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Slavery 21st Century
You thought it was over, think again
jan 16, 2020
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
*PETE BUTTIGIEG’S CAMPAIGN USED GIG-WORK PLATFORM, NOTORIOUS FOR LOW PAY, FOR POLLING
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FedEx mounts big-money push to head off unionization by US workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. employment in the 2010s in five charts
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CNN agrees to record $76M settlement over labor dispute
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber is trying to trick its drivers into skirting California's new contractor law
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Silicon Valley is primed for a worker uprising
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*AT&T touted worker bonuses after $3 billion Trump tax cut. Now it’s outsourcing thousands of jobs(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Amazon warehouse workers doing “back-breaking” work walked off the job in protest(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Bosses Are Charged with Breaking the Law in Over 40% of Union Campaigns
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Disney Sued by Labor Union for Failing to Pay Living Wage: Employees Have to ‘Live in Their Cars’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. third-quarter labor costs revised down; productivity weak
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Harvard Grad Workers Are Striking Over Medical Debt and Sexual Harassment
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*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)
*Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
what he says are his policies are just bullshit!!!
PETE BUTTIGIEG’S CAMPAIGN USED GIG-WORK PLATFORM, NOTORIOUS FOR LOW PAY, FOR POLLING
Ryan Grim, Akela Lacy - the intercept
January 16 2020, 7:17 a.m.
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg spent $20,000 over the summer hiring gig workers through the platform Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, one of the most controversial actors in the gig-working space. Studies have found gig workers at the company are paid far below minimum wage, even though many on the platform work full-time.
The Buttigieg campaign contracted with MTurk for “polling” in August and September, according to Federal Election Commission records. MTurk allows a job requester to post the type of task they want completed and a price they’ll pay for it (the site allows payments as low as 1 cent). It is unclear from the FEC records how much the campaign paid per survey. A campaign spokesperson said they took steps to ensure participants were paid above the minimum wage for surveys that lasted 2-3 minutes, but would not specify how much the participants were paid.
The campaign’s use of an exploitative platform like MTurk is in sharp contrast with the way Buttigieg has cast himself as a pro-worker candidate. He has been outspoken about the need for labor protections for those in the gig economy, whom companies often misclassify as independent contractors rather than employees in order to skirt labor protections. He has proposed several measures that would achieve better labor standards for gig workers, including a $15 minimum wage, cracking down on payroll fraud that lists gig workers as independent contractors, and ending right-to-work laws.
This past weekend, at a culinary union’s town hall in Las Vegas, Buttigieg told the audience, “If you’re a gig worker, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing a gig, you’re working. And if you’re working, that makes you a worker, and if you’re a worker, you deserve protections. We are going to make sure gig workers have the chance to organize and unionize, too.” In August, Buttigieg joined gig workers to rally outside of Uber’s headquarters in support of a California law that aimed to crack down on exploitation.
But workers on MTurk are not considered employees by the company, which is owned by Amazon, and do not have any labor or wage protections, nor do they have the freedom to join a union. Workers there tried to form a union in 2014 and Amazon, which collects a 20 percent fee per “worker reward,” squashed the effort.
While exploitation is rampant in the gig economy, MTurk has been identified as one of the worst offenders by journalists and researchers. MTurk workers can perform “mind-numbing tasks for hours on end, sometimes earning just pennies per job,” Alana Semuels wrote last January in The Atlantic in a piece titled, “The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell.” Companies like MTurk, Semuels wrote, may inadvertently end up targeting vulnerable individuals because they provide quick, easy work that can be done remotely and without requesters on the site having to expend resources on vetting workers. “Requesters use Mechanical Turk because they can farm out menial work on the cheap and get that work done quickly,” Semuels wrote. “They may seem like one-off jobs, done for money on the side by people with a surplus of idle time. But a growing number of people are turning to platforms like Mechanical Turk for the bulk of their income, despite the fact that the work pays terribly. It’s emblematic of the state of the economy in certain regions of the country that some people consider this type of work to be their only choice.” Requesters can also reject work if it doesn’t meet their standards, a subjective decision that means workers risk not being paid even if they spend time on a task.
In several reviews of MTurk on Glassdoor, current and former employees confirm the minimal pay. Some tasks are paid “around 10 cents per minute or 6 dollars an hour if you know the tricks,” wrote one reviewer. “The pay sucks,” another reviewer wrote. “It’s way less than minimum wage.” Under “advice to management,” they wrote, “pay at least min wage in the US.”
The use of MTurk for polling, as the Buttigieg campaign did, has proven controversial among academics who rely on survey responses for their research. “Perhaps most problematic, is the ethical quandary of employed, tenured academics exploiting low-wage work by people at the opposite end of the pay and job security scale,” wrote technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel in JSTOR Daily, in an essay subtitled, “Online services like Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk’ have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Buttigieg campaign is not the first to take advantage of contemporary labor practices to the benefit of its campaign. Last month, The Intercept reported that Mike Bloomberg’s campaign was exploiting prison labor to make phone calls, a relationship the campaign ended following questions from The Intercept. The Intercept could find no evidence that any other campaign was using MTurk, though it’s not uncommon to find Uber or Lyft expenditures in FEC reports. Last year, some staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders complained that the campaign was using Airbnb for lodging and Amazon for office supplies.
