United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:18 pm

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A survey by Temp Worker Justice found high rates of racial, gender and age discrimination in temp jobs. Photograph: Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

Poverty, wage theft, injuries, and even death are features of the temporary employment system. Black workers are overrepresented in temp work and are more likely to experience these abuses.

There are 13 to 16 million temporary workers who find their jobs through staffing agencies. It’s a fairly major part of the business world and many companies use temp workers to supplement their regular workforces with contracted employees that they can pay less. Most people think of temp workers as someone filling-in for someone at the front desk for a day somewhere at a medium sized office, but in truth they are widely employed for longer stints and are also found across the economy including with large companies like Amazon, Walmart, Google, and Tyson Foods.

A new repor t from a broad coalition of workers organizations — including the National Employment Law Project and Temp Worker Justice — concluded: “Workplace deaths, lack of safety training, retaliation from bosses, poverty pay, rampant wage theft, and “permatemping” are among the abysmal working conditions endured by temp workers.” The report is based on a broad survey of temp workers in the country.

Among the main findings of their research is the fact that “Nearly 1 in 4 (24%) temp workers reported that, while working as a temp, their employers have stolen wages from them in at least one of three ways—paid less than the minimum wage, failed to pay the overtime rate, or failed to pay for all hours worked.”

The report also found that “One in six temp workers (17%) reported experiencing a work-related injury or illness while employed through a staffing agency. Of those workers, 41 percent said that they covered healthcare costs themselves, out of pocket or through their own health insurance.”

The report laid out that the percentage of temporary workers receiving poverty wages is significantly higher than the percentage of poverty wage jobs in the workforce at large at 7.6% and 3.6% respectively. Moreover, “More than 1 in 3 (36% of) temp workers reported that they or their dependents have received some form of public assistance while they worked via a staffing agency.”

Black workers are heavily overrepresented in the temporary labor market. The report lays out that, “Black workers are 12.2 percent of the overall workforce, but they make up 23.2 percent of temporary help and staffing agency workers.” In the field of manufacturing and warehousing, one in three temp workers is Black workers — double the overall concentration of Black workers in the industry.

Likewise the report found, “in manufacturing and warehousing occupations, Latinx workers are…30.9 percent of temp workers in these occupations, compared to 23.9 percent of overall manufacturing and warehousing workers.” There are even “‘Temp towns’ — areas with a high concentration of staffing agencies” that are “located in immigrant communities, where agencies target undocumented workers.”

The research also revealed that, “Seven in ten temp workers (71%) said that they experienced some form of retaliation for raising workplace issues with a supervisor or management.”

Even in manufacturing jobs, and their reputation for better pay, temp workers are, on average, paid 21% less than workers more formally employed at the same workplace. The report also discussed the phenomenon of “permatemping” where employers bring in temps for long periods for the advantages of being able to pay them less, not have to offer any benefits and more easily violate labor laws. As the report notes: “One in three temp workers (35%) reported that their current temp assignment had lasted over one year, and nearly one in five (18%) reported that their current temp assignment had lasted over two years.”

It’s clear that the temp staffing industry is explicitly designed to make it easier for employers to supplement their workforce with people who they can underpay, to steal their wages and exploit. And further that this industry exploits the racism and discrimination in the labor market to target more vulnerable sections of the working class. In other words, it's one of capital’s methods for organizing super-exploited workers into easy to tap (and discard) pools.

Like with the gig economy, there is a common talking point that temp workers desire the “freedom” of such work. But in reality, 4 in 5 temp workers reported interest in joining a worker organization like a union that would work to improve their conditions. Just as more workers are starting to organize against anti-union corporations around the country, temp workers too are ready to fight back.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/realities-temp-work

The freedom to starve hasn't been so stark in the last 80 years as with this 'gig economy'. Ain't no conspiracy, it's just that capitalism is impelled to just keep getting 'better', that is to exploit labor to the greatest degree possible without killing the goose. Anything else on the part of corporate management is considered a lack of 'due diligence' and could result in being declassed.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 21, 2022 2:16 pm

This piece is about a successful labor action in Russia. So what? All of the essentials are the same.

TREKOL against workers. Alexander Batov // What to do
02/19/2022

Rubric Alexander Batov "What to do" on the channel "Prime Numbers"
From the editor . We publish the text of Alexander Batov's speech on the Simple Numbers channel, dedicated to the resistance of the workers of the successful manufacturer of all-terrain vehicles TREKOL against the arbitrariness of the authorities. About how it was and why they managed to win, read the article or watch the video .
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Not so long ago, another parliamentary election was held in Russia. Millions of people with bated breath followed the summing up. They thought - yes, many still think! – that elections are the only opportunity to change your life for the better. As if once every 5 years, a magical portal to Hogwarts opens, but you can only hope to get there with a correctly drawn up ballot. And all the other months and years you just have to wait, endure and hope.

However, the real fight for a better life is not at the polls. And not once every five years, but every day. It is to her that we will devote our today's story. But first things first.

At the beginning of July 2021, at the plant of the Aqua Star company, one of the enterprises for bottling bottled water of the Holy Spring brand, the stacker driver Andrey Okulov , who worked the third consecutive 12-hour night shift, became ill. He went to the locker room to take the medicine - and lost consciousness. The result of this was dismissal for absenteeism, since he did not work the shift! To confirm his absence from the workplace - at the stacker, the employer simply collected explanatory notes from the dismissed colleagues. No one even asked him the reason for his absence. Similar cases have recently occurred with frightening frequency: defiant disregard for labor laws, semi-slave working conditions ,flagrant violation of safety regulations, sometimes leading to the death of workers (including mass deaths ). But only a small part becomes known - what was leaked to the media .
Why do we continue to put up with this and dutifully agree to endure overtime, hellish heat in the shops, help to hide cases of injury? Moreover, we sign a paper slipped by the employer against our own comrade - if only not to be in his place, if only not to become the next one?
But after all, everyone understands - at least in the depths of their souls - that the next one will definitely happen. And this can only be resisted collectively.

In our new series of broadcasts, we will talk about how not to become a victim of arbitrariness in the workplace and protect your labor rights.

To do this, we will try to analyze some of the already completed social or labor conflicts. However, completed is not quite the right word. As long as capitalist relations reign in society, not a single labor conflict can be considered completely completed. The stories we will tell about are completed only to the extent that it is possible to sum up intermediate results, evaluate the gains and losses of the parties, and, most importantly, draw useful lessons.

This is what we will do now.

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Open Day at the National Guard. A photo

Our first story is connected with the city of Lyubertsy near Moscow, where the TREKOL Research and Production Company is located . It manufactures and sells wheeled all-terrain vehicles . The company's products are not cheap, the company itself is not poor. TREKOL all-terrain vehicles, as described on the company's website, are used by Gazprom, Rosneft, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and other reputable organizations. And even the National Guard . So if you are going to hold an unauthorized picket somewhere in the taiga outback, it is quite possible that they will come to pacify you on the TREKOL all-terrain vehicle.

In the crisis of 2020, the financial position of NPF TREKOL LLC not only did not shake, but even strengthened.

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“1988, Nadym. How Trakol started. A photo

In general, the situation is typical for Russian industry: no nugget inventors, but instead a team of Soviet scientists who worked for many years on relevant developments in research institutes, on their scientific and industrial base, wrote dissertations ... And then, like many others were sent on a free market voyage - to get their own food as best they can. Somehow it turned out that the owner of both the business and the patents turned out to be only one of that group of enthusiasts. And also his children. For many years, TREKOL has been a purely family business. But this is a different story.

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Distribution of shares in the authorized capital of LLC NPF TREKOL
Let's go back to our days.

The company continues to expand and is actively recruiting employees for its Kolomna branch. Recruitment is conducted both for privates and for leadership and administrative positions.

By the way, this division is formally an independent legal entity - TREKOL KOLOMNA LLC , and its revenue is not included in the charts shown above. It, as well as another company, Trekolservis, belong to the same Knyazkov family. The turnover in them is much more modest than in the main company, however, they allow adding several million rubles more to the profits and capitals of the owners.

A special pride for TREKOL is that their brainchild was entrusted with transporting President Putin during an expedition to the northernmost archipelago of the country - Franz Josef Land.

For which the local (i.e. Lyubertsy) media called the creators of the all-terrain vehicle "conquerors of the Arctic":

“Here they are, the conquerors of the Arctic from Lyubertsy. Heroes of our time, creators and testers of unique technology, who do their daily work without much fuss. Sometimes doing heroic deeds. TREKOL specialists are seriously focused on making their contribution to the historical cause of the development of the Arctic”.

But the point here, of course, is not only pride - just following the results of the expedition, a real prospect of obtaining a long-awaited state contract from the Ministry of Defense loomed before the company.

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Checkpoint LLC NPF "TREKOL"


In a word, you have already understood what a serious and responsible business, without exaggeration, they are doing behind an inconspicuous gray fence with a sign “Research and Production Company “TREKOL”. And, perhaps, they even imagined spacious bright workshops, and in them the “conquerors of the Arctic” at work.

In fact, our "innovative" enterprise is more like a "garage" production, dominated by screw assembly from finished parts and assemblies.

Here is how the Drome portal describes one of the tested all-terrain vehicles. Ru: “At first glance, the design of the all-terrain vehicle is unpretentious. The UAZ body of the first configuration, docked with the frame from the “loaf”, is equipped with one of three engines to choose from. The transfer box .. from the all-wheel drive Sobol .., and the optional disc mechanisms of the working brake system are a kind of mix of UAZ and gas units. With the world on a string. ... The original "Trekol" details: the lower perimeter of the body with wide wings, the "stockings" of the bridges, the disc parking brake, the fuel tank, the tires - according to the TREKOL matrices, the Volgograd plant "Voltyre Prom" manufactures .
At the same time, various stages of the production cycle - welding, painting, assembly, quality control - are carried out in one assembly shop . Including cutting fiberglass, which releases a lot of allergenic dust. It is easy to guess that in such a workshop there is a very harmful atmosphere containing dust, paint, solvent vapors. According to labor protection standards, all workers must be equipped with personal protective equipment. But the employer just preferred to save on them.
Moreover, in such conditions, workers had to work by no means for 8 hours - the enterprise actively practiced processing with a very vague pay system.

And in the fall of 2019, several TREKOL workers ran out of patience. Complaints about harmful working conditions and the lack of protective equipment - both to the employer and to the labor inspectorate - did not lead to anything. After that, the workers decided to create a cell of the MPRA trade union in order to fight for their rights in an organized manner.

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Picket at the TREKOL gate. October 2019.

The management of the enterprise responded in the traditional way for our current life - pressure and repression.
One of the ways to put pressure on employees is the so-called "renewal of personnel", which, according to the employees themselves, was regularly carried out at TREKOL. These are fictitious reductions: the dismissal of some employees with the subsequent hiring of new ones in their place. "What's the point of this?" - you ask. This shuffling of frames is a veiled form of cuts. In addition, the threat of "renewal" constantly hangs over employees and makes them more accommodating. Often, it is more profitable for an employer to spend a little money on severance pay and training new personnel, but loyal, “knowing their place” employees will remain. And then they, together with the newcomers, will more than work out all the costs - working overtime without decent pay, without ensuring proper working conditions and safety measures.
It was this “downsizing” of staff that the TREKOL leadership decided to take advantage of in order to get rid of trade union activists.

On October 15 and 16, 2019, workers who were not ready to put up with their dismissal held a series of single pickets at the entrance of the TREKOL enterprise.

A week later, these actions were repeated with the support of activists from the ROT FRONT movement and the MPRA trade union. During the picketing, the workers tried to personally hand over to the director documents about their membership in the trade union and about claims regarding the production process. However, he preferred to hide from people in his expensive car.

Then, caught already outside the saving walls of the car, the director simply ran away at the sight of the “red folder”. Other employees authorized to receive correspondence suddenly found themselves on sick leave .

All this was reminiscent of the children's game "I'm in the house." But infantile behavior did not help the administration much. In addition to playing catch-up, the workers sent documents by registered mail, and therefore - according to the law - the employer was notified of the formation of the union and its requirements.

Further events developed in a familiar rut. In December, management scowled at employees with disciplinary sanctions. Worker Stanislav Korenyugin snatched off the penalty for absence from the workplace - at the time when he went to the office to hand over documents. In the end, union members were fired.

But, to the surprise of the employer, the workers did not accept. They went to court.
Litigation lasted more than one month. In some meetings, ROT FRONT activists acted as witnesses. In February 2020, the court reinstated Stanislav Korenyugin at work. For Sergei Lukin , the proceedings dragged on until May 2020. In addition to the restoration and payment of forced absenteeism, the workers also achieved in court the cancellation of the reprimand issued against them and compensation for non-pecuniary damage.
Of course, the management of the enterprise did not calm down. After going to work, Stanislav and Sergey began to receive orders from their superiors that provoke formal absenteeism. But they managed to fight off all attempts to bring them under the article again.

So, in particular, the employer tried to take advantage of the pandemic that had begun ... In May, the management of TREKOL decided to transfer rebellious workers to the positions of "stewards", whose duties included measuring the temperature at the entrance and pouring sanitizers. This, among other things, was supposed to deprive them of the piecework part of the payment and leave them with only a salary of 19 thousand rubles, which was not too different from the minimum wage in the region (14,200 rubles at that time). The workers refused, and in June they still managed to return to the shop. Although this was accompanied by threats of dismissal already for refusing to transfer.

But threatening is one thing, and the employer did not dare to get involved in another losing business. Moreover, in August-September 2020, he lost an appeal in one of his previous cases.

And here we finally come to the main thing - why we told you this whole story. After all, many are probably wondering: what was the point of starting a confrontation, if all that our heroes achieved was not to be fired? But the matter never developed into a collective struggle for the rights of workers. After all, the TREKOL team as a whole remained passive. The workers silently watched the unfolding fight: they swallowed insults in half with dust and paint .. but endured. Apparently, the policy of weeding out potential "violent" ones has borne fruit.
But still, now, a few months later, one can evaluate the results of this small campaign against the employer and say: the game ended far from a draw. The workers won, and the whole team, including even those who preferred to sit out.
Why?

First , unreasonable layoffs have stopped.

The administration understands that now any worker reduced in this way can go to court - and win the case. And then - reinstatement at work, payment at the expense of the employer of forced absenteeism and other court costs.

