” But these outliers are washed out by the loud honks of support. The honks don’t usually come from the expensive Teslas that drive by. They come from the bus drivers, the electrical trucks, the waste workers, the big rigs—from the other union workers in the City of Angels.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2023 ... ng-this/

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California Launches Pilot Program to Fund Labor Law Aid for Immigrant Farmworkers
by Natalie Hanson
July 19, 2023

Introduction:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Courthouse News) — Immigration attorneys say California's new pilot program to fund legal services for some farmworkers will help address a historic gap in immigrant workers’ rights.

Governor Gavin Newsom said the $4.5 million pilot program announced Wednesday will fund free immigration legal assistance for farmworkers who are involved in state labor investigations. The program offers case review services, legal advice and representation by an attorney at no cost to farmworkers.

“Farmworkers are the backbone of our economy and we won’t stand by as bad actors use the threat of deportation as a form of exploitation,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday. “In the absence of Congress modernizing our broken, outdated immigration system, California continues our efforts to support immigrant families."

Newsom said the state estimates about half of all California farmworkers are in the U.S. illegally. They may avoid filing labor claims or providing witness accounts due to fear of retaliation from bad actor employers and deportation or difficulties obtaining other jobs without work authorization.

He said the program is designed to prevent workers from exploitation and help California labor enforcement departments address workers' fears of pursuing their rights despite their immigration status.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/califor ... mworkers/

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Mother of Texas construction worker who died of heatstroke sues employer
Source: The Guardian

Lawsuit seeks $1m in damages for death, noting no protections were in place by employer to protect workers from extreme heat. The mother of a 24-year-old worker who died from heatstroke while working for a construction firm in San Antonio, Texas, has filed a lawsuit against his employer.

Gabriel Infante was working for B Comm Constructors in San Antonio, Texas, on 23 June 2022, digging in the hot summer sun to move internet fiber optic cable, a job he had recently started with a childhood best friend while they were finishing college.

The lawsuit comes after Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a controversial bill into law on 14 June that prohibits local municipalities from enacting heat protection standards for construction workers. The bill nullifies ordinances previously passed in Austin and Dallas that mandated 10-minute breaks for workers every four hours. A similar ordinance was being considered in San Antonio before the state bill was passed.

According to the lawsuit, Infante began exhibiting heatstroke symptoms including confusion, altered mental state, dizziness and loss of consciousness. His friend and co-worker Joshua Espinoza began pouring cold water over him, trying to cool him down. A foreman insisted Espinoza call the police, claiming Infante’s bizarre behavior was due to drugs, and the foreman pushed for a drug test when emergency medical services arrived...

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... reg-abbott

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Kaiser Permanente Union Workers Picket at Health Care Facilities Across the West
by Natalie Hanson
July 25, 2023

Introduction:

OAKLAND, Calif. (Courthouse News) — Kaiser Permanente workers hit picket lines again at hospitals in the West, nearly one year after a two-month strike that demanded the health giant overhaul its struggling mental health provider system.

Health care workers began picketing Tuesday at hospitals across the San Francisco Bay Area. The workers are part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing more than 85,000 health care workers in seven states and the District of Columbia. Their contracts will expire Sept. 30, and are protesting an ongoing crisis of short staffing that they say affects patients and caregivers.

In front of the Kaiser hospital in the Oakland suburb of San Leandro, workers marched with signs saying that the company’s management has refused to improve chronic understaffing since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lenetra Stevenson, who works at the hospital as a patient care technician, said she is frustrated that executives took bonuses while denying them to lower staffers.

“Our last bargaining session didn’t go well,” she said. “The cost of living wages has gone up for everyone, but they don’t want to pay us what we’re worth.”

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/kaiser- ... the-west/

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Thousands of Los Angeles City Workers Stage One-day Walkout
by Hillel Aron
August 8, 2023

Introduction:

LOS ANGELES (Courthouse News) — More than 11,000 city of Los Angeles employees, including lifeguards, mechanics, sanitation workers and traffic officers are on strike over what they say are unfair labor practices.