The Buttigieg campaign contracted with MTurk for “polling” in August and September, according to Federal Election Commission records. MTurk allows a job requester to post the type of task they want completed and a price they’ll pay for it (the site allows payments as low as 1 cent). It is unclear from the FEC records how much the campaign paid per survey. A campaign spokesperson said they took steps to ensure participants were paid above the minimum wage for surveys that lasted 2-3 minutes, but would not specify how much the participants were paid.
The campaign’s use of an exploitative platform like MTurk is in sharp contrast with the way Buttigieg has cast himself as a pro-worker candidate. He has been outspoken about the need for labor protections for those in the gig economy, whom companies often misclassify as independent contractors rather than employees in order to skirt labor protections. He has proposed several measures that would achieve better labor standards for gig workers, including a $15 minimum wage, cracking down on payroll fraud that lists gig workers as independent contractors, and ending right-to-work laws.
This past weekend, at a culinary union’s town hall in Las Vegas, Buttigieg told the audience, “If you’re a gig worker, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing a gig, you’re working. And if you’re working, that makes you a worker, and if you’re a worker, you deserve protections. We are going to make sure gig workers have the chance to organize and unionize, too.” In August, Buttigieg joined gig workers to rally outside of Uber’s headquarters in support of a California law that aimed to crack down on exploitation.
But workers on MTurk are not considered employees by the company, which is owned by Amazon, and do not have any labor or wage protections, nor do they have the freedom to join a union. Workers there tried to form a union in 2014 and Amazon, which collects a 20 percent fee per “worker reward,” squashed the effort.
While exploitation is rampant in the gig economy, MTurk has been identified as one of the worst offenders by journalists and researchers. MTurk workers can perform “mind-numbing tasks for hours on end, sometimes earning just pennies per job,” Alana Semuels wrote last January in The Atlantic in a piece titled, “The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell.” Companies like MTurk, Semuels wrote, may inadvertently end up targeting vulnerable individuals because they provide quick, easy work that can be done remotely and without requesters on the site having to expend resources on vetting workers. “Requesters use Mechanical Turk because they can farm out menial work on the cheap and get that work done quickly,” Semuels wrote. “They may seem like one-off jobs, done for money on the side by people with a surplus of idle time. But a growing number of people are turning to platforms like Mechanical Turk for the bulk of their income, despite the fact that the work pays terribly. It’s emblematic of the state of the economy in certain regions of the country that some people consider this type of work to be their only choice.” Requesters can also reject work if it doesn’t meet their standards, a subjective decision that means workers risk not being paid even if they spend time on a task.
In several reviews of MTurk on Glassdoor, current and former employees confirm the minimal pay. Some tasks are paid “around 10 cents per minute or 6 dollars an hour if you know the tricks,” wrote one reviewer. “The pay sucks,” another reviewer wrote. “It’s way less than minimum wage.” Under “advice to management,” they wrote, “pay at least min wage in the US.”
The use of MTurk for polling, as the Buttigieg campaign did, has proven controversial among academics who rely on survey responses for their research. “Perhaps most problematic, is the ethical quandary of employed, tenured academics exploiting low-wage work by people at the opposite end of the pay and job security scale,” wrote technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel in JSTOR Daily, in an essay subtitled, “Online services like Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk’ have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Buttigieg campaign is not the first to take advantage of contemporary labor practices to the benefit of its campaign. Last month, The Intercept reported that Mike Bloomberg’s campaign was exploiting prison labor to make phone calls, a relationship the campaign ended following questions from The Intercept. The Intercept could find no evidence that any other campaign was using MTurk, though it’s not uncommon to find Uber or Lyft expenditures in FEC reports. Last year, some staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders complained that the campaign was using Airbnb for lodging and Amazon for office supplies.
US unions
FedEx mounts big-money push to head off unionization by US workers
Teamsters bid to organize employees seeking better pay and benefits as company bombards them with anti-union messages
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Tue 14 Jan 2020 05.30 EST
FedEx workers hoping to unionize and get better pay and benefits have met with a well-financed barrage of opposition from the company, according to recordings obtained by the Guardian.
Workers who charge that their benefits are less than at rival UPS said the company has bombarded them with anti-union messages and forced them to attend anti-union meetings.
The Guardian obtained recordings of meetings that were mandatory and required workers to sign in, according to a FedEx employee, held at FedEx facilities in 2015 and 2016, where managers and union avoidance consultants lectured workers on unions as the Teamsters was attempting to organize FedEx drivers at several locations around the United States.
“It’s time to campaign. If you don’t want this third party coming in putting a wall between us, it’s time. Because when you campaign and tell them you don’t want them here, eventually it becomes loud and clear to them. You can do that,” said a FedEx human resources manager in a July 2016 captive audience meeting.
In the meetings, FedEx human resources managers often cited anecdotes to dismiss union organizing.
One, in the same July 2016 meeting, said: “Recently I had this question come up from an employee. Why is there a small group of employees at our company who seem to be very ungrateful at what the company has to offer them? Why do some employees give their allegiance to strangers and an organization like the Teamsters rather than this company that continues to provide for us, that has provided us with a long list of benefits and incredible pay, not to mention good equipment and facilities?
