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Slavery 21st Century
You thought it was over, think again
nov 29, 2019
Slavery did not end it was merely outsourced,
reconfigured, and made politically correct
The Global Slavery Index
published on Thursday by Walk Free Foundation, describes modern slavery as a complex and often hidden crime that crosses borders, sectors and jurisdictions. The US number, the study estimates, is almost one hundredth of the estimated 40.3 million global total number of people it defines as being enslaved.
labor history - recommended reading
*THE SILK STRIKE OF 1913
*AMERICAN LABOR VIOLENCE: ITS CAUSES, CHARACTER, AND OUTCOME
headlines and issues
*US retail employees call out working conditions with Black Friday protests
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Walmart offers Thanksgiving workers measly discount in place of holiday pay
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*McDonald’s Employees Are Suing to Win Protection From Violence at Work
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Google hires anti-union firm among brewing labor tensions: report
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Being Mindful of Paycheck Abuses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber Hit With $650 Million Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Instacart cut bonuses after a strike. Workers suspect it's retaliation
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*There's a national labor uprising happening right now that the media isn't reporting
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Minimum wage workers win big union victory in anti-union Texas
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Work or go to jail': how LA courts force thousands to do unpaid labor
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Employers Are Misusing State Department Visa Program to Abuse Workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We’re organizing to improve lives’: New York fast food workers push to unionize
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Graduate Workers Are Going to Fight Like Hell to Stop the Trump NLRB’s New Rule
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ENDING GM’S TWO-TIERED LABOR SYSTEM IS UAW MEMBERS’ TOP DEMAND — AND PART OF A BIGGER FIGHT AGAINST WORKER MISCLASSIFICATION
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE STRIKE AGAINST GENERAL MOTORS IS ONE FRONT IN A MUCH LARGER CLASS WAR
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Underpaid and undervalued': 10 women claim systemic discrimination at Disney
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP’S NLRB, TRYING TO CUT PROTECTIONS FOR MILLIONS OF TEMPS AND FAST-FOOD WORKERS, TRIPS UP AGAIN(ARTICLE BELOW)
*More than 49,000 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In ‘disgusting’ move, Jeff Bezos abruptly cuts health benefits for nearly 2,000 part-time Whole Foods workers(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*From Kentucky Miners to Toys ‘R’ Us Employees, Workers Confront Corporate Greed
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Nevada casino workers fight an uphill battle to get – and keep – their unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CEOs rake in 940% more than 40 years ago, while average workers earn 12% more
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We won’t back down’: Over 50 catering workers arrested at American Airlines HQ in protest against poverty wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
Black Friday
US retail employees call out working conditions with Black Friday protests
United for Respect holds demonstrations at H&M stores to address retaliation while 45 Guess stores protest mass firing
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Fri 29 Nov 2019 12.01 EST
Workers across the US are using Black Friday and Thanksgiving holiday shopping sales to address working conditions and labor issues in retail and related industries.
On Black Friday, workers from the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, are holding protests at 45 Guess retail stores across the US. The art foundation’s owners, Maurice and Paul Marciano, founded Guess in 1981, and workers are targeting the stores to call attention to the mass firing of 70 visitor service associates at the art museum earlier this month after the announcement of a union organizing drive. The workers filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board in response to the firings.
“This is a great opportunity to show what’s going on in the museum and nonprofit sectors is connected to all labor movements, and to show people all over the country that unions have considerable braun and are willing to stand up against injustices,” said Eli Petzold, a member of the Marciano Art Foundation union organizing committee and one of the visitor associates who were laid off. “They made this firing decision so callously, impulsively and without any transparency. I don’t think any of us deserve working in a place that’s like that.”
United for Respect, a not-for-profit organizing retail workers across several different corporations, are holding protests on Black Friday at H&M stores around the US to bring attention to retaliation and intimidation against its workers for participating in organizing efforts.
In August, Nick Gallant was fired from his job at an H&M retail store in Emery, California. Gallant helped pass a local fair workweek ordinance to provide workers with predictable scheduling. Gallant explained he was fired in retaliation for pushing H&M to abide by the ordinance and criticizing unsafe practices in the store, such as limiting a pregnant worker’s bathroom breaks.
“When I was terminated, the reason given to me was because it was a conflict of interest in brand damaging or making H&M look negatively,” said Gallant. “I didn’t do anything wrong. H&M didn’t like that I was raising these concerns and advocating for better working conditions and now other workers are scared to speak out for fear of retaliation from management.”
H&M declined to comment on Gallant’s termination. “H&M respects the rights of groups to engage in policy debate,” said an H&M spokesperson in an email.
About 650 Macy’s workers at the Union Square store in San Francisco voted to authorize a strike earlier this month as their union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, have yet to make a decision on whether workers will carry out the strike on Black Friday. Contract negotiations with Macy’s stalled over low wages and unaffordable healthcare for workers. A Macy’s spokesperson said the store will remain open on Black Friday whether a strike occurs or not.
Immigrant organizations, labor groups, activists and workers at Amazon held a rally ahead of Black Friday at a Staten Island, New York-based warehouse in response to reports of high injury rates at various Amazon Fulfillment Centers. Dozens of groups also announced the formation of a coalition of groups devoted to address Amazon’s monopolistic practices, work with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice), working conditions and massive tax breaks and subsidies the company has received in fueling its expansion.
One of the member organizations, Fight for the Future, is supporting a call on musicians to remove their music from Amazon’s music streaming service starting on Black Friday as part of the No Music For Ice campaign in protest of Amazon’s contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to host the agency’s databases used to track down immigrants.
“Amazon’s surveillance based business model is fundamentally at odds with basic human rights. They’re providing a technical backbone for the US government’s violent attacks on immigrant communities. Musicians have a moral responsibility to leverage whatever power and platform we have to oppose this,” said Evan Greer, an artist and deputy director of Fight for the Future.
More than 1,000 artists signed the initial No Music For Ice pledge to boycott Amazon-sponsored events or entering into exclusive partnerships with Amazon.
Amazon, Guess and the Marciano Art Foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
For more than 4 million workers in retail and thousands of temporary seasonal workers, the Black Friday sales that begin in many stores on Thanksgiving Day worsen erratic scheduling in the industry and come with anxiety, long hours and low pay in exchange for missing time spent with family over the holiday.
“It’s a two-pronged experience for workers. On one hand, they’re not getting all the hours they want during the rest of the year and this is a time to catch up and make up those hours, but never knowing how many they’re going to get scheduled and what their schedules are going to look like,” said Janna Shadduck-Hernández, the project director for the UCLA Labor Center, which has published extensive research on retail workers as Los Angeles city council and other municipalities around the US are currently considering or have already passed fair workweek laws that mandate employers give workers predictable schedules.
“Black Friday brings up all these issues,” added Shadduck-Hernández. “Retail workers are anticipating it with mixed emotions, angst and hopefulness there is going to be a bigger paycheck at the same time with facing a lot of frantic, stressful experiences.”
On Black Friday, workers from the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, are holding protests at 45 Guess retail stores across the US. The art foundation’s owners, Maurice and Paul Marciano, founded Guess in 1981, and workers are targeting the stores to call attention to the mass firing of 70 visitor service associates at the art museum earlier this month after the announcement of a union organizing drive. The workers filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board in response to the firings.
“This is a great opportunity to show what’s going on in the museum and nonprofit sectors is connected to all labor movements, and to show people all over the country that unions have considerable braun and are willing to stand up against injustices,” said Eli Petzold, a member of the Marciano Art Foundation union organizing committee and one of the visitor associates who were laid off. “They made this firing decision so callously, impulsively and without any transparency. I don’t think any of us deserve working in a place that’s like that.”
United for Respect, a not-for-profit organizing retail workers across several different corporations, are holding protests on Black Friday at H&M stores around the US to bring attention to retaliation and intimidation against its workers for participating in organizing efforts.
In August, Nick Gallant was fired from his job at an H&M retail store in Emery, California. Gallant helped pass a local fair workweek ordinance to provide workers with predictable scheduling. Gallant explained he was fired in retaliation for pushing H&M to abide by the ordinance and criticizing unsafe practices in the store, such as limiting a pregnant worker’s bathroom breaks.
“When I was terminated, the reason given to me was because it was a conflict of interest in brand damaging or making H&M look negatively,” said Gallant. “I didn’t do anything wrong. H&M didn’t like that I was raising these concerns and advocating for better working conditions and now other workers are scared to speak out for fear of retaliation from management.”
H&M declined to comment on Gallant’s termination. “H&M respects the rights of groups to engage in policy debate,” said an H&M spokesperson in an email.
About 650 Macy’s workers at the Union Square store in San Francisco voted to authorize a strike earlier this month as their union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, have yet to make a decision on whether workers will carry out the strike on Black Friday. Contract negotiations with Macy’s stalled over low wages and unaffordable healthcare for workers. A Macy’s spokesperson said the store will remain open on Black Friday whether a strike occurs or not.
Immigrant organizations, labor groups, activists and workers at Amazon held a rally ahead of Black Friday at a Staten Island, New York-based warehouse in response to reports of high injury rates at various Amazon Fulfillment Centers. Dozens of groups also announced the formation of a coalition of groups devoted to address Amazon’s monopolistic practices, work with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice), working conditions and massive tax breaks and subsidies the company has received in fueling its expansion.
One of the member organizations, Fight for the Future, is supporting a call on musicians to remove their music from Amazon’s music streaming service starting on Black Friday as part of the No Music For Ice campaign in protest of Amazon’s contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to host the agency’s databases used to track down immigrants.
“Amazon’s surveillance based business model is fundamentally at odds with basic human rights. They’re providing a technical backbone for the US government’s violent attacks on immigrant communities. Musicians have a moral responsibility to leverage whatever power and platform we have to oppose this,” said Evan Greer, an artist and deputy director of Fight for the Future.
More than 1,000 artists signed the initial No Music For Ice pledge to boycott Amazon-sponsored events or entering into exclusive partnerships with Amazon.
Amazon, Guess and the Marciano Art Foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
For more than 4 million workers in retail and thousands of temporary seasonal workers, the Black Friday sales that begin in many stores on Thanksgiving Day worsen erratic scheduling in the industry and come with anxiety, long hours and low pay in exchange for missing time spent with family over the holiday.
“It’s a two-pronged experience for workers. On one hand, they’re not getting all the hours they want during the rest of the year and this is a time to catch up and make up those hours, but never knowing how many they’re going to get scheduled and what their schedules are going to look like,” said Janna Shadduck-Hernández, the project director for the UCLA Labor Center, which has published extensive research on retail workers as Los Angeles city council and other municipalities around the US are currently considering or have already passed fair workweek laws that mandate employers give workers predictable schedules.
“Black Friday brings up all these issues,” added Shadduck-Hernández. “Retail workers are anticipating it with mixed emotions, angst and hopefulness there is going to be a bigger paycheck at the same time with facing a lot of frantic, stressful experiences.”
Walmart
Walmart offers Thanksgiving workers measly discount in place of holiday pay
*Staff at retail giant not entitled to time-and-a-half holiday pay
*Walton family that owns Walmart worth more than $190bn
Michael Sainato
then guardian
Wed 27 Nov 2019 10.21 EST
Thanksgiving and Black Friday mark the beginning of the festive season in the US, but Walmart workers are not feeling the cheer. The world’s largest retailer will not be offering staff extra pay for working some of the busiest days of the year. Instead they will be offered a discount to shop at their own store.
More than 165 million people in the US are expected to shop between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to a National Retail Federation survey, the busiest shopping days of the year.
Several large retailers including Barnes & Noble, Costco and Trader Joe’s have decided to close on Thanksgiving in recent years, arguing staff should have time with their family on the national holiday. But Walmart is one of several big-box retailers who are open on Thanksgiving Day and will start its Black Friday sale at 6pm.
Walmart is also one of the few big companies that does not offer employees increased hourly wages for working shifts on a holiday. At Target and Amazon, workers are paid time and a half for each hour worked.
“Walmart doesn’t offer holiday pay. They have a discount you have to work certain days to receive and one discount only lasts two days,” said a Walmart worker in Idaho who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. They are re scheduled to work full-time shifts on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday this year.
“No one is getting paid extra. You can’t get overtime unless it’s approved.”
The worker shared a flyer promoting the 10% discount offered Walmart employees in December, with another 15% discount offered to workers who work shifts from Wednesday to Saturday, to use once on two specific days in December. A Walmart spokesperson confirmed the discount.
Walmart has received criticism from workers, labor activists, and elected officials for paying workers low wages while the family that owns Walmart, the Waltons, are ranked the wealthiest in the world with an estimated net worth of over $190bn.
The company’s minimum wage was raised to $11 an hour in 2018, after the Trump tax cuts which provided Walmart with an estimated $2.2bn annual savings, a fraction of the cost-of-wage increases. Walmart also rolled out a $20bn stock buyback program after the wage increase was announced.
In 2016, the company changed its paid time off program to roll paid vacation, sick time, personal time and holiday time into one category.
A Walmart spokesperson said: “We simplified our paid time-off policies in 2016 to combine vacation, holiday, sick and personal time into one bucket. We did this to give our associates greater flexibility and more choice to use their time off when and how they want to. As part of this change, we no longer pay holiday pay. Associates can now cash out any unused PTO at the end of the year.”
More than 165 million people in the US are expected to shop between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to a National Retail Federation survey, the busiest shopping days of the year.
Several large retailers including Barnes & Noble, Costco and Trader Joe’s have decided to close on Thanksgiving in recent years, arguing staff should have time with their family on the national holiday. But Walmart is one of several big-box retailers who are open on Thanksgiving Day and will start its Black Friday sale at 6pm.
Walmart is also one of the few big companies that does not offer employees increased hourly wages for working shifts on a holiday. At Target and Amazon, workers are paid time and a half for each hour worked.
“Walmart doesn’t offer holiday pay. They have a discount you have to work certain days to receive and one discount only lasts two days,” said a Walmart worker in Idaho who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. They are re scheduled to work full-time shifts on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday this year.
“No one is getting paid extra. You can’t get overtime unless it’s approved.”
The worker shared a flyer promoting the 10% discount offered Walmart employees in December, with another 15% discount offered to workers who work shifts from Wednesday to Saturday, to use once on two specific days in December. A Walmart spokesperson confirmed the discount.
Walmart has received criticism from workers, labor activists, and elected officials for paying workers low wages while the family that owns Walmart, the Waltons, are ranked the wealthiest in the world with an estimated net worth of over $190bn.
The company’s minimum wage was raised to $11 an hour in 2018, after the Trump tax cuts which provided Walmart with an estimated $2.2bn annual savings, a fraction of the cost-of-wage increases. Walmart also rolled out a $20bn stock buyback program after the wage increase was announced.
In 2016, the company changed its paid time off program to roll paid vacation, sick time, personal time and holiday time into one category.
A Walmart spokesperson said: “We simplified our paid time-off policies in 2016 to combine vacation, holiday, sick and personal time into one bucket. We did this to give our associates greater flexibility and more choice to use their time off when and how they want to. As part of this change, we no longer pay holiday pay. Associates can now cash out any unused PTO at the end of the year.”
McDonald’s Employees Are Suing to Win Protection From Violence at Work
BY Bryce Covert, Truthout
PUBLISHED November 23, 2019
Last year as Elvira Gonzalez was mopping the floor outside a bathroom in the Chicago-area McDonald’s where she worked, a customer came in and started yelling at her. Then he picked up the “Wet Floor” sign and hit her over the back, an incident that has left her with chronic pain to this day. On another occasion, a customer came into the men’s bathroom while she was cleaning it, exposed his genitals and groped her. When she ran out screaming and told her manager what happened, she says he laughed and said she should let him “make love to you.” The same man has returned to the restaurant multiple times and continued verbally harassing her, but her managers have refused to call the police and said that he was “flattering” her.
“I worry every day I come to work at McDonald’s because McDonald’s does not prioritize our safety,” Gonzalez said in a statement to the press.
McDonald’s workers have been protesting for years to demand better pay. Now workers who are part of the Fight for 15 have added a new demand: that the company take steps to protect them from the kind of workplace violence that Gonzalez has endured.
On November 21, Gonzalez, along with 16 other McDonald’s employees who work in 13 restaurants across the city of Chicago, filed a lawsuit arguing that employees “face a daily risk of violence while at work” because of the way the company designs its restaurants, as well as its decision to keep locations open overnight without instituting best practices for the spike in violence during late night hours.
Those incidents, the lawsuit alleges, include customers jumping over the counter to threaten workers with guns or throw equipment at them, customers exposing themselves and groping employees, and physical and verbal harassment. At one location, employees discovered a dead body and large amounts of blood in the bathroom.
The workers argue that the company is responsible for failing to protect its employees from this kind of violence. “The incidents described in this complaint are not random or unforeseeable,” the suit states. “Rather, they are part of a citywide and nationwide pattern at McDonald’s restaurants. Further, they are the result of choices made by McDonald’s that undermine safety.”
In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, a company spokesperson sent a statement to Truthout saying, “McDonald’s takes seriously its responsibility to provide and foster a safe working environment for our employees, and along with our franchisees, continue to make investments in training programs that uphold safe environments for customers and crew members. In addition to training, McDonald’s maintains stringent policies against violence in our restaurants.”
But the lawsuit argues that restaurant operators have ignored best practices that protect workers’ safety, such as creating “strong physical barriers” between employees and customers at places with late night hours. Instead, it says, the company has removed or decreased counters nationwide to create a more modern look. After the counter was lowered at one restaurant in 2018, several customers jumped on top of it or over it to assault employees, including an instance where one waved a gun.
On top of that, drive-thru windows are designed such that workers can’t avoid direct contact with customers, making them vulnerable to physical and verbal assaults, while bathrooms have no locks. Some workers have been told not to post signs saying bathrooms are out of service during cleaning, which employees say leaves them vulnerable to sexual violence.
And yet despite the high volume of 911 calls made from restaurants — 20 a day in Chicago, for example — the workers claim that their managers discouraged them from calling law enforcement, “seemingly out of a misguided belief that a police presence would repel customers,” according to the lawsuit. One manager allegedly threatened to suspend anyone who reported an attack. The lawsuit also claims that the company doesn’t provide basic safety training.
These experiences have left workers with “physical and psychological harm,” the lawsuit says. “We shouldn’t have to put ourselves in harm’s way just to support our families,” Sonia Acuña, a McDonald’s employee and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement. “That’s why we’re suing McDonald’s … because it’s life or death for us.”
“Throughout the country, McDonald’s workers are regularly threatened, assaulted and injured by customers,” Danny Rosenthal, a partner at James & Hoffman and the lead attorney on the case, said in a statement to the press. “The Chicago area is a prototypical case.”
The lawsuit also points to a number of media reports on violence in Chicago area restaurants, including someone who was shot and killed in May 2019. Indeed, a previous analysis of media reports found that there were 721 instances of violence at McDonald’s locations across the country over a 3-year period, or one every 36 hours, including shootings, sexual assaults, robberies, and other forms of harassment and violence. And that’s just what gets covered in the media — there are almost certainly far more that have gone unreported.
While some of the restaurants where the violence occurred are owned by franchisees, not the corporation itself, the Chicago workers argue that McDonald’s is still aware of the problem and retains control of design, training and policies at its locations. It has a nationwide security team and receives regular crime reports. It is therefore, they say, obligated to protect employees at all restaurants.
The lawsuit is not the first action workers have taken to draw attention to this problem. In May, workers went on strike across Chicago to protest violence at their restaurants. They also filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that calls for a systemic investigation into workplace violence across the country.
Workers in St. Petersburg, Florida, also went on strike this year after an employee was assaulted by a customer.
These actions also come amid workers’ campaign to get the company to address sexual harassment and assault faced by its employees. Workers have filed a number of lawsuits against the company claiming that they were harassed by managers and coworkers, including being groped, propositioned and sexually assaulted. Out of frustration with what they say is a lack of response from the company, they also staged the first-ever nationwide strike over sexual harassment last year and have followed it up with subsequent actions.
“I worry every day I come to work at McDonald’s because McDonald’s does not prioritize our safety,” Gonzalez said in a statement to the press.
McDonald’s workers have been protesting for years to demand better pay. Now workers who are part of the Fight for 15 have added a new demand: that the company take steps to protect them from the kind of workplace violence that Gonzalez has endured.
On November 21, Gonzalez, along with 16 other McDonald’s employees who work in 13 restaurants across the city of Chicago, filed a lawsuit arguing that employees “face a daily risk of violence while at work” because of the way the company designs its restaurants, as well as its decision to keep locations open overnight without instituting best practices for the spike in violence during late night hours.
Those incidents, the lawsuit alleges, include customers jumping over the counter to threaten workers with guns or throw equipment at them, customers exposing themselves and groping employees, and physical and verbal harassment. At one location, employees discovered a dead body and large amounts of blood in the bathroom.
The workers argue that the company is responsible for failing to protect its employees from this kind of violence. “The incidents described in this complaint are not random or unforeseeable,” the suit states. “Rather, they are part of a citywide and nationwide pattern at McDonald’s restaurants. Further, they are the result of choices made by McDonald’s that undermine safety.”
In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, a company spokesperson sent a statement to Truthout saying, “McDonald’s takes seriously its responsibility to provide and foster a safe working environment for our employees, and along with our franchisees, continue to make investments in training programs that uphold safe environments for customers and crew members. In addition to training, McDonald’s maintains stringent policies against violence in our restaurants.”
But the lawsuit argues that restaurant operators have ignored best practices that protect workers’ safety, such as creating “strong physical barriers” between employees and customers at places with late night hours. Instead, it says, the company has removed or decreased counters nationwide to create a more modern look. After the counter was lowered at one restaurant in 2018, several customers jumped on top of it or over it to assault employees, including an instance where one waved a gun.
On top of that, drive-thru windows are designed such that workers can’t avoid direct contact with customers, making them vulnerable to physical and verbal assaults, while bathrooms have no locks. Some workers have been told not to post signs saying bathrooms are out of service during cleaning, which employees say leaves them vulnerable to sexual violence.
And yet despite the high volume of 911 calls made from restaurants — 20 a day in Chicago, for example — the workers claim that their managers discouraged them from calling law enforcement, “seemingly out of a misguided belief that a police presence would repel customers,” according to the lawsuit. One manager allegedly threatened to suspend anyone who reported an attack. The lawsuit also claims that the company doesn’t provide basic safety training.
These experiences have left workers with “physical and psychological harm,” the lawsuit says. “We shouldn’t have to put ourselves in harm’s way just to support our families,” Sonia Acuña, a McDonald’s employee and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement. “That’s why we’re suing McDonald’s … because it’s life or death for us.”
“Throughout the country, McDonald’s workers are regularly threatened, assaulted and injured by customers,” Danny Rosenthal, a partner at James & Hoffman and the lead attorney on the case, said in a statement to the press. “The Chicago area is a prototypical case.”
The lawsuit also points to a number of media reports on violence in Chicago area restaurants, including someone who was shot and killed in May 2019. Indeed, a previous analysis of media reports found that there were 721 instances of violence at McDonald’s locations across the country over a 3-year period, or one every 36 hours, including shootings, sexual assaults, robberies, and other forms of harassment and violence. And that’s just what gets covered in the media — there are almost certainly far more that have gone unreported.
