Source: changewalmart
So, by now you’ve heard that Walmart workers are walking out on strike on Black Friday. Here’s a quick primer on why they’re striking.
Let’s start with the basics. Walmart is the largest private employer in the world. They help set labor standards for almost every country on earth.
The Chicago teacher’s strike is over. It worked. The Verizon strike is over. It worked. Strikes work. Workers should have them more often.
When I say that strikes work, I don’t mean that unions get each and every last thing they ask for. That’s an unrealistic goal in any negotiation. I mean that strikes allow unions to get things that they would not get without a strike. This is primarily because a strike adds a very powerful stakeholder to the outcome of the negotiations: the public. When negotiations involve only workers and management, management is often able to simply say “fuck off.” Management can wait them out—workers will run out of money and start starving long before their managers do. If managements feels that they can save money in the long term by telling workers to fuck off with their contract demands, they will do it, even if it means taking a financial hit in the short term. This is the cold logic of capitalism. Absent any direct incentive, management will always take a dollar out of workers’ pockets and put it into their own, if they can.
A strike, though, acts as a check on that imbalance of power by inviting a very powerful third party to the table. Rahm Emanuel, perhaps, would be happy to tell teachers to fuck off. When Rahm Emanuel has a million angry parents calling his office demanding that he fix the god damn teacher’s strike so their kids have somewhere to go all day, things change. Mike Bloomberg, perhaps, would be happy to tell the NYC subway employees to fuck off. But when they go on strike and the subways stop running and the entire commuter-driven metropolis grinds to a halt, eight million people collectively demand a solution, and fast. Verizon would surely be happy to tell its employees to fuck off and take what it gives them. When nobody can get their cable fixed in time to watch the game, Verizon will feel the wrath of the world, pressuring it to find a solution. The public is awesomely powerful, and self-interested. The public wants things to work. The details of how that’s accomplished usually get drowned out in the primal scream of “fix it now!” This pressure mostly falls on management. Sure, people get angry at the unions, but unions, excluding corrupt ones, are not primarily concerned with PR (at least not to the extent that corporations or politicians are, by necessity). They’re concerned with improving the lives of their members. They are the only thing standing between workers and the “good will” of management, which is often the same as oblivion.
Are strikes an inconvenience for the public? Yes. That is why they work. And that inconvenience, in the long run, is a small price to pay for living in a country that respects freedom enough to allow its workers to organize. Strikes are the pinnacle of workers exercising their freedoms in this capitalist system of ours; conservatives should love them. On principle, it scarcely matters whether the workers are public or private. As John Cook wrote about Chicago’s teachers, they are “participants in a labor market. They are free to organize and to withhold their labor if they don’t like the deal they’re getting. They will either get what they want, or they won’t. This is how things work.”
Restricting the right to strike is tantamount to forcing people to work against their will. That’s an even more onerous government demand than taxes. You would think the Republican party would be protecting workers’ rights to strike at all costs.
Some countries with far more radical economic histories than ours can find themselves paralyzed by frequent strikes, to the detriment of the nation. We’re not them. We’re not Greece, and we’re not Venezuela. We’re not even close. We’re America, where “socialism” is still considered a pornographic word in politics. The working people of America—which is to say the majority—would be better off with more strikes, not fewer. Because they work.
Of course, in order to have strikes, we need unions. That’s another thing to work on.
[Photo: AP]
You should make this your facebook profile pic immediately.
The Chicago Teachers Union is on strike, and what happens there will affect teachers throughout the nation. Hell, this strike could affect all unions for years to come.
Rahm and CPS wanted this strike, and now they’re going to get it.
Rahm, the latte liberal asshole, and his team at CPS don’t seem to know their head from their ass when it comes to labor relations. Shit is going to get real. Stand strong, don’t back down, Solidarity forever!
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - The Anheuser-Busch-owned beer distributorship in Riverside, Calif., wanted to implement its own business model - we’re talking money, folks - but apparently forgot the Teamsters represent its 120-person workforce.
The result? Bargaining broke down and A-B, now a subsidiary of a Belgian brewer, forced Teamsters Local 166 to strike.
The conflict between Anheuser-Busch and the Teamsters in Southern California is not the first faceoff between the union and affiliates of the big brewer. In St. Louis, A-B’s hometown and headquarters, local distributors of Busch beers - though not the brewery itself - spent months trying to hire non-union truckers to haul cases of Busch beer. Anheuser-Busch took a hands-off position against calls to intervene.