Secondly , processing with arbitrary tariffing has ceased.

Now those who wish not to go to work on weekends or go home in the evening after the end of the main working hours can do so.

Thirdly , some improvements in working conditions, although insignificant, nevertheless took place. For example, an industrial vacuum cleaner was purchased for a workshop; got better with protective equipment.

Just do not think that the administration immediately took and handed over its positions. Not at all!

For example, on Friday, April 30, according to the law, there was a shortened working day. But when some of the workers tried to leave the premises of the enterprise an hour earlier than usual, the exit guards refused to let them out, claiming that the working day was not over. Moreover, she refused not verbally, but with the use of physical violence. The torn backpack of one of the workers became the victim of the brawl.
Further, during the weekend of May 4-7, 2021, announced by a presidential decree, TREKOL decided to continue working as usual. But for safety reasons, they indicated in the order: "with the consent of the workers." Not everyone agreed. Those who refused to work on weekends were, as usual, threatened with dismissal. And although, of course, no one was fired, they were still punished: despite the fact that these days were declared “non-working days with the retention of wages for employees,” TREKOL employees who refused to go to work on May 4-7 did not receive payment for these days .
So, what conclusions can be drawn from the labor conflict at the TREKOL enterprise?

I. On whose side is the court?
Law is the will of the ruling class. Laws are written by the authorities and in the interests of the authorities. Trying to defend your rights in court is very difficult, and often useless. And yet those workers are wrong who think that the owner has the right to act as he pleases, and we have to throw the Labor Code in the trash. There are loopholes in the Labor Code to protect our rights. It's just that most workers have never discovered laws in their lives and know nothing about these possibilities.

Therefore, business is often sure that the force is unconditionally on its side, and employees do not dare to defend their rights. Indeed, most workers are afraid to go to court to defend their rights. They are dominated by the fear of being fired in one day, difficulties with further employment.

But those who still dare to argue with the employer in court, most often win. Here's what the statistics tell us:

In a dispute over the recovery of wages - in 97% of cases, the court takes the side of the employees (data for 2018-2020).

Cases on the provision of guarantees and compensations in accordance with labor legislation end in favor of employees in an average of 85% of cases. (data for 2019-2020)

Cases on recognizing the dismissal as illegal - an average of 45% of cases. (data for 2019-2020)
Thus, today the court can still be an effective tool in the fight for labor rights - especially when it comes to an individual dispute, and the employer is too openly breaking the law.
However, first, the tool must be used - which many employees simply do not dare to do, and the second - to use it correctly in order to maximize the chances of success.

And here we come to conclusion number 2.

II. Prepare for confrontation with the employer
How?

1) Awareness of one's rightness and readiness to go to the end

First of all, you need to prepare mentally. The workers of TREKOL, whom we talked about, achieved success because they embarked on the path of struggle: they made a decision, set a goal for themselves and relentlessly moved towards it, not succumbing to difficulties and pressure from the employer.

2) Careful collection of evidence

You can't rely on the courts to sort things out on their own. Even if you are not yet sure that the actions of the employer are illegal and that you will have to go to court or other authorities, if you only assume such a possibility or see injustice towards yourself and other members of the team, immediately start collecting evidence in support of your positions.
Act like the heroes of this story: copy and save documents, hand them over against signature or registered mail; Videotape and audio-record conversations whenever possible. In all situations. If they want to involve you in overtime work without consent and familiarization with the order, if they want to force you to work bypassing safety regulations, record everything.
3) Support for public organizations and information resources

It is advisable to contact one of the trade unions or other public organizations for support as soon as possible, where they will help you understand the intricacies of the law and draw up a plan of action.

For example, in the case of TREKOL, the workers were provided with information, methodological and legal support by the trade union MPRA, the ROT Front movement, the Agitprop project and many others.

III. Success must be consolidated and developed
It could have been a brilliant success, but the rest of the team remained passive or chose to take the position of observers. Silence and indifference always lead to defeat.

However, a start has been made. This seemingly small, individual victory of two team members had an impact on other workers. To see next to you a living example of how the same workers, like yourself, can not only pour out discontent in the smoking room, but act - and win! is a major motivating factor.

Now other workers are not afraid to refuse offers to work overtime. Colleagues of the winners began to apply to the union.
An important point: our heroes did not just stand up for THEIR rights, THEIR interests, THEIR human dignity. When they were fired, the guys tried to protest against the planned fictitious layoffs, the “victims” of which were to be other workers. Standing up for their comrades, they demonstrated solidarity - something that we all lack so much today.
We know the result: the administration was unable to get rid of the activists, and the “purges” stopped for the entire team.

However, one should not think that this will always be the case. The employer will undoubtedly try to regain lost positions. And he'll be better prepared next time. Therefore, we cannot stop there. It is foolish to hope that next time some loner will be able to successfully compete for the interests of the entire team. It is important to constantly demand new improvements: in terms of working conditions, ensuring safety, transparency in payroll. And not just to demand, but also to organize in order to achieve the fulfillment of these requirements.
The main conclusion: skillfully you can beat the employer. While you are silent and endure, you will be beaten everywhere and everywhere. And when you overcome your fear and start the fight, then victory becomes real. And even more real when there are those around who can help.
https://www.rotfront.su/trekol-protiv-r ... andr-bato/

Google Translator

And there it is: more solidarity, less individualism.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 24, 2022 4:05 pm

How Canada's Freedom Convoy could be a wake-up call for the Teamsters
Will the next great trucker protest be by UPS workers?
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SAOIRSE GOWAN
FEBRUARY 23, 2022

This week, a "People's Convoy" of truckers aggrieved by COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates will descend upon the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area with a goal of blockading economic activity in the nation's capital. The American convoy models itself off similar trucker demonstrations in Ottawa, which were able to temporarily shut down over a quarter of the daily trade between the U.S. and Canada.

One protest organizer, Bob Bolus, told D.C.'s Fox 5 News that he analogizes the goal of the Washington convoy to "a giant boa constrictor that basically squeezes you, chokes you, and … swallows you, and that's what we're going to do the D.C. [region]." Residents of the area are understandably nervous about another large group of conservative protesters coming in from out of town with the goal of shutting things down.

There is, however, another group that might be watching the D.C. convoy closely: the union representing 1.4 million truck drivers and other logistics workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The Teamsters have come out strongly against the convoys, calling them a "disruption" and a threat to the livelihood of working Americans. But within the union, many are hoping truckers will soon cause more disruption. Sasha, a UPS Teamster working out of Oakland, California, recently had her pay cut by almost 25 percent under a contract loophole that permits the company to roll back higher wages that were offered to new part-time hires during the pandemic. She recalled to The Week a conversation with one of her coworkers who is raising a child and told her that he had been proud to be a UPS worker, but that with the pay cut the choice for him was either "to quit, or to fight." Sasha has told her friends, only partially in jest, that they should expect Christmas to be canceled in 2023 if the company doesn't meet their demands — and she relayed that the workers she knows are "excited about the prospect of more militant action," especially since the pay cuts.

The Teamsters are the largest private-sector union in the United States. With the retirement of General President Jimmy Hoffa — son of the more famous late president of the same name — the union has elected Sean O'Brien at the head of an uneasy coalition between longstanding Hoffa critics (including the reform-minded Teamsters for a Democratic Union, of which Sasha is a member) and recent defectors from Hoffa's faction, many of whom were angered by a 2018 decision by the previous leadership to impose a contract on 250,000 UPS workers despite a majority voting against ratification. The candidate backed by Hoffa, Steve Vairma, received just one-third of the vote in last year's election, while O'Brien, who defected from Hoffa's faction over his opposition to the UPS contract move, received two-thirds. O'Brien will take office next month.

While Teamster politics have long been contentious and there are multiple reasons for the shift in leadership, O'Brien and his coalition tapped into a sentiment that the union needs to be more aggressive in bargaining and willing to support strikes. The new leader's agenda includes a promise to involve rank-and-file members on bargaining teams and, crucially, to pay out strike benefits beginning on day one, reversing a policy that had workers go without pay for over a week before the union's strike fund provided them with relief — a policy that O'Brien and allies argue undermines the threat of strikes as bargaining leverage.

The UPS contract expires in 2023, giving the union an opportunity for a do-over on issues such as two-tier pay structures, forced overtime, and harassment by supervisors at a company that increased its operating profits by over 50 percent in 2021. The big question for workers and their union is, how far are they willing to go to end these practices and win better pay and conditions?

The new leadership, elected on pledges to drive a harder bargain and to prepare the union for a strike if necessary, could simply do these things with the intention of achieving a better deal at the last minute, averting a strike. The IATSE union, representing film and television production staff, used this tactic to win concessions from studios, authorizing a strike with 98 percent voting in favor at a 90 percent turnout, then cutting a controversial deal passed only by slim majorities within the union.

However, this is not the only option. Teamsters might like their chances in a strike against UPS, especially as memories will be fresh from the disruptions caused by trucker convoys, organized without strike pay or legal protection from a pro-union National Labor Relations Board. Workers would likely have political support from the Biden administration, and the sky-high profits reported by UPS may work against the company due to the sentiment that they can afford to give workers a better deal. Sasha, the California Teamster, says that this is "common sense" with her community when she talks about the issues and notes Americans supported the last UPS strike in 1997, which won part-time workers like her healthcare benefits, among other victories.

The trucker convoy protests have little to do with traditional labor issues, and lots of Teamsters view them with disdain; many of those participating in the protests are nonunion owner-operators. The Ottawa convoy's target is not the boss, but an elected federal government with an incentive to project strength by rejecting demands of a group that are damaging the economy. The disruption caused by the trucker protests was not sufficient to force the Canadian government into serious concessions, and they're even less likely to do so in D.C.

The Teamsters facing off against UPS, on the other hand, have better odds. The union is unlikely to officially support blockades due to potential liability, but legal mass pickets and community campaigns are likely, and it is possible to imagine some truckers (indeed, possibly some of the same truckers — there are, Sasha notes, labor unionists of all races, genders, and political orientations) taking matters into their own hands and shutting down access to major shipping corridors. With the union withdrawing its labor, militant disruptions, and public sympathy, the company could be forced into major concessions.

Anyone hoping that the trucker convoys will turn into a durable expression of working-class power is deluding themselves, whether they be naive leftists who see a revolution around every corner, or conservative populists offering ludicrous pronouncements about the Republican Party being a "workers' party." But history sometimes takes strange courses, and it is possible to imagine that this display of economic disruption by anti-mandate truckers in Canada and the United States could be remembered as a wake-up call for labor.

https://theweek.com/feature/opinion/101 ... -for-labor

*****************************************

Ajamu Baraka: Freedom Convoy – Workers Struggle or Far Right Provocation?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 22, 2022



This week, Briahna Joy Gray speaks to Green Party 2016 Vice Presidential candidate, activist, and National Spokesperson for Black Alliance for Peace, Ajamu Baraka, Canadian journalist and co-host of Michael & Us, Luke Savage, & Canadian freelance writer and cohost of Unredacted with Glenn Greenwald Q. Anthony Omene about how the left should approach the convoy of Canadian truckers that have been protesting following a vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US/Canadian boarder.

Should the left be trying to use this uprising as an opportunity for left radicalization?

Are mandates with little public health benefit worth the political backlash?

Is the left ultimately envious that it rarely mobilizes as effectively as these Canadian protesters have done?

Is this what the George Floyd uprising should have been?
Ajamu Baraka @ajamubaraka
Neoliberals are exposing themselves as most effective agents of fascism. The "Emergency Act" in Canada evoked in opposition to the Truckers action can "temporarily suspend parts of Canadian constitution that protect "free movement & assembly."
10:31 AM · Feb 15, 2022·SocialPilot.co

Ajamu Baraka @ajamubaraka
Look at how these neoliberal fascists are moving to shut down any opposition. You cheer because today it's supposed to be the right but tomorrow its all of us when the state is allowed to shut down raising money. Besides I thought money was speech!

Ajamu Baraka @ajamubaraka
Even more relevant today with the truckers in Canada, the corporate media mobilizing public to support a coup govt in Ukraine infested with neo-fascists with that effort being supported by confused left forces.
12:05 PM · Feb 16, 2022
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/02/ ... ovocation/

I have not checked this out, too much going on, and give benefit of the doubt to Baraka.

And what the hell does Glenn Greenwald know about the left anyway? Allowing libertarian assholes like Greenwald to pose as the left throws class politics out the window, as we know too well from years past.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 01, 2022 2:15 pm

Amazon hired an influential Democratic pollster to fight Staten Island union drive
PUBLISHED THU, MAR 31 20229:00 AM EDTUPDATED THU, MAR 31 20228:12 PM EDT
@ANNIERPALMER

KEY POINTS
Amazon hired Global Strategy Group, an influential Democratic polling firm, to fight unionizing efforts on New York’s Staten Island, CNBC has learned.
The firm created anti-union materials on behalf of Amazon to discourage workers at several Staten Island warehouses from unionizing.
The vote at Amazon’s largest fulfillment center on whether to join a union wrapped up on Wednesday.


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Amazon workers arrive with paperwork to unionize at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, October 25, 2021.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Amazon tapped an influential consulting and polling firm with close ties to Democratic political groups to help the company thwart a critical unionization effort at a Staten Island, New York, warehouse, CNBC has learned.

Global Strategy Group, which served as a polling partner for a pro-Biden super PAC ahead of the 2020 election, has been working for Amazon since at least late last year to produce anti-union materials, according to documents viewed by CNBC.

<snip>

At JFK8, Amazon’s largest warehouse in New York City, and three other facilities on Staten Island, GSG has put together videos featuring Amazon managers and executives, and has distributed flyers to staffers. Amazon has delivered anti-union presentations that workers have been required to sit through at meetings, which were often attended by representatives from GSG, according to a person familiar with the matter.

GSG employees have also been monitoring the social media accounts of Amazon Labor Union organizers, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. ALU is a fledgling organization, made up of current and former company employees, that’s seeking to represent JFK8 workers.

An anti-union website
The videos and printed materials distributed by GSG attempt to discourage employees from voting to join a union. They use phrases like “One team, working together” and “Unpack it: Get the facts about unions,” a slogan repeated on Amazon’s anti-union website – unpackjfk8.com. Some of the materials tout the many benefits that Amazon already provides, including health care, vacation time and opportunities for improving job skills.