While some of the restaurants where the violence occurred are owned by franchisees, not the corporation itself, the Chicago workers argue that McDonald’s is still aware of the problem and retains control of design, training and policies at its locations. It has a nationwide security team and receives regular crime reports. It is therefore, they say, obligated to protect employees at all restaurants.
The lawsuit is not the first action workers have taken to draw attention to this problem. In May, workers went on strike across Chicago to protest violence at their restaurants. They also filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that calls for a systemic investigation into workplace violence across the country.
Workers in St. Petersburg, Florida, also went on strike this year after an employee was assaulted by a customer.
These actions also come amid workers’ campaign to get the company to address sexual harassment and assault faced by its employees. Workers have filed a number of lawsuits against the company claiming that they were harassed by managers and coworkers, including being groped, propositioned and sexually assaulted. Out of frustration with what they say is a lack of response from the company, they also staged the first-ever nationwide strike over sexual harassment last year and have followed it up with subsequent actions.
Google hires anti-union firm among brewing labor tensions: report
The relationship with the consulting firm was discovered by employees, who leaked the information to reporters
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
NOVEMBER 21, 2019 9:31PM (UTC)
Silicon Valley loves its contractors, but not as people. The contract workforce is to Silicon Valley as water is to a fish: Many tech companies have ascended (see: Uber, Lyft) not because of their superior technology, but due to their ability to exploit contract laborers in a maximally efficient manner — thus offloading employee expenses onto contractors and keeping said workers as expendable as possible.
Google is exemplary in this regard. 54 percent of the tech giant's workforce is comprised of temps, according to employees. Particularly within Google's white-collar campuses, many contractors work side-by-side with full-time workers, doing the same work for far less pay. That physical proximity has helped many Google employees feel common cause with their exploited peers, and together, Google contractors have been organizing for a union for the past few years. The nascent labor movement has had some success: In September, a group of 73 Pittsburgh-based contract tech workers for Google voted to join the United Steelworkers.
Now, according to a new report in The New York Times, Google has hired a notorious anti-union consulting firm, IRI Consultants. Google employees, according to the report, discovered the contract accidentally by stumbling upon calendar entries that hinted that the company hired the firm. Screenshots were shared with the New York Times.
Employees noticed that Google had installed a tool on employees’ web browsers that would flag internal calendar events that required more than 100 participants or 10 meeting rooms. As reported by Bloomberg, many employees believed the tool was actually a way to monitor organizing among workers. In an effort to learn more about the tool and calendar policy change, employees searched the calendar of a Google human resources official who had requested the policy change.
The report explains:
While searching that official’s calendar, which was open to other Google employees at the time, these employees discovered that she had been part of a group of Google human resources, legal and communications officials who for months had been invited to meetings with officials from IRI, according to the two employees.
They noticed that the group had a meeting scheduled only a few hours before the human resources official requested the change in calendar policy. The Times obtained screenshots of portions of the official’s calendar and two posts on an internal ticketing system discussing the change.
According to the firm’s website, its services can help identify “key vulnerabilities and risks that could become the target of an organizing campaign."
On their website, the consulting firm brags that they stopped organizing at a healthcare company. IRI boasts:
Despite dedicating millions of dollars to their organizing campaigns, the unions did not gain enough support to hold an NLRB-conducted election and were not able to organize any of the employees. We were also successful in creating in-house capabilities to support their long-term employee relations goals.
Last month, Google management in Zurich tried to intercept a meeting organized by Google employees about unionization.
Chloe Cooper, a Google spokeswoman, told The Times the company engaged “dozens of outside firms to provide us with their advice on a wide range of topics.”
Workers within the tech giant Google have become an activist force within the company in the past few years, protesting the company's many egregious misdeeds and rankling management. Last year, when a report broke that a Google executive investigated by the company for sexual assault was awarded a $90 million exit package upon his resignation, employees responded with a global walkout. It was successful in terms of media coverage and awareness, but when some of the organizers returned to their desks they were welcomed with demotions.
The tech industry is certainly no stranger to unions; many blue collar workers at companies like Verizon and AT&T, such as custodial, technician and food service staff, are unionized. Yet the effort to organize the most white collar workers in tech, such as software engineers and data analysts, signals a big shift in Silicon Valley. It seems like Google is not taking recent efforts lightly.
Google is exemplary in this regard. 54 percent of the tech giant's workforce is comprised of temps, according to employees. Particularly within Google's white-collar campuses, many contractors work side-by-side with full-time workers, doing the same work for far less pay. That physical proximity has helped many Google employees feel common cause with their exploited peers, and together, Google contractors have been organizing for a union for the past few years. The nascent labor movement has had some success: In September, a group of 73 Pittsburgh-based contract tech workers for Google voted to join the United Steelworkers.
Now, according to a new report in The New York Times, Google has hired a notorious anti-union consulting firm, IRI Consultants. Google employees, according to the report, discovered the contract accidentally by stumbling upon calendar entries that hinted that the company hired the firm. Screenshots were shared with the New York Times.
Employees noticed that Google had installed a tool on employees’ web browsers that would flag internal calendar events that required more than 100 participants or 10 meeting rooms. As reported by Bloomberg, many employees believed the tool was actually a way to monitor organizing among workers. In an effort to learn more about the tool and calendar policy change, employees searched the calendar of a Google human resources official who had requested the policy change.
The report explains:
While searching that official’s calendar, which was open to other Google employees at the time, these employees discovered that she had been part of a group of Google human resources, legal and communications officials who for months had been invited to meetings with officials from IRI, according to the two employees.
They noticed that the group had a meeting scheduled only a few hours before the human resources official requested the change in calendar policy. The Times obtained screenshots of portions of the official’s calendar and two posts on an internal ticketing system discussing the change.
According to the firm’s website, its services can help identify “key vulnerabilities and risks that could become the target of an organizing campaign."
On their website, the consulting firm brags that they stopped organizing at a healthcare company. IRI boasts:
Despite dedicating millions of dollars to their organizing campaigns, the unions did not gain enough support to hold an NLRB-conducted election and were not able to organize any of the employees. We were also successful in creating in-house capabilities to support their long-term employee relations goals.
Last month, Google management in Zurich tried to intercept a meeting organized by Google employees about unionization.
Chloe Cooper, a Google spokeswoman, told The Times the company engaged “dozens of outside firms to provide us with their advice on a wide range of topics.”
Workers within the tech giant Google have become an activist force within the company in the past few years, protesting the company's many egregious misdeeds and rankling management. Last year, when a report broke that a Google executive investigated by the company for sexual assault was awarded a $90 million exit package upon his resignation, employees responded with a global walkout. It was successful in terms of media coverage and awareness, but when some of the organizers returned to their desks they were welcomed with demotions.
The tech industry is certainly no stranger to unions; many blue collar workers at companies like Verizon and AT&T, such as custodial, technician and food service staff, are unionized. Yet the effort to organize the most white collar workers in tech, such as software engineers and data analysts, signals a big shift in Silicon Valley. It seems like Google is not taking recent efforts lightly.
Being Mindful of Paycheck Abuses
November 14th, 2019
by Phil Mattera - dirt diggers digest
It turns out that yoga instructors are mindful about more than poses and breathing. They also make sure they are paid properly for their work. A group of instructors in Illinois who sued CorePower Yoga for violating federal labor law recently reached a final settlement of $1.5 million to resolve allegations that the chain failed to pay them for mandatory out-of-studio work such as class preparation and communicating with students.
The yoga instructors’ case is just one of a remarkable series of settlements that continue to emerge from the courts despite the efforts by employers to thwart collective action against workplace abuses. I keep an eye on these developments as part of my work on Violation Tracker and am amazed at the quantity and variety of wage theft litigation. Here are some other examples I have been collecting to include in the next update of the database.
PetSmart agreed to pay $2.4 million to a group of dog groomers in California who alleged they were shortchanged on overtime and mandatory rest breaks and meal periods.
Zocdoc, an online medical appointment booking service, agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve a lawsuit filed in New York alleging that the company mistakenly classified sales personnel as exempt from overtime pay.
Safelite agreed to pay $8.2 million to windshield replacement technicians in California who claimed they were not properly paid for administrative duties and time spent traveling to jobs.
Great American Financial Resources agreed to pay $1.25 million in Ohio to settle a dispute involving commissions for insurance agents.
Here are some other cases in which the parties have reached a settlement that is awaiting final court approval:
Morgan Stanley agreed to pay more than $10 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging it improperly refused to reimburse its financial advisers for work-related expenses such as client entertainment.
Pongsri Thai Restaurant in New York agreed to pay $3.7 million to a group of workers to resolve allegations that the company violated overtime and minimum wage regulations.
FedEx agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle a suit brought by a group of drivers in western New York claiming they were misclassified as independent contractors and subject to improper pay deductions.
Not all these cases are resolved through a settlement. For example, a federal jury in Florida recently awarded $1.2 million to a group of forepersons employed by the tree service company Asplundh who alleged they were improperly denied overtime pay. It is not yet clear whether the company will appeal.
A federal appeals court recently upheld a $4.6 million verdict won by a group of exotic dancers who had alleged that the Penthouse Club in Philadelphia misclassified them as independent contractors and thus denied them minimum wage and overtime protections.
Two things are made clear by this list. The first is that the problem of wage theft is pervasive. It is present in both old economy and new economy companies and in both highly paid and low-wage occupations. The culprits are both large employers and small ones, and the problem can be found all over the country.
The second conclusion is that, despite adverse rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and efforts by employers to make it as difficult as possible for workers to sue, there is no sign yet that the flow of successful collective action wage and hour lawsuits is receding.
This is vital at a time when the Trump Labor Department has been seeking to replace federal enforcement with a dubious program promoting voluntary compliance by employers. For now, workers are holding their own in the ongoing battle over paycheck abuses.
The yoga instructors’ case is just one of a remarkable series of settlements that continue to emerge from the courts despite the efforts by employers to thwart collective action against workplace abuses. I keep an eye on these developments as part of my work on Violation Tracker and am amazed at the quantity and variety of wage theft litigation. Here are some other examples I have been collecting to include in the next update of the database.
PetSmart agreed to pay $2.4 million to a group of dog groomers in California who alleged they were shortchanged on overtime and mandatory rest breaks and meal periods.
Zocdoc, an online medical appointment booking service, agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve a lawsuit filed in New York alleging that the company mistakenly classified sales personnel as exempt from overtime pay.
Safelite agreed to pay $8.2 million to windshield replacement technicians in California who claimed they were not properly paid for administrative duties and time spent traveling to jobs.
Great American Financial Resources agreed to pay $1.25 million in Ohio to settle a dispute involving commissions for insurance agents.
Here are some other cases in which the parties have reached a settlement that is awaiting final court approval:
Morgan Stanley agreed to pay more than $10 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging it improperly refused to reimburse its financial advisers for work-related expenses such as client entertainment.
Pongsri Thai Restaurant in New York agreed to pay $3.7 million to a group of workers to resolve allegations that the company violated overtime and minimum wage regulations.
FedEx agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle a suit brought by a group of drivers in western New York claiming they were misclassified as independent contractors and subject to improper pay deductions.
Not all these cases are resolved through a settlement. For example, a federal jury in Florida recently awarded $1.2 million to a group of forepersons employed by the tree service company Asplundh who alleged they were improperly denied overtime pay. It is not yet clear whether the company will appeal.
A federal appeals court recently upheld a $4.6 million verdict won by a group of exotic dancers who had alleged that the Penthouse Club in Philadelphia misclassified them as independent contractors and thus denied them minimum wage and overtime protections.
Two things are made clear by this list. The first is that the problem of wage theft is pervasive. It is present in both old economy and new economy companies and in both highly paid and low-wage occupations. The culprits are both large employers and small ones, and the problem can be found all over the country.
The second conclusion is that, despite adverse rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and efforts by employers to make it as difficult as possible for workers to sue, there is no sign yet that the flow of successful collective action wage and hour lawsuits is receding.
This is vital at a time when the Trump Labor Department has been seeking to replace federal enforcement with a dubious program promoting voluntary compliance by employers. For now, workers are holding their own in the ongoing battle over paycheck abuses.
Uber Hit With $650 Million Employment Tax Bill in New Jersey
Chris Opfer - bloomberg law
Updated: Nov. 14, 2019, 1:31 PM
Uber Technologies Inc. owes New Jersey about $650 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes because the rideshare company has been misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, the state’s labor department said.
Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a pair of letters to the companies. The rideshare businesses also are on the hook for as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts, according to other internal department documents.
The New Jersey labor department has been after Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years, according to the documents, which Bloomberg Law obtained through an open public records request.
“We are challenging this preliminary but incorrect determination, because drivers are independent contractors in New Jersey and elsewhere,” Uber spokeswoman Alix Anfang told Bloomberg Law.
Uber fell 2.7%, to $25.99, after earlier declining as much as 3.9% on news of New Jersey’s efforts. Ridehailing competitor Lyft Inc. fell 3.2%.
The state’s determination is limited to unemployment and disability insurance, but it could also mean that Uber is required to pay drivers minimum wages and overtime under state law. Uber’s costs per driver, and those of Lyft, could jump by more than 20% if they are forced to reclassify workers as employees, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
The notices mark the latest attack on the rideshare companies’ business model, which treats drivers as self-employed entrepreneurs rather than employees—a classification that deprives the workers of certain benefits. Uber and Lyft recently pledged $30 million each to fight a new California law that is expected to force them to reclassify drivers as employees. They’re also prepping for a similar lobbying battle in New York, where lawmakers are planning to take up gig worker legislation next year.
“I expect we may see more of this,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who has sued Uber on behalf of drivers in California and Massachusetts, said of New Jersey’s tax claim against Uber. “Uber and Lyft, by misclassifying drivers, are harming not only the drivers but also the states and the public at large. The money that they’re not paying into the unemployment and disability systems is being picked up by the states and the taxpayers.”
New Jersey informed Uber in 2015 that it had obtained a court judgment ordering the company to pay about $54 million in overdue unemployment and temporary disability insurance contributions. It is not clear whether the company ever paid any of that bill.
The state labor department, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the Uber situation. Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo said in a prepared statement that “cracking down on employee misclassification” is a “priority” for Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration.
“For those who say properly enforcing our unemployment laws will stifle worker flexibility, let’s be clear: there is no reason temporary or on-demand workers can’t be treated like other employees who work flexible hours for short durations,” Asaro-Angelo said.
Uber in April told the state labor department that it disagreed with the determination that drivers are employees and requested a hearing on the issue, but it is not clear whether a hearing has been scheduled.
Audit Launched Last Year
The state labor department sent surveys to Uber and Lyft drivers over the last year seeking information about their work arrangements and tax status. The department audits 1% of employers each year for potential worker misclassification.
Since Oct. 23, the department also has determined that 65 drivers who listed Uber, Rasier or Lyft as their employer in unemployment-insurance-benefits claim forms are employees of those companies and therefore eligible to seek jobless benefits. Drivers who moonlight for the companies to supplement income from other jobs are additionally required to report rideshare earnings for eligibility determination purposes as a result of the state’s determination that they are employees.
The state labor department didn’t provide any documents in response to Bloomberg Law’s request for unemployment insurance assessments against Lyft.
Gig employers—like Uber, Lyft, home cleaning service Handy, and food delivery operator Postmates—pitch themselves as platform providers that simply connect drivers and other service providers to customers. That argument has satisfied federal regulators during the Trump administration.
The federal Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board have recently issued guidance indicating they’re not likely to pursue Uber or Lyft for alleged misclassification. The DOL in an April opinion letter said workers at an unnamed “virtual marketplace” aren’t employees for federal wage and hour purposes because the company acts as a “referral business” that links workers to new opportunities. The NLRB’s top lawyer, in a memo made public two weeks later, said Uber drivers are independent contractors, excluded from protections for union and other activity.
Uber and other gig employers are still trying to fight off lawsuits filed under more restrictive state laws across the country.
That includes New Jersey, which uses a version of the “ABC” test to determine whether workers are employees or contractors. In order to classify workers as contractors, state law requires a company to show that it doesn’t control the work and that the service provided is outside of its “usual course” of business, or outside of the places of business where the services are otherwise performed.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t speak to at least two clients about how to enhance their compliance with independent contractor laws, in particular those with ‘ABC’ laws,” said Richard Reibstein, a business lawyer in New York.
Uber, Lyft, and other online platforms unsuccessfully lobbied to stop a new law in California that uses a similar test to distinguish between contractors and employees. The companies had offered to institute minimum wages, portable benefits like paid sick leave, and some collective bargaining rights in exchange for being carved out of the new law. They’re expected to push to get a referendum added to the ballot next year that would exempt platform companies from the law.
Some New Jersey drivers told Bloomberg Law that they would prefer to remain contractors and keep the flexibility to choose when and where they work. Worker advocates say that’s a false choice rideshare operators offer to skirt their basic responsibilities.
“This would be life-changing for thousands of drivers, to know that they will be earning at least the minimum wage,” Bhairavi Desai, founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told Bloomberg Law. “The companies being required to pay into the unemployment insurance fund will mean that they can’t just toss drivers off the app.”
Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a pair of letters to the companies. The rideshare businesses also are on the hook for as much as $119 million in interest and penalties on the unpaid amounts, according to other internal department documents.
The New Jersey labor department has been after Uber for unpaid employment taxes for at least four years, according to the documents, which Bloomberg Law obtained through an open public records request.
“We are challenging this preliminary but incorrect determination, because drivers are independent contractors in New Jersey and elsewhere,” Uber spokeswoman Alix Anfang told Bloomberg Law.
Uber fell 2.7%, to $25.99, after earlier declining as much as 3.9% on news of New Jersey’s efforts. Ridehailing competitor Lyft Inc. fell 3.2%.
The state’s determination is limited to unemployment and disability insurance, but it could also mean that Uber is required to pay drivers minimum wages and overtime under state law. Uber’s costs per driver, and those of Lyft, could jump by more than 20% if they are forced to reclassify workers as employees, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
The notices mark the latest attack on the rideshare companies’ business model, which treats drivers as self-employed entrepreneurs rather than employees—a classification that deprives the workers of certain benefits. Uber and Lyft recently pledged $30 million each to fight a new California law that is expected to force them to reclassify drivers as employees. They’re also prepping for a similar lobbying battle in New York, where lawmakers are planning to take up gig worker legislation next year.
“I expect we may see more of this,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who has sued Uber on behalf of drivers in California and Massachusetts, said of New Jersey’s tax claim against Uber. “Uber and Lyft, by misclassifying drivers, are harming not only the drivers but also the states and the public at large. The money that they’re not paying into the unemployment and disability systems is being picked up by the states and the taxpayers.”
New Jersey informed Uber in 2015 that it had obtained a court judgment ordering the company to pay about $54 million in overdue unemployment and temporary disability insurance contributions. It is not clear whether the company ever paid any of that bill.
The state labor department, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the Uber situation. Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo said in a prepared statement that “cracking down on employee misclassification” is a “priority” for Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration.
“For those who say properly enforcing our unemployment laws will stifle worker flexibility, let’s be clear: there is no reason temporary or on-demand workers can’t be treated like other employees who work flexible hours for short durations,” Asaro-Angelo said.
Uber in April told the state labor department that it disagreed with the determination that drivers are employees and requested a hearing on the issue, but it is not clear whether a hearing has been scheduled.
Audit Launched Last Year
The state labor department sent surveys to Uber and Lyft drivers over the last year seeking information about their work arrangements and tax status. The department audits 1% of employers each year for potential worker misclassification.
Since Oct. 23, the department also has determined that 65 drivers who listed Uber, Rasier or Lyft as their employer in unemployment-insurance-benefits claim forms are employees of those companies and therefore eligible to seek jobless benefits. Drivers who moonlight for the companies to supplement income from other jobs are additionally required to report rideshare earnings for eligibility determination purposes as a result of the state’s determination that they are employees.
The state labor department didn’t provide any documents in response to Bloomberg Law’s request for unemployment insurance assessments against Lyft.
Gig employers—like Uber, Lyft, home cleaning service Handy, and food delivery operator Postmates—pitch themselves as platform providers that simply connect drivers and other service providers to customers. That argument has satisfied federal regulators during the Trump administration.
The federal Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board have recently issued guidance indicating they’re not likely to pursue Uber or Lyft for alleged misclassification. The DOL in an April opinion letter said workers at an unnamed “virtual marketplace” aren’t employees for federal wage and hour purposes because the company acts as a “referral business” that links workers to new opportunities. The NLRB’s top lawyer, in a memo made public two weeks later, said Uber drivers are independent contractors, excluded from protections for union and other activity.
Uber and other gig employers are still trying to fight off lawsuits filed under more restrictive state laws across the country.
That includes New Jersey, which uses a version of the “ABC” test to determine whether workers are employees or contractors. In order to classify workers as contractors, state law requires a company to show that it doesn’t control the work and that the service provided is outside of its “usual course” of business, or outside of the places of business where the services are otherwise performed.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t speak to at least two clients about how to enhance their compliance with independent contractor laws, in particular those with ‘ABC’ laws,” said Richard Reibstein, a business lawyer in New York.
Uber, Lyft, and other online platforms unsuccessfully lobbied to stop a new law in California that uses a similar test to distinguish between contractors and employees. The companies had offered to institute minimum wages, portable benefits like paid sick leave, and some collective bargaining rights in exchange for being carved out of the new law. They’re expected to push to get a referendum added to the ballot next year that would exempt platform companies from the law.
Some New Jersey drivers told Bloomberg Law that they would prefer to remain contractors and keep the flexibility to choose when and where they work. Worker advocates say that’s a false choice rideshare operators offer to skirt their basic responsibilities.
“This would be life-changing for thousands of drivers, to know that they will be earning at least the minimum wage,” Bhairavi Desai, founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told Bloomberg Law. “The companies being required to pay into the unemployment insurance fund will mean that they can’t just toss drivers off the app.”
Instacart cut bonuses after a strike. Workers suspect it's retaliation
On the heels of a strike, the contractor-dependent company cuts a bonus that many workers relied upon for survival
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
NOVEMBER 14, 2019 1:18AM (UTC)
One week after thousands of Instacart workers took part in a 72-hour strike, the San Francisco-based company — which promises same-day grocery deliveries by paying gig workers to pick up things at the grocery store for “busy” people — made an announcement: They were cutting a bonus that their shopper contractors received for quality work.
Shoppers received the news via an email from the company, which read:
Over the last several years, we’ve experimented with numerous versions of the quality bonus, in addition to other boosts and incentives. During the last year, we offered a new version of the quality bonus and found that it did not meaningfully improve quality. As a result, we will no longer be offering the quality bonus beginning next week. We value the quality of service shoppers provide and will continue exploring ways to recognize shoppers who deliver a high-quality experience for customers.
The bonus in question was implemented last year, and gave workers $3 for every 5-star rating they received. While the company claims the cut was planned before last week’s strike, this pay cut is raising tensions between the company and its shoppers, who aren’t classified as employees, but rather independent contractors. Like many independent contractors in the gig economy, Instacart shoppers don't receive hourly wages or salaries, but are paid per gig — meaning that small bonuses, like $3 for each 5-star rating, can add up to between $45 to $80 a week for some shoppers.