The one-day work stoppage, the first by city workers in more than 40 years, is organized by the Service Employees International Union local 721. The labor union and the city are in ongoing negotiations over their next labor contract. According to the union, the city has not been "bargaining in good faith."

"It’s about dignity and respect for all of our workers," SEIU local 721 President David Green told a crowd of hundreds of members at a rally held outside City Hall. "We’re here today to send a message."

Some city services have been disrupted, including trash collection, which will be delayed by one day. Mayor Karen Bass took to Twitter to assure Angelenos that police and fire services, as well as city-run homeless shelters and day care centers would not be affected, though she cautioned that parking enforcement, traffic operations and the airport would.

"Residents may experience traffic delays at major events held within the city of Los Angeles," she warned. "Passengers are encouraged to allow for extra time to travel to and from LAX." Libraries will remain open, but animal shelters are closed to the public.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/thousan ... -strike/

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That said, countervailing forces will limit the distribution of worker gains. For instance, UPS package volumes have been dropping for several quarters, in part because pandemic-induced demand has fallen considerably. So don’t expect UPS to be hiring a lot more drivers, which probably made it easier for it to be so generous.

Going forward, UPS might also be expected to lose some market share. Amazon shipping already has been gaining at UPS expense, and that trend is now more likely to continue. The relevant Amazon workers are not unionized and are paid lower wages. In any case, if self-driving delivery trucks were just around the corner — metaphorically of course — then UPS probably would not have agreed to this package.

UPS can also claw back some of the worker gains by how it rations the driver jobs. Before they can drive, workers first must accept lower-paid jobs sorting and loading packages, a quasi-apprenticeship that can last for several years. That too is economics at work. That upfront deal also might worsen over time. After it was announced, one online jobs board saw searches for UPS driver openings rise about 50%. Higher demand may allow UPS to be pickier about hiring, and to offer lesser terms to loaders and sorters.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginal ... -deal.html

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UFW Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against Ulster County Farm for Alleged ‘Intimidation’
by Maria M. Silva
August 25, 2023

Introduction:

(Times Union) MARLBORO — United Farm Workers, the union that represents farmworkers at Porpiglia Farms in Ulster County, has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state Public Employee Relations Board against the farm which accuses its owners, Anthony and Joseph Porpiglia, of disrupting a union meeting on Monday.

The meeting took place in the living quarters of six farmworkers, which are on the farm’s premises, UFW Secretary-Treasurer Armando Elenes said. Only three farmworkers were present at the time. The union alleges that Anthony and Joseph Porpiglia, alongside two other men, interrupted the meeting asking who had invited the organizer, Isabel Egas, and demanding that she leave, Elenes said.

Egas then called Elenes, who asked her to stay calm. The farm’s owners allegedly threatened Egas with calling the police and having her arrested for trespassing, Elenes said. Egas eventually left the premises. But the Porpiglias said her “unannounced” and “uninvited” visit amounted to trespassing and that when she was asked to leave, she refused.

The confrontation involving Egas and the Porpiglias is the latest escalation between UFW and Porpiglia Farms, one of five New York farms where H2A workers have unionized, pending a challenge that is before the state Public Employment Relations Board.

Elenes said that Egas meets daily with the farmworkers at Porpiglia Farms, who are Mexican and Jamaican workers on H2A temporary visas and live in employer-provided housing. He said the union does not announce those meetings “because then (the owners) can really be there to try to intimidate the workers.”

Read more here: https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalle ... 7704.php

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National Labor Relations Board Slams Union-busting Tactics by Employers
by David Byrnes
August 25, 2023

Introduction:

(Courthouse News) — The National Labor Relations Board handed labor unions a major win Friday, with a ruling that punishes employer interference in union elections.

"It's more than major. It's landmark," University of Illinois labor law professor Matthew Finkin said in a phone interview.

The board handed down the ruling as part of a long-running dispute between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC, a company that employs cement truck drivers. Per the ruling, an employer has two options when 50%-plus-one of its employees in a given bargaining unit sign their union cards. It can immediately recognize and begin good-faith bargaining with the union — without a formal, secret-ballot election — or it must immediately file a petition for a formal election.