In Riverside, negotiations on a new contract began in April and Busch negotiators, who dance to the tune of the fairly new owner, In-Bev, mistakenly thought the Teamsters had to roll over, too.
The company wanted to do away with the traditional hourly pay rate for drivers, warehouse and mechanics and force a straight base and commission plan.
The members weren’t buying it and the Teamsters were forced to strike on June 25. They’ve been picketing 24/7 since then.
“The company reps are basically no-good, rotten, piles of dung,” Local 166 Secretary-Treasurer Mike Bergen said in a milder moment. “They turned down federal mediator assistance, never moved in negotiations and apparently borrowed the blinders from Budweiser’s Clydesdales.”
Bergen said the company’s recalcitrant, divisive posture is counterbalanced by the 120 strikers’ solidarity and resolve.
“Never in all my years in the Teamsters have I seen a stronger, more motivated group of strikers who care about each other and the integrity of their jobs,” he said.
Bergen said a second stumbling block in negotiations was retirees’ medical coverage. Retirees never had co-pays before and now the company wanted to block any new retiree coverage under any conditions once a new contract was ratified and implemented.
Paul Mihalow is editor of The Southern California Teamster.
By Paulo Winterstein
SAO PAULO—As many as 7,500 General Motors Co. (GM) workers in Brazil may go on strike as soon as Monday should their union not come to an agreement with the car maker over a production line in the city of Sao Jose dos Campos.
Members of the metalworkers union of Sao Jose dos Campos approved on Thursday plans to strike, and may stop work after the mandatory 48-hour notice period expires over the weekend. The union has said that GM plans to shut down its passenger-car assembly line in the city, which employs 1,500 workers.
GM’s press …
(click the link for more)
July 12 2012
HARTFORD, Conn. - A week after nearly 700 nurses, nurse assistants and laundry, dietary and housekeeping staff began walking the picket lines at five HealthBridge nursing homes in a strike over unfair labor practices, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman came out to join them.
The National Labor Relations Board issued a citation against the New Jersey based company when it unlawfully ended contract negotiations and unilaterally implemented its “last, best and final” offer.
The workers, members of 1199 New England, would each lose, on average, about $8,000 a year for six years through cuts in hours, increased health insurance premiums to more than $8,000 per year for many workers, and an end to retirement security after a lifetime of challenging and backbreaking work.
Malloy told the workers that the company is trying to set a new model of union busting in Connecticut and “we don’t want them to be that model.”
“Day after day for the last 16 years, I have worked to provide the best care possible to my residents,” said Eva Fal, an 1199 union member at Newington Health Care Center, where the governor joined the picket line. “I have never seen owners as profit-hungry as the owners of HealthBridge. They make millions and millions of dollars in profits each year - but they have the nerve to say that our pay and benefits aren’t ‘realistic’?” she exclaimed.
HealthBridge reported annual profits of $45.4 million in 2010. In addition, that year HealthBridge paid $234 million to subsidiaries and related companies of owners Daniel and Moshael Straus.
The union negotiated contracts with 50 other nursing homes in the state over the past two years with no problems. Only HealthBridge chose to try and force the 1199 caregivers out.
“These types of tactics are unacceptable,” said Malloy in a prepared statement. “They negatively impact the lives of the residents who live in these nursing homes and the residents’ families because the continuum of care gets interrupted.”
Family members of residents are also speaking out in support of the unionized workers, urging that good faith negotiations resume. State Rep. Patricia Billie Miller, D-Stamford walked the picket line in Stamford where her 83 year old father is being treated. She told the media, “I know that these workers care about the patients and I’ve witnessed that firsthand. I don’t know if the workers who are brought in will have the same relationship.”
In a 14-page decision, the NLRB said HealthBridge “failed and refused to bargain in good faith with the union.” This is the fifth complaint against the company. A trial will be held on September 10.
“By their outrageous, inhumane and unlawful actions, HealthBridge has given workers no other alternative,” said 1199 President David Pickus. “This for-profit, out-of-state corporation has demonstrated absolute contempt for the law, for their employees and for the nursing home residents who depend on them for care. But our members have declared loudly that they intend to defend themselves and their communities,” he said.