“I don’t have an answer, I don’t know. I feel your pain. I appreciate the company and what they offer. I have an attitude of gratitude.”
In another alleged anecdote, the same FedEx manager told workers a story about an unnamed 58-year-old employee for three years who supported unionizing because they wanted a better pension plan.
The manager told workers: “He’s getting closer to retirement. He tells the HR manager. The manager said: what have you done leading up in your career to prepare for retirement? You can’t hold FedEx Freight accountable for your own inability and failure to prepare for your retirement. He changed his whole attitude about it and started supporting the company because he took ownership of his own failure.”
In the meetings, FedEx managers and consultants claimed negotiations with labor unions are a gamble.
“It’s like going to Vegas and rolling the dice,” one said.
They also referred to union authorization cards as a “blank check”, and told workers “they need money, they’re running out of money. They want your money. They want our money.”
In a video used by FedEx to deter unionization, the Teamsters union was characterized as a plot to undermine FedEx by UPS, where about 250,000 employees are represented by the Teamsters.
“A package lost by FedEx equals a package gained by UPS,” said a narrator in the video.
FedEx, the second largest logistics company in the US, spent $837,000 between 2014 and 2018 on union avoidance consultants, according to a recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found by examining publicly available forms filed by consultants with the Department of Labor, US employers spend around $340m annually on union avoidance consultants, with FedEx as one of the top spenders.
FedEx’s anti-union campaign between 2014 to 2018 was largely a success. In April 2019, the only FedEx Freight workers unionized in the US voted against an effort to decertify the Teamsters union at a warehouse in Stockton, California, but prior decertification efforts were successful in 2017 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The only other unionized FedEx employees are their pilots, who voted to form a union in 1993.
A FedEx location in New Jersey voted to unionize in 2014, only to voluntarily cede representation in 2017 after FedEx fought in court with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for years over which workers should be included in the bargaining unit. Several FedEx warehouses around the US voted against unionizing between 2014 and 2018, while other locations didn’t get that far in the union organizing process due to company pushback.
“They told me, ‘either you’re a team player, or you’re a problem and we will do everything to eliminate problems,’” said Greg Barfuss, a FedEx driver for seven years who was laid off in December 2015 after openly supporting unionization of his Gardena, California, based FedEx warehouse. “They first tried to intimidate me. When that didn’t work they fired me, and that scared other drivers from trying any more.”
He filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, and a settlement was reached with FedEx in May 2016 for one of the charges.
FedEx rejected Barfuss’s claim that he was fired for union organizing and noted the NLRB did not rule in favor of Barfuss on the charge of being fired in retaliation for union activity. “To avoid the time and expense of litigation, FedEx Freight chose to resolve one of the claims and did so without payment of money or admission of liability,” a spokesperson for FedEx told the Guardian in an email.
As FedEx heavily opposed unionization efforts among its employees, the company aggressively lobbied in favor of the 2017 Trump tax cut bill, which decreased FedEx’s taxes from over $1.5bn in 2017 to zero in 2018. Despite the significant tax savings, the New York Times reported in November 2019 that FedEx did not fulfill promises of using the tax windfall to reinvest in equipment and other assets, while spending about $3.6bn on stock buybacks in 2018 and 2019. FedEx’s CEO, Fred Smith, claimed the story was “distorted”, without citing specific examples, and challenged the New York Times publisher to a debate in response.
Workers at FedEx experienced cuts to bonuses in 2019 and a FedEx driver in Texas, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said this year workers essentially received a pay cut due to increases in healthcare costs.
“They decided for 2020 that if your spouse can get insurance at their employer and you keep them with Fedex’s insurer, they’re going to charge you $150 a month to keep your spouse on it. The pay raise amounted to $30 a week because we received $0.75 an hour raise so it doesn’t cover the spousal surcharge,” they said.
FedEx is also changing its pension plan in 2020, eliminating it for new hires who will be offered a 401k plan instead, while giving current employees the choice to keep their current plans or opt in to the 401k.
The FedEx driver explained the pension plan was one of the driving forces for union organizing at FedEx.
He said: “Our retirement is bad when you compare it to UPS. A UPS worker gets $100 a month for every year of service, somewhere around there. So 20 years in you’ll get a $2,000-per-month pension. I have 20 years here. If you project my pension, in another 10 years my projected income will be $300 a month with almost 30 years in. What am I going to do with $300 a month?”
A FedEx spokesperson said the company was changing retirement benefits program to ensure the benefits “remain competitive”.
The spokesperson added in an email to the Guardian: “While FedEx Freight respects the right of our team members to decide for themselves if they want to be part of a union, the law does not require us to remain neutral and protects our right to provide facts and opinions about unions so that our employees may make a fully informed decision.”
Workers who charge that their benefits are less than at rival UPS said the company has bombarded them with anti-union messages and forced them to attend anti-union meetings.
The Guardian obtained recordings of meetings that were mandatory and required workers to sign in, according to a FedEx employee, held at FedEx facilities in 2015 and 2016, where managers and union avoidance consultants lectured workers on unions as the Teamsters was attempting to organize FedEx drivers at several locations around the United States.