GSG employees in New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., have been involved with the project, the documents show. Barbara Russell, Amazon’s global director of employee relations, is helping to oversee the work with GSG.

<snip>

Working for Amazon in an anti-union capacity could pose a problem for GSG because of its close affiliation with the Democratic Party, which has traditionally been an advocate for labor unions. The firm even conducted polling for New York Attorney General Letitia James, an Amazon critic who accused the company of unlawfully firing Christian Smalls, now the president of ALU. GSG also provided polling services for a branch of the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest labor unions in the country.

According to GSG’s website, the firm “led polling for dozens of winning campaigns and political organizations in 2018 and 2020 to secure today’s Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives and US Senate.” It was the polling partner for Priorities USA, a super PAC that backed President Joe Biden, and has worked for Democratic Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Joe Manchin and Ed Markey, its website says.

GSG has long been a well-known name on Capitol Hill, and a decade ago employed Jen Psaki, who’s now Biden’s White House press secretary.

(more...)

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/amazon- ... -vote.html

So then, Which side are you on, boys?

*******************************

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Police used smoke bombs and rubber bullets against free trade agreement protestors in Miami. 2003.

Why there’s more labor media coverage
Originally published: Working-Class Perspectives by Lane Windham (March 14, 2022 ) - Posted Mar 28, 2022

It seems like workers and their unions are in the news more than ever lately. Starbucks baristas, Amazon warehouse workers, John Deere strikers, and even New York Times tech workers, who just unionized, have all starred in the recent swell of labor coverage. The pandemic launched essential workers out of the media’s shadows, making this largely Black, brown, and female workforce much harder for reporters to ignore. Yet the shift in the media’s coverage of labor has been a dozen years in the making. It started before the pandemic and even predates the current upsurge in union organizing. Why are we seeing this increase in working-class and labor reporting? And how does it connect with larger shifts in how Americans view class itself?

For many years, I did media outreach for the national AFL-CIO, so I spent much of my time talking to labor reporters. When I started at the federation in 1998, there were about 20 reporters on my A-list. By the time I left, in 2009, there were three. Even in the early days, when the roster was more robust, it was extremely difficult to get stories about workers’ grassroots struggles and protests into the corporate, legacy outlets. Only two national reporters did any in-person reporting on the 5,000 Avondate shipyard workers who fought a six-year battle to unionize their Navy shipyard in New Orleans in the late 1990s, for instance.

Important labor stories just didn’t get covered. Only one outlet covered the massive labor and environmental protests against the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ministerial meetings in Miami. Police shot at unionists with rubber bullets, clubbed protesters, and tanks lined the streets outside a rally. I remember watching in shock as tear gas filled the streets next to union retirees. You probably haven’t heard of this protest, because there was only one brief news story and no in-depth coverage or analysis.

The issue went beyond the labor beat. Reporters in general only used the term “working class” during election season, when they dusted it off to track voting trends among white workers without college degrees. Even the AFL-CIO didn’t refer to workers as “working class” in these years, because it deemed that term more divisive than “working families.” Though the media still has a long way to go to fully cover the interests and activities of today’s diverse working class, it gives far more attention to working-class issues than it did during my tenure doing press work for labor, even when it doesn’t use the word “class.”

I couldn’t believe it when so many reporters recently flocked to Bessemer, Alabama to cover the Amazon warehouse workers’ union election. Many thought the vote was unprecedented, given that the media long ignored Southern workers’ union organizing.

So what changed? I suspect that the uptick of media coverage of workers and their unions is linked to larger shifts away from a dominant neoliberal consensus and also to changing understandings of class itself. This seismic shift started after the economic crash of 2008–2009, and inspired a new emphasis on inequality that fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. These events shot holes in many tenets of the neoliberal consensus: that all trade and globalization was good at any price; that shareholder value was the ultimate goal of the economy; that public goods were better privatized; that unions were Luddites who stood in the way of all this progress. These neoliberal tenets had held for forty years, since the 1970s, but most people’s lived experience did not bear them out. The idea that the 99% lost out to the 1% rang true for many, and their thoughts on what was fair began to change.

Young people who entered this economy during and after the financial meltdown of 2008 found a working world that was incredibly different from the one that Baby Boomers and GenXers entered. They came of age in a time when neoliberal thinking had far less of a foothold and when precarious, contract work was much more normal. They weren’t going to do as well as their parents had, and they knew it. Young people today are the demographic that is most supportive of unions; recent Gallup polling found that 77 percent of people under 35 favor unions.

The reporters driving the change in labor coverage are of this generation. Many got their start in the newly-minted digital media platforms, like VICE and Gawker, which they then unionized. They also began reporting in a time when social media had dismantled the gatekeeping function at the legacy outlets that had long ignored labor. They began bringing their own experience as young people in a precarious economy to their reporting, and they focused in a new way on class. Many of them were not white men, and so reporters like Michelle Chen, Sarah Jaffe, Kim Kelly, Lauren Kaori Gurley and others, shaped what they deemed newsworthy. When the pandemic hit, this new cadre of labor reporters showed the virus’s impact on the working class. Young reporters at digital outlets led the way, and the legacy news outlets followed.

But it’s not just the reporters who are changing; their readers’ worldview is changing, too. The neoliberal, markets-fix-everything mindset had already taken a hit in the 2008 crash. Then during the pandemic, many middle-class professionals watched from the safety of home as essential workers, largely working-class people of color, braved the virus. They saw that these workers didn’t get treated better or paid more for their labor, even as housing and living costs continued to skyrocket. Thus, the stories that new labor reporters offered about workers and their experiences found an intense interest among readers.

The new upsurge in labor media coverage is anchored in fresh awareness about class and its role in America today, a growing understanding that is stripped of the anti-Communism that shaped ideas about class for much of the twentieth century. It’s not yet clear how fully this working-class renaissance will develop. What is clear is that a new generation of labor reporters is standing ready to report on it. This increased coverage, in turn, may allow the next generation of worker activists to see their own movement’s growth, and that may inspire even more to take a stand.

https://mronline.org/2022/03/28/why-the ... -coverage/

Without socialists leading labor is bound to get screwed as has been seen since the end of WWII.

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:26 pm

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Amazon Labor Union activists celebrate their victory on April 1. (Photo: Amazon Labor Union)

Amazon win shows power of rank-and-file organising
Originally published: Green Left by Malik Miah (April 5, 2022 / Issue #1341 ) | - Posted Apr 09, 2022

Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York City, won a historic ballot on April 1 to form a union.

The newly formed Amazon Labor Union (ALU) won by more than 500 votes, with 2654 workers voting in favour of a union and 2131 voting against, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) count. About 7000 people are employed at the site, known as the JFK8 Fulfillment Center.

After processing any objections lodged by the parties, the vote is expected to be certified later this month. Once it is, JFK8 will become the one and only Amazon warehouse to unionise out of 110 across the United States.

Amazon is the second-largest employer in the U.S., after Walmart, with more than 1.1 million employees.

Amazon Labor Union

The workers will join the independent ALU, co-founded by Christian Smalls, a 33-year-old African American who was sacked from his job at Amazon in March 2020, and 33-year-old African American JFK8 worker Derrick Palmer. The union operates on a shoestring budget, raised money through crowd-funding, received free legal help and rallied workers to vote on TikTok, at bus stops and during picnics and pizza parties.

Celebrating the victory, Smalls said:

We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going up to space, because while he was up there, we were organising a union.

“We went for the jugular, and we went after the top dog. We’re going to unionise. We’re not going to quit our jobs anymore,” Smalls told The City on April 1, adding that Amazon executives “are going to have to bargain with their workers now”.

Workers at an Amazon shipping centre in Staten Island will also vote on unionisation later this month.

Smalls founded the ALU because he was convinced it was the best approach in the wake of the failed unionisation campaign at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) led that drive early last year.

Many union officials and experts said it was a long shot, considering that Smalls and his team had little organising experience or expertise and were going up against a fiercely anti-union colossus with U.S.$386 billion in annual revenues.

“I believe we’ll be successful,” Smalls said in June last year.

New York is a union town. The bus drivers, the sanitation workers, the police, the firefighters, they’re all unionised. Everybody is related or knows somebody in a union.

After the ALU’s victory, the newly-elected reform president of the Teamsters, which represents most unionised drivers and warehouse workers in the country, announced plans to significantly increase organising efforts at Amazon facilities.

Learning from defeat

Smalls told the media last year that he had learned from the RWDSU’s loss in Alabama. “The fact that we’ve seen what Amazon does gives us an advantage,” he said.

And we learned from the union’s missed opportunities. We’re not going to make their mistakes.

Smalls promised to have a bigger, stronger workers’ committee to educate and mobilise workers in support of unionisation.

Explaining his decision to create a new union, Smalls told The Guardian last June:

If established unions had been effective, they would have unionised Amazon already. We have to think about 21st century-style unionising. It’s how do we build up the workers’ solidarity. Established unions don’t really know Amazon and what it is to work at Amazon.

The New York Times reported on April 3 that early last year Smalls and Palmer travelled to Amazon’s Bessemer Alabama warehouse to witness the RWDSU’s union drive.

But they found organisers from the retail union–the one that had previously declared an interest in JFK8–less than welcoming to them and thought the professionals seemed like outsiders who had descended on the community.

According to media reports, Smalls was sacked from Amazon after leading a walk out over the lack of COVID-19 safety measures. The company’s lawyers mapped out a plan–in a meeting Jeff Bezos attended–to smear Smalls as “not smart or articulate” and to make him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement.”

“They said they’d make me the whole face of the union effort against Amazon,” Smalls told The Guardian last June.

I’m trying to make them eat their words.

Smalls told The Guardian the company lawyers’ strategy was “definitely racist”. The lawyer claimed he didn’t know Smalls was Black, but Smalls didn’t buy it.

Palmer and fellow Amazon worker Gerald Bryson joined Smalls in the unionisation campaign. Palmer was disciplined by Amazon for joining Smalls’ COVID-19 protest. Bryson–a packer at JFK8–was previously illegally sacked for leading a second protest about COVID-19 safety.

Amazon initially gave these “essential” workers a “bonus” $2 an hour in 2020, then later took it away even as COVID-19 spread.

Year-long campaign

Palmer told The Guardian:

Most of the people involved with the Amazon Labor Union have lots of experience at Amazon and know what Amazon workers want.

The ALU’s campaign began in April last year. Activists set up a tent outside the Staten Island Amazon warehouse next to a bus stop, with a sign saying: “Sign your [union ballot] authorisation cards here.”

Under U.S. labour laws, the union needed at least 30% of the workforce (1700 signatures) to hold a ballot.

It is unusual to file for a ballot with less than 50% signed cards. However, Smalls and Parker knew many workers were afraid to sign even though they supported unionisation.

Established unions rarely consider calling for a unionisation ballot without 70% support, expecting that many workers who initially sign will stand down in the face of anti-union pressure by the employer.

Leadership role

Smalls told The Guardian he was first hired by Amazon in 2015. He performed so well that the company transferred him to the Staten Island warehouse to train workers when it opened in 2018.

He enjoyed working for the company at first, but over the years realised it had some “deep systemic issues”, including an injury rate that was “too high”. Smalls also saw discrimination against older workers, mistreatment of women workers and saw that workers were sacked when they faced family emergencies but had run out of leave. He also experienced racial discrimination:

I applied to be a manager 49 times and never got it.

Having a union on the job would help on all these matters, said Smalls.

Even though some labour experts and union bureaucrats didn’t give the new union much hope of winning, Amazon certainly took Smalls and the ALU unionisation campaign seriously.

Amazon tells its workers they don’t need a union–or the burden of paying union dues.

But, as Smalls told The Guardian:

Unionised workers make $11,000 more per year than non-union workers on average, and who cares if you pay $1000 in union dues, when you’re making $11,000 more as a union member?

Why an independent union
Palmer told The City on April 1 that the ALU used whatever means it could to reach workers in the lead up to the ballot, and emphasised an approach where Amazon workers organised others.

“You have to have a different approach,” he said.

You have to do something innovative, and I feel like the barbecues resonated, the t-shirts resonated, the fact that we stood up during the [company’s] captive audience meetings resonated because that hasn’t really been done like that.

We had to show the workers that we got a lot of fight in us and that we’re not gonna back down.

While many Democrats and “progressive” elected officials cheered the union’s victory, Smalls said in a TV interview that none of them actively backed their effort, but then congratulated them for their success.

The idea of rank-and-file workers, not affiliated with a major union, was seen as an impossible task. That’s why most mainstream labour activists stayed on the sidelines in the organising period. But in the final weeks before the voting a few New York area unions did give some on-the-ground help.

Palmer told The City:

It’s never too late to get on board. But damn, like you know, it’s been almost a year without that support. But we’ve forgiven that as well. That’s why I told my team, ‘It doesn’t matter who’s here or who’s coming. We’ve got to organize who’s around us’ and that’s what we’ve based this campaign off of and it paid off for us.

Savouring the victory
When the ballot results came through on April 1, the ALU activists gathered outside the NLRB couldn’t believe they had won.

“I can’t explain it,” Smalls told The City.

This is literally 11 months in the making. This moment, it hasn’t really soaked in yet. I’m trying to stay calm, but I know we poured in a lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears into this. I’m so happy to even still be doing this two years later.

From the start of the ballot count, the ALU pulled ahead of the “no” vote. Over the first five hours, as ballot boxes were emptied, it became clear the union was headed for victory, Palmer told The City.

When the count concluded the following day, Amazon’s lawyers shook the ALU organisers’ hands, said Palmer.

They had to accept it.

But Amazon isn’t conceding just yet. The company plans on filing objections “based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election”.

Regardless, the NLRB is expected to certify the election.

Union will spread

The ALU has its sights set beyond Staten Island. Smalls told The City that Amazon workers around the country have already contacted the union for help.

“We want to be able to help them now that we have the union to do so. Hopefully, resources come behind that and then hopefully we’ll be able to give resources out,” said Smalls.

Palmer wants to start organising workers at his old warehouse in New Jersey, where he first started working for Amazon.

While at first sight this fight appears to be a “David and Goliath” story, in fact it shows the power of rank-and-file workers–on a starting pay of $18 an hour–when they are united against a powerful employer like Amazon. Workers united can win.