“One-percenters like the Straus brothers rake in millions each year off the backs of their caregivers and the Connecticut taxpayers who fund the Medicaid and Medicare programs they have used to make themselves rich. It’s time for HealthBridge to get out of our state and let a more caring and responsible operator run these homes in a way that promotes the well-being of caregivers and residents-not the Straus brothers,” Pickus concluded.
The company announced the massive concessions by sending an email at 11 pm on Saturday, June 16 informing 1199 that the implementation would begin on Sunday morning.
The nursing homes are Danbury Health Care Center, Long Ridge of Stamford, Newington Health Care Center, West River Health Care Center in Milford and Westport Health Care Center. Earlier this month, the State of Connecticut gave HealthBridge permission to close Wethersfield Health Care Center, which is part of the NLRB case.
Four previous NLRB complaints cited bad-faith bargaining and other illegal behavior by HealthBridge.
The company locked out workers at their Milford facility last Christmas. The workers were called back to their regular shifts and positions four months later, as a result of increasing pressure from residents, family members, community members and elected officials and citations from the Connecticut Department of Public Health and NLRB.
HealthBridge operates nine facilities in Connecticut, with dozens more under the HealthBridge and CareOne names in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Photo: 1199NE
Palermo’s Pizza factory workers in Milwaukee have been on strike since June 1 to demand recognition of their independent union. Their strike and boycott have given the labor community bruised by Governor Scott Walker’s recall victory a welcome rallying point. Photo: Jenna Pope.
The eight-year-old daughter of a striking Palermo’s Pizza factory worker tried to deliver a petition last week with 15,000 signatures pledging to boycott the Milwaukee-based frozen pizza company.
Daniella Benitez was turned away by police, who said only one adult would be allowed on the premises. She came back with her mother and a local pastor and left pizza boxes filled with pages of signatures at the feet of the unreceptive officers.
Since workers filed a petition for recognition May 29, the company has aggressively tried to bust their independent Palermo’s Workers Union, but the strikers, mostly immigrants, are gaining ground by cultivating relationships across Wisconsin labor and community groups and by recruiting to their national boycott.
Workers are asking supporters not to buy Palermo’s products until the company recognizes their union and to visit their website, www.sliceofjustice.com, to sign the petition or donate to their strike fund.
The union movement in Milwaukee was denied a lengthy mourning of the recall election results that saw Wisconsin’s anti-union governor re-elected, when the Palermo’s workers began striking June 1 to demand recognition and to protest unfair labor practices.
Joe Shansky of the immigration rights group Voces de la Frontera said the struggle had energized the labor community with a focal point to rally around. “Morale was kinda low here, understandably, or it’s assumed to be,” he said. “And these workers are showing that organizing in the workplace is alive and well, and it’s not a good time to be messing with unions in Wisconsin.”
Severe injuries and work weeks of up to 90 hours led Palermo’s factory workers to form a union.
“There were horrible accidents like getting fingers chopped off. Just horrible working conditions,” said striker Roberto Silva.
Rampant health and safety issues result from insufficient training in operating the factory’s heavy machinery, a lack of paid sick days, and sick and injured employees being told to return to work. Workers who miss three or more days of work in six months, even with a doctor’s excuse, can be fired, leading many of them to handle food while sick.
When 150 of the 223 workers walked out, they began a boycott to pressure Palermo’s to recognize their union. Palermo’s pizza is sold under both their brand name and undivulged private labels at Costco and other supermarkets. The company’s products are available in Canada and in all but six states, so a large-scale boycott is key to interrupting profits.
Palermo’s retaliated by firing at least 90 of the 150 striking workers. Some were allowed to return to work and others got new jobs, but the majority remain on strike. They were replaced with workers unskilled in operating the machinery, and production is ongoing but slowed.
The company also claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had given management a 10-day deadline to collect immigration papers for an audit, though no such deadline existed. The company posted misleading statements on its website and signs outside the factory, implying that employees were being fooled into thinking a union could grant them citizenship. One sign outside the plant read, “A union will not change your status.”
Anti-union signs were also posted inside the plant. “They had materials saying unions are bad, saying the best relationship is between employee and employer,” said Silva.
Workers responded by informing the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor about their organizing and by filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. DHS has a policy of not overtly interfering in labor disputes, so the agency stopped the ICE audit.