“It’s time to campaign. If you don’t want this third party coming in putting a wall between us, it’s time. Because when you campaign and tell them you don’t want them here, eventually it becomes loud and clear to them. You can do that,” said a FedEx human resources manager in a July 2016 captive audience meeting.
In the meetings, FedEx human resources managers often cited anecdotes to dismiss union organizing.
One, in the same July 2016 meeting, said: “Recently I had this question come up from an employee. Why is there a small group of employees at our company who seem to be very ungrateful at what the company has to offer them? Why do some employees give their allegiance to strangers and an organization like the Teamsters rather than this company that continues to provide for us, that has provided us with a long list of benefits and incredible pay, not to mention good equipment and facilities?
“I don’t have an answer, I don’t know. I feel your pain. I appreciate the company and what they offer. I have an attitude of gratitude.”
In another alleged anecdote, the same FedEx manager told workers a story about an unnamed 58-year-old employee for three years who supported unionizing because they wanted a better pension plan.
The manager told workers: “He’s getting closer to retirement. He tells the HR manager. The manager said: what have you done leading up in your career to prepare for retirement? You can’t hold FedEx Freight accountable for your own inability and failure to prepare for your retirement. He changed his whole attitude about it and started supporting the company because he took ownership of his own failure.”
In the meetings, FedEx managers and consultants claimed negotiations with labor unions are a gamble.
“It’s like going to Vegas and rolling the dice,” one said.
They also referred to union authorization cards as a “blank check”, and told workers “they need money, they’re running out of money. They want your money. They want our money.”
In a video used by FedEx to deter unionization, the Teamsters union was characterized as a plot to undermine FedEx by UPS, where about 250,000 employees are represented by the Teamsters.
“A package lost by FedEx equals a package gained by UPS,” said a narrator in the video.
FedEx, the second largest logistics company in the US, spent $837,000 between 2014 and 2018 on union avoidance consultants, according to a recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found by examining publicly available forms filed by consultants with the Department of Labor, US employers spend around $340m annually on union avoidance consultants, with FedEx as one of the top spenders.
FedEx’s anti-union campaign between 2014 to 2018 was largely a success. In April 2019, the only FedEx Freight workers unionized in the US voted against an effort to decertify the Teamsters union at a warehouse in Stockton, California, but prior decertification efforts were successful in 2017 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The only other unionized FedEx employees are their pilots, who voted to form a union in 1993.
A FedEx location in New Jersey voted to unionize in 2014, only to voluntarily cede representation in 2017 after FedEx fought in court with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for years over which workers should be included in the bargaining unit. Several FedEx warehouses around the US voted against unionizing between 2014 and 2018, while other locations didn’t get that far in the union organizing process due to company pushback.
“They told me, ‘either you’re a team player, or you’re a problem and we will do everything to eliminate problems,’” said Greg Barfuss, a FedEx driver for seven years who was laid off in December 2015 after openly supporting unionization of his Gardena, California, based FedEx warehouse. “They first tried to intimidate me. When that didn’t work they fired me, and that scared other drivers from trying any more.”
He filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, and a settlement was reached with FedEx in May 2016 for one of the charges.
FedEx rejected Barfuss’s claim that he was fired for union organizing and noted the NLRB did not rule in favor of Barfuss on the charge of being fired in retaliation for union activity. “To avoid the time and expense of litigation, FedEx Freight chose to resolve one of the claims and did so without payment of money or admission of liability,” a spokesperson for FedEx told the Guardian in an email.
As FedEx heavily opposed unionization efforts among its employees, the company aggressively lobbied in favor of the 2017 Trump tax cut bill, which decreased FedEx’s taxes from over $1.5bn in 2017 to zero in 2018. Despite the significant tax savings, the New York Times reported in November 2019 that FedEx did not fulfill promises of using the tax windfall to reinvest in equipment and other assets, while spending about $3.6bn on stock buybacks in 2018 and 2019. FedEx’s CEO, Fred Smith, claimed the story was “distorted”, without citing specific examples, and challenged the New York Times publisher to a debate in response.
Workers at FedEx experienced cuts to bonuses in 2019 and a FedEx driver in Texas, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said this year workers essentially received a pay cut due to increases in healthcare costs.
“They decided for 2020 that if your spouse can get insurance at their employer and you keep them with Fedex’s insurer, they’re going to charge you $150 a month to keep your spouse on it. The pay raise amounted to $30 a week because we received $0.75 an hour raise so it doesn’t cover the spousal surcharge,” they said.
FedEx is also changing its pension plan in 2020, eliminating it for new hires who will be offered a 401k plan instead, while giving current employees the choice to keep their current plans or opt in to the 401k.
The FedEx driver explained the pension plan was one of the driving forces for union organizing at FedEx.
He said: “Our retirement is bad when you compare it to UPS. A UPS worker gets $100 a month for every year of service, somewhere around there. So 20 years in you’ll get a $2,000-per-month pension. I have 20 years here. If you project my pension, in another 10 years my projected income will be $300 a month with almost 30 years in. What am I going to do with $300 a month?”