“You don’t think about three dollars being a lot of money, but you add up a whole lot of three-dollars and it builds up,” Heidi Carrico, an Instacart shopper living in Portland, Oregon, told Salon. “It’s disheartening to know we have customers who will take the time to rate us, and for a company that is so immoral and unethical that they would cheat us out of three dollars.”
Carrico estimated she will lose about $45 a week in wages. When she first started shopping for Instacart a year and a half ago, she would make between $600 to $900 a week while working three days a week. Now, she is available to work seven days a week, and she is making around $300. Carrico said she is losing money on the job now when factoring in additional expenses like gas. In Portland, the minimum wage is $12.50, but sometimes she can take a job that will take an hour, or more, and receive only $8.
Shoppers used to be paid 40 cents per item, with bonuses and tipping sprinkled in, but last October the company began using an algorithm to calculate pay. Factors included were product weight and driving distance. Shoppers are guaranteed at least $5 per delivery, although it has been previously reported that when all pay and costs were factors in, some shoppers made as low as $1 an hour. Over the last three years, Instacart has gone back and forth from allowing customers the option to tip shoppers, and suggesting a 5 percent default tip. In February, NBC News reported tips were being used to substitute a portion of workers' wages rather than boost their incomes.
This latest labor pain comes on the heels of a class-action lawsuit that alleges Instacart “intentionally and maliciously misappropriated gratuities in order to pay plaintiff’s wages even though Instacart maintained that 100 percent of customer tips went directly to shoppers.”
It has been a rough ride for many Instacart shoppers, who have seen their incomes from the app slashed significantly — which is why when the company announced the latest $3 elimination, it was easy to interpret it as some sort of retaliation for the strike. Instacart denied to talk to Salon on the record about anything beyond the email that was sent to its shoppers.
Alyssa Longobardi, who has been working as an Instacart shopper both part time and full time in the Philadelphia suburbs on and off since 2015, told Salon it will “absolutely” impact her pay.
“I would regularly shop 20 to 30 batches a week, about 80 percent or slightly less would rate 5-stars, that’s a loss of $45 to $60 a week,” Longobardi said in an email. “If there’s four or five weeks in a month, that’s $200 to 300 a month I will no longer receive.”
Longobardi added that her pay had been typically $700 to $900, working 35 to 42 hours a week. Once the pay structure was adjusted, she couldn’t make more than $300 a week.
“There were payouts on orders I just refused to take due to how low they were for the amount of time, effort and gas that would need to be used to complete it,” she said.
Susan Caffaro, in San Diego, California, has been working since February. She estimates she might lose up to $90 a week.
“It’s a little motivation that helps you work that much harder,” Caffaro told Salon.
While the cut might not come as a surprise to the workers who have been privy to the company's treatment of them over the last couple years, the move has rattled many customers, many of whom have taken to social media to announce they are boycotting Instacart, spreading the #DeleteInstacart hashtag on social media. Shoppers are hopeful that the customers getting involved will put pressure on the company to meet shoppers’ demands and treat them better.
“Instacart is nothing without shoppers, but it’s really nothing without customers and shoppers,” Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper in Menlo Park who helped organize the strike, told Salon.
Shoppers received the news via an email from the company, which read:
Over the last several years, we’ve experimented with numerous versions of the quality bonus, in addition to other boosts and incentives. During the last year, we offered a new version of the quality bonus and found that it did not meaningfully improve quality. As a result, we will no longer be offering the quality bonus beginning next week. We value the quality of service shoppers provide and will continue exploring ways to recognize shoppers who deliver a high-quality experience for customers.
The bonus in question was implemented last year, and gave workers $3 for every 5-star rating they received. While the company claims the cut was planned before last week’s strike, this pay cut is raising tensions between the company and its shoppers, who aren’t classified as employees, but rather independent contractors. Like many independent contractors in the gig economy, Instacart shoppers don't receive hourly wages or salaries, but are paid per gig — meaning that small bonuses, like $3 for each 5-star rating, can add up to between $45 to $80 a week for some shoppers.
“You don’t think about three dollars being a lot of money, but you add up a whole lot of three-dollars and it builds up,” Heidi Carrico, an Instacart shopper living in Portland, Oregon, told Salon. “It’s disheartening to know we have customers who will take the time to rate us, and for a company that is so immoral and unethical that they would cheat us out of three dollars.”
Carrico estimated she will lose about $45 a week in wages. When she first started shopping for Instacart a year and a half ago, she would make between $600 to $900 a week while working three days a week. Now, she is available to work seven days a week, and she is making around $300. Carrico said she is losing money on the job now when factoring in additional expenses like gas. In Portland, the minimum wage is $12.50, but sometimes she can take a job that will take an hour, or more, and receive only $8.
Shoppers used to be paid 40 cents per item, with bonuses and tipping sprinkled in, but last October the company began using an algorithm to calculate pay. Factors included were product weight and driving distance. Shoppers are guaranteed at least $5 per delivery, although it has been previously reported that when all pay and costs were factors in, some shoppers made as low as $1 an hour. Over the last three years, Instacart has gone back and forth from allowing customers the option to tip shoppers, and suggesting a 5 percent default tip. In February, NBC News reported tips were being used to substitute a portion of workers' wages rather than boost their incomes.
This latest labor pain comes on the heels of a class-action lawsuit that alleges Instacart “intentionally and maliciously misappropriated gratuities in order to pay plaintiff’s wages even though Instacart maintained that 100 percent of customer tips went directly to shoppers.”
It has been a rough ride for many Instacart shoppers, who have seen their incomes from the app slashed significantly — which is why when the company announced the latest $3 elimination, it was easy to interpret it as some sort of retaliation for the strike. Instacart denied to talk to Salon on the record about anything beyond the email that was sent to its shoppers.
Alyssa Longobardi, who has been working as an Instacart shopper both part time and full time in the Philadelphia suburbs on and off since 2015, told Salon it will “absolutely” impact her pay.
“I would regularly shop 20 to 30 batches a week, about 80 percent or slightly less would rate 5-stars, that’s a loss of $45 to $60 a week,” Longobardi said in an email. “If there’s four or five weeks in a month, that’s $200 to 300 a month I will no longer receive.”
Longobardi added that her pay had been typically $700 to $900, working 35 to 42 hours a week. Once the pay structure was adjusted, she couldn’t make more than $300 a week.
“There were payouts on orders I just refused to take due to how low they were for the amount of time, effort and gas that would need to be used to complete it,” she said.
Susan Caffaro, in San Diego, California, has been working since February. She estimates she might lose up to $90 a week.
“It’s a little motivation that helps you work that much harder,” Caffaro told Salon.
While the cut might not come as a surprise to the workers who have been privy to the company's treatment of them over the last couple years, the move has rattled many customers, many of whom have taken to social media to announce they are boycotting Instacart, spreading the #DeleteInstacart hashtag on social media. Shoppers are hopeful that the customers getting involved will put pressure on the company to meet shoppers’ demands and treat them better.
“Instacart is nothing without shoppers, but it’s really nothing without customers and shoppers,” Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper in Menlo Park who helped organize the strike, told Salon.
There's a national labor uprising happening right now that the media isn't reporting
Decades of wealth concentration and corporate domination leave unions no other choice
BOB HENNELLY - salon
NOVEMBER 3, 2019 1:00PM (UTC)
As the national press corps fixates on the coming and goings of President Trump as if it were the only story, the American labor movement is rising up, informed by almost a half-century of wage suppression made possible by unchecked corporate greed that’s turned our economy into a pyramid scheme where all the wealth drifts to the top.
For a generation after Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s striking air traffic controllers, unions were intimidated from striking. Those days are gone. With our politics so consumed with the blood sport of partisan self-preservation, the actual conditions in the country continue to decline. Hence, it is falling to organized labor to be last backstop against abject societal decline.
It has been decades since there been such tumult on the labor front with teachers going on strike in Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angles and Denver. Last month United Automobile Workers (UAW) ended a 40-day walkout against General Motors. And last year, there were more strikes than there had been in 33 years.
Last week, 8,000 members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 turned out in front of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency Headquarters in lower Manhattan chanting “a people united, will never be divided.”
In 18 months, working around the clock in a dangerous underground environment, they restored a subway system that the politicians had neglected for a generation and let fall into a decrepit state of disrepair. Yet, even as the system was showing signs of a rebound, with increased on-time performance, management wanted a long list of concessions.
Management was looking to the workers to help close a budget gap that’s the result of the legacy of the agency’s poor management, which has resulted in so much debt that one out of every five dollars generated by the system goes to pay debt service to bond holders for past borrowing.
Whether it be a red state like West Virginia, where teachers in a right to work state successfully won a strike, or in Chicago where teachers went out for 11 days, union members are now willing to put something at risk not only to advance their own circumstance — but that of their communities that for too long have been neglected by the political system.
While the corporate news media likes to zero in on the fight over wages, consider that the Chicago teachers were also going to bat for smaller class sizes, more nurses, social workers and librarians. They know that in our winner take all society their students, over three-quarters of whom are from economically struggling families, need a lot more support than they have been getting.
What’s driving this militancy?
Since the 1970s, while productivity increased, wages declined or stagnated as earning power was replaced by household and consumer debt. The percentage of Americans in a union declined. While workers increasingly struggled to make ends meet, corporations preceded to grow larger and larger, thanks to a U.S. tax code that subsidized them shifting their operations abroad and then enabled them to hide their profits in places like the Cayman Islands.
Members of Congress, from both political parties looked the other way, were rewarded with hundreds of millions in campaign cash and often found went to work to lobby for the very same commercial interests that underwrote their campaigns.
Almost 20 years into the 21st century we are a country where the average life expectancy has declined for three years in a row, where the severely mentally ill are left to wander the streets or sit in our public libraries, while an estimated 1 in 9 Americans are food insecure, roughly over 37 million Americans, including more than 11 million children.
In New York City, which fancies itself as progressive, for the fourth year in a row more than 100,000 children, one in ten, are either living in a homeless shelter or doubled up in temporary housing. According to the New York State Department of Education 34,000 kids life in shelters while 73,740 live in doubled up in makeshift arrangements.
It was this kind of steady deterioration of our national circumstance that Trump exploited in 2016. In the years since his election wealth concentration has continued and the income gap has grown wider.
So, it has fallen to labor to punch above its weight on behalf of the American people who have been cut adrift by a political system captive to corporate interests.
For a generation after Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s striking air traffic controllers, unions were intimidated from striking. Those days are gone. With our politics so consumed with the blood sport of partisan self-preservation, the actual conditions in the country continue to decline. Hence, it is falling to organized labor to be last backstop against abject societal decline.
It has been decades since there been such tumult on the labor front with teachers going on strike in Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angles and Denver. Last month United Automobile Workers (UAW) ended a 40-day walkout against General Motors. And last year, there were more strikes than there had been in 33 years.
Last week, 8,000 members of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 turned out in front of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency Headquarters in lower Manhattan chanting “a people united, will never be divided.”
In 18 months, working around the clock in a dangerous underground environment, they restored a subway system that the politicians had neglected for a generation and let fall into a decrepit state of disrepair. Yet, even as the system was showing signs of a rebound, with increased on-time performance, management wanted a long list of concessions.
Management was looking to the workers to help close a budget gap that’s the result of the legacy of the agency’s poor management, which has resulted in so much debt that one out of every five dollars generated by the system goes to pay debt service to bond holders for past borrowing.
Whether it be a red state like West Virginia, where teachers in a right to work state successfully won a strike, or in Chicago where teachers went out for 11 days, union members are now willing to put something at risk not only to advance their own circumstance — but that of their communities that for too long have been neglected by the political system.
While the corporate news media likes to zero in on the fight over wages, consider that the Chicago teachers were also going to bat for smaller class sizes, more nurses, social workers and librarians. They know that in our winner take all society their students, over three-quarters of whom are from economically struggling families, need a lot more support than they have been getting.
What’s driving this militancy?
Since the 1970s, while productivity increased, wages declined or stagnated as earning power was replaced by household and consumer debt. The percentage of Americans in a union declined. While workers increasingly struggled to make ends meet, corporations preceded to grow larger and larger, thanks to a U.S. tax code that subsidized them shifting their operations abroad and then enabled them to hide their profits in places like the Cayman Islands.
Members of Congress, from both political parties looked the other way, were rewarded with hundreds of millions in campaign cash and often found went to work to lobby for the very same commercial interests that underwrote their campaigns.
Almost 20 years into the 21st century we are a country where the average life expectancy has declined for three years in a row, where the severely mentally ill are left to wander the streets or sit in our public libraries, while an estimated 1 in 9 Americans are food insecure, roughly over 37 million Americans, including more than 11 million children.
In New York City, which fancies itself as progressive, for the fourth year in a row more than 100,000 children, one in ten, are either living in a homeless shelter or doubled up in temporary housing. According to the New York State Department of Education 34,000 kids life in shelters while 73,740 live in doubled up in makeshift arrangements.
It was this kind of steady deterioration of our national circumstance that Trump exploited in 2016. In the years since his election wealth concentration has continued and the income gap has grown wider.
So, it has fallen to labor to punch above its weight on behalf of the American people who have been cut adrift by a political system captive to corporate interests.
Minimum wage workers win big union victory in anti-union Texas
October 21, 2019
By Bill Schleicher, DCReport @ RawStory- Commentary
While Donald Trump’s Labor Department works to diminish employee rights, organized workers have scored an important victory deep in the heart of anti-union Texas.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2021 for 8,000 people at the city’s two airports. That’s a 65% increase for workers paid the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. About 8,000 baggage handlers, caterers, wheelchair attendants and others benefit.
The Service Employees International Union organized the Houston workers. Workers in Denver earlier won $15 an hour by 2021. A new ordinance proposed in Minneapolis would require $15 an hour by 2022.
The federal minimum wage is worth only $6.10 an hour when adjusted for inflation since 2009 when the $7.25 floor was established.
That a local government in Texas is raising wages for mostly minority workers shows how organized efforts can win improved pay despite how Trump has turned the Labor Department into “the Department of Management Rights,”as Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik put it.
Vicious Scheme
Workers at Houston’s Bush airport suffer in a low-wage no-rights, no-benefits hell with the financial fires fueled by a vicious contracting-out scheme. It’s a perfect example of how the Trump administration’s misclassification of millions of “gig economy” employees as independent contractors hurts workers.
United Airlines dominates at Houston Intercontinental and Hobby Airports. Linda Alexander, who guards an escalator, was demoted for trying to tell United about the horrendous working conditions. She wants travelers to know that United Airlines is their real employer because it “actually pays our salaries through ABM,” the Houston airports contracting firm.
A recent survey of contracted out skycaps, wheelchair attendants and cabin cleaners. found 43 percent mired at the rock-bottom federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and 96 percent making under $11 an hour.
That’s less than Texas United Way’s “survival budget” for a single adult. It’s far beneath the charity’s $24-an-hour survival standard for a family with two kids. And its less than half the minimum pay at airports in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and metropolitan New York.
“The contracting-out started earlier, but it has accelerated under Trump, the most anti-worker president we have ever had,” said Rocio Saenz, executive VP of the Service Employees International Union. “In the Trump years we have seen a vast shift of power to corporations and CEOs, who have rigged this system against the workers.”
“The contract workers get lower pay for longer hours as the airlines dodge their responsibility for the employees who make their businesses run and bring in their profits,” said Saenz. The CEOs of United, Delta and American airlines each took home more than $10 million last year.
Creating Poverty Jobs
“The majority of the contract workers are people of color and immigrants — the ones Trump scapegoats while he helps corporations and the rich,” Saenz said. He came from Mexico, worked as a low-paid janitor and became an SEIU organizer.
Contracting out labor and then classifying employees as contractors causes economic pain far beyond airports. About 57 million Americans do jobs like driving for Uber and Lyft, delivering groceries for Instacart and Doordash and cleaning houses for Task Rabbit and Handy.
Said Kyle Bragg, who heads SEIU Local 32BJ: “The airlines have turned well-paid union jobs over to contractors and made them into poverty jobs.”
The 2017 Trump/Radical Republican tax law also “gave business incentives for outsourcing, and the sub-contracting serves as a roadblock to organizing,” said Steven Kreisberg, research director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSCME represents airport workers in Miami, St. Louis and other cities.
Contracting out goes hand-in-hand with the parallel policy of making gig workers self-employed independent contractors instead of employees, as announced earlier this year by the federal Labor Department and the Trump-dominated National Labor Relations Board.
“Both help business intensify exploitation” of workers, Kreisberg said, “especially of immigrants and minorities, who have less opportunity elsewhere.”
Close to 97% of baggage handler and transportation attendant jobs are now outsourced nationwide, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Winning in “Right to Work” states
Instead of being employees with some protections and benefits, these workers are classified as independent contractors, which means they possess no right to minimum wages, overtime, workers’ comp, unions or even their jobs. As independent contractors they can be kicked out of work for no reason and may not be eligible for jobless benefits.
Organizing is hard in states like Texas which call themselves “right-to-work” states. That term really means the right to work for less because the law is strongly anti-collective action.
“Houston is one of the last major hubs where the workers are organizing to hold the airlines accountable.” explained Elsa Caballero, the SEIU Texas president and an immigrant from Honduras. “United [Airlines] took advantage of the opportunity to raise its profits by giving good union jobs to the lowest-bidding sub-contractors, and the workers are suffering.”
Teresa McClatchie’s job is in airport security. She makes sure no one slips through the gates at Bush Intercontinental Airport without a ticket. But she doesn’t work for United. Her employer is actually a sub-contractor, ABM.
“It sucks to the max!” said McClatchie. “On $9 an hour, I can barely feed myself and help my granddaughter a little with college.”
The lack of labor rights became evident when her neck was severely injured in a car crash and surgeons implanted a metal plate. On a Friday McClatchie asked on for a week off to recuperate.
“If you’re not here on Monday, you won’t have a job,” management answered.
Other Nations Treat Workers Better
No other nation with a modern economy allows such thoughtless cruelty. We say thoughtless because without time to recover properly an injury can worsen, result in a relapse with further damage and perhaps lifelong disability, turning a productive worker into a person dependent on taxpayers.
According to Leslie Kamstra of Airport Workers United, an arm of the 1.9 million member SEIU, some women workers at the airport wear adult diapers at work because they are denied restroom breaks in the cause of fattening the bottom line for the company owners.
“My four years of work for them didn’t mean a thing,” McClatchie said. “There should be respect for our hard work, but we’re under constant surveillance, and when I’m working by myself, no bathroom breaks are allowed. I could be charged with abandoning my post, but no boss can make me soil myself.”
McClatchie’s workweek was cut to four days for speaking out about the workers’ plight.
“They will probably retaliate against me for talking to you about this,” she told DCReport. A religious woman, she prays for her co-workers and even for the bosses who have cursed her.
Prayers as Health Insurance
McClathcie said she can’t afford to purchase medical benefits. “My health insurance is praying not to get sick,” she said.
McClatchie and Alexander are among the Houston airport workers still fighting to build a union and raise their meager pay even more. “ABM doesn’t seem to understand compassion, but with a union we would be one strong voice together and they would have to listen and treat us with some humanity,” said McClatchie.
The unionists are optimistic. Pushing politically and in contract negotiations, nearly 120,000 cabin and terminal cleaners, baggage handlers, security workers and skycaps across the country have won wage and other improvements in recent years. About 30,000 have won union rights with SEIU.
In the last two years, Chicago, Denver and Portland airport workers won paths to $15-an-hour minimum wages. SEIU Local32BJ made history when the New York/New Jersey Port Authority board voted unanimously for a $19 hourly minimum at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports.
Because of union political pressure New York City imposed minimum pay rates for Uber and Lyft drivers and California enacted a law to ban businesses from classifying employees like drivers, janitors, and nail salon workers as contractors
Caballero, an SEIU official in Texas, has organized demonstrations and political pressure for more responsible contractors and higher wages at the airport, which is controlled by the city.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, met with the union, including rank-and-file workers like Linda Alexander. “He listened carefully and committed publicly to work for a solution,” said Caballero, “but we aren’t just relying on the goodwill of whoever is in office. We are organizing to give a voice at the table to people who haven’t been heard. Only the union can do that.”
“Trump’s attacks have only made us stronger and more united as a growing wave of underpaid workers are joining the union across race and place to fight for $15 an hour and union rights to make the economy work for everyone, not just the few Trump favors at the top.” said Saenz.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2021 for 8,000 people at the city’s two airports. That’s a 65% increase for workers paid the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. About 8,000 baggage handlers, caterers, wheelchair attendants and others benefit.
The Service Employees International Union organized the Houston workers. Workers in Denver earlier won $15 an hour by 2021. A new ordinance proposed in Minneapolis would require $15 an hour by 2022.
The federal minimum wage is worth only $6.10 an hour when adjusted for inflation since 2009 when the $7.25 floor was established.
That a local government in Texas is raising wages for mostly minority workers shows how organized efforts can win improved pay despite how Trump has turned the Labor Department into “the Department of Management Rights,”as Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik put it.
Vicious Scheme
Workers at Houston’s Bush airport suffer in a low-wage no-rights, no-benefits hell with the financial fires fueled by a vicious contracting-out scheme. It’s a perfect example of how the Trump administration’s misclassification of millions of “gig economy” employees as independent contractors hurts workers.
United Airlines dominates at Houston Intercontinental and Hobby Airports. Linda Alexander, who guards an escalator, was demoted for trying to tell United about the horrendous working conditions. She wants travelers to know that United Airlines is their real employer because it “actually pays our salaries through ABM,” the Houston airports contracting firm.
A recent survey of contracted out skycaps, wheelchair attendants and cabin cleaners. found 43 percent mired at the rock-bottom federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and 96 percent making under $11 an hour.
That’s less than Texas United Way’s “survival budget” for a single adult. It’s far beneath the charity’s $24-an-hour survival standard for a family with two kids. And its less than half the minimum pay at airports in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and metropolitan New York.
“The contracting-out started earlier, but it has accelerated under Trump, the most anti-worker president we have ever had,” said Rocio Saenz, executive VP of the Service Employees International Union. “In the Trump years we have seen a vast shift of power to corporations and CEOs, who have rigged this system against the workers.”
“The contract workers get lower pay for longer hours as the airlines dodge their responsibility for the employees who make their businesses run and bring in their profits,” said Saenz. The CEOs of United, Delta and American airlines each took home more than $10 million last year.
Creating Poverty Jobs
“The majority of the contract workers are people of color and immigrants — the ones Trump scapegoats while he helps corporations and the rich,” Saenz said. He came from Mexico, worked as a low-paid janitor and became an SEIU organizer.
Contracting out labor and then classifying employees as contractors causes economic pain far beyond airports. About 57 million Americans do jobs like driving for Uber and Lyft, delivering groceries for Instacart and Doordash and cleaning houses for Task Rabbit and Handy.
Said Kyle Bragg, who heads SEIU Local 32BJ: “The airlines have turned well-paid union jobs over to contractors and made them into poverty jobs.”
The 2017 Trump/Radical Republican tax law also “gave business incentives for outsourcing, and the sub-contracting serves as a roadblock to organizing,” said Steven Kreisberg, research director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSCME represents airport workers in Miami, St. Louis and other cities.