Amazon spent millions to pressure their workers in Staten Island and Alabama to vote against unionising during compulsory “captive audience” meetings. In contrast, the ALU had a budget of just over $100,000.

The next stage, maybe the hardest part in the class conflict, comes next in negotiating the first contract. The ALU is confident.

The energy and determination is clearly on the side of the workers.

https://mronline.org/2022/04/09/amazon- ... rganising/

******************************

Amazon employee app to ban discussion of 'injustice' and 'slave labor'
07.04.2022
Market freedom of speech
Amazon is preparing to ban the use of words that allude to poor working conditions and unionism in a specially designed application for employees. The worker will not be able to use the words and phrases “union”, “wage raise”, “slave labor”, “injustice”, “prison” and “plantation”, as well as “toilets” - presumably, the latter is associated with reports from Amazon employees about that they have to defecate in bottles in order to meet harsh regulations. Freedom of speech for Amazon employees was reported in The Intercept, based on leaked company documents.

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Daily Sweatshop at Amazon

After a meeting where innovations were discussed, the "Automatic monitoring of bad words" service was developed, which is a kind of black list that marks and automatically blocks the sending of messages by employees containing obscene or inappropriate keywords. However, in addition to profanity, the terms include many expressions related to labor struggles, including "union" , "complaint" , "wage raise" and "compensation" . Other prohibited keywords include the terms "ethics" , "injustice" , "slave" , "master" , "freedom" , "diversity", "injustice" and "justice" . Even some phrases like "it worries" will be banned.

At the same time, as the publication notes, the application was developed to increase employee satisfaction.

The company's spokespersons say that Amazon management made this decision in order to "prevent the experience of negative communication" in the application.

Russian companies are not yet so involved in IT communications with employees, but they have already learned how to automatically dismiss for "non-involvement". The last to become famous was the head of Xsolla Alexander Agapitov , who in August 2021 sent a mocking letter of dismissal to 147 employees of the Perm office based on big data calculations.
Numerous examples demonstrate: no one will protect the rights of an employee, except for himself. Only a proud and organized team is able to defend their interests and achieve truly comfortable working conditions. For example, in February 2022, the Australian nurses explained to the employer that effective work is impossible without recruiting and increasing wages. Today, Australian nurses, accustomed to a dialogue with the employer, consistently receive from 6.5 to 8 thousand Australian dollars (350-572 thousand rubles) per month.
https://www.rotfront.su/prilozhenie-dly ... n-zapreti/

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 15, 2022 2:34 pm

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Let Us Now Praise Amazon Unionists
April 13, 2022
By Chris Hedges – Apr 6, 2022

The only way to halt the global assault on the human rights of workers is to unionize.

Let us honor those workers who stood up to Amazon, especially Chris Smalls, described by Amazon’s chief counsel as “not smart, or articulate,” who led a walkout at the Amazon warehouse at Staten Island JFK8 in New York at the beginning of the pandemic two years ago to protest unsafe working conditions. He was immediately fired.

Amazon’s high-priced lawyers, however, were in for a surprise. Smalls unionized the first Amazon warehouse in the country. He, along with his co-founder Derrick Palmer, built their union worker-by-worker with little outside support and no affiliation with a national labor group, raising $120,000 on GoFundMe. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million on anti-union consultants last year alone, according to federal filings.


We must not underestimate this victory. It is only by rebuilding unions and carrying out strikes that we will halt the downward spiral of the working class. No politician will do this for us. Neither of the two ruling parties will be our allies. The media will be hostile. The government, beholden to corporations and the rich, will use its resources, no matter which of the two ruling parties is in the White House, to crush worker movements. It will be a long, painful and lonely struggle.

You can tell what the oligarchs fear by what they seek to destroy—unions. Amazon, the country’s second largest employer after Walmart, pours staggering resources into blocking union organizing, like Walmart. According to court documents, it formed a reaction team involving 10 departments, including a security group staffed by military veterans, to counter the Staten Island organizing and had blueprints for breaking union activity worked out in its “Protest Response Playbook” and “Labor Activity Playbook.”


The strike-breaking teams organized compulsory meetings, up to 20 a day, with workers where supervisors denigrated unions. It employed subterfuges making it hard to vote for a union. It put up anti-union posters in the bathrooms. It fired workers suspected of organizing. And it relied on the gutting of antitrust legislation and OSHA, as well as the emasculation of the National Labor Relations Board, which left workers largely defenseless, although the NLRB made a few decisions in favor of the union organizers.

“They called us a bunch of thugs,” Smalls told reporters after the 2,654 to 2,131 vote to form the union. “They tried to spread racist rumors. Tried to demonize our character, but it didn’t work.”

Amazon, like most large corporations, has no more commitment to worker’s rights than it does to the nation. It avoids taxes through a series of loopholes designed by their lobbyists in Washington and passed by Congress. The company dodged about $5.2 billion in corporate federal income taxes in 2021, even as it reported record profits of more than $35 billion. It paid only 6% of those profits in federal corporate income tax. Amazon posted income of more than $11 billion in 2018 but paid no federal taxes and received a federal tax refund of $129 million.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, is worth over $180 billion. He, like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, worth $277 billion, plays with space rockets as if they were toys and is finishing work on his $500 million yacht, the largest in the world.

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Jeff Bezos unveils blue moon space craft, May 9, 2019. Photo: Dave Mosher/Wikimedia Commons

Media Ownership

Bezos owns The Washington Post. The billionaire bioscientist Patrick Soon-Shiong owns The Los Angeles Times. Hedge funds and other financial firms own half of the daily newspapers in the United States.

Television is in the hands of roughly a half-dozen corporations who control 90 percent of what Americans watch. WarnerMedia, currently owned by AT&T, owns CNN and Time Warner. MSNBC is owned by Comcast, which is a subsidiary of General Electric, the 11th largest defense contractor in the US. News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.

The ruling oligarchs don’t care what we watch, as long as we remain entranced by the trivial, emotionally-driven spectacles they provide. None of these outlets challenge the interests of their owners, shareholders or advertisers, who orchestrate the assault on workers. The more powerful workers become, the more the media will be weaponized against them.

The first story I published in a major newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, was about the US corporation Gulf and Western’s crushing of labor organizing in its industrial free zone in La Romana in the Dominican Republic, a campaign that included the intimidation, beating, firing and assassination of Dominican labor organizers. The story was originally accepted by the Outlook section of The Washington Post until Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount Pictures, threatened to pull its movie advertising from the newspaper. The Monitor, funded by The Christian Science Church, did not carry advertising. It was an early and important lesson on the severe constraints of the commercial press.

The New York Times had gutted an investigative piece a year earlier written by perhaps our greatest investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, who exposed the killing of some 500 unarmed civilians by the US army in My Lai and the torture at Abu Ghraib, and Jeff Gerth about Gulf and Western. Hersh and Gerth documented how Gulf and Western carried out fraud, abuse, tax avoidance and had links with organized crime.

Charles Bluhdorn, the CEO of Gulf and Western, socialized with the publisher, Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, which included invitations to preview soon-to-be-released Paramount movies in Bluhdorn’s home theater. Bluhdorn used his connections at the paper to discredit Hersh and Gerth, as well as to bombard the newspaper with accusatory letters and menacing phone calls.

He hired private investigators to dig up dirt on Hersh and Gerth. When the two reporters filed their 15,000-word expose, the business editor, John Lee, in Hersh’s words, and “his ass-kissing coterie of moronic editors,” perhaps fearful of being sued, neutered it. It was one thing, Hersh found, to go up against a public institution. It was something else to take on a major corporation. He would never again work regularly for a newspaper.

“The experience was frustrating and enervating,” Hersh writes in his memoir Reporter. “Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me. There would be no check on corporate America, I feared: Greed had won out. The ugly fight with Gulf and Western had rattled the publisher and the editors to the point that the editors who ran the business pages had been allowed to vitiate and undercut the good work Jeff and I had done. I could not but wonder if the editors there had been told about Bluhdorn’s personal connection to Punch. In any case, it was clear to me and Jeff that the courage the Times had shown in confronting the wrath of a president and an attorney general in the crisis over the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was nowhere to be seen when confronted by a gaggle of corporate con men…”

The United States had the most violent labor wars in the industrialized world, with hundreds of workers murdered by company goons and militias, thousands wounded and tens of thousands blacklisted.

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Hammer-Head by Mr. Fish.

The fight for unions, and with them decent salaries, benefits, and job protection, was paid for by rivers of working-class blood and tremendous suffering. The formation of unions, as in the past, will entail a long and vicious class war. The security and surveillance apparatus, including Homeland Security and the FBI, will be deployed, along with private contractors and thugs hired by corporations, to monitor, infiltrate and destroy union organizing.

Gains rolled back

Unions made possible, for a while, a middle-class salary for auto workers, bus drivers, electricians, and construction workers. But those gains were rolled back. If the minimum wage had kept pace with rising productivity, as The New York Times pointed out, workers would be earning at least $20 an hour.

The nascent organizing at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, John Deere, Kellogg, the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia, owned by Berkshire Hathaway; REI, the Northwest Carpenters Union, Kroger, teachers in Chicago, Sacramento, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona; fast food workers, hundreds of nurses in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees are signs that workers are discovering that the only real power they have is as a collective, although a paltry 9% of the US workforce is unionized. Fourteen hundred workers at a Kellogg’s plant in Omaha that makes Cheez-Its won a new contract with more than 15% wage increases over three years after they went on strike for nearly three months last fall.

The betrayal of the working class by the Democratic Party, especially during the Clinton administration, included trade deals that allowed exploited workers in Mexico or China to take the place of unionized workers at home. Anti-labor legislation was passed by bought-and-paid for politicians in the two ruling parties on behalf of big business. Deindustrialization and job insecurity morphed into the gig economy, where workers are reduced to living on subsistence wages with no benefits or job security, and few rights.

Capitalists, as Karl Marx pointed out, have only two goals: Reduce the cost of labor, which means impoverishing and exploiting workers, and increase the rate of production, which often occurs through automation, such as Amazon’s ubiquitous squat orange robots carrying yellow racks across million-square-foot warehouse floors. When human beings interfere in these two capitalist objectives, they are sacrificed.

The financial distress afflicting workers, trapped in debt peonage and preyed upon by banks, credit card companies, student loan companies, privatized utilities, the gig economy, a for-profit healthcare system that has not prevented the US from having roughly a sixth of all reported worldwide COVID-19 deaths—although we have less than a 12th of the world’s population—and employers who pay meager wages and do not provide benefits is getting steadily worse, especially with rising inflation.

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National Nurses United protest against lack of personal protective equipment at UCLA Medical Center, April 13, 2020. Photo: Marcy Winograd/Wikimedia Commons

US President Joe Biden, while lavishing $13.6 billion on Ukraine and expanding the military budget to $754 billion, has overseen the loss of extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, forbearance for student loans, emergency checks, the moratorium on evictions and now the ending of the expansion of the child tax credit. He has refused to fulfill even his most tepid campaign promises, including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and forgiving student loans. His Build Back Better bill has been gutted and may not be revived.

Amazon workers, like many American workers, endure appalling work conditions. They are forced to work compulsory 12-hour shifts. They are denied bathroom breaks, often urinating into bottles. They endure stifling temperatures inside the warehouse in the summer. They must scan a new item every 11 seconds to hit their quota. The company knows immediately when they fall behind. Fail to meet the quota and you are fired.

Will Evans, in an investigative piece for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, found that “the company’s obsession with speed has turned its warehouses into injury mills.” Evans amassed internal injury reports from 23 of the company’s 110 “fulfillment centers” nationwide. “Taken together,” he writes, “the rate of serious injuries for those facilities was more than double the national average for the warehousing industry: 9.6 serious injuries per 100 full-time workers in 2018, compared with an industry average that year of 4.”

Those who are injured, Evans found, are “cast aside as damaged goods or sent back to jobs that injured them further.”

“The Amazon tenure of Parker Knight, a disabled veteran who worked at the Troutdale, Oregon, warehouse this year, shows the ruthless precision of Amazon’s system,” Evans writes. “Knight had been allowed to work shorter shifts after he sustained back and ankle injuries at the warehouse, but [proprietary software tracking program] ADAPT didn’t spare him. Knight was written up three times in May for missing his quota. The expectations were precise. He had to pick 385 small items or 350 medium items each hour. One week, he was hitting 98.45% of his expected rate, but that wasn’t good enough. That 1.55% speed shortfall earned him his final written warning—the last one before termination.”

The New York Times revealed last year that Amazon also regularly shortchanges new parents, patients dealing with medical crises and other vulnerable workers on leave.

“Workers across the country facing medical problems and other life crises have been fired when the attendance software mistakenly marked them as no-shows, according to former and current human resources staff members, some of whom would speak only anonymously for fear of retribution,” the newspaper reported. “Doctors’ notes vanished into black holes in Amazon’s databases. Employees struggled to even reach their case managers, wading through automated phone trees that routed their calls to overwhelmed back-office staff in Costa Rica, India, and Las Vegas. And the whole leave system was run on a patchwork of programs that often didn’t speak to one another. Some workers who were ready to return found that the system was too backed up to process them, resulting in weeks or months of lost income. Higher-paid corporate employees, who had to navigate the same systems, found that arranging a routine leave could turn into a morass.”

The ruling class, through self-help gurus such as Oprah, “prosperity gospel” preachers and the entertainment industry, has effectively privatized hope. They peddle the fantasy that reality is never an impediment to what we desire. If we believe in ourselves, if we work hard, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, we can have anything we want.

The privatization of hope is pernicious and self-defeating. When we fail to achieve our goals, when our dreams are unattainable, we are taught it is not due to economic, social, or political injustice, but faults within us. History has demonstrated that the only power citizens have is through the collective, without that collective we are shorn like sheep. This is a truth the ruling class spends a lot of time obscuring.

Any advance we make in social, political, and economic justice immediately comes under assault by the ruling class. The ruling class chips away at the gains we make, which is what happened following the rise of mass movements in the 1930s and later in the 1960s.