A FedEx spokesperson said the company was changing retirement benefits program to ensure the benefits “remain competitive”.
The spokesperson added in an email to the Guardian: “While FedEx Freight respects the right of our team members to decide for themselves if they want to be part of a union, the law does not require us to remain neutral and protects our right to provide facts and opinions about unions so that our employees may make a fully informed decision.”
U.S. employment in the 2010s in five charts
Dan Burns, Howard Schneider - reuters
1/10/20
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The last U.S. employment report of the 2010s out Friday had few surprises, but it wrapped up a decade that featured some notable milestones in a job market that has changed dramatically in the space of 10 years.
RECORD DECADE FOR JOB CREATION
The 2010s will go into the record books - for at least another 10 years - as the decade that saw the greatest number of jobs created in the United States: 22.6 million.
It was a welcome recovery from the 2000s, the only decade in the history of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to feature a net loss of jobs, thanks largely to the two recessions that bookended that era. December’s report was the 111th monthly scorecard in a row to show employment gains, and the U.S. economy ended the decade with a record 152.4 million people working.[...]
RECORD DECADE FOR JOB CREATION
The 2010s will go into the record books - for at least another 10 years - as the decade that saw the greatest number of jobs created in the United States: 22.6 million.
It was a welcome recovery from the 2000s, the only decade in the history of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to feature a net loss of jobs, thanks largely to the two recessions that bookended that era. December’s report was the 111th monthly scorecard in a row to show employment gains, and the U.S. economy ended the decade with a record 152.4 million people working.[...]
CNN agrees to record $76M settlement over labor dispute
ap
1/11/20
CNN has agreed to pay $76 million in backpay as part of a record settlement with the federal labor board after the cable television network terminated the contracts of unionized camera operators in 2003.
The settlement is the “largest monetary remedy” in the National Labor Relations Board’s 85-year history, the agency said in a statement Friday. The settlement will benefit more than 300 people, officials said.
“The settlement demonstrates the Board’s continued commitment to enforcing the law and ensuring employees who were treated unfairly obtain the monetary relief ordered by the Board,” General Counsel Peter B. Robb said in the statement.
The NLRB said CNN ended its contract with a unionized subcontractor, Team Video Services, and then replaced the workers with new employees “without recognizing or bargaining with the two unions that had represented the TVS employees.”
“After more than a decade of litigation, negotiation and appeals we are pleased to have resolved a longstanding legal matter,” a CNN spokesperson said.
The settlement is the “largest monetary remedy” in the National Labor Relations Board’s 85-year history, the agency said in a statement Friday. The settlement will benefit more than 300 people, officials said.
“The settlement demonstrates the Board’s continued commitment to enforcing the law and ensuring employees who were treated unfairly obtain the monetary relief ordered by the Board,” General Counsel Peter B. Robb said in the statement.
The NLRB said CNN ended its contract with a unionized subcontractor, Team Video Services, and then replaced the workers with new employees “without recognizing or bargaining with the two unions that had represented the TVS employees.”
“After more than a decade of litigation, negotiation and appeals we are pleased to have resolved a longstanding legal matter,” a CNN spokesperson said.
Uber is trying to trick its drivers into skirting California's new contractor law
A seemingly benign change in how the Uber app works in California is actually a plot to dodge regulation
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
JANUARY 10, 2020 12:20AM (UTC)
It’s 2020, which means California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a law that passed last year which was designed to improve the livelihood of gig workers, has gone into effect — and Uber is taking its first steps to evade it.
On Wednesday morning, the rideshare behemoth emailed 150,000 California drivers, and millions of California passengers, to alert them of changes that will impact how the company operates in California.
In the email, the company said changes include replacing upfront pricing with an estimate for any rides except carpools with other paying passengers (known as Uber Pools).
Hence, rather than give rider a firm price upfront for rideshares, “the final price will be calculated at the end of your trip, based on the actual time and distance traveled,” Uber explains.
The law forces Uber, and other companies that rely on independent contractors, to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage. Of course, this doesn’t merely apply to exploited gig workers like Uber and Lyft drivers. It applies to all freelancers, including writers, artists and musicians, many of whom are reportedly experiencing unintended consequences of the law, some of them losing work as a result. Assorted independent workers have banded together to try to argue for exemptions from the law. Freelance journalists have yet to receive one, despite a request. However, a California judge ruled that truck drivers aren’t covered by the new law, and hence can retain their independent contractor status.
The changes that Uber made as a result of AB5 give drivers more control over their rides — a change which on the surface may seem benign. Yet the sinister purpose of such a change is to let drivers skirt the law and be more clearly defined as contractors. (A full-time employee, presumably, would not have a choice as to which riders they do and do not take.)
This is Uber’s attempt to keep their workers classified as independent contractors, and avoid paying them benefits or salaries.
According to the text of the bill, a worker is considered an employee unless the hiring entity could demonstrate they were free from the employer’s control. In December, Uber filed a lawsuit in federal court in California requesting to seek an injunction that would have blocked the law from applying to them.
As part of the changes, riders will be able to request their favorite drivers when scheduling a trip in advance. Overall, consumers in California might see more frequently rejected rides and higher prices.