Contracting out goes hand-in-hand with the parallel policy of making gig workers self-employed independent contractors instead of employees, as announced earlier this year by the federal Labor Department and the Trump-dominated National Labor Relations Board.
“Both help business intensify exploitation” of workers, Kreisberg said, “especially of immigrants and minorities, who have less opportunity elsewhere.”
Close to 97% of baggage handler and transportation attendant jobs are now outsourced nationwide, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Winning in “Right to Work” states
Instead of being employees with some protections and benefits, these workers are classified as independent contractors, which means they possess no right to minimum wages, overtime, workers’ comp, unions or even their jobs. As independent contractors they can be kicked out of work for no reason and may not be eligible for jobless benefits.
Organizing is hard in states like Texas which call themselves “right-to-work” states. That term really means the right to work for less because the law is strongly anti-collective action.
“Houston is one of the last major hubs where the workers are organizing to hold the airlines accountable.” explained Elsa Caballero, the SEIU Texas president and an immigrant from Honduras. “United [Airlines] took advantage of the opportunity to raise its profits by giving good union jobs to the lowest-bidding sub-contractors, and the workers are suffering.”
Teresa McClatchie’s job is in airport security. She makes sure no one slips through the gates at Bush Intercontinental Airport without a ticket. But she doesn’t work for United. Her employer is actually a sub-contractor, ABM.
“It sucks to the max!” said McClatchie. “On $9 an hour, I can barely feed myself and help my granddaughter a little with college.”
The lack of labor rights became evident when her neck was severely injured in a car crash and surgeons implanted a metal plate. On a Friday McClatchie asked on for a week off to recuperate.
“If you’re not here on Monday, you won’t have a job,” management answered.
Other Nations Treat Workers Better
No other nation with a modern economy allows such thoughtless cruelty. We say thoughtless because without time to recover properly an injury can worsen, result in a relapse with further damage and perhaps lifelong disability, turning a productive worker into a person dependent on taxpayers.
According to Leslie Kamstra of Airport Workers United, an arm of the 1.9 million member SEIU, some women workers at the airport wear adult diapers at work because they are denied restroom breaks in the cause of fattening the bottom line for the company owners.
“My four years of work for them didn’t mean a thing,” McClatchie said. “There should be respect for our hard work, but we’re under constant surveillance, and when I’m working by myself, no bathroom breaks are allowed. I could be charged with abandoning my post, but no boss can make me soil myself.”
McClatchie’s workweek was cut to four days for speaking out about the workers’ plight.
“They will probably retaliate against me for talking to you about this,” she told DCReport. A religious woman, she prays for her co-workers and even for the bosses who have cursed her.
Prayers as Health Insurance
McClathcie said she can’t afford to purchase medical benefits. “My health insurance is praying not to get sick,” she said.
McClatchie and Alexander are among the Houston airport workers still fighting to build a union and raise their meager pay even more. “ABM doesn’t seem to understand compassion, but with a union we would be one strong voice together and they would have to listen and treat us with some humanity,” said McClatchie.
The unionists are optimistic. Pushing politically and in contract negotiations, nearly 120,000 cabin and terminal cleaners, baggage handlers, security workers and skycaps across the country have won wage and other improvements in recent years. About 30,000 have won union rights with SEIU.
In the last two years, Chicago, Denver and Portland airport workers won paths to $15-an-hour minimum wages. SEIU Local32BJ made history when the New York/New Jersey Port Authority board voted unanimously for a $19 hourly minimum at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports.
Because of union political pressure New York City imposed minimum pay rates for Uber and Lyft drivers and California enacted a law to ban businesses from classifying employees like drivers, janitors, and nail salon workers as contractors
Caballero, an SEIU official in Texas, has organized demonstrations and political pressure for more responsible contractors and higher wages at the airport, which is controlled by the city.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, met with the union, including rank-and-file workers like Linda Alexander. “He listened carefully and committed publicly to work for a solution,” said Caballero, “but we aren’t just relying on the goodwill of whoever is in office. We are organizing to give a voice at the table to people who haven’t been heard. Only the union can do that.”
“Trump’s attacks have only made us stronger and more united as a growing wave of underpaid workers are joining the union across race and place to fight for $15 an hour and union rights to make the economy work for everyone, not just the few Trump favors at the top.” said Saenz.
'Work or go to jail': how LA courts force thousands to do unpaid labor
Exclusive: study finds county relies on laborers – largely people of color – threatened with debts and jail to do work that would otherwise be paid
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
the guardian
Wed 16 Oct 2019 03.00 EDT
Los Angeles courts force roughly 100,000 people to do weeks and even months of “community service” each year, exposing some of them to exploitative and hazardous working conditions without enjoying basic labor rights and protections, according to a first-of-its-kind study.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers analyzing court-mandated community service also found that government departments and not-for-profit organizations rely on workers threatened with debts and jail time to complete labor that would otherwise be paid – and that those impacted are overwhelmingly people of color.
The UCLA Labor Center findings released Wednesday and shared with the Guardian, show:
The new paper, the first in-depth study of these kinds of sentences in the US, presents court-ordered service as a type of legal coercion and labor exploitation, comparable to wage theft. While community service has traditionally been considered a progressive alternative to imprisonment, in LA county, which has the largest jail system in the world, it’s a punishment that exacerbates inequality and creates an unregulated labor force where workers are vulnerable to abuse, the authors said.
“There’s this invisible economy that is being produced out of the criminal justice system,” said Noah Zatz, a UCLA law professor. “Normally, it’s unconstitutional to threaten people with jail if they don’t work … This is a government-run system of extraction that is targeting communities of color and low-income communities.”
There’s been growing recognition of the unjust systems that send low-income people to jail because they can’t afford to pay municipal fines. Community service has received little scrutiny but operates in a similar manner by creating work mandates for people who can’t pay fees for traffic infractions or other offenses, Zatz said.
While defendants sentenced to labor are generally considered “volunteers” with few rights, they are also frequently assigned to positions alongside paid workers, sometimes manual labor such as graffiti removal, trash pickup and janitorial work. In LA, people most often work for places like CalTrans, the state transit agency, local parks and municipal departments, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and local community centers.
If they experience discrimination, sexual harassment, abuse, injuries or other forms of mistreatment on the job, they have few options, the researchers noted.
“Get to work or go to jail” is a looming threat, which means workers struggle to speak up, said Tia Koonse, the legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center. “It has a chilling effect on asking for accommodations, asking for a meal or bathroom break, asking for your rights.”
Spokespeople for LA county courts and a local agency involved in community service placement declined to comment.
Selena Lopez, 24, said she was forced to do service at a community center as punishment for a misdemeanor case in 2016. At the time, her father had been deported and her mother had died, and she was struggling with addiction, leading to minor run-ins with the law.
She said she was trying to get back on her feet and finish school, but that the community service system derailed her. Then 21 years old, Lopez had to clean the kitchen at a not-for-profit organization and was surrounded by men who sexually harassed her, she said. The cleaning fluids she was using also made her sick, she said.
“I’m in a situation that is not good for my health, that is not safe for me,” she said, recalling that when she complained to supervisors, they threatened to revoke her hours or say she didn’t complete her mandatory service. “I had to choose – do I get this done, or walk away and lose everything?”
Lopez had to complete more than 30 days of service, which forced her to put her education on hold.
“Do I want to be in school or do I want to be in jail? I had this haunting me everyday,” she said, adding, “Is community service doing good out here, or is it causing more harm?”
The UCLA report cited anecdotes of community service workers facing verbal and physical harassment harassment, with one saying “they treat people like trash”, and another reporting a male supervisor inappropriately touching women.
The authors recommend that the courts reduce the threats of jail and debt that force people into service jobs in the first place, noting that traffic stops and other policing of low-level offenses are plagued by racial profiling. They also support other sentencing alternatives that don’t rely on forced labor and argue that if punitive community service is used, it should lead to paid jobs and opportunities meant to help people.
Lopez, who is now studying communications and an advocate for the rights of incarcerated people, said people caught up in the system are “trying to make our wrongs right” and need support, not unpaid jobs. She said she hoped more people speak up: “I know I’m not the only one. There are so many people going through this.”
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers analyzing court-mandated community service also found that government departments and not-for-profit organizations rely on workers threatened with debts and jail time to complete labor that would otherwise be paid – and that those impacted are overwhelmingly people of color.
The UCLA Labor Center findings released Wednesday and shared with the Guardian, show:
- People in LA county are ordered to perform an estimated total of 8m hours of unpaid work over a year, the equivalent of 4,900 paid jobs. Government agencies receive an estimated 3m hours of free labor, replacing 1,800 jobs.
- People struggle to complete their work by imposed deadlines, and in criminal court, nearly one in five people sentenced to community service ultimately face a probation violation or arrest warrant as a result.
- While community service is supposed to be an alternative to debt, most criminal defendants are still forced to make payments averaging $323. People also often have to “pay to work for free” through initial fees to receive their community service referrals, which can be more than $100.
- In traffic court, which sentences people to community service for minor infractions, 89% of defendants are people of color.
The new paper, the first in-depth study of these kinds of sentences in the US, presents court-ordered service as a type of legal coercion and labor exploitation, comparable to wage theft. While community service has traditionally been considered a progressive alternative to imprisonment, in LA county, which has the largest jail system in the world, it’s a punishment that exacerbates inequality and creates an unregulated labor force where workers are vulnerable to abuse, the authors said.
“There’s this invisible economy that is being produced out of the criminal justice system,” said Noah Zatz, a UCLA law professor. “Normally, it’s unconstitutional to threaten people with jail if they don’t work … This is a government-run system of extraction that is targeting communities of color and low-income communities.”
There’s been growing recognition of the unjust systems that send low-income people to jail because they can’t afford to pay municipal fines. Community service has received little scrutiny but operates in a similar manner by creating work mandates for people who can’t pay fees for traffic infractions or other offenses, Zatz said.
While defendants sentenced to labor are generally considered “volunteers” with few rights, they are also frequently assigned to positions alongside paid workers, sometimes manual labor such as graffiti removal, trash pickup and janitorial work. In LA, people most often work for places like CalTrans, the state transit agency, local parks and municipal departments, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and local community centers.
If they experience discrimination, sexual harassment, abuse, injuries or other forms of mistreatment on the job, they have few options, the researchers noted.
“Get to work or go to jail” is a looming threat, which means workers struggle to speak up, said Tia Koonse, the legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center. “It has a chilling effect on asking for accommodations, asking for a meal or bathroom break, asking for your rights.”
Spokespeople for LA county courts and a local agency involved in community service placement declined to comment.
Selena Lopez, 24, said she was forced to do service at a community center as punishment for a misdemeanor case in 2016. At the time, her father had been deported and her mother had died, and she was struggling with addiction, leading to minor run-ins with the law.
She said she was trying to get back on her feet and finish school, but that the community service system derailed her. Then 21 years old, Lopez had to clean the kitchen at a not-for-profit organization and was surrounded by men who sexually harassed her, she said. The cleaning fluids she was using also made her sick, she said.
“I’m in a situation that is not good for my health, that is not safe for me,” she said, recalling that when she complained to supervisors, they threatened to revoke her hours or say she didn’t complete her mandatory service. “I had to choose – do I get this done, or walk away and lose everything?”
Lopez had to complete more than 30 days of service, which forced her to put her education on hold.
“Do I want to be in school or do I want to be in jail? I had this haunting me everyday,” she said, adding, “Is community service doing good out here, or is it causing more harm?”
The UCLA report cited anecdotes of community service workers facing verbal and physical harassment harassment, with one saying “they treat people like trash”, and another reporting a male supervisor inappropriately touching women.
The authors recommend that the courts reduce the threats of jail and debt that force people into service jobs in the first place, noting that traffic stops and other policing of low-level offenses are plagued by racial profiling. They also support other sentencing alternatives that don’t rely on forced labor and argue that if punitive community service is used, it should lead to paid jobs and opportunities meant to help people.
Lopez, who is now studying communications and an advocate for the rights of incarcerated people, said people caught up in the system are “trying to make our wrongs right” and need support, not unpaid jobs. She said she hoped more people speak up: “I know I’m not the only one. There are so many people going through this.”
op - ed: Employers Are Misusing State Department Visa Program to Abuse Workers
BY Jeremy McLean, Truthout
PUBLISHED October 10, 2019
After meeting Walter Schumacher at a job fair in Jamaica, Dorret Francis scraped together funds to enroll in the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, the largest of the U.S. State Department’s cultural exchange programs providing temporary work authorization to J-1 visa holders. Schumacher, the president of APEX USA, Inc., a J-1 visa sponsor agency, extended a job offer to Francis, who arrived in the United States with the hope that a summer spent working in the hospitality industry would help advance her collegiate studies at home, lifting her out of poverty.
Upon arrival, however, Francis and other workers recruited under the program alleged that the Schumacher family — who also owned and operated the two hotels, a restaurant and waterpark where they worked — quickly defaulted on their promises, paying the workers less over fewer hours and charging unreasonable rent to live in overcrowded housing. They were also threatened with financial and physical repercussions should they try to quit their jobs, according to their federal labor trafficking lawsuit filed last year in Oklahoma.
These experiences are consistent with the many abuses revealed in an analysis of government data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the International Labor Recruitment Working Group. The report found employers increasingly use the J-1 program as a means to sidestep what few labor protections exist for temporary foreign workers.
In 2015 — the only year for which the Working Group was able to obtain data — nearly 16,000 companies, including large corporations like McDonald’s, Disney and Food Lion, hired nearly 95,000 young migrant workers through the J-1 program. Top destinations for the program include New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida and Maryland, where many J-1 workers fill positions in the hospitality, entertainment, arts and retail sectors.
While seasonal staffing and cultural exchange are not incompatible, too many employers compromise the cultural experience in order to increase their bottom line. Disney hired 2,355 J-1 workers in 2015, saving the company an estimated $15 million in labor costs. McDonald’s franchises hired J-1 workers across 167 different zip codes. In Pennsylvania, McDonald’s franchises were forced to pay out $205,977 in backpay to 291 fast food workers whose complaints included wage theft and working 25-hour shifts.
The dual tension of workers’ fear of reporting abuse combined with recruiters’ economic interest to suppress complaints makes it hard to determine the depth of illegality within the program. However, based on complaints reported to our organization, Justice in Motion, employers frequently bait and switch young workers who they know must work for them to maintain their visa, and may have debts back home after paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees.
While working as an attorney in an anti-trafficking program a few years ago, I received a referral through the National Human Trafficking Hotline from a J-1 worker on Long Island, New York. He was one of a couple of dozen young workers from Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. to work in a restaurant where the workers were expected to work full-time and make enough money to pay their bills and program fees while experiencing the United States. They were each expected to pay several hundred dollars a month in rent for one of 20-plus bunk beds stacked in a filthy basement. They weren’t paid the wages promised to them or scheduled for enough hours to even cover their living costs, let alone any debt they incurred to acquire the job.
Poor treatment can quickly transform into labor trafficking, a form of human trafficking defined by forced labor or coercion. According to Polaris, a nonprofit organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67 J-1 visa holders self-reported as victims of labor trafficking between 2015 and 2017.
To be sure, not all employers are abusing the program. But the State Department’s inadequate oversight — and an utter lack of transparency — exposes young workers from around the world to unnecessary risk.
In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members introduced the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act to standardize how agencies publicly report data on temporary foreign worker programs. The bill expands access to data the government already collects on temporary foreign worker programs, including businesses who use the program, working conditions, terms and conditions of employment, specific jobs and worksite locations.
If passed, expanded public reporting would aid workers’ rights organizations in identifying abusive schemes, preventing human trafficking and defending basic labor protections for all workers.
While the State Department created the J-1 program as a cultural exchange, employers increasingly use it as a temporary foreign worker program — and it should be regulated as one. With another season for summer work now closed, the time is ripe to hold a long-overdue hearing on this program with outsized impacts for workers’ rights.
Upon arrival, however, Francis and other workers recruited under the program alleged that the Schumacher family — who also owned and operated the two hotels, a restaurant and waterpark where they worked — quickly defaulted on their promises, paying the workers less over fewer hours and charging unreasonable rent to live in overcrowded housing. They were also threatened with financial and physical repercussions should they try to quit their jobs, according to their federal labor trafficking lawsuit filed last year in Oklahoma.
These experiences are consistent with the many abuses revealed in an analysis of government data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the International Labor Recruitment Working Group. The report found employers increasingly use the J-1 program as a means to sidestep what few labor protections exist for temporary foreign workers.
In 2015 — the only year for which the Working Group was able to obtain data — nearly 16,000 companies, including large corporations like McDonald’s, Disney and Food Lion, hired nearly 95,000 young migrant workers through the J-1 program. Top destinations for the program include New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida and Maryland, where many J-1 workers fill positions in the hospitality, entertainment, arts and retail sectors.
While seasonal staffing and cultural exchange are not incompatible, too many employers compromise the cultural experience in order to increase their bottom line. Disney hired 2,355 J-1 workers in 2015, saving the company an estimated $15 million in labor costs. McDonald’s franchises hired J-1 workers across 167 different zip codes. In Pennsylvania, McDonald’s franchises were forced to pay out $205,977 in backpay to 291 fast food workers whose complaints included wage theft and working 25-hour shifts.
The dual tension of workers’ fear of reporting abuse combined with recruiters’ economic interest to suppress complaints makes it hard to determine the depth of illegality within the program. However, based on complaints reported to our organization, Justice in Motion, employers frequently bait and switch young workers who they know must work for them to maintain their visa, and may have debts back home after paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees.
While working as an attorney in an anti-trafficking program a few years ago, I received a referral through the National Human Trafficking Hotline from a J-1 worker on Long Island, New York. He was one of a couple of dozen young workers from Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. to work in a restaurant where the workers were expected to work full-time and make enough money to pay their bills and program fees while experiencing the United States. They were each expected to pay several hundred dollars a month in rent for one of 20-plus bunk beds stacked in a filthy basement. They weren’t paid the wages promised to them or scheduled for enough hours to even cover their living costs, let alone any debt they incurred to acquire the job.
Poor treatment can quickly transform into labor trafficking, a form of human trafficking defined by forced labor or coercion. According to Polaris, a nonprofit organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67 J-1 visa holders self-reported as victims of labor trafficking between 2015 and 2017.
To be sure, not all employers are abusing the program. But the State Department’s inadequate oversight — and an utter lack of transparency — exposes young workers from around the world to unnecessary risk.
In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members introduced the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act to standardize how agencies publicly report data on temporary foreign worker programs. The bill expands access to data the government already collects on temporary foreign worker programs, including businesses who use the program, working conditions, terms and conditions of employment, specific jobs and worksite locations.
If passed, expanded public reporting would aid workers’ rights organizations in identifying abusive schemes, preventing human trafficking and defending basic labor protections for all workers.
While the State Department created the J-1 program as a cultural exchange, employers increasingly use it as a temporary foreign worker program — and it should be regulated as one. With another season for summer work now closed, the time is ripe to hold a long-overdue hearing on this program with outsized impacts for workers’ rights.
‘We’re organizing to improve lives’: New York fast food workers push to unionize
Manhattan-based local union that works with Fight for $15 has launched effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers
Steven Greenhouse in New York
the guardian
Mon 30 Sep 2019 02.01 EDT
The Fight for $15 low wage movement has long had two goals: winning a $15 an hour wage for low-paid workers and a union for fast food workers. On wages it has been a major success – seven states have enacted minimum wage laws scheduled to reach $15 – but so far it has made little progress unionizing fast food workers. That could soon change.
A Manhattan-based union local that works closely with the Fight for $15 has launched an effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers, getting workers at more than 50 restaurants to sign pro-union cards. “We’re running a campaign for workers in an industry that has been abusing its workers,” said Kyle Bragg, president of the local carrying out the unionization drive, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. “These workers want a union. We’re organizing in order to lift workers and improve their lives.”
Until now, the Fight for $15 – which was underwritten by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – hadn’t begun a formal unionization effort at fast food restaurants. When Fight for $15 began in late 2012, its original strategy was to exert so much pressure on McDonald’s that the fast food giant would agree to sit down and discuss wages and other matters and perhaps promise not to resist unionization efforts. But McDonald’s has refused to talk with the Fight for $15’s leaders.
With its latest effort, Local 32BJ, a powerful local union with 175,000 members, hopes to make clear to Chipotle and McDonald’s that it is intent on unionizing their restaurants in New York, and they shouldn’t oppose that effort. Union officials say a majority of the hundreds of fast food workers organizers have approached have signed cards supporting a union.
Jeremy Espinal, who works at a Chipotle in Greenwich Village, said he supports unionization because managers often treat workers with little respect. “The managers try to dehumanize you and try to beat you down mentally as much as they can so they can overwork you and make you feel you’re never doing enough,” said Espinal, a junior at Hunter College.
Espinal said the work includes lots of lifting and is far harder than he had anticipated. “I tore my Achilles heel at Chipotle,” he said. “I cut off part of my thumb. I have burn marks on my arm.” He also complained that after managers learned he was an outspoken union supporter, his hours were cut from 25 a week to 11.
Princess Wright backs unionization at her McDonald’s in downtown Brooklyn. She said the managers “make it seem like they’re for you, but there’s a lot of wage theft and playing around with our hours. If we start at 11, they’ll say we started at 11.15. Sometimes you work 48 hours a week, and they pay you for only 40.” She complained that managers want employees to be available to work any time of the week, and that they sometimes scheduled her to work certain hours even though she had told managers that those hours conflicted with her college classes.
Workers at various Chipotles and McDonald’s said managers sometimes failed to comply with New York City’s new Fair Workweek Law, which requires giving fast food workers two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedule and paying them premiums when their hours are changed with little notice or they’re called in at the last minute.
Helped by Local 32BJ, more than 30 current or former Chipotle workers filed complaints with the city about not receiving premium pay for schedule changes, prompting the city’s office of consumer and workplace protections to file a lawsuit against Chipotle, seeking more than $1m in restitution for violating its Fair Workweek Law.
With Chipotle having adopted the motto “food with integrity”, Bragg said, “Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash. We want to help that company achieve what they want to be.”
Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief reputation officer, said: “Chipotle has been working cooperatively with the city to ensure we have systems and processes in place to comply with” the Fair Workweek Law. She added that the company’s employees “know that Chipotle is committed to complying with all laws, rules and regulations”.
One obstacle to unionizing fast food restaurants is that many are run by franchisees, and it could be labor-intensive and expensive to seek to unionize and secure union contracts from franchisees that have just a few restaurants. Then even if the Fight for $15 got a majority of workers at dozens of restaurants to vote to unionize, the fast food companies and their franchisees might drag their feet for years before agreeing to a first contract.
The more than 40 Chipotle restaurants in New York where Local 32BJ has begun organizing efforts are all owned and run by the parent company. That makes it easier to pressure an image-conscious parent company and secure union contracts covering more restaurants.
“We haven’t assigned any one strategy to get a union,” Bragg said. “The goal is to get the employer to the table and bargain in good faith.”
Chipotle officials declined to address the unionization push, but said Chipotle gives workers “industry-leading benefits such as tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year, competitive health benefits and quarterly bonuses for all employees”.