The NLRB is investigating the unfair labor practice. The union argues that the company’s acceleration of the ICE audit and its hiring of replacement employees are grounds for the NLRB to require the employer to recognize the union, reinstate fired workers, and begin bargaining.
Employers whose unfair labor practices obstruct fair elections can be forced by the NLRB to recognize a union, though this rarely happens. Palermo’s workers feel they have a strong case because the employer has so consistently flouted the law.
The NLRB also set July 6 for a union vote. But the Food and Commercial Workers union claimed jurisdiction and asked the Board to be added to the ballot, which pushed the date back to July 27. The workers and their supporters said UFCW Local 1473 didn’t have a base of support before it intervened. The local declined to comment.
The company claims that 82 replacement workers are eligible to vote and that strikers are ineligible, and the union has updated its unfair labor practice charge to reflect this development.
Five weeks into the strike, workers are feeling the effects of the delay. Fundraisers and online donations through the union’s website have netted $50,000 for the strike fund, but they will need to continuously raise money for the duration of their strike.
Workers picket outside the factory twice a day, six days a week during shift changes. They’re seeing increasing support from union members and community allies who frequently swell the numbers on the picket line despite sweltering temperatures.
Service Employees, Steelworkers, Teachers (AFT), and AFSCME are among regular supporters. AFT Local 212 at Milwaukee Area Technical College held a fundraiser that netted $5,000.
Mike Rosen, Local 212’s president, connected the struggle to the long-running battle against Governor Scott Walker and his legislation that stripped public workers of their bargaining rights. “We understand that an injury to one is an injury to all,” Rosen said. “Their fight for union recognition is just a continuation of the fight we’ve been fighting.”
National labor is also on board. The AFL-CIO and the Steelworkers are providing much-needed organizing help. The union is receiving less conventional aid, too.
The Overpass Light Brigade—a group of Milwaukee community activists who recently held LED lights spelling out “Recall Walker” on overpasses—has been lighting up the night with “Boycott Palermo’s.” The Brigade’s message is especially useful in reminding consumers that Palermo’s is served at Brewers baseball games.
“Their signs really energized the people that are on strike,” said Voces’ Shansky. “The workers and their families joined the OLB on the bridge and held the lights, and it really gave them a sense that this fight was much bigger than them.”
Voces has been assisting the Palermo’s workers with issues like unsafe working conditions and discrimination since 2008. Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz said that petition signatures gathered all across the country show a growing awareness of the boycott, but that it will need to expand if the workers are to win.
Silva said workers gain hope from the widespread signatures, but whether they are able to outlast management is the most important factor. “There is justice in the workers’ union,” Silva said, “and then there’s corporations and money and power. They can spend all the money they have to win this battle.
“There’s five weeks of strike now. I thought support for the strike was eventually going to go down, but it’s actually been getting stronger.” Palermo’s workers insist, “No Justice, No Piece!”
As the summer heat seared New York City, tensions between the city’s major electricity company and its union reached a boiling point over the weekend. By Monday, a meltdown in the talks over pensions and benefits left thousands of Consolidated Edison utility workers suddenly frozen out of their jobs. The lockout, a classic anti-union tactic, had paralyzed both the negotiations and the livelihoods of some 8500 union members. But that afternoon, scores of locked out workers assembled outside ConEd headquarters near Manhattan’s Union Square to show they would keep the heat on their boss.
Mario, a 55-year old worker at ConEd’s East River Generating Station, wasn’t shocked by the lockout. “It’s corporate America. A lot of greed, a lot of arrogance,” he said. “Blame the unions, blame the workers, take their benefits away, and just keep increasing their bonuses.”
As of Monday, ConEd was operating on an emergency staff, with about 5,000 “managers” replacing the locked-out workers. The company promised to maintain “essential operations,” though fears of electricity breakdowns loomed large as scorching heat blanketed ConEd’s millions of customers across the five boroughs and Westchester. There were no catastrophes immediately following the lockout, according to local news reports, but outages hit some neighborhoods, and a substation fire in Brooklyn injured a manager.
Read the rest here: http://www.alternet.org/story/156145/conedison_puts_new_york%27s_power_at_risk_during_heat_wave_with_lockout_of_workers?akid=9038.207153.GvXf1M&rd=1&t=2
Click the link to see a guy complaining about the strike who doesn’t understand that the world doesn’t revolve around him, the consumer.