But should the board later find the employer tried to hinder a prompt, fair election, it will scrap the petition and order the employer to immediately recognize and begin bargaining with the workers' chosen union without any election at all.

"When employers pursue this option [to file for an election petition], the new standard will promote a fair election environment by more effectively disincentivizing employers from committing unfair labor practices," the NLRB said in a statement accompanying the decision.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/nationa ... ployers/

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Why Does Starbucks Stall Union Negotiations? Because It Can.
Mark Kreidler
August 29, 2023

Introduction:

(Capital & Main) In January of 2022, Jacklyn Gabel and her co-workers at the Starbucks Coffee location on Mission Street in Santa Cruz began considering the idea of organizing. Four months later, they voted 15-2 to become part of a labor union, Starbucks Workers United.

The goal, Gabel said, was simple: Come together to more effectively bargain on wages, benefits and working conditions.

So how many negotiating sessions has the union held so far with Starbucks?

“None,” Gabel said. “There has never been a bargaining session.”

Union leaders say this has become a staple of the Starbucks playbook: If it can’t keep a store from unionizing, it can certainly slow-walk any progress toward an actual contract. But as infuriating as that can be for organized workers, perhaps more concerning is how easily federal labor law can be used — or broken — in the service of that goal.

Read more here: https://capitalandmain.com/why-does-st ... -it-can

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Biden says striking UAW workers deserve "fair share of the benefits they help create" for automakers
Source: cbs

President Biden treaded carefully Friday as he addressed the decision by United Auto Workers to strike, after about 13,000 autoworkers walked off the job at midnight Friday.

Mr. Biden, who considers himself the most pro-union president in modern history, said he's deploying two of his top administration officials to Detroit to assist with negotiations. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and senior adviser Gene Sperling are heading to Detroit to work with the UAW and the companies on an agreement. Mr. Biden wants a resolution for UAW workers, but recognizes that a prolonged strike would be bad news for the U.S. economy ahead of an election year, senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe noted.

"Let's be clear, no one wants a strike. I'll say it again — no one wants a strike," the president said during remarks in the Roosevelt Room, insisting workers deserve a "fair share of the benefits they help create for an enterprise."

Mr. Biden said he appreciates that the entities involved have worked "around the clock," and said companies have made "significant offers," but need to offer more. At this point, the auto companies are offering a 20% raise, among other things. ...............................................................

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden- ... e-remarks/

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Ford, GM temporarily lay off employees at plants affected by UAW strike
Source: Detroit Free Press

Ford Motor Co. and General Motors will lay off multiple employees, the two companies announced Friday, saying the United Auto Workers' strike at the plants led to the layoffs.

The UAW declared a strike against the Detroit Three automakers Thursday as contract talks failed to secure new labor agreements before the current deals expired at 11:59 p.m.

UAW President Shawn Fain announced the first wave of plants the union would strike if a new labor agreement was not reached including Ford Michigan Assembly Plant (Final Assembly and Paint only) in Wayne, Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio and General Motors Wentzville Assembly in Missouri.

As a result, 600 employees at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne were temporarily laid off by Ford. Additionally, GM laid off some 2,000 employees at its Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas City, Kansas, which builds the Cadillac XT4 SUV and the Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

Read more: https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ ... 868281007/

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Labor unions win big in California Legislature as hot labor summer drags into fall

SACRAMENTO — By the time California state senators took up a bill Thursday night to grant unemployment benefits to striking workers, labor unions had already scored several monumental wins in the state Legislature.

They landed a major deal to raise fast food wages to $20 an hour. They convinced lawmakers to pass a bill requiring driverless trucks to have a human safety driver. They persuaded the Democratic-led Legislature to send Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill giving all workers in California a minimum of five paid sick days — up from the current requirement of three.

So when the time came to vote on allowing striking workers to receive unemployment benefits, an exasperated Republican state senator rose to make the case that businesses wouldn’t be able to stay afloat if their employees could get paid while on the picket line.

“Frankly, colleagues, I’m gonna say it. I think many people are thinking about it,” said Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield).

“The fourth branch of government in this Capitol building,” she said, referring to labor unions, “has a little bit too much power this year.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -into-fall

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