The McDonald’s Corporation said: “Together with our independent franchisees, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that supports crew members and their ambitions.” McDonald’s added that it “recognizes the rights under the law of individual employees to choose to join – or choose not to join – labor organizations”.
McDonald’s said it has begun an ambitious program to train more than 2,000 franchisees and 850,000 employees to make sure workers are treated with dignity and to combat bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Jahaira Garcia, a union supporter who works at a Chipotle on Second Avenue in Manhattan, said sexual harassment was a problem at her restaurant. “The men are too touchy,” she said. Garcia, a senior at City College, said she has talked to many workers “my age, 17, 18, 19, 20” and gotten them interested in the union, and they “started to talk to an older group in their 40s. The younger group has motivated the older people to join.”
“One reason I want a union,” Garcia continued, “is a lot of people don’t have papers, and they’re really scared to talk about not being paid fairly and sexual harassment and not getting enough hours and being treated badly.”
Espinal agreed that unionization can be a powerful tool for workers who feel powerless. “A majority of people who work at Chipotle” in New York “are minorities or immigrants or children of immigrants”, he said. “They are groups that never felt empowered. The most difficult part is to change the mentality that these people have. This effort is about educating them and letting them see this is stuff that’s been done before and this is something we have to do with each other to help each other because the company isn’t looking out for us.”
A Manhattan-based union local that works closely with the Fight for $15 has launched an effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers, getting workers at more than 50 restaurants to sign pro-union cards. “We’re running a campaign for workers in an industry that has been abusing its workers,” said Kyle Bragg, president of the local carrying out the unionization drive, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. “These workers want a union. We’re organizing in order to lift workers and improve their lives.”
Until now, the Fight for $15 – which was underwritten by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – hadn’t begun a formal unionization effort at fast food restaurants. When Fight for $15 began in late 2012, its original strategy was to exert so much pressure on McDonald’s that the fast food giant would agree to sit down and discuss wages and other matters and perhaps promise not to resist unionization efforts. But McDonald’s has refused to talk with the Fight for $15’s leaders.
With its latest effort, Local 32BJ, a powerful local union with 175,000 members, hopes to make clear to Chipotle and McDonald’s that it is intent on unionizing their restaurants in New York, and they shouldn’t oppose that effort. Union officials say a majority of the hundreds of fast food workers organizers have approached have signed cards supporting a union.
Jeremy Espinal, who works at a Chipotle in Greenwich Village, said he supports unionization because managers often treat workers with little respect. “The managers try to dehumanize you and try to beat you down mentally as much as they can so they can overwork you and make you feel you’re never doing enough,” said Espinal, a junior at Hunter College.
Espinal said the work includes lots of lifting and is far harder than he had anticipated. “I tore my Achilles heel at Chipotle,” he said. “I cut off part of my thumb. I have burn marks on my arm.” He also complained that after managers learned he was an outspoken union supporter, his hours were cut from 25 a week to 11.
Princess Wright backs unionization at her McDonald’s in downtown Brooklyn. She said the managers “make it seem like they’re for you, but there’s a lot of wage theft and playing around with our hours. If we start at 11, they’ll say we started at 11.15. Sometimes you work 48 hours a week, and they pay you for only 40.” She complained that managers want employees to be available to work any time of the week, and that they sometimes scheduled her to work certain hours even though she had told managers that those hours conflicted with her college classes.
Workers at various Chipotles and McDonald’s said managers sometimes failed to comply with New York City’s new Fair Workweek Law, which requires giving fast food workers two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedule and paying them premiums when their hours are changed with little notice or they’re called in at the last minute.
Helped by Local 32BJ, more than 30 current or former Chipotle workers filed complaints with the city about not receiving premium pay for schedule changes, prompting the city’s office of consumer and workplace protections to file a lawsuit against Chipotle, seeking more than $1m in restitution for violating its Fair Workweek Law.
With Chipotle having adopted the motto “food with integrity”, Bragg said, “Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash. We want to help that company achieve what they want to be.”
Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief reputation officer, said: “Chipotle has been working cooperatively with the city to ensure we have systems and processes in place to comply with” the Fair Workweek Law. She added that the company’s employees “know that Chipotle is committed to complying with all laws, rules and regulations”.
One obstacle to unionizing fast food restaurants is that many are run by franchisees, and it could be labor-intensive and expensive to seek to unionize and secure union contracts from franchisees that have just a few restaurants. Then even if the Fight for $15 got a majority of workers at dozens of restaurants to vote to unionize, the fast food companies and their franchisees might drag their feet for years before agreeing to a first contract.
The more than 40 Chipotle restaurants in New York where Local 32BJ has begun organizing efforts are all owned and run by the parent company. That makes it easier to pressure an image-conscious parent company and secure union contracts covering more restaurants.
“We haven’t assigned any one strategy to get a union,” Bragg said. “The goal is to get the employer to the table and bargain in good faith.”
Chipotle officials declined to address the unionization push, but said Chipotle gives workers “industry-leading benefits such as tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year, competitive health benefits and quarterly bonuses for all employees”.
The McDonald’s Corporation said: “Together with our independent franchisees, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that supports crew members and their ambitions.” McDonald’s added that it “recognizes the rights under the law of individual employees to choose to join – or choose not to join – labor organizations”.
McDonald’s said it has begun an ambitious program to train more than 2,000 franchisees and 850,000 employees to make sure workers are treated with dignity and to combat bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Jahaira Garcia, a union supporter who works at a Chipotle on Second Avenue in Manhattan, said sexual harassment was a problem at her restaurant. “The men are too touchy,” she said. Garcia, a senior at City College, said she has talked to many workers “my age, 17, 18, 19, 20” and gotten them interested in the union, and they “started to talk to an older group in their 40s. The younger group has motivated the older people to join.”
“One reason I want a union,” Garcia continued, “is a lot of people don’t have papers, and they’re really scared to talk about not being paid fairly and sexual harassment and not getting enough hours and being treated badly.”
Espinal agreed that unionization can be a powerful tool for workers who feel powerless. “A majority of people who work at Chipotle” in New York “are minorities or immigrants or children of immigrants”, he said. “They are groups that never felt empowered. The most difficult part is to change the mentality that these people have. This effort is about educating them and letting them see this is stuff that’s been done before and this is something we have to do with each other to help each other because the company isn’t looking out for us.”
CIRCA 1870: A CARTOON SATIRISING THE SWEATSHOPS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. ORIGINAL ARTIST: BY JOHN LEECH FROM PUNCH MAGAZINE. (PHOTO BY RISCHGITZ/GETTY IMAGES)
Graduate Workers Are Going to Fight Like Hell to Stop the Trump NLRB’s New Rule
BY JEFF SCHUHRKE - in these times
WEDNESDAY, SEP 25, 2019, 4:43 PM
At universities across the country, graduate student workers perform essential labor. We teach classes, grade exams and assignments, tutor and mentor undergraduates, maintain labs, and perform clerical duties. Some 66,000 graduate employees at over 30 universities in the United States are currently represented by unions and protected through collective bargaining agreements, because public-sector labor laws in many states recognize the obvious—we are workers.
In August 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a landmark decision recognizing that graduate employees at private universities—who do the same labor as their counterparts at public universities—are also workers, and therefore also have collective bargaining rights. Since then, private universities have seen an explosion of graduate worker organizing. At least nine now have recognized grad unions, and five of those already have union contracts in place.
But now President Trump is trying to permanently reverse the 2016 decision. His anti-union appointees who control the National Labor Relations Board declared on September 20 that graduate workers at private institutions are not workers at all, but only “students,” and therefore have no right to union representation or collective bargaining. Traditionally, the NLRB settles questions of labor law through case-by-case decisions, but this time it’s exercising its rarely used rulemaking authority to set a definitive policy.
Before the rule can be implemented, there is a 60-day public comment period, which opened on September 23. The unions representing grad workers at private universities—including AFT, SEIU, UAW and UNITE HERE—are teaming up by calling on all graduate workers and allies to submit a public comment to the NLRB expressing opposition to the proposed rule. Their goal is to get 30,000 comments. With enough public pressure, the unions hope to stop—or at least delay—the new rule.
“We’re looking at having flyers, petitions, delegations, rallies, and of course commenting guidelines, to engage as many folks as possible,” says Yiran Zhang a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
Zhang is co-chair of the SEIU-affiliated Loyola Graduate Workers' Union, which the university has refused to recognize or bargain with despite a majority of graduate employees voting to unionize in February 2017. The administration has also faced multiple protests, including a civil disobedience action and one-day walkout this past spring.
“This is a crossroads for Loyola,” Zhang explains. “They must either publicly show they stand on the side of workers who are increasingly coming under attack by bargaining with us, or they will show once again that they eschew their professed social justice values to simply hide behind Trump’s anti-labor policies.”
Nationally, graduate employees have taken on increasingly heavy teaching workloads in recent years while making poverty wages and receiving few benefits. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of graduate workers employed by universities increased by 16.7 percent, while the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty rose by only 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, executive compensation at private universities has sharply increased, with the presidents of 61 private universities now making over $1 million every year.
The argument that graduate employees are not “real” workers is as old as it is absurd. It’s not an invention of Trump’s NLRB, but of university administrators who are determined to profit off of the exploited labor of their grad workers, and don’t want unions to get in the way.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of when the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became the first recognized graduate worker union in the country. Since then, graduate workers at dozens of other public institutions—where labor relations are governed by state laws instead of the NLRB—have won union recognition.
Almost every time, administrators fought tooth and nail to prevent unionization by trotting out the same line that grad workers are more “students” than “employees.” That’s because, once they’re required to negotiate with grad unions, administrators are eventually forced to guarantee higher wages, better healthcare, tuition and fee waivers, grievance procedures, protections against discrimination and other rights through union contracts.
After half a century, it should be obvious that the “students not workers” argument is nothing more than anti-union propaganda. In reality, there’s no question that graduate workers are indeed workers who can and should have collective bargaining rights.
While universities claim to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, administrators hate unions so much they are now allying themselves with the most anti-intellectual and mendacious president in history. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the same institutions that often cover up campus sexual assault and readily roll out the welcome mat for white supremacists have found common cause with the racist sexual predator who occupies the White House.
For all the talk from universities of fostering collegial dialogue and debate, administrators are afraid to sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with their own workers. For all the talk of promoting critical thinking, they cling to lazy union-busting talking points. For all the talk of commitment to diversity and democracy, they do everything possible to prevent their graduate student workers from having an independent voice.
If campus administrators and Trump’s NLRB insist that graduate workers at private institutions really aren’t workers, then perhaps they should all decide to collectively stop working—and see just how long the universities can function without their labor.
In August 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a landmark decision recognizing that graduate employees at private universities—who do the same labor as their counterparts at public universities—are also workers, and therefore also have collective bargaining rights. Since then, private universities have seen an explosion of graduate worker organizing. At least nine now have recognized grad unions, and five of those already have union contracts in place.
But now President Trump is trying to permanently reverse the 2016 decision. His anti-union appointees who control the National Labor Relations Board declared on September 20 that graduate workers at private institutions are not workers at all, but only “students,” and therefore have no right to union representation or collective bargaining. Traditionally, the NLRB settles questions of labor law through case-by-case decisions, but this time it’s exercising its rarely used rulemaking authority to set a definitive policy.
Before the rule can be implemented, there is a 60-day public comment period, which opened on September 23. The unions representing grad workers at private universities—including AFT, SEIU, UAW and UNITE HERE—are teaming up by calling on all graduate workers and allies to submit a public comment to the NLRB expressing opposition to the proposed rule. Their goal is to get 30,000 comments. With enough public pressure, the unions hope to stop—or at least delay—the new rule.
“We’re looking at having flyers, petitions, delegations, rallies, and of course commenting guidelines, to engage as many folks as possible,” says Yiran Zhang a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
Zhang is co-chair of the SEIU-affiliated Loyola Graduate Workers' Union, which the university has refused to recognize or bargain with despite a majority of graduate employees voting to unionize in February 2017. The administration has also faced multiple protests, including a civil disobedience action and one-day walkout this past spring.
“This is a crossroads for Loyola,” Zhang explains. “They must either publicly show they stand on the side of workers who are increasingly coming under attack by bargaining with us, or they will show once again that they eschew their professed social justice values to simply hide behind Trump’s anti-labor policies.”
Nationally, graduate employees have taken on increasingly heavy teaching workloads in recent years while making poverty wages and receiving few benefits. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of graduate workers employed by universities increased by 16.7 percent, while the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty rose by only 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, executive compensation at private universities has sharply increased, with the presidents of 61 private universities now making over $1 million every year.
The argument that graduate employees are not “real” workers is as old as it is absurd. It’s not an invention of Trump’s NLRB, but of university administrators who are determined to profit off of the exploited labor of their grad workers, and don’t want unions to get in the way.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of when the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became the first recognized graduate worker union in the country. Since then, graduate workers at dozens of other public institutions—where labor relations are governed by state laws instead of the NLRB—have won union recognition.
Almost every time, administrators fought tooth and nail to prevent unionization by trotting out the same line that grad workers are more “students” than “employees.” That’s because, once they’re required to negotiate with grad unions, administrators are eventually forced to guarantee higher wages, better healthcare, tuition and fee waivers, grievance procedures, protections against discrimination and other rights through union contracts.
After half a century, it should be obvious that the “students not workers” argument is nothing more than anti-union propaganda. In reality, there’s no question that graduate workers are indeed workers who can and should have collective bargaining rights.
While universities claim to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, administrators hate unions so much they are now allying themselves with the most anti-intellectual and mendacious president in history. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the same institutions that often cover up campus sexual assault and readily roll out the welcome mat for white supremacists have found common cause with the racist sexual predator who occupies the White House.
For all the talk from universities of fostering collegial dialogue and debate, administrators are afraid to sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with their own workers. For all the talk of promoting critical thinking, they cling to lazy union-busting talking points. For all the talk of commitment to diversity and democracy, they do everything possible to prevent their graduate student workers from having an independent voice.
If campus administrators and Trump’s NLRB insist that graduate workers at private institutions really aren’t workers, then perhaps they should all decide to collectively stop working—and see just how long the universities can function without their labor.
ENDING GM’S TWO-TIERED LABOR SYSTEM IS UAW MEMBERS’ TOP DEMAND — AND PART OF A BIGGER FIGHT AGAINST WORKER MISCLASSIFICATION
Rachel M. Cohen - the intercept
September 26 2019, 4:00 a.m.
SINCE LAST WEEK, nearly 50,000 GM workers have been on strike, in part against a two-tiered system enforced by the auto giant that leaves “temporary” workers doing the same jobs as permanent staff for substantially less pay and fewer benefits.
The striking workers, represented by the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, are demanding a defined path to “permanent seniority” for GM’s temporary workers — who make up about 7 percent of GM’s U.S. workforce. GM has also entrenched inequality in its ranks by contracting out some jobs, like custodial work, that were traditionally staff roles.
“I work right across from a temporary employee who’s been there for two and a half years,” Chaz Akers, a Michigan-based autoworker who has worked at GM for 3 1/2 years told Reuters. “I install the passenger side headlight. He installs the driver side headlight. I make more money than he does. I have better health insurance than he does. It ain’t fair. It ain’t right. If you’re going to pay people to do a job, pay them all the same.”
The workers’ demands are part of a broader push against worker misclassification, a tactic used by employers to lessen their labor costs. The fight has been playing out most aggressively in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping bill last week to transform the lives of workers in his state. The law — known as AB5 — sets strict limits on who can be classified as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, and is the most serious legislative threat to the gig economy in years. The law also provides new momentum for advocates considering similar reforms in other states.
Coming to an agreement on temporary workers has become the most difficult issue in the GM-UAW negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both sides are reportedly holding strong to their positions. The Free Press also reported that resolving questions around temp workers was union members’ top request when UAW leadership surveyed them last year.
Protests of temporary workers by the UAW is “not a brand-new development” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “What Unions No Longer Do.” “But it does seem really foregrounded now in the union’s complaints, and that seems new. These classification disputes, from my perspective, seem to be growing and tracks on to the same battles over classification in California with Uber and Lyft.”
GM, like Uber and Lyft, is pushing back against the workers’ demands by claiming that such “flexible” workers are necessary for its business model. Right now, GM is trying to convince permanent, full-time workers to accept raises and more job security in exchange for freedoms around temps.
For example, GM has reportedly proposed a boost to the company’s profit-sharing formula, financial gains that would only go to permanent, full-time employees. GM workers typically earn about $1,000 for every billion in GM’s North American pretax profits. In 2018, eligible employees earned payments up to $10,750.
TEMPORARY WORKERS, who often do the same work as traditional employees, are paid less, entitled to fewer benefits, and are easier to get rid of. “That’s a trend that we’re seeing all over the economy as companies try to shed conventional, full-time employees in favor of independent contractors, subcontracted workers, or franchised employees,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “The difference with the auto manufacturers is that their temporary workers are covered by the UAW and its contracts, unlike in most other sectors of the economy.”
In 2007, under pressure from the financial crisis, UAW leaders agreed to a two-tiered contract, in which new GM hires would be paid at lower rates than workers hired before. To get out of this arrangement, widely deemed unfair, the union negotiated a new contract in 2015, in which new hires would still have lower starting salaries, at $15 an hour, but could “grow into” the full UAW hourly wage of roughly $30 an hour after eight years. Union leaders — citing GM’s clear improved financial position with billions of dollars in profit — now want to shorten that process, under the basic principle of equal pay for equal work. GM and the UAW did not return requests for comment.
GM’s current arrangement with temporary workers is one of several ways that employers have managed to fissure their workplaces over the last few decades, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California Santa Barbara. Another example is by spinning off portions of their companies, like in the 1990s, when GM spun off its parts factory, Delphi. “What that meant was all of a sudden, Delphi was competing with lots of other non-union companies and went bankrupt [in 2005] and so then, of course, in the bankruptcy proceedings, you manage to transition to lower wages,” Lichtenstein said. Another way is by contracting out custodial staff who used to be company employees.
“In the auto industry, janitors used to be employed by the auto companies and got the same wages as autoworkers,” he said. “In fact, autoworkers would often become janitors as they got older because it was easier labor and still good pay,” said Lichtenstein. “Eventually, all the companies said, ‘OK, janitorial work is not part of our core business — we’ll just outsource it.’”
In general, there has been an upward trend in companies like GM moving toward temporary workers. In 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of all temp workers in the U.S. were in clerical positions, compared with 28 percent of temp workers in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. But by 2000, just a decade later, 47 percent of all U.S. temp workers would be working in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
The UAW, for its part, has a record dating back to the early 1980s of negotiating concessions around labor costs if economic conditions sour, with the understanding that if the company’s fortunes improve, those concessions would be phased back out, Lichtenstein said.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler all say that they may need to increase their use of temporary workers in the future, pointing to the fact that they’re competing with non-union foreign manufacturers that have more temporary workers and lower labor costs. In June, the Los Angeles Times reported that workers at rival auto plants run by Toyota, Nissan, and Honda make $50 an hour in wages and benefits, while GM workers cost $63 an hour. Temporary workers make up about 20 percent of the Japanese automakers’ plants.
A former GM temp worker, now in a skilled trades apprentice program, told Michigan’s public radio station last week that being a temp was one of the worst times of her life. “They have a way of pitting you against a permanent employee where you feel like, if you go the extra mile, if you work a little bit more than your union brother or sister, that will give you an opportunity to eventually get hired in full time and that’s not the case,” she told the radio station.
Lichtenstein believes it’s clear that these two-tiered systems are weakening labor organizations. “And it’s not just a humanism or good-feeling thing,” he said. “It’s also a recognition that this is going to divide and then destroy the union.”
The striking workers, represented by the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, are demanding a defined path to “permanent seniority” for GM’s temporary workers — who make up about 7 percent of GM’s U.S. workforce. GM has also entrenched inequality in its ranks by contracting out some jobs, like custodial work, that were traditionally staff roles.
“I work right across from a temporary employee who’s been there for two and a half years,” Chaz Akers, a Michigan-based autoworker who has worked at GM for 3 1/2 years told Reuters. “I install the passenger side headlight. He installs the driver side headlight. I make more money than he does. I have better health insurance than he does. It ain’t fair. It ain’t right. If you’re going to pay people to do a job, pay them all the same.”
The workers’ demands are part of a broader push against worker misclassification, a tactic used by employers to lessen their labor costs. The fight has been playing out most aggressively in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping bill last week to transform the lives of workers in his state. The law — known as AB5 — sets strict limits on who can be classified as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, and is the most serious legislative threat to the gig economy in years. The law also provides new momentum for advocates considering similar reforms in other states.
Coming to an agreement on temporary workers has become the most difficult issue in the GM-UAW negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both sides are reportedly holding strong to their positions. The Free Press also reported that resolving questions around temp workers was union members’ top request when UAW leadership surveyed them last year.
Protests of temporary workers by the UAW is “not a brand-new development” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “What Unions No Longer Do.” “But it does seem really foregrounded now in the union’s complaints, and that seems new. These classification disputes, from my perspective, seem to be growing and tracks on to the same battles over classification in California with Uber and Lyft.”
GM, like Uber and Lyft, is pushing back against the workers’ demands by claiming that such “flexible” workers are necessary for its business model. Right now, GM is trying to convince permanent, full-time workers to accept raises and more job security in exchange for freedoms around temps.
For example, GM has reportedly proposed a boost to the company’s profit-sharing formula, financial gains that would only go to permanent, full-time employees. GM workers typically earn about $1,000 for every billion in GM’s North American pretax profits. In 2018, eligible employees earned payments up to $10,750.
TEMPORARY WORKERS, who often do the same work as traditional employees, are paid less, entitled to fewer benefits, and are easier to get rid of. “That’s a trend that we’re seeing all over the economy as companies try to shed conventional, full-time employees in favor of independent contractors, subcontracted workers, or franchised employees,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “The difference with the auto manufacturers is that their temporary workers are covered by the UAW and its contracts, unlike in most other sectors of the economy.”
In 2007, under pressure from the financial crisis, UAW leaders agreed to a two-tiered contract, in which new GM hires would be paid at lower rates than workers hired before. To get out of this arrangement, widely deemed unfair, the union negotiated a new contract in 2015, in which new hires would still have lower starting salaries, at $15 an hour, but could “grow into” the full UAW hourly wage of roughly $30 an hour after eight years. Union leaders — citing GM’s clear improved financial position with billions of dollars in profit — now want to shorten that process, under the basic principle of equal pay for equal work. GM and the UAW did not return requests for comment.
GM’s current arrangement with temporary workers is one of several ways that employers have managed to fissure their workplaces over the last few decades, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California Santa Barbara. Another example is by spinning off portions of their companies, like in the 1990s, when GM spun off its parts factory, Delphi. “What that meant was all of a sudden, Delphi was competing with lots of other non-union companies and went bankrupt [in 2005] and so then, of course, in the bankruptcy proceedings, you manage to transition to lower wages,” Lichtenstein said. Another way is by contracting out custodial staff who used to be company employees.
“In the auto industry, janitors used to be employed by the auto companies and got the same wages as autoworkers,” he said. “In fact, autoworkers would often become janitors as they got older because it was easier labor and still good pay,” said Lichtenstein. “Eventually, all the companies said, ‘OK, janitorial work is not part of our core business — we’ll just outsource it.’”