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By Josh Jarman
More than 600 COTA bus drivers and mechanics kept their word this morning and went on strike at 3 after reaching a tentative agreement hours earlier with authority officials.
About 30 Central Ohio Transit Authority workers stood outside COTA headquarters on N. High Street and waved signs and shouted at passing cars.
Workers also are marching at two COTA facilities, on McKinley and Fields avenues.
Some cars honked in support of the workers Downtown. Some car drivers, however, made other, less positive, gestures to striking workers.
Andrew Jordan, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 208, said the agreement will be presented to union workers at a 6 p.m. meeting today.
Curtis Stitt, COTA’s president and CEO, said in a news release that striking workers are leaving central Ohio in a bind.
“While we are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with union negotiators, we’re dismayed that union members will still walk off the job … and leave thousands of people without transportation to their jobs, school, medical appointments and other destinations,” he said.
“Striking after the parties have negotiated a tentative agreement is irresponsible and will only injure people who rely on COTA for transportation.”
Services for disabled riders will continue.
Jordan, who talked with union workers outside of the authority’s headquarters this morning, said COTA’s management is at fault.
“The authority had the ability to come to the table early and avert this; they are not innocent,” he said. “We want to come to work and be at work.”
Duane Marbury, treasurer for the union and a COTA employee for 32 years, stood with the workers.
“We are just trying to get a fair wage and decent working conditions. We are just working guys trying to maintain a living.”
According to COTA, the tentative deal calls for wage increases of 7 percent over the three years of the contract, with workers having to pay an additional 2 percent into their pensions.
The strike is the first job action in the city to park buses in 25 years and comes the day before buses were to shuttle thousands Downtown for the Red, White & Boom fireworks festivities.
At COTA’s McKinley Avenue facility, groups of striking workers gathered in front of the entrances to the property this morning.
Workers sat in lawn chairs with coolers of bottled water nearby. The atmosphere was more relaxed than the site Downtown, except for when a bus carrying drivers for the authority’s paratransit fleet came through the picket line escorted by an unmarked security car. Striking workers booed the other drivers.
This morning, Neal Belair, who works in Dublin, stood at a bus stop at the corner of N. High Street and King Avenue waiting for his bus to work.
Although he expected the possibility of the strike, he said he didn’t know the bus wouldn’t be pulling up today. He said he’ll take his bicycle to work instead.
“I kind of think that people like bus drivers don’t have a lot of choices to get a fair wage, so sometimes striking is necessary,” Belair said. “As a customer, I’m not put off by it. I understand.”
Kevin Gartrell drove to work from the Polaris area this morning. He said he usually takes the No. 33 bus Downtown.
He said that while he understands that the workers feel like they are not making enough money, “It’s a tough economy, we’re all making sacrifices.”
The drivers and mechanics union and COTA officials met for more than 12 hours of closed-door talks that ran late into the night at the Northeast Side offices of federal mediator George Albu. The building was dark because of the power outages that hit Columbus on Friday. It was not known what the negotiators were using for light.
The union and COTA have been in talks since the last contract expired in November. Union members shot down a state fact-finder’s recommendations and larger tentative agreement in April that would have amounted to 2 percent pay raises this year and 2.5 percent raises in 2013 and 2014
The earlier agreement also called for drivers and mechanics to pay 1 percent more toward their pensions in 2013 and 2014 and did not address concerns of drivers who wanted to reach the top of COTA’s pay scale more quickly.
It’s a difficult time for a strike that would inconvenience thousands.
Mayor Michael B. Coleman yesterday called the prospect of a strike “irresponsible.”
In addition to a heat wave and storms that left hundreds of thousands of central Ohioans without power, the strike comes just before the Red, White & Boom fireworks show on Tuesday.
Some 26,000 people took buses to and from Downtown for the fireworks last year. COTA had scheduled 200 extra buses for this year’s traffic-choking celebration.
COTA provided nearly 19 million trips to riders last year, the highest in more than a decade amid increasing ridership.
The union last went on strike off-and-on from November 1986 to February 1987.
Riders were without service a total of 65 days during that time, with the strike ended by a back-to-work court order.
Reporters Jennifer Smith-Richards, Jim Woods and Lydia Coutre contributed to this story.