Prior to the passage of the law, Uber and Lyft were threatening changes that would harm consumers in the event that the law passed. However, as Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, told Salon in September 2019, such changes aren’t written in the law; they were the companies' choice in an attempt to gain political will to avoid having to comply.
"They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law,” Jacobs told Salon.
As reported by the Washington Post, Uber has been working away on a project known as Project Luigi since October to change Uber’s app for California drivers. According to the report, Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said the company is “making a number of changes to the Uber marketplace, which tens of thousands of California drivers use to find flexible work. While we are confident that drivers are already correctly classified, these product changes will further strengthen drivers’ independence and preserve their ability to work when, where and how they want.”
John Costa, International President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said in a media statement Uber’s response is “yet another indication that Uber has no intention of treating its drivers fairly and respectfully.”
“The Amalgamated Transit Union calls on California lawmakers to stand strong in the face of Uber’s scattershot attempts to avoid granting fair wages and basic benefits and protections to its drivers,” Costa said.
It doesn't come as a surprise that this is Uber's response. As Salon has previously reported, it's hard to say definitively one way or another if Uber and Lyft can survive these changes, as their business models were entirely reliant on exploiting workers and keeping them as contractors.
“What I can say is that the way the business model is currently structured is that it is very much based on drivers being independent contractors and not treating them as employees,” Saba Waheed, a research director at the UCLA Labor Center, told Salon. “This business model was built on pretty exploitative conditions for drivers.”
Even in the absence of AB5's passage, an increase in costs of Uber and Lyft was inevitable, as the company continues to subsidize costs in its price war with Lyft and attempt to win market share. Both companies continue to bleed investor money, and neither are profitable.
"The cheap fares aren’t because they are cheap rides, it’s because drivers aren’t paid well and they are subsidizing part of that fare,” Waheed said.
On Wednesday morning, the rideshare behemoth emailed 150,000 California drivers, and millions of California passengers, to alert them of changes that will impact how the company operates in California.
In the email, the company said changes include replacing upfront pricing with an estimate for any rides except carpools with other paying passengers (known as Uber Pools).
Hence, rather than give rider a firm price upfront for rideshares, “the final price will be calculated at the end of your trip, based on the actual time and distance traveled,” Uber explains.
The law forces Uber, and other companies that rely on independent contractors, to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage. Of course, this doesn’t merely apply to exploited gig workers like Uber and Lyft drivers. It applies to all freelancers, including writers, artists and musicians, many of whom are reportedly experiencing unintended consequences of the law, some of them losing work as a result. Assorted independent workers have banded together to try to argue for exemptions from the law. Freelance journalists have yet to receive one, despite a request. However, a California judge ruled that truck drivers aren’t covered by the new law, and hence can retain their independent contractor status.
The changes that Uber made as a result of AB5 give drivers more control over their rides — a change which on the surface may seem benign. Yet the sinister purpose of such a change is to let drivers skirt the law and be more clearly defined as contractors. (A full-time employee, presumably, would not have a choice as to which riders they do and do not take.)
This is Uber’s attempt to keep their workers classified as independent contractors, and avoid paying them benefits or salaries.
According to the text of the bill, a worker is considered an employee unless the hiring entity could demonstrate they were free from the employer’s control. In December, Uber filed a lawsuit in federal court in California requesting to seek an injunction that would have blocked the law from applying to them.
As part of the changes, riders will be able to request their favorite drivers when scheduling a trip in advance. Overall, consumers in California might see more frequently rejected rides and higher prices.
Prior to the passage of the law, Uber and Lyft were threatening changes that would harm consumers in the event that the law passed. However, as Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, told Salon in September 2019, such changes aren’t written in the law; they were the companies' choice in an attempt to gain political will to avoid having to comply.
"They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law,” Jacobs told Salon.
As reported by the Washington Post, Uber has been working away on a project known as Project Luigi since October to change Uber’s app for California drivers. According to the report, Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said the company is “making a number of changes to the Uber marketplace, which tens of thousands of California drivers use to find flexible work. While we are confident that drivers are already correctly classified, these product changes will further strengthen drivers’ independence and preserve their ability to work when, where and how they want.”
John Costa, International President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said in a media statement Uber’s response is “yet another indication that Uber has no intention of treating its drivers fairly and respectfully.”
“The Amalgamated Transit Union calls on California lawmakers to stand strong in the face of Uber’s scattershot attempts to avoid granting fair wages and basic benefits and protections to its drivers,” Costa said.
It doesn't come as a surprise that this is Uber's response. As Salon has previously reported, it's hard to say definitively one way or another if Uber and Lyft can survive these changes, as their business models were entirely reliant on exploiting workers and keeping them as contractors.
“What I can say is that the way the business model is currently structured is that it is very much based on drivers being independent contractors and not treating them as employees,” Saba Waheed, a research director at the UCLA Labor Center, told Salon. “This business model was built on pretty exploitative conditions for drivers.”
Even in the absence of AB5's passage, an increase in costs of Uber and Lyft was inevitable, as the company continues to subsidize costs in its price war with Lyft and attempt to win market share. Both companies continue to bleed investor money, and neither are profitable.