In general, there has been an upward trend in companies like GM moving toward temporary workers. In 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of all temp workers in the U.S. were in clerical positions, compared with 28 percent of temp workers in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. But by 2000, just a decade later, 47 percent of all U.S. temp workers would be working in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
The UAW, for its part, has a record dating back to the early 1980s of negotiating concessions around labor costs if economic conditions sour, with the understanding that if the company’s fortunes improve, those concessions would be phased back out, Lichtenstein said.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler all say that they may need to increase their use of temporary workers in the future, pointing to the fact that they’re competing with non-union foreign manufacturers that have more temporary workers and lower labor costs. In June, the Los Angeles Times reported that workers at rival auto plants run by Toyota, Nissan, and Honda make $50 an hour in wages and benefits, while GM workers cost $63 an hour. Temporary workers make up about 20 percent of the Japanese automakers’ plants.
A former GM temp worker, now in a skilled trades apprentice program, told Michigan’s public radio station last week that being a temp was one of the worst times of her life. “They have a way of pitting you against a permanent employee where you feel like, if you go the extra mile, if you work a little bit more than your union brother or sister, that will give you an opportunity to eventually get hired in full time and that’s not the case,” she told the radio station.
Lichtenstein believes it’s clear that these two-tiered systems are weakening labor organizations. “And it’s not just a humanism or good-feeling thing,” he said. “It’s also a recognition that this is going to divide and then destroy the union.”
The Strike Against General Motors Is One Front in a Much Larger Class War
BY SEAN CRAWFORD AND MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - in these times
WEDNESDAY, SEP 18, 2019
Nearly 50,000 General Motors (GM) auto workers left their posts and marched off the job en masse late Sunday night. Since then, it’s been all able bodies to the picket line. The strike is on.
With negotiations between GM and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) leadership hitting an impasse, the 2015 GM collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight on September 15. The UAW officially announced the strike after local union leaders from around the country convened on Sunday morning. The ensuing images of workers (including a coauthor of this article) hitting picket lines this week glow with an electric air of worker solidarity. From afar, one gets the sense of an undivided union showing its strength—united in the fight from top to bottom. But the view from the pavement tells a very different story.
Far from a unified front, the largest strike against GM in over a decade reveals something that everyone sitting at the bargaining table in Detroit knows and fears: The divide between the UAW leadership and the rank and file has never been wider. Much of this has to do with revelations from an FBI corruption probe implicating former and current union officials in alleged misdeeds, including rampantly misappropriating union funds and abusing the trust of their members. With news that even current UAW President Gary Jones is being investigated for corruption, anger and frustration among workers is palpable. And their feelings towards GM executives aren’t any rosier.
Workers have watched GM haul in major profits after having been bailed out by the public (to the tune of $11.2 billion) during the Great Recession—and kept afloat by the sacrifices its own employees agreed to make. Among those sacrifices was the introduction of a tiered wage system, which allowed GM to bring in more low-wage and temporary workers to do the same jobs for a lot less money. An ostensibly temporary fix that GM has more or less made permanent, this tiered system sows divisions on the shop floor, and UAW members want it gone.
Workers accepted these and other belt-tightening measures when the chips were down. But with GM generating a combined profit of $35 billion in North America over the past three years, it’s clear that the belt remains noose-locked around the rank and file while the engorged bellies and bank accounts of GM executives continue their unconstrained expansion. And after seeing these profits and their own sacrifices rewarded with plant closures and mass layoffs, workers are rightfully pissed.
Ask any long-term worker on the picket line and they will tell you just how vividly they remember what they had to give up to keep GM out of bankruptcy a decade ago—and how painfully aware they are of GM’s refusal to appreciate and adequately repay them for it. They haven’t forgotten, and they’re prepared for a long fight. Both GM and the UAW leadership have to know that they are sitting on top of a powder keg.
The rank and file tell the truth, and the truth is that this strike is decades in the making. The truth is that, like our fellow workers around the country and around the world, auto workers have had so much more taken from them over the past half century than they could ever hope to claw back in any collective bargaining agreement. And the truth is that what has been lost can only be taken back by the force of a democratic rank-and-file movement—a movement that refuses to be co-opted by the owning class the way the out-of-touch union hierarchies allowed themselves to be co-opted.
Day in, day out, we sweat and grind under the heavy sun of labor’s lost dreams: the dream of working to live, not living to work; the dream of workers having greater ownership over our workplaces, and having more of a say in what our economy produces and how; the dream of workers, not owners, actually being the ones who profit from our hard work; the dream of universal, guaranteed employment; the dream of necessities like healthcare being institutionalized as basic rights so that one’s employer could never have the grossly unjust power to take them away. A rank-and-file movement can and must re-ignite these dreams, and it must do so while recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls labor fell into before.
A strike against GM is one battle in a much larger class war waged against working people by the owners of society. To quote Walter Reuther, “There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.”
The bigger the bargaining unit, the more power we have. And the ravages multinational corporations like GM wreak upon our communities can only be fought with international worker solidarity.
In the past we were unified by geography. Companies like GM would envelope an entire city. With workers living so close to one another they could develop a culture of solidarity that bound them together. Now the workforce is global, split up over invisible lines in the dirt, caged within imagined national communities that are held together by guns, walls and bureaucracies. If our goal is to regain the power we once had, the power that gave birth to the labor movement in the first place, we need to broaden our vision, we need to see the global class struggle for what it is, and we need to act accordingly.
Unionism in one country is no match for capitalism in every country. We can’t just focus on one industry, one nation, or one job classification. We need to unify with our fellow workers across borders in a collective effort to win back what’s ours, the fruits of our labor.
With negotiations between GM and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) leadership hitting an impasse, the 2015 GM collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight on September 15. The UAW officially announced the strike after local union leaders from around the country convened on Sunday morning. The ensuing images of workers (including a coauthor of this article) hitting picket lines this week glow with an electric air of worker solidarity. From afar, one gets the sense of an undivided union showing its strength—united in the fight from top to bottom. But the view from the pavement tells a very different story.
Far from a unified front, the largest strike against GM in over a decade reveals something that everyone sitting at the bargaining table in Detroit knows and fears: The divide between the UAW leadership and the rank and file has never been wider. Much of this has to do with revelations from an FBI corruption probe implicating former and current union officials in alleged misdeeds, including rampantly misappropriating union funds and abusing the trust of their members. With news that even current UAW President Gary Jones is being investigated for corruption, anger and frustration among workers is palpable. And their feelings towards GM executives aren’t any rosier.
Workers have watched GM haul in major profits after having been bailed out by the public (to the tune of $11.2 billion) during the Great Recession—and kept afloat by the sacrifices its own employees agreed to make. Among those sacrifices was the introduction of a tiered wage system, which allowed GM to bring in more low-wage and temporary workers to do the same jobs for a lot less money. An ostensibly temporary fix that GM has more or less made permanent, this tiered system sows divisions on the shop floor, and UAW members want it gone.
Workers accepted these and other belt-tightening measures when the chips were down. But with GM generating a combined profit of $35 billion in North America over the past three years, it’s clear that the belt remains noose-locked around the rank and file while the engorged bellies and bank accounts of GM executives continue their unconstrained expansion. And after seeing these profits and their own sacrifices rewarded with plant closures and mass layoffs, workers are rightfully pissed.
Ask any long-term worker on the picket line and they will tell you just how vividly they remember what they had to give up to keep GM out of bankruptcy a decade ago—and how painfully aware they are of GM’s refusal to appreciate and adequately repay them for it. They haven’t forgotten, and they’re prepared for a long fight. Both GM and the UAW leadership have to know that they are sitting on top of a powder keg.
The rank and file tell the truth, and the truth is that this strike is decades in the making. The truth is that, like our fellow workers around the country and around the world, auto workers have had so much more taken from them over the past half century than they could ever hope to claw back in any collective bargaining agreement. And the truth is that what has been lost can only be taken back by the force of a democratic rank-and-file movement—a movement that refuses to be co-opted by the owning class the way the out-of-touch union hierarchies allowed themselves to be co-opted.
Day in, day out, we sweat and grind under the heavy sun of labor’s lost dreams: the dream of working to live, not living to work; the dream of workers having greater ownership over our workplaces, and having more of a say in what our economy produces and how; the dream of workers, not owners, actually being the ones who profit from our hard work; the dream of universal, guaranteed employment; the dream of necessities like healthcare being institutionalized as basic rights so that one’s employer could never have the grossly unjust power to take them away. A rank-and-file movement can and must re-ignite these dreams, and it must do so while recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls labor fell into before.
A strike against GM is one battle in a much larger class war waged against working people by the owners of society. To quote Walter Reuther, “There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.”
The bigger the bargaining unit, the more power we have. And the ravages multinational corporations like GM wreak upon our communities can only be fought with international worker solidarity.
In the past we were unified by geography. Companies like GM would envelope an entire city. With workers living so close to one another they could develop a culture of solidarity that bound them together. Now the workforce is global, split up over invisible lines in the dirt, caged within imagined national communities that are held together by guns, walls and bureaucracies. If our goal is to regain the power we once had, the power that gave birth to the labor movement in the first place, we need to broaden our vision, we need to see the global class struggle for what it is, and we need to act accordingly.
Unionism in one country is no match for capitalism in every country. We can’t just focus on one industry, one nation, or one job classification. We need to unify with our fellow workers across borders in a collective effort to win back what’s ours, the fruits of our labor.
'Underpaid and undervalued': 10 women claim systemic discrimination at Disney
Exclusive: more women join pay inequality case, expanding allegations to ABC Television and Walt Disney Pictures
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
the guardian
Wed 18 Sep 2019 20.27 EDT
Class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps Photograph: Richard Drew/AP
Ten women have now accused the Walt Disney Company of gender discrimination as part of a major class-action pay gap case that has expanded to include ABC Television and Disney’s film studio.
The wage inequality lawsuit against one of the world’s largest media and entertainment corporations alleges that divisions across Disney systematically mistreat women by giving them lower salaries than male colleagues doing equivalent work and by denying them promotions.
Four more women have come forward in a new complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles, which provided detailed claims about their struggles to get paid the same as men. Their claims of unlawful discrimination are against Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney’s music label, ABC Television’s music department, and the company’s finance department. Six of the 10 named plaintiffs are women of color.
“Being underpaid and undervalued year after year has a very real cumulative effect, financially,” said Nancy Dolan, one of the new plaintiffs, in a statement to the Guardian, which first reported on the new complaint. “It’s also demoralizing and emotionally draining. It’s time for Disney to join the dozens of California companies who have pledged to pay their women workers fairly.”
The class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the media industry and other sectors.
An earlier filing in July included accusations against Disney Music Publishing, a recording arm of the company; a business division responsible for ESPN and Hulu streaming services; Walt Disney Imagineering, a division that does projects for the company’s theme parks, resorts, cruises and venues; and the Hollywood Records label, which has signed singers such as Demi Lovato, Zendaya and Miley Cyrus.
“There’s trepidation about coming forward, but all of them felt like they had no other option,” Lori Andrus, an attorney for the women, said in an interview Wednesday.
Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaint and plaintiffs. The company previously said the lawsuit was “without merit” and that the corporation had “robust pay equity practices and policies”.
Dolan has worked for Disney’s film studio for 18 years and has been a senior manager of creative music marketing since 2015. Her supervisor has repeatedly told her that her job responsibilities were the same as someone several steps above her current title and that a promotion was “long overdue”, the suit said.
Her performance review in 2016 said she was “operating easily at director level, if not higher”. In 2018, the review said she was working at “vice-president level” and was an “unparalleled expert in her field”. Disney HR, however, has refused to promote her, the suit said, despite one review that stated: “Her contribution to Beauty and the Beast alone resulted in the most substantial music marketing campaign in recent years and yielded global success.”
At one point, HR allegedly told her she could not be promoted from manager to director because she would be skipping a level, but then subsequently promoted two of her male counterparts in that exact manner. When she asked about this, Disney told her that one of the men was promoted because he was more of a “retention risk”, since he was younger, the suit said.
One supervisor also directly acknowledged that Dolan was doing the work of an executive vice-president “for a fraction of the cost”, according to the complaint.
Anabel Pareja Sinn, another new plaintiff, worked as a senior designer for Hollywood Records from 2006 to 2017. She was doing equivalent work to a male colleague, but he was classified as an art director, and she made significantly less money as a result, the suit said.
Sinn told the Guardian in an email that if the company took this issue seriously, it could have widespread implications: “Disney has such influence in our country, and in the world. If Disney leads the way for gender equity, all women in the workforce will be better off.”
A third new plaintiff, Dawn Wisner-Johnson, worked for Disney’s ABC Television music branch until 2017 (ABC is home to Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder and other major hit television shows).
Wisner-Johnson was classified as a manager while doing director-level work and was also denied a raise, the suit said.
Kathy Ly, the fourth person to join the lawsuit this week, worked as an analyst in the finance marketing department from March 2017 to March 2018. She routinely worked 55 to 60 hours a week and received positive performance feedback, but made less than men doing the same work and was given a “much lower raise than her male counterpart” without valid reason, the suit said.
Andrus said it was difficult for some of the women to directly see the company valuing men over them without justification: “Sometimes the men are younger. Sometimes the men are not as good performers. Sometimes they are not as experienced. And they are just being promoted because of their potential.”
For the women, it was an entirely different experience, the lawyer said: “They’re getting great performance reviews and being told to wait a year while they are watching male colleagues skip steps and move up more quickly.”
Andrus, whose firm has a history of equal pay cases against major corporations, said it was a “red flag” that a majority of the plaintiffs were women of color. The case does not allege racial discrimination, though research has repeatedly shown that women of color suffer a worse pay gap than white women.
The attorney added that it was not easy to come forward: “All of them love Disney, they love the work they do, the people they work with.” But going public in court was the only step they had left after reaching dead ends internally, she said: “They’ve tried everything.”
The wage inequality lawsuit against one of the world’s largest media and entertainment corporations alleges that divisions across Disney systematically mistreat women by giving them lower salaries than male colleagues doing equivalent work and by denying them promotions.
Four more women have come forward in a new complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles, which provided detailed claims about their struggles to get paid the same as men. Their claims of unlawful discrimination are against Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney’s music label, ABC Television’s music department, and the company’s finance department. Six of the 10 named plaintiffs are women of color.
“Being underpaid and undervalued year after year has a very real cumulative effect, financially,” said Nancy Dolan, one of the new plaintiffs, in a statement to the Guardian, which first reported on the new complaint. “It’s also demoralizing and emotionally draining. It’s time for Disney to join the dozens of California companies who have pledged to pay their women workers fairly.”
The class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the media industry and other sectors.
An earlier filing in July included accusations against Disney Music Publishing, a recording arm of the company; a business division responsible for ESPN and Hulu streaming services; Walt Disney Imagineering, a division that does projects for the company’s theme parks, resorts, cruises and venues; and the Hollywood Records label, which has signed singers such as Demi Lovato, Zendaya and Miley Cyrus.
“There’s trepidation about coming forward, but all of them felt like they had no other option,” Lori Andrus, an attorney for the women, said in an interview Wednesday.
Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaint and plaintiffs. The company previously said the lawsuit was “without merit” and that the corporation had “robust pay equity practices and policies”.
Dolan has worked for Disney’s film studio for 18 years and has been a senior manager of creative music marketing since 2015. Her supervisor has repeatedly told her that her job responsibilities were the same as someone several steps above her current title and that a promotion was “long overdue”, the suit said.
Her performance review in 2016 said she was “operating easily at director level, if not higher”. In 2018, the review said she was working at “vice-president level” and was an “unparalleled expert in her field”. Disney HR, however, has refused to promote her, the suit said, despite one review that stated: “Her contribution to Beauty and the Beast alone resulted in the most substantial music marketing campaign in recent years and yielded global success.”
At one point, HR allegedly told her she could not be promoted from manager to director because she would be skipping a level, but then subsequently promoted two of her male counterparts in that exact manner. When she asked about this, Disney told her that one of the men was promoted because he was more of a “retention risk”, since he was younger, the suit said.
One supervisor also directly acknowledged that Dolan was doing the work of an executive vice-president “for a fraction of the cost”, according to the complaint.
Anabel Pareja Sinn, another new plaintiff, worked as a senior designer for Hollywood Records from 2006 to 2017. She was doing equivalent work to a male colleague, but he was classified as an art director, and she made significantly less money as a result, the suit said.
Sinn told the Guardian in an email that if the company took this issue seriously, it could have widespread implications: “Disney has such influence in our country, and in the world. If Disney leads the way for gender equity, all women in the workforce will be better off.”
A third new plaintiff, Dawn Wisner-Johnson, worked for Disney’s ABC Television music branch until 2017 (ABC is home to Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder and other major hit television shows).
Wisner-Johnson was classified as a manager while doing director-level work and was also denied a raise, the suit said.
Kathy Ly, the fourth person to join the lawsuit this week, worked as an analyst in the finance marketing department from March 2017 to March 2018. She routinely worked 55 to 60 hours a week and received positive performance feedback, but made less than men doing the same work and was given a “much lower raise than her male counterpart” without valid reason, the suit said.
Andrus said it was difficult for some of the women to directly see the company valuing men over them without justification: “Sometimes the men are younger. Sometimes the men are not as good performers. Sometimes they are not as experienced. And they are just being promoted because of their potential.”
For the women, it was an entirely different experience, the lawyer said: “They’re getting great performance reviews and being told to wait a year while they are watching male colleagues skip steps and move up more quickly.”
Andrus, whose firm has a history of equal pay cases against major corporations, said it was a “red flag” that a majority of the plaintiffs were women of color. The case does not allege racial discrimination, though research has repeatedly shown that women of color suffer a worse pay gap than white women.
The attorney added that it was not easy to come forward: “All of them love Disney, they love the work they do, the people they work with.” But going public in court was the only step they had left after reaching dead ends internally, she said: “They’ve tried everything.”
Trump’s NLRB, Trying to Cut Protections for Millions of Temps and Fast-Food Workers, Trips Up Again
The labor-relations board’s attempt to kill an Obama rule protecting third-party employees fizzled once because of a conflict of interest. Now, two representatives charge, there’s a new conflict and it involves the agency’s own use of temps.
by Ian MacDougall - pro publica
Sept. 16, 5 a.m. EDT
Under the Trump administration, the National Labor Relations Board has been trying to roll back an Obama-era decision that made companies more responsible for temporary staffers, fast-food-franchise workers and others who work for them indirectly. The first attempt was foiled in early 2018 when a Trump appointee to the board was found to have a conflict of interest.
Now, as the NLRB tries to undo the rule for a second time, it’s facing questions from two Democratic representatives about another potential conflict of interest — and this one involves the NLRB’s own use of temporary staffers. In May, the labor board engaged a company called Ardelle Associates to supply lawyers and paralegals to help review public comments on the proposed overhaul of the provision in question, which is known as the “joint-employer rule.”
Among those who submitted comments advocating a reversal of the Obama-era rule are two trade associations that Ardelle belongs to and uses to recruit temps, according to contracting records. In their comments to the NLRB supporting the rule change, the trade associations asserted that companies have grown more reluctant to hire temporary employees because the rule has left them uncertain of their labor law obligations.
In essence, the NLRB hired temps whose bosses have a stake in the outcome to review and potentially summarize the public comments. And that, two top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Labor say, poses a conflict of interest under federal contracting rules. In a letter the committee's chair, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and the chair of its labor subcommittee, Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., sent last week to the labor board's chairman, John Ring, they accuse the board of violating those rules when it selected Ardelle. Democratic committee aides provided a copy of the letter to ProPublica.
The NLRB’s repeated attempts to overhaul the joint-employer rule are one front in a broader national struggle over the rights of the growing proportion of the workforce — about one-third of U.S. workers, according to a Gallup poll last year — that large corporations engage through intermediaries. Other battle lines include the rules governing when a company can classify workers as independent contractors, who are not protected by key federal labor laws. Last week, California entered the fray, enacting a law that will make it harder for companies like Uber to deny their drivers employee status. The stakes are significant, as a recent ProPublica investigation into Amazon’s reliance on contractor-supplied delivery drivers shows.
During the Obama years, the NLRB expanded protections for workers employed by third parties, like temp agencies or franchise holders, by broadening the circumstances under which a company could be held responsible for labor abuses against those workers.
The Trump administration views that as handcuffing companies. That position is supported by many major corporations, like McDonald’s, a target of Obama-era enforcement of the joint-employer rule. In a comment to the NLRB’s current effort to loosen that rule, the International Franchise Association, of which McDonald’s is a member, argued that the present joint-employer rule “has cost the franchising sector as much as $33.3 billion annually and has resulted in as many as 376,000 lost job opportunities.”
Congressional Democrats generally support the current incarnation of the joint-employer rule, making them particularly attentive to how the Trump administration goes about attempting to change it.
The letter from the two Democratic representatives raises questions about the accuracy of statements the NLRB's Ring has made to Congress. Ring assured Scott and Wilson, in a March 22 letter, that the contractor (Ardelle hadn't yet been selected) would not be involved in "any substantive, deliberative review of the comments but will be limited to sorting comments into categories in preparation for their substantive review." Yet contracting records indicate that officials had a more substantive role in mind for the Ardelle temps: they might be asked to summarize comments. That provision was drafted more than a month before Ring sent his letter, internal NLRB emails obtained by ProPublica show, and the provision remained in the final contract. Board members will rely on those summaries as they consider whether to move forward with the proposed rule change, according to a copy of Ring's notes from a Feb. 13 talk he gave to board staff.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment on the issues raised by Scott and Wilson’s letter beyond saying that the NLRB is in the process of preparing a response. Ardelle did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision to contract out part of the comment review process raised concerns inside the NLRB. “I am a little worried moving forward with so much opposition” to engaging a contractor, a board contracting officer wrote on April 1, just after learning Ardelle had been selected. The contracting officer asked a supervisor whether to hold off on the contract “until you all meet with Congressional and Public Affairs?” (Scott and Wilson had already sent a letter to Ring raising initial concerns about plans to contract out review of the comments.)
“We can still move forward” and bring on a temp firm, the supervisor responded a few minutes later. “Congress may decide it’s fine or months from now come back and say it’s not fine terminate the contract.”
It is not unusual for federal agencies to outsource review of comments when proposed rules generate a large volume of them. The joint-employer rulemaking generated 29,000 comments, according to Ring’s notes from his Feb. 13 talk, of which 500 to 2,000 were substantive and nonduplicative.
The present rulemaking process is the board’s second attempt to replace the joint-employer rule announced in an Obama-era case titled Browning-Ferris. In December 2017, the board’s new conservative majority voted to rescind Browning-Ferris’s revision of the rule. But it later vacated that decision, after the board’s inspector general and an ethics official determined that one of the members, William Emanuel, should have recused himself. Emanuel’s former law firm represented a party in Browning-Ferris, which at the time was still on appeal before a federal court in Washington. ProPublica reported on the inspector general’s investigation and Emanuel’s potential conflicts last year.