The oligarchs seek to snuff out what the political scientist Samuel Huntington cynically called “the excess of democracy.” The sociologist Max Weber, for this reason, called politics a vocation. Social change cannot be achieved simply by voting. It requires a constant, ceaseless effort. It is an endless striving for a new political order, one that demands lifelong dedication, organizing to keep the rapacious excesses of power in check and personal sacrifice. This eternal vigilance is the key to success.

Amazon’s vast machinery, as I write, is no doubt plotting to destroy the union in Staten Island. It cannot allow it to be a successful example. It has 109 “fulfillment centers” it is determined to keep nonunionized. But, if we do not become complacent, if we continue to organize and resist, if we link our arms with our unionized allies across the country, if we are able to strike we—and they—have a chance.



Featured image: Chris Smalls, one of the leaders who organized the union at an Amazon Staten Island distribution center, speaks to the press while other workers cheer after the union votes were tallied, on April 1 in New York City. Photo: Jason Szenes/EPA/Shutterstock

https://orinocotribune.com/let-us-now-p ... unionists/

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Amazon Cracks Down on Organizing After Historic Union Win

The fiercely anti-union company has doubled down on its anti-union efforts at a Staten Island warehouse, LDJ5, that is scheduled to begin a union election on April 25.
By Lauren Kaori Gurley
April 13, 2022, 9:04am

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GETTY IMAGES

Less than two weeks after a small upstart union won the first election at an Amazon warehouse in U.S. history, the fiercely anti-union company is cracking down on organizing at a smaller neighboring warehouse, known as LDJ5, that is scheduled to begin its own union election on April 25.

Organizers of the scrappy Amazon Labor Union say the company has clamped down on union activity in recent days at LDJ5, by repeatedly dismantling a pro-union banner in the break room, disciplining a leader of the unionization effort at LDJ5 for her organizing activity on the warehouse floor, and confiscating pro-union literature.

“Amazon’s tactics have gotten very, very intense,” said Madeline Wesley, an Amazon warehouse worker at LDJ5 and the treasurer of Amazon Labor Union who was written up on April 10 for “soliciting” her coworkers. “They’re getting away with lots of illegal anti-union activity.”

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Do you have a tip to share with us about Amazon? Please get in touch with Lauren, the reporter, via email lauren.gurley@vice.com or securely on Signal 201-897-2109.

Amazon has also continued to hold daily mandatory anti-union meetings and one-on-ones at LDJ5, and ALU organizers say, that the company has hired anti-union consultants, who typically work as independent contractors, as full-time employees with “blue badges” that allow them to blend in better with workers in the warehouse. Motherboard reviewed documentation that Amazon hired a veteran union buster, Rebecca Smith, to work at LDJ5. Smith is the author of Union Hypocrisy, has more than a decade of experience fighting union drives, and has ties to “ultra-conservative” political circles.

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Last week, the National Labor Relations Board’s top attorney said she wanted to ban so-called ‘captive audience’ meetings saying they involve “an unlawful threat” that workers will be punished for refusing to listen to “such speech.”

At both warehouses, Amazon has deployed a wide variety of other anti-union propaganda, including fliers, mailers, phone calls, Instagram and Facebook ads, banners, and videos.

A victory for the union at LDJ5, which employs some 1,500 workers according to an internal roster obtained by Motherboard earlier this year, would be an important indicator of whether Amazon Labor Union’s success can be replicated elsewhere and spur a wave of unionization at Amazon warehouses across the country.

In late March, representatives of the company also repeatedly confiscated pro-union literature in the break room at LDJ5, according to Amazon Labor Union and videos uploaded to social media, where an Amazon representative confiscates union literature, but then promises to put it back when workers confront her saying “it’s illegal to remove anti-union literature,” and then removes it again shortly after.

In December, Amazon reached a national deal with the National Labor Relations Board, agreeing to email past and current warehouse workers in the United States—likely more than one million people—of their rights to organize within its facilities, the largest concession Amazon had made to date to organized labor.

The cases that led to the settlement involved workers in Staten Island and Chicago, where Amazon had banned workers from being in its break rooms and parking lots more than 15 minutes before or after a shift, impeding workers ability to organize.

Amazon’s settlement in December gave workers greater legal protection to organize in break rooms at Amazon warehouses, which became crucial in Amazon Labor Union’s victory in April, but ALU lawyers say that Amazon has refused to fully abide by this settlement at LDJ5.

“Amazon is violating the national settlement agreement,” said Seth Goldstein, an attorney who represents Amazon Labor Union workers and has filed more than 50 unfair labor practice complaints against Amazon on behalf of the union since May 2021. “These are blatant attacks on an agreement they were a party to. The core of the matter is Amazon agreed to something but they’re violating it because it suits their purposes for winning the election.”

At JFK8, Amazon did not interfere when union supporters hung up a free-standing yellow banner in the break room that said “Amazon Labor Union: VOTE YES!” in the lead up to the recent election. But when workers brought the banner into the break room at LDJ5 following Amazon Labor Union’s victory at JFK8, Amazon managers asked workers to take it down.

When workers refused, Amazon representatives removed the banner multiple times, at one point telling workers that the banner was only allowed to remain up if workers were holding it the entire time, and later saying that the banner could not be displayed in the break room at all.

“It’s the same banner that we were allowed to have at JFK8, but they didn’t think we’d win,” said Wesley. “First a manager and HR rep said we’re asking you to take it down, they didn’t say why, and we said ‘no we’re not going to take it down. It’s legally protected.’ Then they said it's a policy and we said’ then show us the policy,’ but [they refused.]’ Then they said organizers have to hold the banner, it can’t be freestanding. Then they said no banners allowed period. Their policy keeps changing and they still haven’t shown us the policy, but we’re worried that they’ll write organizers up for it, so now there are no banners.”

On April 10, two Amazon representatives called Wesley into a private meeting and presented her with a disciplinary write up for “soliciting” her coworkers during work hours at a workstation five days earlier, according to an audio recording obtained by Motherboard. According to an Amazon manager who is recorded on audio, Amazon punished Wesley for asking her coworkers to “vote yes” during work hours because “Amazon prohibits employees from soliciting during working time in working areas.”

“Soliciting involves engaging with a group of associates during the working time period,” the human resources representative said.

“So am I not allowed to talk to people during work?” Wesley said.

“You’re more than welcome to talk to anybody you’d like to,” the Amazon representative says. “It’s just when it’s regarding anything about the union.”

“So I’m not allowed to talk about the union when I’m working?” Wesley says.

“Specifically soliciting and engaging associates regarding that in the lanes while people are clocked in is prohibited, but you’re more than welcome to distribute any type of literature during non working periods,” the representative says.

“They wouldn’t give me any specific info on what I did,” Wesley told Motherboard of the incident. “I’m on the floor talking to people about union all the time. I have freedom of speech and other people are talking about the union all the time.”

In response to Amazon’s disciplinary action against Wesley, Goldstein filed unfair labor practice changes against Amazon for allegedly retaliating against a worker in order to discourage union activity. Goldstein also filed an unfair labor practice charge against Amazon for removing the “Vote Yes!” banner from the LDJ5 break room. Both charges will likely not be resolved for months, long after a result is determined in the upcoming union election.

The union election at LDJ5 will occur throughout the week of April 25. Votes will be tallied on May 2.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx9jp/ ... -union-win
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 20, 2022 2:08 pm

The Amazon Labor Union Victory
Lessons for All Workers

by Ed Grystar / April 18th, 2022

In one of the most remarkable labor organizing victories in decades, the Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize with the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU). This is the first organizing victory for any union at any of Amazon’s 110 warehouses across the USA, the nation’s second largest employer with over a million employees.

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Amazon Labor Union worker-organizers celebrated their 2,654-2,131 win today. Photo: AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

This was a real bottom-up organizing effort potentially highlighting an effective way forward for the rest of labor – a victory that gives momentum to workers not only in the other Amazon warehouses but in all industries. It demonstrates how and why rank and file workers are the essential elements of not only a successful organizing drive but critical to a revitalized labor movement based on struggle.

In a remarkable moment of candor, the Financial Times, which always speaks for big business, admits Amazon workers took great inspiration from none other than legendary communist William Z. Foster.

Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island is a thoroughly 21st-century workplace where human “pickers” select items from shelves brought to them by a fleet of robots. Yet when the leaders of the newly formed Amazon Labor Union wanted to unionize the place, they turned to a manual called ‘Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry’ from 1936. The pamphlet recommends among other things a “chain system” whereby workers recruit other workers.

That Amazon workers should look back to the history of the steel industry is not as strange as it might sound. Steel was a vital sector of the American economy a century ago, as is ecommerce today.


Justine Medina, Amazon organizer, described Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry in Labor Notes as a “must-read”.

Why Follow William Z Foster? And Why Now?

While written in the 1930s, the short but informative pamphlet illustrated and combined the necessary ideological foundation, strategic outlook and practical tasks needed to take on the biggest Steel corporations and win. And it remains relevant today.

Unfortunately the strategy and victory for the ALU is an exception to the norm in today’s labor movement. A combination of red baiting, de-industrialization, and lack of desire to actually fight has seen the broader labor movement completely abandon any semblance of class struggle for class collaboration since Foster’s time.

Not only have traditional unions been largely unable to organize large militant units like the ALU just did in Staten Island, but the same losing class-collaborationist approach was most apparent when unions were unable to protect workers who were already organized. In the late 1970’s and onward, the de-industrialization of the USA was in full swing. Steel, coal, auto, rubber, transportation were just a few of the basic industries that were offshored, downsized or dis-invested by capital. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, communities were devastated, as infrastructure and public services took a major blow.

The causes of this man-made disaster were pictured and portrayed by politicians, business, the media, and labor as inevitable results of living under the magic of the capitalist market. The mayor of Pittsburgh, Richard Caliguiri remarked that workers should leave the city for greener pastures, essentially defending the bosses’ shut down of the steel mills in western Pennsylvania. Rather than use their existing political and organizational muscle to mobilize the tens of thousands into a grand coalition to put up a fight, unions simply folded into a charity-based approach, reducing their credibility and giving credence to the bosses’ arguments that the unions caused the offshoring because they “asked for too much”. Given that all these industries were unionized yet collapsed without a mass struggle is crucial for workers today.

Labor’s efforts today, with the exception of a few unions in particular sectors, largely mirror this defeatist approach.Tied to the bosses and the twin corrupt mainstream political parties, labor’s efforts are reduced to lobbying, email campaigns, media releases, and excessive legalistic strategies. For years, rather than attempt to unionize many low-wage sectors, labor lobbied for a federal minimum wage bill, something still yet to come to fruition.

This is what makes the Amazon victory so exciting, and one can see the incredible relevance today that is exhibited by the Foster pamphlet used to organize the Steel Industry decades ago. The parallels for the labor movement today and in the late 1920s and early 1930s are remarkable:

The organization campaign must be a fighting movement. It must realize that if the steel workers are to be organized they can only rely upon themselves and the support they get from other workers. While every advantage should be taken of all political institutions and individuals to defend the steel workers’ civil rights and to advance their interests generally, it would be the worst folly to rely upon Roosevelt, Earle or other capitalist politicians to adopt measures to organize the steel workers. There is every probability that only through a great strike can the steel workers establish their union and secure their demands, and this perspective must be constantly borne in mind.

Although the steel workers must not place their faith in capitalist politicians, they should utilize every means to develop working class political activity and organization in the steel areas. Especially there should be organized local Labor parties in the steel towns and thus foundations laid for an eventual Farmer-Labor Party.


Christian Smalls, leader of the ALU, in an interview on Fox News commented on being ignored by politicians in the runup to the NLRB election, “Whether they showed up or not, they didn’t make or break our election. We just had to continue to organize.” Like Foster, Smalls is setting an example in which unions chart an independent course, focusing on confidence and mass support of the rank and file over tacit support from politicians – worrying about whether AOC or Bernie Sanders attends a photo op rally is not a priority.

Democracy Defined as Rank and File Control and Involvement

For both Foster and now the ALU, mass participation among the rank and file and a captivating positive attitude among the organizing committee were crucial.

The necessary discipline cannot be attained by issuing drastic orders, but must be based upon wide education work among the rank and file and the development of confidence among them in the cause and ultimate victory of the movement.

A central aim must always be to draw the largest possible masses into direct participation in all the vital activities of the union; membership recruitment, formulation of demands, union elections, petitions, pledge votes, strike votes, strike organization, etc. This gives them a feeling that the union is actually their movement.


This critical strategy to draw in the workers to participate in the drive was necessary to destroy management’s attempt to picture the union organizers as “outsiders” that can confuse employees and reduce the union‘s credibility. Unfortunately, Amazon was successful in defeating the first Alabama organizing drive by the RWDSU by constantly highlighting the out-of-town supporters who would pass flyers or visit workers instead of rank-and-file workers at the sites. Solidarity support and professional staff are critical but only work when following a worker-led movement.

What Kind of Union Do Workers Need Today?

Can we learn from our past mistakes? Unions are essential for protecting the workers on the job and that’s why the capitalist class is relentless in opposition to workers organizing. But the Amazon Labor Union model can not exist in a vacuum. Its approach is a guide and for the working class to move to the offensive its principles must be extended far and wide.

The ALU and other new leaders in labor must shift the broader labor movement away from the strategy of class collaboration in order to be strong enough to withstand the ongoing attacks by capital. Workers can only actually go on the offensive once campaigns are moved beyond individual bargaining units to a class-level fight.

The ALU has shown the working class in simple and practical terms that it’s more important to build bottom-up solidarity among all workers than building an identity with your boss. This is something we should understand and help to nurture and grow.

https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/04/the- ... n-victory/

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tarbucks Workers Win 5 Union Elections Today, In A ‘Right To Work’ State No Less

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Sahid Fawaz April 19, 2022

The Starbucks union drive is on fire as workers score five victories today alone. And in a southern, “right to work” state.

The Huffington Post reports:

“The union representing Starbucks workers won a clean sweep of five store elections in the Richmond, Virginia, area on Tuesday, showing no signs of slowing as they try to organize the coffee chain store by store.


The campaign, known as Starbucks Workers United, has now won more than 20 union elections and lost just two since the first votes were held late last year, although not all election results have been certified. None of the chain’s more than 9,000 corporate-owned U.S. stores were organized before.

A union needs to win a majority of votes cast to become the bargaining representative for a workplace. The union prevailed in all five store votes Tuesday in decisive fashion: 17-1, 22-3, 11-2, 13-8 and 19-0.