"The cheap fares aren’t because they are cheap rides, it’s because drivers aren’t paid well and they are subsidizing part of that fare,” Waheed said.
bloodsuckers exposed!!!
Silicon Valley is primed for a worker uprising
The foundation was laid in the 2010s. Will the 2020s be defined by Tech's labor struggles?
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
JANUARY 6, 2020 12:30AM (UTC)
Only ten years ago, the public perception of Silicon Valley was far more optimistic. Time magazine named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg their person of the year in 2010, after Aaron Sorkin’s film “The Social Network” became a blockbuster hit. In part due to the popularity of the iPhone 4, 2010 was also the beginning of the mobile app boom. App developers were becoming overnight millionaires. And Uber was then known as “UberCab,” a small San Francisco startup trying to get its rideshare app to stand out from the noise. Startups were still considered a desirable place to work, and the general public was enamored by quirky tech office perks like ball pits and office kegs.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Unless Zuckerberg repents and becomes a Luddite, it is unlikely he will ever be perceived as anything more than a robotic boy-CEO. Sorkin, who was once captivated by Zuckerberg’s story enough to make a movie out of it, has described Facebook’s policy on allowing politicians to lie on its platform as “assaulting the truth.” Uber is now a multi-billion company whose rise has been tainted by sexism scandals, sexual assaults, and obscene exploitation of their workers. Working at a startup is no longer as novel as it used to be. Rather, workers at Silicon Valley companies, big and small, white collar and blue collar, have started to feel less coddled and more exploited, an energy they have channeled into an uprising — and one that has only just begun.
“Major tech companies lost their positive sheen and tech workers found their voice” in the 2010s, Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute, told Salon in an email. “Tech workers discovered that their companies were engaged in business activities that conflicted with their expressed values.”
As my colleague Keith A. Spencer and I wrote in 2019, that shift in Silicon Valley really gained steam at the end of the decade. The industry, once a bastion of corporate-friendly libertarianism, has seen its politics change as tech workers become cognizant of the often subtle ways that their employers take advantage of them. Meanwhile, many tech companies took contracts from the defense industry and oil and gas, industries that most in the Valley see as irredeemable. In the case of Google parent company Alphabet, Jacobs notes that the company belied its motto, “do no evil," by "working on robotic military systems, assisting censorship in China and ignoring sexual harassment by executives — all of which became the focus of worker protests.”
In 2018, after the New York Times published a report claiming that Google paid out $90 million to one of its executives after he faced sexual assault allegations, workers organized a massive walkout. An estimated 20,000 Google employees walked off the job in protest in November 2018. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, tech workers helped organize for Proposition C which would raise the gross receipts tax by an average of 0.5 percent for businesses that earn more than $50 million a year. As a result, nearly $300 million would go toward homelessness initiatives. Many supporters of the proposition worked at companies whose top executives opposed the measure, signaling tensions between the average worker and the C-suite. At the time, one tech worker told Salon she was supporting the proposition despite working at a company that was advocating against it. “I’m being well compensated now, but how long will that last?” she said. “I have a sense I’m closer to homelessness than a jackpot liquidation.”
Jacobs added that wealth accumulated by a small number of investors and owners of tech companies contrasts sharply with growing homelessness in places like the Bay Area. Even well-heeled tech workers felt distanced from being part of such wealth, in part thanks to the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
“We also saw growing solidarity across the tech companies' workforce,” Jacobs said of the labor pains of the 2010s. “Highly paid engineers supported the successful efforts by contracted cafeteria workers, janitors and bus drivers to organize into unions and push the tech companies to agree to higher wages.”
The popularity of social media platform Facebook has declined in part due to its role in serving as unwitting propagandist in grave political and economic matters. To wit: Facebook ennobling far-right groups promoting violence; being complicit in spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre, which resulted in some parents of Sandy Hook victims receiving death threats; the platform's role in foreign manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election; and Myanmar military personnel who used the social network to incite genocide, to name a few. Many Facebook workers have felt ethically compromised by their company's wrongdoing, leading some to execute exit strategies.
“Social media went from democratizing information to become a major channel for disinformation from autocratic regimes, and the ‘sharing economy’ turned out to be a strategy to avoid labor rights and evade taxes,” Jacobs told Salon.
This is all to say the next decade is primed for a vast uprising among tech workers, nearly all of whom are not unionized and ripe for organizing. Many historic unionization efforts were just getting started at the end of the 2010s. In September 2019, a group of 73 contract tech workers for Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steelworkers. That marked one of the few cases of white collar tech employees organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively. Employees at Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, signed union cards but are still working toward reognition, an effort that has not been free of tension or retaliation from the company. Instacart workers ended the year with a series of actions and a strike to demand higher wages. California will be the first state to classify gig workers as full-time employees. And despite threats from Amazon, a coalition of their workers are speaking out publicly about the company’s role in climate change. Meanwhile, the regulation of Big Tech is a major talking point for presidential candidates.