The NLRB then decided to take a different route to unwind Browning-Ferris. The board generally makes rules by hearing cases and issuing decisions, much like a court. But it can also issue regulations through a public rulemaking process. Last September, the board, having failed to overrule Browning-Ferris by adjudication, decided to try again through rulemaking. Emanuel, the board member found to have a conflict in the earlier vote, is participating in the process. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
A less stringent conflict-of-interest standard applies to rulemaking, and critics say the NLRB’s resort to that process amounts to an end run around federal recusal rules. “By pursuing rulemaking rather than adjudication,” current board member Lauren McFerran, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent from the proposed rule, “the Board is perhaps able to avoid what might otherwise be difficult ethical issues.”
Ring has insisted that the board’s use of rulemaking “will never be for the purpose of evading ethical restrictions,” as he wrote in a letter last year to three Democratic senators who had expressed concerns about the NLRB using the process to overturn Browning-Ferris.
Edwin Egee, a spokesman for the NLRB, noted that the board is presently undertaking several rulemakings, not just the joint-employer rulemaking. “Rulemaking provides the Board the opportunity to consider input from all individuals interested in a particular issue, not only those who are party to a pending case,” Egee said in a statement.
Federal contracting rules stipulate that government contracts “require the highest degree of public trust and an impeccable standard of conduct. The general rule is to avoid strictly any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest in Government-contractor relationships.”
In their letter last week, Scott and Wilson say hiring Ardelle “runs afoul” of this requirement, given its membership in trade associations that have commented on the proposed rule its temps are reviewing. They note, too, that the board did not ask its ethics officials to review the decision to contract with Ardelle and criticize the NLRB for “refusing to produce” information the representatives previously requested.
Their letter raises additional concerns. Federal rules forbid contracting out “inherently governmental functions” and require that agency heads or their designees make “a written determination that none of the functions to be performed are inherently governmental.” The labor board appears not to have made that determination. It repeatedly told committee staff that it did not have any such document, Scott and Wilson say in their letter.
“The NLRB’s failure to analyze” the question, the letter states, “raises a question as to the role of the summaries the contractor will draft in the rulemaking process. The integrity of the regulatory process is vital to ensure that public comments are fully considered before the agency issues its final rule.”
Now, as the NLRB tries to undo the rule for a second time, it’s facing questions from two Democratic representatives about another potential conflict of interest — and this one involves the NLRB’s own use of temporary staffers. In May, the labor board engaged a company called Ardelle Associates to supply lawyers and paralegals to help review public comments on the proposed overhaul of the provision in question, which is known as the “joint-employer rule.”
Among those who submitted comments advocating a reversal of the Obama-era rule are two trade associations that Ardelle belongs to and uses to recruit temps, according to contracting records. In their comments to the NLRB supporting the rule change, the trade associations asserted that companies have grown more reluctant to hire temporary employees because the rule has left them uncertain of their labor law obligations.
In essence, the NLRB hired temps whose bosses have a stake in the outcome to review and potentially summarize the public comments. And that, two top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Labor say, poses a conflict of interest under federal contracting rules. In a letter the committee's chair, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and the chair of its labor subcommittee, Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., sent last week to the labor board's chairman, John Ring, they accuse the board of violating those rules when it selected Ardelle. Democratic committee aides provided a copy of the letter to ProPublica.
The NLRB’s repeated attempts to overhaul the joint-employer rule are one front in a broader national struggle over the rights of the growing proportion of the workforce — about one-third of U.S. workers, according to a Gallup poll last year — that large corporations engage through intermediaries. Other battle lines include the rules governing when a company can classify workers as independent contractors, who are not protected by key federal labor laws. Last week, California entered the fray, enacting a law that will make it harder for companies like Uber to deny their drivers employee status. The stakes are significant, as a recent ProPublica investigation into Amazon’s reliance on contractor-supplied delivery drivers shows.
During the Obama years, the NLRB expanded protections for workers employed by third parties, like temp agencies or franchise holders, by broadening the circumstances under which a company could be held responsible for labor abuses against those workers.
The Trump administration views that as handcuffing companies. That position is supported by many major corporations, like McDonald’s, a target of Obama-era enforcement of the joint-employer rule. In a comment to the NLRB’s current effort to loosen that rule, the International Franchise Association, of which McDonald’s is a member, argued that the present joint-employer rule “has cost the franchising sector as much as $33.3 billion annually and has resulted in as many as 376,000 lost job opportunities.”
Congressional Democrats generally support the current incarnation of the joint-employer rule, making them particularly attentive to how the Trump administration goes about attempting to change it.
The letter from the two Democratic representatives raises questions about the accuracy of statements the NLRB's Ring has made to Congress. Ring assured Scott and Wilson, in a March 22 letter, that the contractor (Ardelle hadn't yet been selected) would not be involved in "any substantive, deliberative review of the comments but will be limited to sorting comments into categories in preparation for their substantive review." Yet contracting records indicate that officials had a more substantive role in mind for the Ardelle temps: they might be asked to summarize comments. That provision was drafted more than a month before Ring sent his letter, internal NLRB emails obtained by ProPublica show, and the provision remained in the final contract. Board members will rely on those summaries as they consider whether to move forward with the proposed rule change, according to a copy of Ring's notes from a Feb. 13 talk he gave to board staff.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment on the issues raised by Scott and Wilson’s letter beyond saying that the NLRB is in the process of preparing a response. Ardelle did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision to contract out part of the comment review process raised concerns inside the NLRB. “I am a little worried moving forward with so much opposition” to engaging a contractor, a board contracting officer wrote on April 1, just after learning Ardelle had been selected. The contracting officer asked a supervisor whether to hold off on the contract “until you all meet with Congressional and Public Affairs?” (Scott and Wilson had already sent a letter to Ring raising initial concerns about plans to contract out review of the comments.)
“We can still move forward” and bring on a temp firm, the supervisor responded a few minutes later. “Congress may decide it’s fine or months from now come back and say it’s not fine terminate the contract.”
It is not unusual for federal agencies to outsource review of comments when proposed rules generate a large volume of them. The joint-employer rulemaking generated 29,000 comments, according to Ring’s notes from his Feb. 13 talk, of which 500 to 2,000 were substantive and nonduplicative.
The present rulemaking process is the board’s second attempt to replace the joint-employer rule announced in an Obama-era case titled Browning-Ferris. In December 2017, the board’s new conservative majority voted to rescind Browning-Ferris’s revision of the rule. But it later vacated that decision, after the board’s inspector general and an ethics official determined that one of the members, William Emanuel, should have recused himself. Emanuel’s former law firm represented a party in Browning-Ferris, which at the time was still on appeal before a federal court in Washington. ProPublica reported on the inspector general’s investigation and Emanuel’s potential conflicts last year.
The NLRB then decided to take a different route to unwind Browning-Ferris. The board generally makes rules by hearing cases and issuing decisions, much like a court. But it can also issue regulations through a public rulemaking process. Last September, the board, having failed to overrule Browning-Ferris by adjudication, decided to try again through rulemaking. Emanuel, the board member found to have a conflict in the earlier vote, is participating in the process. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
A less stringent conflict-of-interest standard applies to rulemaking, and critics say the NLRB’s resort to that process amounts to an end run around federal recusal rules. “By pursuing rulemaking rather than adjudication,” current board member Lauren McFerran, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent from the proposed rule, “the Board is perhaps able to avoid what might otherwise be difficult ethical issues.”
Ring has insisted that the board’s use of rulemaking “will never be for the purpose of evading ethical restrictions,” as he wrote in a letter last year to three Democratic senators who had expressed concerns about the NLRB using the process to overturn Browning-Ferris.
Edwin Egee, a spokesman for the NLRB, noted that the board is presently undertaking several rulemakings, not just the joint-employer rulemaking. “Rulemaking provides the Board the opportunity to consider input from all individuals interested in a particular issue, not only those who are party to a pending case,” Egee said in a statement.
Federal contracting rules stipulate that government contracts “require the highest degree of public trust and an impeccable standard of conduct. The general rule is to avoid strictly any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest in Government-contractor relationships.”
In their letter last week, Scott and Wilson say hiring Ardelle “runs afoul” of this requirement, given its membership in trade associations that have commented on the proposed rule its temps are reviewing. They note, too, that the board did not ask its ethics officials to review the decision to contract with Ardelle and criticize the NLRB for “refusing to produce” information the representatives previously requested.
Their letter raises additional concerns. Federal rules forbid contracting out “inherently governmental functions” and require that agency heads or their designees make “a written determination that none of the functions to be performed are inherently governmental.” The labor board appears not to have made that determination. It repeatedly told committee staff that it did not have any such document, Scott and Wilson say in their letter.
“The NLRB’s failure to analyze” the question, the letter states, “raises a question as to the role of the summaries the contractor will draft in the rulemaking process. The integrity of the regulatory process is vital to ensure that public comments are fully considered before the agency issues its final rule.”
More than 49,000 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors
Union members shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US after contract talks with the company deteriorated
Associated Press - the guardian
Mon 16 Sep 2019 09.24 EDT
More than 49,000 members of the United Auto Workers walked off General Motors factory floors or set up picket lines early on Monday as contract talks with the company deteriorated into a strike.
Workers shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US, as well as 22 parts distribution warehouses.
It wasn’t clear how long the walkout would last, with the union saying GM has budged little in months of talks while GM said it made substantial offers including higher wages and factory investments.
It’s the first national strike by the union since a two-day walkout in 2007 that had little impact on the company.
GM workers joined striking Aramark-employed janitors assigned to GM facilities on the picket lines on Sunday night at a sprawling factory on the border between Detroit and the small town of Hamtramck.
Worker Patty Thomas said she was not scheduled to picket, but came out to support her colleagues at the car plant, which GM wants to close.
She had heard talk that GM may keep the factory open and start building electric pickup trucks there, but she was skeptical.
“What are they going to take away?” she asked. “That’s the big issue.”
She said workers gave up cost-of-living pay raises to help GM get through bankruptcy, and workers want some of that back now that the company is making profits.
Striking GM employees were joined on the picket lines by workers from Ford and Fiat Chrysler, who are working under contract extensions.
The UAW vice-president Terry Dittes, the union’s top GM negotiator, said a strike is the union’s last resort but is needed because both sides are far apart in negotiating a new four-year contract. The union, he said on Saturday, does not take a strike lightly.
“We clearly understand the hardship that it may cause,” he said. “We are standing up for fair wages, we are standing up for affordable quality healthcare, we are standing up for our share of the profits.”
GM, however, said it offered pay raises and $7bn worth of US factory investments resulting in 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The company also said it offered higher profit sharing, “nationally leading” health benefits and an $8,000 payment to each worker upon ratification.
The union’s contract with GM expired on Saturday night, but pacts with the company’s crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, were extended indefinitely. The union has picked GM as its target company this year, and any deal it negotiates will be used as a template for the others.
GM was picked because it is the most profitable of the three, and because its plans to close four US factories have angered union members.
On Sunday, about 200 plant-level leaders voted unanimously to strike against GM if no deal could be reached by Sunday night. Although talks were halted over the weekend, the UAW spokesman, Brian Rothenberg, said there was still dialogue.
Before the talks broke off, GM offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according to a person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The person was not authorized to disclose details of the negotiations.
The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a huge factory that has stopped making cars and will be closed. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.
It is unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.
Rothenberg said UAW was striking for fair wages, affordable healthcare, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.
GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.
The talks this year have been overshadowed by a growing federal corruption investigation that snared a top union official on Thursday. Vance Pearson, head of a regional office based near St Louis, was charged over an alleged scheme to embezzle union money and spend cash on premium booze, golf clubs, cigars and swanky stays in California. It is the same region that UAW’s president, Gary Jones, led before taking the union’s top office last year. Jones himself has been touched by the investigation, leading some union members to call for him to step down, but he has not been charged.
This year’s talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because of GM’s plan to close four US factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, as well as Lordstown and factories in Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.
Workers shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US, as well as 22 parts distribution warehouses.
It wasn’t clear how long the walkout would last, with the union saying GM has budged little in months of talks while GM said it made substantial offers including higher wages and factory investments.
It’s the first national strike by the union since a two-day walkout in 2007 that had little impact on the company.
GM workers joined striking Aramark-employed janitors assigned to GM facilities on the picket lines on Sunday night at a sprawling factory on the border between Detroit and the small town of Hamtramck.
Worker Patty Thomas said she was not scheduled to picket, but came out to support her colleagues at the car plant, which GM wants to close.
She had heard talk that GM may keep the factory open and start building electric pickup trucks there, but she was skeptical.
“What are they going to take away?” she asked. “That’s the big issue.”
She said workers gave up cost-of-living pay raises to help GM get through bankruptcy, and workers want some of that back now that the company is making profits.
Striking GM employees were joined on the picket lines by workers from Ford and Fiat Chrysler, who are working under contract extensions.
The UAW vice-president Terry Dittes, the union’s top GM negotiator, said a strike is the union’s last resort but is needed because both sides are far apart in negotiating a new four-year contract. The union, he said on Saturday, does not take a strike lightly.
“We clearly understand the hardship that it may cause,” he said. “We are standing up for fair wages, we are standing up for affordable quality healthcare, we are standing up for our share of the profits.”
GM, however, said it offered pay raises and $7bn worth of US factory investments resulting in 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The company also said it offered higher profit sharing, “nationally leading” health benefits and an $8,000 payment to each worker upon ratification.
The union’s contract with GM expired on Saturday night, but pacts with the company’s crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, were extended indefinitely. The union has picked GM as its target company this year, and any deal it negotiates will be used as a template for the others.
GM was picked because it is the most profitable of the three, and because its plans to close four US factories have angered union members.
On Sunday, about 200 plant-level leaders voted unanimously to strike against GM if no deal could be reached by Sunday night. Although talks were halted over the weekend, the UAW spokesman, Brian Rothenberg, said there was still dialogue.
Before the talks broke off, GM offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according to a person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The person was not authorized to disclose details of the negotiations.
The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a huge factory that has stopped making cars and will be closed. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.
It is unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.
Rothenberg said UAW was striking for fair wages, affordable healthcare, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.
GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.
The talks this year have been overshadowed by a growing federal corruption investigation that snared a top union official on Thursday. Vance Pearson, head of a regional office based near St Louis, was charged over an alleged scheme to embezzle union money and spend cash on premium booze, golf clubs, cigars and swanky stays in California. It is the same region that UAW’s president, Gary Jones, led before taking the union’s top office last year. Jones himself has been touched by the investigation, leading some union members to call for him to step down, but he has not been charged.
This year’s talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because of GM’s plan to close four US factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, as well as Lordstown and factories in Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.
In ‘disgusting’ move, Jeff Bezos abruptly cuts health benefits for nearly 2,000 part-time Whole Foods workers
September 14, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
“I am in shock. I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday cut benefits for part-time workers at his grocery chain Whole Foods, drawing criticism from the left for a move that could leave thousands of people without health insurance.
“Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said on Twitter. “This is disgusting.”
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of the Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits.”
—writer Elon Green
Business Insider reporter Hayley Peterson broke the story. The decision will affect 1,900 of the business’s 95,000 workers—the ones who work part-time, or around 20 hours a week.
“We are providing team members with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told Peterson. “All Whole Foods Market team members continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store discount.”
One employee, who has been working for the company for 15 years but felt anonymity was necessary to avoid retribution for speaking out, said she was devastated by the news.
“I am in shock,” said the employee. “I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Producer Jennifer Solotaroff took to Twitter to tell her story of being a Whole Foods employee and to explain to her audience the importance of benefits for the company’s part-time staff.
“I worked at Whole Foods and it was the kind of job where people were able to work and go about their life,” said Solotaroff. “Employees were taken care of and you could feel it—the morale was great, it was a diverse environment, and employees felt supported. So much of that had to do with coverage.”
The news of Bezos’s decision didn’t come as a surprise to writer Elon Green.
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of The Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits,” Green tweeted.
The move came less than a month after Bezos signed a pledge to invest in workers, The Verge explained:
Last month, Amazon joined a number of other tech companies and Fortune 500 firms in signing a letter outlining the purpose of a corporation as something not just designed to return shareholder value, but also to serve employees and the community. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the pledge read. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”
That disconnect between words and actions, Business Insider columnist Bob Bryan said, proves there’s no substitute for solidarity.
“The Whole Foods decision is not just hypocritical of Bezos, but also proves why workers should never put too much trust in kind words from CEOs and instead push for lasting changes to uphold their interests and those of their coworkers,” Bryan wrote.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday cut benefits for part-time workers at his grocery chain Whole Foods, drawing criticism from the left for a move that could leave thousands of people without health insurance.
“Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said on Twitter. “This is disgusting.”
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of the Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits.”
—writer Elon Green
Business Insider reporter Hayley Peterson broke the story. The decision will affect 1,900 of the business’s 95,000 workers—the ones who work part-time, or around 20 hours a week.
“We are providing team members with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told Peterson. “All Whole Foods Market team members continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store discount.”
One employee, who has been working for the company for 15 years but felt anonymity was necessary to avoid retribution for speaking out, said she was devastated by the news.
“I am in shock,” said the employee. “I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Producer Jennifer Solotaroff took to Twitter to tell her story of being a Whole Foods employee and to explain to her audience the importance of benefits for the company’s part-time staff.
“I worked at Whole Foods and it was the kind of job where people were able to work and go about their life,” said Solotaroff. “Employees were taken care of and you could feel it—the morale was great, it was a diverse environment, and employees felt supported. So much of that had to do with coverage.”
The news of Bezos’s decision didn’t come as a surprise to writer Elon Green.
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of The Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits,” Green tweeted.
The move came less than a month after Bezos signed a pledge to invest in workers, The Verge explained:
Last month, Amazon joined a number of other tech companies and Fortune 500 firms in signing a letter outlining the purpose of a corporation as something not just designed to return shareholder value, but also to serve employees and the community. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the pledge read. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”
That disconnect between words and actions, Business Insider columnist Bob Bryan said, proves there’s no substitute for solidarity.
“The Whole Foods decision is not just hypocritical of Bezos, but also proves why workers should never put too much trust in kind words from CEOs and instead push for lasting changes to uphold their interests and those of their coworkers,” Bryan wrote.
Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog - salon
September 3, 2019
Wealthy corporations and their enablers have spread 5 big lies about unions in order to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines. Know the truth and spread the truth.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
From Kentucky Miners to Toys ‘R’ Us Employees, Workers Confront Corporate Greed
BY Negin Owliaei, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 28, 2019
For the last few weeks, all eyes have been on Kentucky as coal miners blockade a railroad in protest of what’s essentially highway robbery. The coal miners in Harlan County are demanding their unpaid wages from Blackjewel, the company that employed them before suddenly declaring bankruptcy earlier this year. Their physical blockade of a train full of coal is critical given that Wall Street investors are still looking to eke out money from Blackjewel — even if it means leaving workers without the paychecks they’ve already earned.
The standoff is among the latest instances highlighting a system that funnels the wealth created by workers upwards to the elite. The statistics are startling. Incomes of the top 1 percent of U.S. households have grownmore than seven times more quickly than those of the bottom 20 percent of households over the past four decades. CEO compensation rose by 940 percent since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reports. Meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages grew by only 12 percent.
Workers — from retail employees to rideshare drivers, teachers to bank tellers — are taking on the structures that allow this lopsided economy to thrive. Last year, more than 485,000 workers were involved in major work stoppages, the Bureau of Labor Services found — the highest number since 1986. They’re taking action against the insatiable corporate greed and predatory financial forces widening the chasm between the elite and everyone else.
What does that corporate greed look like? It’s industries that rake in billions and still pay their workers poverty wages, as airlines do. That’s why dozens of airline catering workers were arrested outside American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month, announcing that one job should be enough for them to live with dignity, especially during what their union calls “a time of unprecedented prosperity” for the industry.
The workers aren’t employed directly by American Airlines, but by a subcontractor that provides the company’s in-flight meals and beverages. But they know this type of system is essentially run as a scam — companies can pit subcontractors against each other to get the lowest price, all while avoiding direct accountability to the workers that allow them to prosper. Meanwhile, CEOs like American Airlines’ Doug Parker rake in nearly $12 million in annual compensation.
Thousands of airline workers have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. Despite the fact that they negotiate directly with the subcontractors, workers know where the power lies, which is why they’ve taken their fight to American Airlines’s front door.
This is the same logic that animated the Uber and Lyft strikes, timed to the public offerings of their companies earlier this year. While executives were set to become instant billionaires as the companies went public, workers went on strike to show investors who actually generated the wealth and to ensure their concerns were front and center.
Like the airline industry, rideshare companies have found a way to avoid any responsibility to ensure their workers live with dignity. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing ahead of the public offering, Uber essentially admitted that its business model relies on misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, keeping the company from being required to provide a minimum wage, much less health care or other benefits.
Drivers were keen to contrast this fundamentally anti-worker business model with the sky-high profits expected by company executives, including disgraced former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Lenny Sanchez, a rideshare driver and co-founder of Chicago Rideshare Advocates, said he wished he could tell Kalanick how drivers reacted when they heard how much he had to gain. “They’re like, ‘I have to work. I’m away from my home for 14 hours, six to seven days a week … and this guy is going to make [billions] overnight.’”
It’s no secret that an economic system that allows executives to make such exorbitant profit off the backs of its workers is exploitative. But some worker campaigns are also pointing out how disparities between worker and CEO pay add a new level of risk into the economy, encouraging executives to pursue profit over absolutely everything else.
Bank workers, for example, are highlighting how the inequality baked into financial companies hurt the country’s economic systems as a whole. The Committee for Better Banks is a coalition of bank employees, community and consumer groups, and labor organizations fighting for better conditions for bank workers and advocating for more protections for bank customers. Bank workers in the coalition have blown the whistle on predatory bank practices, like a harmful quota system used by Wells Fargo connected to the fabrication of millions of additional bank accounts for depositors.
Bank workers are the ones both most motivated and most knowledgeable to regulate from below, as the Committee for Better Banks argues. That regulation is critical given that missteps from banks can bring down the entire global economy. Bank executives are more focused on a feedback loop of tax cuts, stock buybacks and inflated CEO compensation, further distorting inequality within their industry. Building power among bank workers helps the entire economy.
For retail workers, taking on predatory institutions means challenging the private equity vultures that profit off the job losses in their sector. Thanks to Wall Street’s “investments,” more than 1.3 million retail jobs have been lost over the last decade, a recent report found.
Toys ‘R’ Us workers, among the most affected by private equity’s greed, staged several protests, including a mock graveyard in the New York lobby of Bain Capital, one of the firms that drove the company into bankruptcy. Those workers initially didn’t receive severance pay when they were laid off — despite the fact that the company’s executives took home millions in bonuses.
The retail workers received a boost from public sector employees, who used their own financial power to challenge the companies that play an active role in destroying the well-being of their fellow workers. State pension funds across the country that had invested in KKR, Bain and Vornado Realty Trust — the profiteers who benefitted off the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy — threatened to divest their ample capital.
“My teacher friends are disgusted,” Ann Marie Reinhart, a former Toys ‘R’ Us employee and an organizer for United for Respect, said. “They say that we’re all hard-working people, and it makes them sick to know their pensions are funded by people losing their jobs.”
Thanks to protests from retail workers and the solidarity from public sector workers, KKR and Bain Capital eventually agreed to put $20 million toward a worker severance fund.