Last week, the union lost a close election at a store in Springfield, Virginia, where workers voted 10-8 against unionizing. That vote had been preceded by a number of unanimous counts elsewhere in favor of the union.

The campaign is one of the most closely watched organizing efforts in decades. Union membership has been on the decline for years, and unions have struggled to gain a toehold in the fast-food economy. The success of the Starbucks campaign and a recent union victory at Amazon have kindled hopes of a labor resurgence, with unions seeing their highest approval ratings in years.

Starbucks has put up stiff resistance to the organizing campaign, with managers trying to persuade workers to vote against the union and CEO Howard Schultz painting the campaign as outsiders.

‘We can’t ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted, in many ways, by the threat of unionization,’ Schultz recently said.”

The company has also fired a number of outspoken union supporters recently. Starbucks says those workers violated company policy, but the union has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging retaliation. Bloomberg recently reported that board officials have determined that seven terminations in Memphis, Tennessee, were illegal.

As the union continues to rack up election victories, the battleground is shifting to the bargaining table, where workers will try to secure a first union contract. A Starbucks spokesperson predicted in an interview with HuffPost last week that “developing a contract that meets or exceeds what we already offer to our partners is going to be difficult for them to do.”

Schultz recently said in a company forum that Starbucks might roll out new work benefits that it couldn’t unilaterally give to the unionized stores.

https://labor411.org/411-blog/starbucks ... e-no-less/
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 27, 2022 2:06 pm

FROM THE CLASSICS: ORGANIZING METHODS IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY (1936) BY WILLIAM Z. FOSTER
Posted by MLT Editors | Apr 25, 2022

From the Classics: Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry (1936) by William Z. Foster

This document was used by New York Amazon workers in 2022 to successfully establish their right to unionize. -THE EDITORS

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The below transcription and marking of “Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry” was done by Philip Mooney in 2019 and then posted in the public domain on the Marxist Internet Archive.

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“Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry” was written with the object of aiding the most active workers in the steel industry and steel workers generally in organizing the industry. There can be no doubt that a mastery of the principles developed in this pamphlet, principles based on practical experiences, would result in a greater efficiency on the part of all those now engaged in organizing the industry. It is really a manual of organization methods in the organization of the unorganized in the mass production industries.

The organizational principles and methods here developed can be easily adapted to problems of organizing other mass production and large-scale industries such as auto, rubber, chemical, textile, etc. There is a great poverty in the labor movement of such literature. This poverty is felt also in labor schools. This manual should prove very popular for trade union courses in the various workers’ labor schools. Let us hope that this is a beginning of the development of such literature to fill the need in the present growth of the trade union movement.

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ORGANIZING METHODS IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY
By William Z. Foster

National Chairman of the Communist Party and Leader of the 1919 Steel Strike

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Contents

Introduction
I. General
II. Organization Forms and Functions
1. Structure of Organizing Forces
2. Structure of the Union
3. Functions and Tasks
III. Mass Agitation
1. Slogans
2. Publicity and Printed Matter
3. Radio
4. Mass Meetings, Demonstrations, etc
IV. Mass Organization
1. Individual Recruitment
2. Open Recruiting
3. Recruitment in Struggle
V. Special Group Work
1. American Whites
2. Negroes
3. Foreign-Born
4. Youth
5. Women
VI. Company Unions
VII. Special Organizational Work
1. Unemployed—W.P.A.
2. Fraternal Organizations
3. Churches
4. Other Organizations

INTRODUCTION

The methods outlined below of doing organization work in the steel industry are based upon the general principles of organization strategy and tactics developed in my pamphlet entitled: Unionizing Steel. They embody the lessons of the 1919 strike and of other steel struggles and they are suggested to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee for its consideration. The general principles in my pamphlet may be very briefly summarized as follows:

1. The organization work must be done by a working combination of the progressive and Left-wing forces in the labor movement. It is only these elements that have the necessary vision, flexibility and courage to go forward with such an important project as the organization of the 500,000 steel workers in the face of the powerful opposition of the Steel Trust and its capitalist allies. As far as the Right-wing reactionaries (crystallized in the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor) are concerned, they will not and cannot organize the steel workers. In 1936, even as in 1919, their attitude is one of sabotage and obstruction.

2. The organization campaign must be based upon the principles of trade union democracy. That is, every effort must be made to draw the widest possible ranks of the workers into the activities of the leading, decisive committees, and also into the work of the organizers and the union generally. Only with such democracy, or systematic mass participation, can the great task of building the union be successfully accomplished.

3. The organization movement must be industrial and national in character. That is, (a) it must include every category of workers in the steel industry, not merely a thin stratum of skilled workers at the top; and (b) the drive must be carried on energetically and simultaneously in every steel center, not simply here and there spasmodically in individual mills or steel centers.

4. The campaign must develop a strong discipline among the organizers and workers in order to prevent the movement from being wrecked by company-inspired local strikes and other disruptive tendencies. The necessary discipline cannot be attained by issuing drastic orders, but must be based upon wide education work among the rank and file and the development of confidence among them in the cause and ultimate victory of the movement.

5. The organization campaign must be a fighting movement. It must realize that if the steel workers are to be organized they can only rely upon themselves and the support they get from other workers. While every advantage should be taken of all political institutions and individuals to defend the steel workers’ civil rights and to advance their interests generally, it would be the worst folly to rely upon Roosevelt, Earle or other capitalist politicians to adopt measures to organize the steel workers. There is every probability that only through a great strike can the steel workers establish their union and secure their demands, and this perspective must be constantly borne in mind.

6. Although the steel workers must not place their faith in capitalist politicians, they should utilize every means to develop working class political activity and organization in the steel areas. Especially there should be organized local Labor parties in the steel towns and thus foundations laid for an eventual Farmer-Labor Party.

7. The movement must be highly self-critical. That is, there should be a constant re-examination of the organization methods used. Only in such a way can the necessary adjustments be made in tactics to fit the different situations. And only thus can the workers and organizers avoid defeat and pessimism and be given a feeling of confidence and sure success. It is a fatal mistake to try to apply blue-print methods of organization to an industry that presents so many and varied situations as steel. Flexibility in the work is a first essential, and to achieve this requires drastic self-criticism.

The situation in the steel industry is now highly favorable and if the organization work is prosecuted energetically, with due regard for the mistakes and weaknesses of past strikes and struggles, it will succeed. The present campaign of the Committee for Industrial Organization, of which John L. Lewis is the head, has many advantages over 1919. The industry is increasing production, the political situation is more favorable for maintaining the civil rights of the workers to meet and organize, the workers are in a more militant mood, the right of the workers to organize is more generally recognized, the campaign is being carried on upon the basis of one industrial union instead of 24 crafts, the illusions about company unionism are less now than ever, the campaign has the solid support of a dozen powerful trade unions, there arc ample funds for the organizing work, the language problem is not as severe as in earlier years, the radio now enables the message of unionism to evade the employers’ censorship and to be carried directly into the steel workers’ home. And, lastly, there is now in the field a strong Communist Party (which was not so in 1919) that is lending all its support to the success of the campaign.

The steel workers have every reason to enter into the present campaign with full confidence of victory. Now is the time to break down the open-shop slavery that has cursed the steel industry ever since the defeat of the heroic Homestead strikers in 1892. Now is the opportunity to build the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers into a great union, powerful enough to bring a happier life to the steel workers and their families.

I. GENERAL
1. The steel workers cannot be organized by agitation alone ; it requires thorough organization work to unionize them.

2. The work must be coordinated and planned—per organizer, per locality, per day, per week, etc.

3. Not mechanical blue-print tactics, but flexibility. The degree to which the proposals below can be applied depends on local conditions; the workers’ mood and strength of organization, the attitude of the bosses and government towards the campaign, etc.

4. The organization work must be carried out upon the basis of an energetic drive, not spontaneously and spasmodically, or merely a slow, gradual growth; sags in activity and loss of momentum are very dangerous in the drive by weakening the confidence of workers.

5. A strong discipline should prevail all through the campaign, but each unit must develop a healthy initiative, based on a vigorous trade union democracy.

6. A central aim must always be to draw the largest possible masses into direct participation in all the vital activities of the union ; membership recruitment, formulation of demands, union elections, petitions, pledge votes, strike votes, strike organization, etc. This gives them a feeling that the union is actually their movement.

7. Self-criticism at all times is absolutely indispensable to the working out of proper tactics.

8. High morale among the organizers and enthusiasm and confidence among the workers are indispensable conditions to the success of the work.

9. Organizers do not know how to organize by instinct, but must be carefully taught.

10. Every organizer and unit in the campaign must be activated at all times. The whole organizing force should move forward as one machine to the accomplishment of its goal of building the union.

11. Hard work and sobriety are basic essentials for success. Chair-warmers and irresponsibles should be made to feel unwelcome in the organizing crew.

12. Every step taken in the campaign must have as its central purpose the direct recruitment of new members. The main slogan is: “Join the Union”.

II. ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS AND FUNCTIONS
1. STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZING FORCES.
The organizing force of the steel campaign should be formed on the following general basis:

(a) The full-time and part-time organizers in the localities and districts should be formed into definitie committees, each with a secretary and with sub-committees for publicity, Negro, youth, women and defense. They should hold regular weekly meetings at definite times and places.

(b) A corps of volunteer organizers should be created, carefully selected to avoid unreliable elements. Each paid organizer should be commissioned as a captain of a crew of volunteer organizers and made immediately responsible for their work

(c) Each local of the Amalgamated Association should appoint an organizing committee of several members.

(d) In the company unions informal organizing committees should be set up to bring the company union membership systematically into the Amalgamated Association.

(e) Organizing committees should be set up in the various steel mills and in their departments, functioning either openly or privately, as conditions dictate. These should become the basis for future local unions.

(f) The Central Labor Unions and other unions (especially the railroad organizations) should set up local committees to support the steel drive and to organize their own trades. The steel drive should aim at 100 per cent organization of all workers in the steel towns.

(g) Similar supporting committees should also be formed among fraternal organizations, churches and elsewhere, where active sympathizers be found for the steel campaign.

(h) These local union, mill and other organizing committees should meet together weekly (so far as is practical) jointly with the paid and volunteer organizers.

(i) One or more national conferences of all the local unions and organizing forces should be held to coordinate the whole campaign of organization.

(j) Periodic meetings of organizers should be held to study concrete methods of mass agitation and organization.

2. STRUCTURE OF THE UNION.
(a) Local unions should be formed on the principle of one mill, one union. In large mills the local union should be sub-divided into branches according to main departments, but the local union branches should be kept linked together by a broad representative committee.

(b) In the localities and districts the local steel unions in the several mills should be joined together into Steel Councils based upon a broad rank-and-file representation.

(c) The obsolete constitution of the Amalgamated Association should be adapted in practice to permit of this form of departmentalized industrial union.

3. FUNCTIONS AND TASKS.
(a) Organizers should not work haphazardly. They should each be given very specific tasks and held responsible for their fulfillment, specified individuals being charged with the work in certain mills, language groups, company unions, etc.

(b) The principles of socialist competition should be introduced to stimulate the work of the organizers, to create friendly organizing rivalry between worker and worker, department and department, mill and mill, town and town

(c) The greatest care should be taken to guard against spies and provocateurs entrenching themselves in the organizing crew and official leadership of the union but the organizers should avoid starting a “spy scare”. Spies that are uncovered should be exposed to the workers.

(d) Care should be taken to protect all lists of members. Loss of such lists and other important documents to company sources is highly demoralizing to the workers, and careless organizers should be disciplined.

(e) An absolutely strict control should be maintained over the finances, as loose financial methods always constitute a grave danger in large campaigns.

(f) The headquarters of the organizing committee and the union should be located conveniently to the mills, but not directly under the eyes of the mill officials.

(g) Organized protection of organizers, officers, local headquarters, etc., should be provided for in local situations of acute struggle.

(h) All organizers should submit detailed weekly reports on their activities.

(i) Organizers and other union officials handling funds should be regularly bonded with a bonding company.

III. MASS AGITATION
The main objectives of the educational work should be to liquidate fear and pessimistic moods among the workers ; to convince them of the necessity for trade unionism to win their demands and the possibility for success in the present campaign ; to rouse the enthusiasm, confidence and fighting spirit of the workers ; to win public sentiment behind the campaign.

1. SLOGANS.
The mass of workers support the drive and join the union in order to improve their conditions by securing the satisfaction of their most urgent economic demands. This elementary fact should never be lost sight of. The whole campaign of agitation must be based upon the popularization of the sloganized major demands of the workers, together with their local demands. The whole steel industry should be saturated with these slogans.

The economic demands of the union should be put forth immediately, but finally formulated and adopted at a broad national rank-and-file conference and then ratified by huge local mass meetings, pledge voted, etc., everywhere in the steel areas.

2. PUBLICITY AND PRINTED MATTER.
The publicity material should be short and concrete, with concise facts about conditions in the industry and arguments for organization. Occasionally it should be printed in the most important foreign languages, the foreign-born workers liking to read their native languages even when they speak and understand english.

(a) Handbills should be issued regularly by the local organizing committees and upon occasion by the various local steel unions.

(b) Bulletins should be issued regularly by the local organizing committees giving local news of the movement, and especially stressing the progress of the campaign in other localities.

(c) House-to-house distribution on a mass scale should be organized for handbills, bulletins and other literature.

(d) A circulation as extensive as possible should be secured for the weekly paper, Steel Labor.

(e) Shop papers should be issued wherever practicable by A.A. local unions.

(f) Advertisements in the local papers are valuable and should be used regularly for important announcements to the steel workers.

(g) Every means should be exercised to secure systematically favorable write-ups in the local press on the campaign.

(h) Stickers are effective, but care must be exercised that they do not become a nuisance and antagonize public opinion, by being stuck up indiscriminately.

(i) The wearing of union buttons in the plants is a very important organizing force, but care must be taken that it be not introduced until there is sufficient mass support and that the proper time is seized upon for its introduction, in order to prevent discharges of workers.

(j) Advertisements in movies in small towns are often practical and effective.

(k) Posters and window-cards should also be utilized on special occasions.