All of this organizing has gotten attention from politicians, like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, and Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal — the sponsors of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress last month. A direct response to the role of private equity and hedge funds in the demise of retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, the legislation puts safeguards in place to protect the 5.8 million workers employed by private equity-owned companies, from newspapers to nursing homes.
Corporate leaders are also taking notice. In a recent statement from Business Roundtable, 181 CEOs announced a shared commitment to “investing in our employees” and “supporting the communities in which we work” — additions to their past mottos that put shareholders over everyone else. They may think a populist tone will help stem off criticism about heightened inequality, especially as concerns about a recession grow. But their statements amount to embarrassingly little, and far too late. Look to worker organizing, not CEO platitudes, for the path toward a new, equitable economy.
The standoff is among the latest instances highlighting a system that funnels the wealth created by workers upwards to the elite. The statistics are startling. Incomes of the top 1 percent of U.S. households have grownmore than seven times more quickly than those of the bottom 20 percent of households over the past four decades. CEO compensation rose by 940 percent since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reports. Meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages grew by only 12 percent.
Workers — from retail employees to rideshare drivers, teachers to bank tellers — are taking on the structures that allow this lopsided economy to thrive. Last year, more than 485,000 workers were involved in major work stoppages, the Bureau of Labor Services found — the highest number since 1986. They’re taking action against the insatiable corporate greed and predatory financial forces widening the chasm between the elite and everyone else.
What does that corporate greed look like? It’s industries that rake in billions and still pay their workers poverty wages, as airlines do. That’s why dozens of airline catering workers were arrested outside American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month, announcing that one job should be enough for them to live with dignity, especially during what their union calls “a time of unprecedented prosperity” for the industry.
The workers aren’t employed directly by American Airlines, but by a subcontractor that provides the company’s in-flight meals and beverages. But they know this type of system is essentially run as a scam — companies can pit subcontractors against each other to get the lowest price, all while avoiding direct accountability to the workers that allow them to prosper. Meanwhile, CEOs like American Airlines’ Doug Parker rake in nearly $12 million in annual compensation.
Thousands of airline workers have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. Despite the fact that they negotiate directly with the subcontractors, workers know where the power lies, which is why they’ve taken their fight to American Airlines’s front door.
This is the same logic that animated the Uber and Lyft strikes, timed to the public offerings of their companies earlier this year. While executives were set to become instant billionaires as the companies went public, workers went on strike to show investors who actually generated the wealth and to ensure their concerns were front and center.
Like the airline industry, rideshare companies have found a way to avoid any responsibility to ensure their workers live with dignity. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing ahead of the public offering, Uber essentially admitted that its business model relies on misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, keeping the company from being required to provide a minimum wage, much less health care or other benefits.
Drivers were keen to contrast this fundamentally anti-worker business model with the sky-high profits expected by company executives, including disgraced former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Lenny Sanchez, a rideshare driver and co-founder of Chicago Rideshare Advocates, said he wished he could tell Kalanick how drivers reacted when they heard how much he had to gain. “They’re like, ‘I have to work. I’m away from my home for 14 hours, six to seven days a week … and this guy is going to make [billions] overnight.’”
It’s no secret that an economic system that allows executives to make such exorbitant profit off the backs of its workers is exploitative. But some worker campaigns are also pointing out how disparities between worker and CEO pay add a new level of risk into the economy, encouraging executives to pursue profit over absolutely everything else.
Bank workers, for example, are highlighting how the inequality baked into financial companies hurt the country’s economic systems as a whole. The Committee for Better Banks is a coalition of bank employees, community and consumer groups, and labor organizations fighting for better conditions for bank workers and advocating for more protections for bank customers. Bank workers in the coalition have blown the whistle on predatory bank practices, like a harmful quota system used by Wells Fargo connected to the fabrication of millions of additional bank accounts for depositors.
Bank workers are the ones both most motivated and most knowledgeable to regulate from below, as the Committee for Better Banks argues. That regulation is critical given that missteps from banks can bring down the entire global economy. Bank executives are more focused on a feedback loop of tax cuts, stock buybacks and inflated CEO compensation, further distorting inequality within their industry. Building power among bank workers helps the entire economy.
For retail workers, taking on predatory institutions means challenging the private equity vultures that profit off the job losses in their sector. Thanks to Wall Street’s “investments,” more than 1.3 million retail jobs have been lost over the last decade, a recent report found.
Toys ‘R’ Us workers, among the most affected by private equity’s greed, staged several protests, including a mock graveyard in the New York lobby of Bain Capital, one of the firms that drove the company into bankruptcy. Those workers initially didn’t receive severance pay when they were laid off — despite the fact that the company’s executives took home millions in bonuses.
The retail workers received a boost from public sector employees, who used their own financial power to challenge the companies that play an active role in destroying the well-being of their fellow workers. State pension funds across the country that had invested in KKR, Bain and Vornado Realty Trust — the profiteers who benefitted off the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy — threatened to divest their ample capital.
“My teacher friends are disgusted,” Ann Marie Reinhart, a former Toys ‘R’ Us employee and an organizer for United for Respect, said. “They say that we’re all hard-working people, and it makes them sick to know their pensions are funded by people losing their jobs.”
Thanks to protests from retail workers and the solidarity from public sector workers, KKR and Bain Capital eventually agreed to put $20 million toward a worker severance fund.
All of this organizing has gotten attention from politicians, like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, and Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal — the sponsors of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress last month. A direct response to the role of private equity and hedge funds in the demise of retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, the legislation puts safeguards in place to protect the 5.8 million workers employed by private equity-owned companies, from newspapers to nursing homes.
Corporate leaders are also taking notice. In a recent statement from Business Roundtable, 181 CEOs announced a shared commitment to “investing in our employees” and “supporting the communities in which we work” — additions to their past mottos that put shareholders over everyone else. They may think a populist tone will help stem off criticism about heightened inequality, especially as concerns about a recession grow. But their statements amount to embarrassingly little, and far too late. Look to worker organizing, not CEO platitudes, for the path toward a new, equitable economy.
More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith
Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday August 27, 2019 · 6:15 PM PDT
The southern United States is not known as a bastion of union strength or worker power, but 20,000 AT&T workers across nine states are on strike this week. The workers’ union, the Communications Workers of America, has been trying to negotiate a new contract with AT&T and, with negotiations having broken down, has said the company is not bargaining in good faith.
“AT&T does not understand that CWA is prepared to bargain and is prepared to make a deal that benefits our members and AT&T,” CWA District 3 wrote in a statement on Friday. “It turns out that for over three months, we have been bargaining with people who do not have the real authority to make proposals or to reach an agreement with us.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders joined workers on a picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, telling them, “I want you to know that millions of American workers are standing with you today. Because what you are going through is exactly what they are going through. I’m proud to be here with you and what you’re doing is what needs to take place all over this country. Working people need to stand up and tell corporate America; enough is enough.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden also tweeted support for the workers.
AT&T got a massive tax break from the Republican tax law, and claimed it would invest in U.S. jobs, only to turn around and cut 23,000 jobs.
“AT&T does not understand that CWA is prepared to bargain and is prepared to make a deal that benefits our members and AT&T,” CWA District 3 wrote in a statement on Friday. “It turns out that for over three months, we have been bargaining with people who do not have the real authority to make proposals or to reach an agreement with us.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders joined workers on a picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, telling them, “I want you to know that millions of American workers are standing with you today. Because what you are going through is exactly what they are going through. I’m proud to be here with you and what you’re doing is what needs to take place all over this country. Working people need to stand up and tell corporate America; enough is enough.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden also tweeted support for the workers.
AT&T got a massive tax break from the Republican tax law, and claimed it would invest in U.S. jobs, only to turn around and cut 23,000 jobs.
Nevada casino workers fight an uphill battle to get – and keep – their unions
Despite winning six union elections, the opposition continues through legal appeals and stalled contracts
Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Tue 20 Aug 2019 02.00 EDT
Union workers protest in front of the Palms casino-resort in Las Vegas in June. Photograph: John Locher/Associated Press
Michael Wagner has worked as a bartender at the Green Valley Ranch Casino Resort in Henderson, Nevada since it first opened in December 2001. Wagner and other workers at the casino voted to form a union in November 2017, with 78% of the vote, after years of facing union busting, intimidation, and retaliation against those participating in union organizing.
It has been a long struggle. But it is still not over. The billionaire Trump allies who own the casino – and others like it – have embarked on a campaign of stalling recognition, delaying contract negotiations and intimidation and poor working conditions, casino workers say.
Since UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 began union-organizing drives at Station Casinos in 2011, workers have successfully voted to form a union at six of the company’s properties in Nevada.
But, despite winning six union elections, the anti-union opposition from the third largest private employer in the Las Vegas area, Station Casinos, continues through legal appeals, none of which have been successful, and stalled contract negotiations.
Station Casinos executives and spokespersons have repeatedly affirmed they would respect union election results. In 2016, Station Casinos president Richard Haskins told the Las Vegas Review: “We have said all along that if a fair and lawful election is held we will abide by the results.”
According to the Culinary Union, Station Casinos is still appealing union elections at its Green Valley Ranch, Palms, and Sunset properties, while a union contract has yet to be negotiated at three other properties that have voted to unionize. The union represents nearly 4,000 workers at all six properties. Meanwhile, dozens of unfair labor practice charges filed by workers against Station Casinos remain under review by the National Labor Relations Board.
The company is owned by billionaires Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. The Fertittas have donated $2m to Trump’s America’s First Action PAC, over $1.5m to Trump’s Victory Fund, and more than $3m to the Republican National Committee and other Republican candidates since Trump’s election.
Several casino workers have alleged wrongful terminations for engaging in union activity at Station Casino properties, and current workers report that the company continues to fire workers without just cause as Nevada is an employment “at will” state, which grants employers the right to terminate employment at anytime for any reason.
“The management hasn’t recognized the union because they do whatever they want to workers and with the union, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” said Paola Felix, a guest room attendant at Green Valley Ranch Resort. “Without a union contract to protect you, you don’t get a chance to defend yourself, they just terminate you for no reason.”
When the first Station Casinos property voted to unionize in September 2016, company management sent out memos to all its employees that health benefits would be increased for all employees except those who had unionized. As part of an NLRB settlement in March 2017, Station Casinos agreed to recognize the union at Palace Station Casino and reimburse the workers at Boulder Station for lower healthcare premiums they were denied.
“They’ve filed legal challenge after legal challenge,” said Gunaydin Milli, a uniform room attendant at Palms Resort & Casino since 2008, where around 900 workers voted to unionize in April 2018. In May 2019, the NLRB ruled the resort was violating federal labor law by refusing to bargain with the union, but a union contract has still yet to be negotiated as Station Casinos is appealing the ruling in federal court.
“They’ve refused to negotiate with us and they’re breaking the law. The hard work we do everyday makes the company successful. We deserve to have something to show for it too,” said Milli.
The most recent union elections occurred at Station Casinos’ Sunset Hotel & Casino, with 83% voting in favor of the union, and Fiesta Rancho Hotel & Casino, with 85% voting for the union.
Casino workers have held numerous protests and rallies calling on Station Casinos to negotiate with the unions and to cease union busting at properties where union organizing drives are ongoing.
“The company has been fighting these workers for a long time,” said Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226. “What the company has been doing is sending a message to workers they do not respect the democratic way these workers voted ‘yes’ to be represented by the Culinary Union.”
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro has recently called on Station Casinos to negotiate with the six unions. Senator Bernie Sanders has also publicly called on the Trump-supporting casino owners to negotiate.
The struggle is expected to gain more attention as Democratic presidential candidates compete for support from the Culinary Union ahead of the Nevada Democratic Caucuses in February 2020.
A spokesperson for Red Rock Resorts, the parent company of Station Casinos, Michael Britt told the Guardian in an email: “With respect to both Palms and Green Valley Ranch, although the union would clearly prefer that we not exercise our legal right to challenge the National Labor Review Board’s (NLRB) decisions regarding those properties in the United States federal courts – we have every right to do so and our challenges are both legal and appropriate.”
They declined to clarify the reasons behind those challenges.
In Red Rock Resort’s most recent annual report, the company claimed, “Union organization activities could disrupt our business by discouraging patrons from visiting our properties, causing labor disputes or work stoppages, and, if successful, could significantly increase our labor costs.”
It has been a long struggle. But it is still not over. The billionaire Trump allies who own the casino – and others like it – have embarked on a campaign of stalling recognition, delaying contract negotiations and intimidation and poor working conditions, casino workers say.
Since UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 began union-organizing drives at Station Casinos in 2011, workers have successfully voted to form a union at six of the company’s properties in Nevada.
But, despite winning six union elections, the anti-union opposition from the third largest private employer in the Las Vegas area, Station Casinos, continues through legal appeals, none of which have been successful, and stalled contract negotiations.
Station Casinos executives and spokespersons have repeatedly affirmed they would respect union election results. In 2016, Station Casinos president Richard Haskins told the Las Vegas Review: “We have said all along that if a fair and lawful election is held we will abide by the results.”
According to the Culinary Union, Station Casinos is still appealing union elections at its Green Valley Ranch, Palms, and Sunset properties, while a union contract has yet to be negotiated at three other properties that have voted to unionize. The union represents nearly 4,000 workers at all six properties. Meanwhile, dozens of unfair labor practice charges filed by workers against Station Casinos remain under review by the National Labor Relations Board.
The company is owned by billionaires Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. The Fertittas have donated $2m to Trump’s America’s First Action PAC, over $1.5m to Trump’s Victory Fund, and more than $3m to the Republican National Committee and other Republican candidates since Trump’s election.
Several casino workers have alleged wrongful terminations for engaging in union activity at Station Casino properties, and current workers report that the company continues to fire workers without just cause as Nevada is an employment “at will” state, which grants employers the right to terminate employment at anytime for any reason.
“The management hasn’t recognized the union because they do whatever they want to workers and with the union, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” said Paola Felix, a guest room attendant at Green Valley Ranch Resort. “Without a union contract to protect you, you don’t get a chance to defend yourself, they just terminate you for no reason.”
When the first Station Casinos property voted to unionize in September 2016, company management sent out memos to all its employees that health benefits would be increased for all employees except those who had unionized. As part of an NLRB settlement in March 2017, Station Casinos agreed to recognize the union at Palace Station Casino and reimburse the workers at Boulder Station for lower healthcare premiums they were denied.
“They’ve filed legal challenge after legal challenge,” said Gunaydin Milli, a uniform room attendant at Palms Resort & Casino since 2008, where around 900 workers voted to unionize in April 2018. In May 2019, the NLRB ruled the resort was violating federal labor law by refusing to bargain with the union, but a union contract has still yet to be negotiated as Station Casinos is appealing the ruling in federal court.
“They’ve refused to negotiate with us and they’re breaking the law. The hard work we do everyday makes the company successful. We deserve to have something to show for it too,” said Milli.
The most recent union elections occurred at Station Casinos’ Sunset Hotel & Casino, with 83% voting in favor of the union, and Fiesta Rancho Hotel & Casino, with 85% voting for the union.
Casino workers have held numerous protests and rallies calling on Station Casinos to negotiate with the unions and to cease union busting at properties where union organizing drives are ongoing.
“The company has been fighting these workers for a long time,” said Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226. “What the company has been doing is sending a message to workers they do not respect the democratic way these workers voted ‘yes’ to be represented by the Culinary Union.”
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro has recently called on Station Casinos to negotiate with the six unions. Senator Bernie Sanders has also publicly called on the Trump-supporting casino owners to negotiate.
The struggle is expected to gain more attention as Democratic presidential candidates compete for support from the Culinary Union ahead of the Nevada Democratic Caucuses in February 2020.
A spokesperson for Red Rock Resorts, the parent company of Station Casinos, Michael Britt told the Guardian in an email: “With respect to both Palms and Green Valley Ranch, although the union would clearly prefer that we not exercise our legal right to challenge the National Labor Review Board’s (NLRB) decisions regarding those properties in the United States federal courts – we have every right to do so and our challenges are both legal and appropriate.”
They declined to clarify the reasons behind those challenges.
In Red Rock Resort’s most recent annual report, the company claimed, “Union organization activities could disrupt our business by discouraging patrons from visiting our properties, causing labor disputes or work stoppages, and, if successful, could significantly increase our labor costs.”
CEOs rake in 940% more than 40 years ago, while average workers earn 12% more
BY KATE GIBSON - CBS News
UPDATED ON: AUGUST 14, 2019 / 11:18 AM / MONEYWATCH
- CEO compensation rose 940% from 1978 to 2018, compared with a 12% rise in pay for the average American worker during the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
- In 2018, average CEO pay at the 350 biggest U.S. companies was $17.2 million.
- Chief executives at large companies make roughly $278 for every $1 a typical worker earns -- that's up from a ratio of 20-to-1 back in 1965 and a ratio of 58-to-1 in 1989.
The chasm between what the country's corporate leaders and their workers earn is widening to Grand Canyon-like proportions, according to new research that shows CEO compensation surged 940% between 1978 to 2018 while the average worker saw a meager 12% pay hike over the same 40-year period.
"CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills," economist Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Julia Wolfe said in the report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Depending on how it's calculated, the average pay of CEOs at the 350 biggest U.S. companies last year came to $17.2 million, the EPI research found. (Or, alternatively, about $14 million, with the smaller number valuing the stock options that make up a big chunk of CEO pay at the time they were granted rather than when they were cashed in at typically higher prices.)
Last year chief execs got $278 for every $1 a typical worker earned, according to Mishel and Wolfe. Back in 1965, top corporate chiefs earned $20 for every dollar a typical worker earned, with that ratio rising to 58-to-1 by 1989. The gap widened dramatically in the following decades, they noted, due to a shift in the 1990s and 2000s to compensate CEOs mostly with stock options, restricted shares and other incentive-based pay fueled a spike in their earnings.
Other factors that have driven income inequality in recent years: failure to raise the federal minimum wage, eroding union membership and globalization -- all of which reflect shifts in economic policy in ways that favor big corporations and the rich, Mishel said.
Pay for performance?
The EPI findings are in line with an analysis by Equilar for the Associated Press earlier this year that found that CEOs at S&P 500-listed companies made a median of $12 million last year, including salary, stock and other compensation.
Many CEOs who haul in massive stock awards aren't necessarily demonstrating their worth, EPI's Mishel told CBS MoneyWatch this week. Rather, the jump in executive compensation broadly reflects the runup in stocks in recent years.
"When every industry stock goes up, their stock goes up, and they're rewarded as though they hit a triple, Mishel said. "That's not for performance as they are sitting in the bleachers."
Excessive CEO pay is the result of a rigged system that creates the wrong incentives for top executives and is the same time terrible for company morale, observed Steven Cliffords, CEO of King Broadcasting for five years and National Mobile Television for nine.
"When people talk to me, they'll say, 'Yeah, but look at those baseball stars and all the money they make,' " Cliffords explained. "But there's a key difference: Baseball players make their money in what's essentially an auction market, where teams bid for their services. It's the same with movie stars. You know Mike Trout is going to improve any team he's on, that Meryl Streep is going to improve any movie she's in."
Conversely, a CEO is not going to improve just any company, as the knowledge it takes to perform well in the job is company-specific. That's why three-quarters of all new CEOs among S&P 500 companies involve internal promotions, said Cliffords, who has chaired numerous compensation committees for public and private companies. (He's also the author of "The CEO Pay Machine, How it Trashes America and How to Stop It.")
The pay gap between CEOs and rank-and-file workers had some members of Congress calling out bank CEOs on the pay disparity earlier this year. New York Democrat Nydia Velazquez told the heads of the nation's largest financial institutions appearing on Capitol Hill that the swelling pay gap "doesn't look good."
Disney heiress Abigail Disney has repeatedly criticized the compensation paid to public company CEOs, calling it "a moral issue" and one that leaves some low-wage earnings sleeping in their cars and rationing insulin. She and other activists contend that workers are often laid off without severance, while top executives line their own and investors' pockets through share buybacks and cash dividends.
"In the 1980s, it became all about creating money for shareholders," William Lazonick, an economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said of the practice of companies spending billions of dollars to repurchase their own stock and artificially driving the price higher.
In its report, EPI called for policies including reinstating higher marginal income tax rates at the very top and setting higher corporate tax rates on companies with higher ratios of CEO-to-worker compensation.
‘We won’t back down’: Over 50 catering workers arrested at American Airlines HQ in protest against poverty wages
August 13, 2019
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - Raw Story
More than 50 unionized catering workers were arrested at American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on Tuesday as hundreds rallied to protest poverty wages and meager benefits.
“American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare.”
—Unite Here
“Bad insurance, lousy pay, this is how your food is made,” chanted the workers, who are employed by subcontractors LSG Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet. American Airlines is Sky Chefs’ largest customer.
Unite Here, the union that represents the protesting workers, said in a report released ahead of the demonstration that “wages for catering workers at American’s most profitable hubs are among the lowest in the country.”
“Airline food workers serving American flights in Dallas make as little as $9.85,” the report found.
As Tuesday’s demonstration kicked off, Unite Here tweeted: “American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare. Airline catering workers are in Dallas this week to tell the airline one job should be enough!”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, applauded the catering workers for standing up and “challenging corporate greed” in a tweet on Tuesday.
“In recent years American Airlines has made billions in profits,” said Sanders. “It is unconscionable that their workers cannot afford good healthcare or get reliable raises.”
In an act of civil disobedience, workers sat down and blocked the road leading to American Airlines’ HQ:
The protest comes just weeks after thousands of airline catering workers voted to authorize a strike as they bargain for better wages and benefits.
Tane Stover, an LSG Sky Chef employee who was arrested during Tuesday’s protest, told the Dallas WBAP, “We don’t want to go on strike, but we will if that’s what it takes for American Airlines to know that one job should be enough.”
“American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare.”
—Unite Here
“Bad insurance, lousy pay, this is how your food is made,” chanted the workers, who are employed by subcontractors LSG Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet. American Airlines is Sky Chefs’ largest customer.
Unite Here, the union that represents the protesting workers, said in a report released ahead of the demonstration that “wages for catering workers at American’s most profitable hubs are among the lowest in the country.”
“Airline food workers serving American flights in Dallas make as little as $9.85,” the report found.
As Tuesday’s demonstration kicked off, Unite Here tweeted: “American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare. Airline catering workers are in Dallas this week to tell the airline one job should be enough!”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, applauded the catering workers for standing up and “challenging corporate greed” in a tweet on Tuesday.
“In recent years American Airlines has made billions in profits,” said Sanders. “It is unconscionable that their workers cannot afford good healthcare or get reliable raises.”
In an act of civil disobedience, workers sat down and blocked the road leading to American Airlines’ HQ:
The protest comes just weeks after thousands of airline catering workers voted to authorize a strike as they bargain for better wages and benefits.
Tane Stover, an LSG Sky Chef employee who was arrested during Tuesday’s protest, told the Dallas WBAP, “We don’t want to go on strike, but we will if that’s what it takes for American Airlines to know that one job should be enough.”
while the slaves drive, the master resides in luxury!!!
Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages
Los Angeles sees a spike in the homelessness population while homes the size of football fields are selling for more than $100m
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Tue 2 Jul 2019 18.12 EDT
This 56,500 sq ft Holmby Hills mansion, once belonging to television producer Aaron Spelling, has sold for $120m. Photograph: Mark Terrill/AP
Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
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