-The full text of the Foster pamphlet is at marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster ... troduction

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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Sat May 07, 2022 1:57 pm

Labor organizing in the U.S. in 2022: confronting the anti-worker, anti-union corporate agenda
May 1, 2022

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Source: The Daily Iowan

By Maya Hernández (National Co-Coordinator)

This past year, profit-over-people ideology and anti-union efforts were particularly prevalent in the sectors that demanded the most labor. Millions of dollars went into campaigns to stop union organizing at the same time that several anti-worker policies passed into effect, painting a grim future for workers across the U.S. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is the single most important federal entity where workers can supposedly go for legal protection. In recent years, particularly following the Trump Administration’s maneuvering, pro-corporate appointees and anti-labor judges have taken over the NLRB.

Late capitalism has exposed the drastic inequalities inherent to our neoliberal economy. While mega billionaires got richer from COVID, millions of Americans suffered excessive levels of debt, unemployment, poverty, and overwhelming loss. These are clear violations of people’s human rights – all the while, corporations’ anti-worker agendas continue to charge powerfully forward.

This past year in labor set a concerning precedent for the future of workers across the country. The union-busting and structural policy changes that have taken place are on track to pressure unions to prioritize the interests of their employers over the rights of workers. The power of corporations over working people is being cemented into policy as we speak to further promote the exploitation of workers and obstruction of unionizing efforts. Our only way out is for workers to gear up for the fight of their lives to push back against these building blocks of corporate interest.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2021 report revealed the effectiveness of corporate anti-union tactics. The report showed 241,000 fewer union members than the previous year, which means just 1 in 10 workers are part of a union. In the private sector, it’s 1 in 16. Without a sturdy base, unions are no match for the union-busting strategies of their employers.

Labor exploitation & union-busting: the case of Amazon

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Source: William Thorntown (AL.com)

Amazon, often referred to as the white whale of the labor movement, is among the most notorious union-busters today. Still, when an Amazon warehouse opened in Bessemer, Alabama in 2020, it took a little under a year for workers to push for a union election. Among their reports were descriptions of abusive productivity expectations across the frenzy-filled pandemic summer. The Amazon behemoth is the world’s fourth-most-valuable company, and Jeff Bezos, its founder, is the world’s richest person. Amazon employs a little over a million people and is the top American ecommerce platform. It’s an example of what a successful business model looks like in the 21st century. It’s also a temperature check for labor conditions today.

As fundamentally anti-worker and pro-corporation, Amazon’s priority is first and foremost to increase worker productivity and lower labor costs, which is done by tracking its workers’ every movement. Externally, In Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon touts paying workers double the minimum wage, which in the state is $7.25, but internally, workers struggle to meet the demand let alone get their basic needs met. Until this past year, little public attention was paid to the working conditions fostered by Amazon. The Bessemer Amazon workers changed the name of the game by calling attention to the drastic conditions they are expected to work under. Workers revealed urinating in bottles while on their shift because they don’t have time to use the bathroom. This goes beyond inhumanity, and points to the lengths that Amazon will go to in order to control workers and guarantee rapid fulfillments.

The worker-led unionizing campaign that arose at the end of the summer sparked a lot of attention because it was in the South and because organizing within Amazon was unexpected. Immediately following the announcement that workers would push to unionize the warehouse, Amazon shot back with an anti-union campaign, employing several aggressive tactics to discourage unionization. This included hiring anti-union lawyers, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, forcing employees to sit through mandatory meetings that emphasized the company’s anti-union position, anti-union signage such as “Vote No” signs in bathrooms, and pestering workers while in the workplace.

The “just and favorable” working conditions defended in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) are far from represented at the Amazon Warehouse in Bessemer. And yet, organizing workers to fight union-busting proved to be incredibly difficult. Though Amazon workers are still in the process of pushing to unionize the Bessemer warehouse, their severe working conditions have not decreased. Neither has the union-busting for that matter. Targeting workers from the most in-demand sectors ensures that millions of workers remain submissive to their employer’s control.

The sustained anti-union agenda

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Source: Brendan McDermid (Reuters)

Efforts to quell union organizing are not only prevalent in newer work sectors; in fact, one of the longest strikes of 2021 featured workers from a coal mine in Brookwood, Alabama. On April 1st, 2021, 1,100 union coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama began striking against the unjust labor practices headed by Warrior Met Coal. Mining in Alabama dates back to the nineteenth century. The miners at Warrior Met who carry on that history, working under grueling conditions with long-lasting effects on their health and physical well-being, are demanding a new and fair contract that includes better pay and more time off.

Warrior Met Coal is a multi-million-dollar coal mining company. It was founded to buy the assets of Walter Energy after it declared bankruptcy in 2015. Workers took on cuts to wages and benefits in the aftermath, but were promised to regain their income and then some once the company regained solvency. The United Mine Workers of America (UMW) have calculated that as per their agreement with Warrior Met, the miners are owed over $1.1 billion in pay and other benefits.

In 2021, Warrior Met Coal reported a net income of $150.9 million. Last December, the company hired the firm Sitrick and Company to improve its public image. One of its tactics was to launch a smear campaign against the miners by feeding stories to the press that described the miners as lawless and violent. At the same time, multiple miners who were striking were hit by cars and trucks driven by company employees while they were on the picket lines. Warrior Met’s publicity team also created a Twitter account called WarriorMetCoalFacts that includes videos and written posts painting miners in a bad light while uplifting the image of the company.

The unionists have been on strike for over 10 months. This has presented many financial struggles for the miners and their families, and they have seen little to no headway or success. The human right to fair payment, to equal pay for equal work, as stipulated in Article 23 of the UDHR, is not being realized by any means. At Warrior Met Coal, workers are permitted to have a union since they are employees, but their union is not respected, nor is it protected from attacks by its employer. These are clear violations of workers’ human rights.

Exploitation in the gig economy

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Source: Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio

Workers for food delivery services and rideshare drivers for billion-dollar corporations like Uber, Lyft, and GrubHub were in high demand this past year. They were also some of the most neglected workers to date, regularly robbed of their most basic human rights. The onset of the gig economy has normalized short-term labor contracts that disallow unionizing, paid time off, hazard pay and other significant benefits. Short-term labor contracts and the hiring of workers as independent contractors lets corporations sidestep nearly all of the responsibility and cost that is fundamental to protecting employees. It essentially dismisses corporations from being held accountable for overworking their workers.

The gig economy’s normalization of protocols that violate workers’ best interest and dismiss their right to protest against such protocols is disturbing and sets a concerning precedent for the future of labor law. Any employer that withholds the right to a safe and dignified work environment is violating workers’ fundamental human rights. Gig workers are prevented from organizing themselves, another tactic aimed at undermining their autonomy.

Anti-worker policy-making

In addition to the union-busting and anti-worker organizing by corporations, there has also been the strategic effort to cement policies within the structural framework of today’s labor force that prioritize corporate interest over workers’ rights. Once anti-worker policies become part of labor law, violations against the rights of workers will become next to impossible to regulate. Two major labor policies pushed forth in 2021 were Proposition 22 and the Protect the Right to Organize or PRO Act.

In a win for Californian gig workers, lawmakers passed legislation called AB5 that reclassified gig workers as employees in 2020. The legislation meant that gig companies would no longer be able to classify their workers as independent contractors. If gig workers were required by law to be hired as employees and not contractors, then these companies would have to increase their expenses to accommodate employer-paid insurance, unemployment insurance, severance, and reimbursements for fuel and other job-related costs. The reclassification of gig workers as employees would obliterate the gig economy’s business model.

Corporate concerns over the passing of this legislation were, as you might imagine, profit-oriented. Immediately following the legislation announcement, Uber and Lyft, among other app-based companies, launched a $200 million campaign to support a ballot initiative called Prop 22, that would exclude them from that law. Their campaign included “Vote Yes” ads that told voters consumer prices would rise and that drivers would suffer if the initiative did not pass. Their campaign was successful; the measure passed, and all gig companies in California raised their prices regardless of what they had previously promised voters.

The Prop 22 ballot measure allows corporations like Uber to continue treating workers as independent contractors. It also incentivized businesses such as the California grocery chain, Albertsons, to lay off their in-house unionized delivery drivers and hire DoorDash contractors instead. According to Idrian Mollaneda from the California Law Review, “Proposition 22, financed almost entirely by gig companies, is a case study in how businesses can purchase new laws.” The win for gig companies in California will likely spread across to the rest of the country, a prospect for the future of the anti-worker policy-making agenda.

Victories of the labor movement

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Source: Alejandro Durán (The City)

The PRO Act is the most important and encouraging policy to be introduced to labor law in a long time – maybe ever, when considering the contemporary issues of the gig economy. If passed, the PRO Act would provide significant labor protections for all workers and restrictions against labor misclassification. The PRO Act would also strengthen unions, protect the right to strike, and protect digital organizing. Via this policy, the rights of workers recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be propped up and promoted through a policy that puts their human rights first.

While passing the PRO Act should continue to be an immediate priority, it certainly isn’t enough to transform the labor movement in the U.S. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the PRO Act will pass soon, when considering the excessive lobbying power that corporations have to dictate legislation. Only an organized labor force can fundamentally shape the conditions of workers in the U.S.

This past March, following two years of organizing, workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island voted to unionize and become part of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a historic and monumental win for the e-commerce labor movement and one of the largest labor forces in the world. Immediately following this landmark win, unionization efforts at other Amazon locations in New York City began snowballing. The success of this worker-led struggle against the Amazon behemoth carries important stakes for the future – most notably, the question of whether workers’ ability to build a revolutionary labor movement is possible.

We need all-hands-on-deck, worker-led organizing. We need motivated unionizing efforts to continue. We need consistent worker-to-worker solidarity. And we need voters to read the legislation and advocate for policies that will uplift workers’ rights. The issues workers are confronting today have nothing on the issues workers will confront in ten years if we don’t do our best to stop the institutionalization of labor laws that undermine workers’ rights and democracy, and build working class power from the bottom up.

References

Ballotpedia. (n.d.). California Proposition 22, App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative (2020). Ballotpedia.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://ballotpedia.org/California_Prop ... ive_(2020)

Bergfeld, M., & Farris, S. (2020, May 10). The COVID-19 Crisis and the End of the “Low-Skilled” Worker. Spectrejournal.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://spectrejournal.com/the-covid-19 ... ed-worker/

Bradbury, A. (2021, December 17). 2021 Year in Review: The Only Way Out is Through. Labornotes.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://labornotes.org/2021/12/2021-yea ... ut-through

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2022, January 20). Union Members Summary – 2021 A01 Results. BLS.gov. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Communications Workers of America. (n.d.). Trump’s Anti-Worker Record. CWA-union.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://cwa-union.org/trumps-anti-worker-record

Congressional Research Service (CRS). (2017, April 28). What Does the Gig Economy Mean for Workers? CRSreports.congress.gov. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44365/5

Furman, J. (2022, February 21). We can’t just keep saying ‘pass the Pro Act.’ we have to organize. Labornotes.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://labornotes.org/blogs/2022/02/we ... e-organize

Groves, D. (2022, April 1). Warrior Met Coal Strike Hits One-Year Mark. Thestand.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.thestand.org/2022/04/warrio ... year-mark/

Hern, A. (2020, January 29). Gig Economy Traps Workers in Precarious Existence, Says Report. Theguardian.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ays-report

H.R.842 – Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021. (2021, March 9). Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-con ... e-bill/842

Kelly, K. (2021, October 27). Warrior Met Coal’s New PR Strategy: Smearing Striking Miners. Patreon.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.patreon.com/posts/warrior-met-new-57945196

Lake, R. (2022, January 9). What was California Assembly Bill 5 (AB5)? Investopedia.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.investopedia.com/california ... b5-4773201

Leon, L. F. (2021, August 10). Striking Alabama Coal Miners Want Their $1.1 Billion Back. Labornotes.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.labornotes.org/2021/08/stri ... llion-back

Logan, J. (2021, February 2). 12 Facts About Morgan Lewis, Amazon’s Powerful Anti-Union Law Firm. LAWCHA.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.lawcha.org/2021/02/02/12-fa ... -law-firm/

Lowrey, A. (2017, May 1). Why the Phrase “Late Capitalism” is Suddenly Everywhere. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... sm/524943/

Mollaneda, I. (2021, May). The Aftermath of California’s Proposition 22. Californialawreview.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.californialawreview.org/the ... sition-22/

Rosenberg, J. (2020, November 4). Uber and Lyft Just Bought Their Way Out of Employing Drivers. Motherjones.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... rnia-ab-5/

Savage, L. (2021, May 13). Corporate CEOs Won the Pandemic. Jacobinmag.com. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/05/corp ... inequality

Streitfeld, D. (2021, April 5). Amazon’s Clashes with Labor: Days of Conflict and Control. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/05/tech ... osition=16

United Nations. (n.d.). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UN.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universa ... man-rights.

Warrior Met Coal. (2022, February 22). Warrior Met Coal Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from http://investors.warriormetcoal.com/new ... -210541289

Weise, K., & Scheiber, N. (2022, April 1). Amazon Workers on Staten Island Vote to Unionize in Landmark Win for Labor. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/tech ... sland.html

Zhang, S. (2021, July 22). Over 40 Progressive Orgs Unite to Pressure Congress to Pass Pro-Union Pro Act. Truthout.org. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://truthout.org/articles/over-40-p ... e-pro-act/

https://afgj.org/labor-organizing-in-the-us-in-2022
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Re: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Them and Us :

Post by blindpig » Wed May 25, 2022 3:26 pm

US Federal Reserve says its goal is ‘to get wages down’

US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said his goal is “to get wages down,” complaining workers have too much power in the labor market. Economist Michael Hudson says this is “junk economics,” and corporate monopolies are driving inflation, not wages.


ByBenjamin NortonPublished21 hours ago

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The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said his goal is “to get wages down.”

In a press conference on May 4, Powell announced that the Fed would be raising interest rates by half a percentage and implementing policies aimed at reducing inflation in the United States, which is at its highest level in 40 years.

According to a transcript of the presser published by the Wall Street Journal, Powell blamed this inflation crisis, which is global, not on the proxy war in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia, but rather on US workers supposedly making too much money.

“Employers are having difficulties filling job openings, and wages are rising at the fastest pace in many years,” Powell complained.

The Fed’s proposed solution: bring down wages.

There are more job vacancies than there are unemployed people in the United States, as the economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Powell claimed this discrepancy between job vacancies and unemployment is due to high wages, which discourage workers from taking bad, low-paying jobs with few benefits, and therefore give them too much power.

“Wages are running high, the highest they’ve run in quite some time,” the Fed chairman lamented.

Workers need to be disciplined by the labor market, he insisted.

Powell argued, “There’s a path by which we would be able to have demand moderate in the labor market and have—therefore have vacancies come down without unemployment going up, because vacancies are at such an extraordinarily high level. There are 1.9 vacancies for every unemployed person; 11½ million vacancies, 6 million unemployed people.”

Powell aims to do this by reducing wages.

“By moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give us a chance to have lower—to get inflation—to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially. So there’s a path to that,” he said.

The Federal Reserve chairman did concede that “these wages are to some extent being eaten up by inflation.” But Powell blamed that rising inflation on increasing wages, which economist Michael Hudson says is an example of ridiculous “junk economics.”

Powell was first appointed Fed chair by Donald Trump in 2018. On May 23, 2022, he started his second four-year term, after being re-nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed in a landslide bipartisan Senate vote of 80-19.

Inflation is rising faster than US wages
The US federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, and has remained at that level since 2009, despite significant increases in inflation.

In 1968, the US federal minimum wage was $1.60, which would be equivalent to $13.29 in 2022 dollars.

It is true that the minimum wage has increased in recent years in numerous US states, especially ones that have significantly higher costs of living like New York and California. But real wages have not kept up with inflation.

Even the Washington-based think tank the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which is infamous for its avid promotion of neoliberal policies, acknowledged in a January 2022 study, “US wages grew at fastest pace in decades in 2021, but prices grew even more.”

The report explained:

Since December of 2020, nominal wages and salaries were up 4.5 percent, the fastest increase since 1983. These increases bring nominal wages and salaries to 1.2 percent above their pre-pandemic trend.



Prices, however, have also risen rapidly, and so inflation-adjusted wages fell by 4.3 percent at an annual rate over the last three months, 2.4 percent over the last year and 1.2 percent lower than they were in December 2019.

Inflation-adjusted wages should have grown 2.1 percent over this period if pre-pandemic trends had continued, leaving real wages well below their pre-pandemic trend.

While nominal wages have still grown faster in some sectors relative to its pre-pandemic trend, all sectors have seen below-trend real wage growth.


Michael Hudson: Inflation is caused by corporate monopolies, not labor

Economist Michael Hudson responded to these remarks by the Fed, analyzing the inflation crisis in a May 13 panel organized by the International Manifesto Group.

“Inflation is basically the excuse that right-wing governments have for trying to lower wage levels by blaming the inflation on rising wages,” he said.

“What economists like to blame it [inflation] on is labor, on rising wages, on government social spending, and of course on Russia trying to break away from America’s unipolar international order,” Hudson explained.

He recalled his time working at Chase Manhattan Bank in the 1960s. Hudson’s boss was Paul Volcker, who would go on to serve as Federal Reserve chairman under US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

He noted that Volcker had “always said that the big concern of finance is wage gains will mean that the purchasing power of all of our investors, who have bank accounts, and stocks, and bonds, will have less power over wages. And our class interest is in increasing our power over wages, so we’ve got to keep wages down, even if it causes a recession. That’s basically the Federal Reserve’s policy.”

“The present Federal Reserve chairman, Jay Powell, came right out and announced that the Biden administration, Democratic Party policy is quote, ‘to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially’,” Hudson continued.

“In other words, you want to keep the finance, insurance, and the stock market, real estate sector going; you just want to squeeze down wages somehow.”

“So the objective of all this is that, if labor wants to get a job, and the health insurance that goes with it, then labor will have to lower its wage levels. That’s the current US government policy.”

“Well it’s junk economics, of course,” Hudson continued. “Today’s inflation throughout the world, not only in the United States but now in Europe, is led by pure monopoly powers, headed … by energy and food prices.”

“The United States and NATO are trying to blame inflation on Putin and Russia not exporting oil and gas to Europe, as a result of the NATO sanctions against it, but gas hasn’t stopped yet, and … the US oil companies have said that, looking forward, they see a supply problem, and they’re raising prices now even though the supply of oil hasn’t really changed at all.”

“So you have supply being fairly constant, but prices going way up, because the oil companies say, ‘We anticipate they’ll go up, therefore we’re raising oil prices, because we can.’ Well, the same thing is happening in agriculture.”

“You’re also having rent rising as a result of the plunge in home ownership rates, that started with President Obama’s mass evictions of the victims of junk mortgage lending.”

“And the private capital investors that are taking over all of the houses, the owner-occupied houses that have defaulted, they’re being sold off, and you’ve had home ownership rates falling by about 10 percent in the United States since 2008.”

“Well now you have companies like Blackstone very sharply rising rents. In New York they’ve been jumping by about one-third in the last year. So again, with the same amount of real estate, prices are going way up.”

“So none of this can be blamed on labor,” Hudson stressed.

https://multipolarista.com/2022/05/24/u ... inflation/

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Trump’s new Medicaid rule prohibits automatic payment of union dues. (Photo: Peoples Dispatch)

Labor law failings, workplace organizing challenges, and possibilities for union renewal
By Martin Hart-Landsberg (Posted May 23, 2022)

Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on May 9, 2022 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

If you follow the news it must seem like joining a union is a step outside the norms of U.S. law. Afterall, the media is full of stories about how big companies like Starbucks and Amazon threaten their pro-union workers with dismissal, spy on their employees and deny them the right to meet and share information during legally mandated break and meal times, require their workers to participate in 1-on-1 and group meetings with managers where they are routinely told lies about what unions do and the consequences of unionization, find ways to delay promised union elections, and refuse to negotiate a contract even after workers have successfully voted for unionization.

Yet, the National Labor Relations Act, which is the foundational statute governing private sector labor law, boldly asserts that workers should be able to freely organize to improve the conditions of their employment. As the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) states:

The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity.

So, one might reasonably ask, how do businesses get away with the kind of behavior highlighted above? One answer is that a series of Supreme Court decisions and NLRB rulings have reinterpreted the country’s labor laws in ways that have given employers a free pass to engage in a variety of anti-worker actions. Another is that Congress has refused to adequately fund the NLRB, leaving the organization unable to hire sufficient staff to do the needed investigations of worker complaints and oversee elections even during the rare periods when the NLRB has actively sought to protect worker rights.

President Biden has taken two actions that offer some hope for a progressive turn. The first is his inclusion of a significant increase in funding for the NLRB in his proposed 2023 fiscal year budget. The second, and more important one, was his 2021 appointment of Jennifer Abruzzo, a former attorney for the Communications Workers of America, as NLRB General Counsel. Abruzzo is pressing the NLRB to ban “captive audience” meetings as an unfair labor practice and to restore the Joy Silk doctrine, which would allow the NLRB to immediately recognize a union if a strong majority of workers signed cards or a petition demonstrating their support for unionization.

It remains to be seen what will come from either action. At the same time, labor activists have shown tremendous determination in the face of corporate opposition and their organizing work appears to be paying off. We should celebrate their bravery and support their efforts. However, gains shouldn’t have to be so challenging—if organizing to improve working conditions is a guaranteed right, it should truly be protected.

We have a business-friendly labor law

Private sector labor law has, over time, become increasingly business, not worker, friendly. For example, the NLRB originally required employers to remain neutral when workers considered whether to unionize. However, in 1941, the Supreme Court ruled that employers had the right to make their case as long as their actions were not “coercive.” The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 gave new meaning to the court’s decision by inserting into the NLRA what is known as the “employer free speech” clause, which opened the door for businesses to push their anti-union position in captive audience meetings. In the 1970s, the NLRB decided that it was acceptable for management to use those meetings to threaten workers with a loss of benefits or even employment if they voted for a union. It later also ruled that management had the right to ban union supporters from attending captive audience meetings and even ban employees from speaking during the meetings.

In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that businesses did not have to agree to recognize a union regardless of the number of worker-signed cards or names on a petition expressing support for unionization. Instead, they could insist that the NLRB conduct an election. Later NLRB rulings have stretched out the time between card filing and voting and allowed companies to further delay elections by requiring that unfair labor practice charges and company challenges to the proposed bargaining unit be settled before voting. Delays, of course, give companies more time for captive meetings, to threaten dire consequences from a positive vote for unionization, and to intimidate and sometimes fire union activists.

Many more examples can be given. Here are just a few recent ones. NLRB rulings have made it easier for companies to reclassify their workers as independent contractors (thereby removing them entirely from the protection of labor laws). Other rulings have given employers the right to deny union organizers access to company parking lots or other public spaces, even if they are open to the general public, such as cafeterias, and workers the right to use their company email system for communicating about workplace issues even if it is regularly used for nonwork purposes.

As Lawrence Mishel, Lynn Rhinehart, and Lane Windham carefully document in their Economic Policy Institute study of reasons for the decline in private sector union membership, “Though these employer-friendly laws were on the books in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, it was not until the 1970s that employers began to take full advantage of their power.” And take advantage they did. In fact, the authors make a strong case that one of the most important reasons for the steady decline in private sector unionism was the ruthless corporate exploitation of the new legal environment.

A weak National Labor Relations Board

Sadly, even at its best, the NLRB has limited power to protect worker rights. A case in point: if the NLRB actually determines that an employer illegally fired a worker for their pro-union activity—a process that can take up to two years because of a lack of staff—all it can do is order the employer to rehire the worker and pay them their back wages (minus whatever they earned while unemployed) and post a sign in the breakroom acknowledging that the worker was illegally fired.

As Mishel, Rhinehart, and Windham describe:

Workers do not receive monetary damages to compensate them for the economic harms inflicted by their illegal treatment. Unlike other employment laws, workers have no right to bring a lawsuit against the employer for violating their NLRA rights; they are entirely dependent on the agency pursuing their case. In contrast, other employment laws, such as civil rights laws, provide much greater penalties and provide for a private right of action so workers can bring cases on their own and collect attorneys’ fees if they prevail.

Here is a recent real-life example of how the NLRB, even when it acts in support of worker rights, is hamstrung by the class-biased framework underlying the NLRA. A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board ruled in April 2022, in response to charges filed by the Starbucks union, that the company had indeed engaged in illegal actions against union supporters. As reported by the New York Times, the regional director found the company guilty of:

firing employees in retaliation for supporting the union; threatening employees’ ability to receive new benefits if they choose to unionize; requiring workers to be available for a minimum number of hours to remain employed at a unionized store without bargaining over the change, as a way to force out at least one union supporter; and effectively promising benefits to workers if they decide not to unionize.

In response, the regional director ordered top management to record a video that can be distributed to all stores making clear that workers do have the right to engage in pro-union activity. That’s it—no fines. And, of course, the company is appealing the ruling. At the same time, it is unlikely that the company would have been found guilty under the regime of the previous NLRB General Counsel.

Some reasons for hope

President Biden’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 calls for an increase in funding for the NLRB from $274 million to $319.4 million. If achieved it would be a big deal. The NLRB’s last budget increase was in 2014 and according to its staff union the agency has lost over 30 percent of its staff since 2010. The lack of staff translates into fewer investigations into unfair labor practices and delays in elections.

But it remains to be seen whether Biden will fight for this increase and if so, whether Democrats will stand firm in the face of Republican opposition. The 2022 fiscal year budget included $301.17 million for the NLRB, which the agency said would allow it to add nearly 150 staff. However, at the last minute, the money disappeared from the final budget agreement. As C.M. Lewis explains:

In the deal-making to reach an omnibus spending bill that could secure Republican votes, Democratic leadership made their priorities clear: and they didn’t include defending the right to organize. Congressional leadership and the White House have both demonstrated a willingness to take a victory lap for proposing increased funding while quietly continuing austerity for the sole federal agency tasked with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act.

More hopeful is the work of General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Under her leadership, the NLRB has been aggressive about responding to worker charges of unfair labor practices. More importantly, Abruzzo is pushing the NLRB to reverse its current position on captive audience meetings. According to an NLRB Office of Public Affairs statement:

National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memorandum to all Field offices announcing that she will ask the Board to find mandatory meetings in which employees are forced to listen to employer speech concerning the exercise of their statutory labor rights, including captive audience meetings, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). . . . Forcing employees to attend captive audience meetings under threat of discipline discourages employees from exercising their right to refrain from listening to this speech and is therefore inconsistent with the NLRA.

The memo explains that years ago the Board incorrectly concluded that an employer does not violate the Act by compelling its employees to attend meetings in which it makes speeches urging them to reject union representation. As a result, employers commonly use explicit or implied threats to force employees into meetings about unionization or other statutorily protected activity.


Abruzzo has also filed a brief in a case brought before the NLRB by the Teamsters in which she calls for the immediate reinstatement of the Joy Silk doctrine. Under that doctrine, which shaped NLRB policy some 50 years ago, an employer could be ordered to recognize and bargain with a union if the union was able to show that it was supported by a majority of workers in the bargaining unit. An election would be required only if the employer could demonstrate that its refusal to bargain was based on its good faith doubt about the union’s majority status. Currently, as Fran Swanson explains in an Onlabo r blog post, “a bargaining order may only issue in cases where an ‘employer’s misdeeds are so widespread they make a fair election impossible,’ a standard which the brief argues has ‘failed to deter employers’ from interfering with elections.”

Of course, Abruzzo doesn’t have the last word. She has to convince the 5 member NLRB to accept her position on both captive audience meetings and the Joy Luck doctrine. Board members are appointed by the President, with Senate consent, and serve for five years. Each year, the term of one member expires. That means that the majority of the board predates Biden’s election. It is unclear how they will decide.

There is no doubt that if the NLRB receives a long overdue budget increase and Abruzzo is successful, workers will find it easier to organize. At the same time, it would be a serious mistake to believe that changes in labor law by themselves will be enough to ensure the revival of the labor movement. That will require the sustained hard work of rank-and-file organizers. Of course, it’s the combination that offers us the best chance for success. So, let’s keep the spotlight and pressure on the NLRB while continuing to support the kind of smart, aggressive organizing that has companies like Starbucks on the defensive.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/23/labor-l ... n-renewal/

Anyone who expects the Biden regime to favor labor over business in any meaningful way is a goddamn fool.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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