At the dawn of the 2020s, the foundation has been laid.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Unless Zuckerberg repents and becomes a Luddite, it is unlikely he will ever be perceived as anything more than a robotic boy-CEO. Sorkin, who was once captivated by Zuckerberg’s story enough to make a movie out of it, has described Facebook’s policy on allowing politicians to lie on its platform as “assaulting the truth.” Uber is now a multi-billion company whose rise has been tainted by sexism scandals, sexual assaults, and obscene exploitation of their workers. Working at a startup is no longer as novel as it used to be. Rather, workers at Silicon Valley companies, big and small, white collar and blue collar, have started to feel less coddled and more exploited, an energy they have channeled into an uprising — and one that has only just begun.
“Major tech companies lost their positive sheen and tech workers found their voice” in the 2010s, Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute, told Salon in an email. “Tech workers discovered that their companies were engaged in business activities that conflicted with their expressed values.”
As my colleague Keith A. Spencer and I wrote in 2019, that shift in Silicon Valley really gained steam at the end of the decade. The industry, once a bastion of corporate-friendly libertarianism, has seen its politics change as tech workers become cognizant of the often subtle ways that their employers take advantage of them. Meanwhile, many tech companies took contracts from the defense industry and oil and gas, industries that most in the Valley see as irredeemable. In the case of Google parent company Alphabet, Jacobs notes that the company belied its motto, “do no evil," by "working on robotic military systems, assisting censorship in China and ignoring sexual harassment by executives — all of which became the focus of worker protests.”
In 2018, after the New York Times published a report claiming that Google paid out $90 million to one of its executives after he faced sexual assault allegations, workers organized a massive walkout. An estimated 20,000 Google employees walked off the job in protest in November 2018. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, tech workers helped organize for Proposition C which would raise the gross receipts tax by an average of 0.5 percent for businesses that earn more than $50 million a year. As a result, nearly $300 million would go toward homelessness initiatives. Many supporters of the proposition worked at companies whose top executives opposed the measure, signaling tensions between the average worker and the C-suite. At the time, one tech worker told Salon she was supporting the proposition despite working at a company that was advocating against it. “I’m being well compensated now, but how long will that last?” she said. “I have a sense I’m closer to homelessness than a jackpot liquidation.”
Jacobs added that wealth accumulated by a small number of investors and owners of tech companies contrasts sharply with growing homelessness in places like the Bay Area. Even well-heeled tech workers felt distanced from being part of such wealth, in part thanks to the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
“We also saw growing solidarity across the tech companies' workforce,” Jacobs said of the labor pains of the 2010s. “Highly paid engineers supported the successful efforts by contracted cafeteria workers, janitors and bus drivers to organize into unions and push the tech companies to agree to higher wages.”
The popularity of social media platform Facebook has declined in part due to its role in serving as unwitting propagandist in grave political and economic matters. To wit: Facebook ennobling far-right groups promoting violence; being complicit in spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre, which resulted in some parents of Sandy Hook victims receiving death threats; the platform's role in foreign manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election; and Myanmar military personnel who used the social network to incite genocide, to name a few. Many Facebook workers have felt ethically compromised by their company's wrongdoing, leading some to execute exit strategies.
“Social media went from democratizing information to become a major channel for disinformation from autocratic regimes, and the ‘sharing economy’ turned out to be a strategy to avoid labor rights and evade taxes,” Jacobs told Salon.
This is all to say the next decade is primed for a vast uprising among tech workers, nearly all of whom are not unionized and ripe for organizing. Many historic unionization efforts were just getting started at the end of the 2010s. In September 2019, a group of 73 contract tech workers for Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steelworkers. That marked one of the few cases of white collar tech employees organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively. Employees at Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, signed union cards but are still working toward reognition, an effort that has not been free of tension or retaliation from the company. Instacart workers ended the year with a series of actions and a strike to demand higher wages. California will be the first state to classify gig workers as full-time employees. And despite threats from Amazon, a coalition of their workers are speaking out publicly about the company’s role in climate change. Meanwhile, the regulation of Big Tech is a major talking point for presidential candidates.
At the dawn of the 2020s, the foundation has been laid.
AT&T touted worker bonuses after $3 billion Trump tax cut. Now it’s outsourcing thousands of jobs
After giving workers $1,000 bonuses, AT&T is forcing many of those workers to train their own foreign replacements
IGOR DERYSH - salon
DECEMBER 31, 2019 11:00AM (UTC)
AT&T touted President Trump’s tax cut and claimed it would result in higher wages for workers. But despite getting a $3 billion tax cut last year, the company is forcing thousands of those workers to train their own cheaper foreign replacements after signing deals with big outsourcing companies.
“Lower taxes drives more investment, drives more hiring, drives greater wages,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told CNBC in 2017 as he made the rounds pushing Trump’s tax cut bill. “I know exactly what AT&T would do: We would invest more.”
Stephenson celebrated the signing of the bill by touting $1,000 bonuses for 200,000 of its workers.
“This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs,” Stephenson said at the time. “In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees.”
But the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents many AT&T employees, said earlier this year that the company cut nearly 28,000 jobs after the bill was passed. On Sunday, Axios reported that the company also plans to lay off thousands more workers “after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements.”
Many of the workers being replaced have been at the company for over a decade but are not being offered severance or early retirement, Axios reported. The company has already inked deals with major outsourcing firms, though a spokesperson insisted to Axios that AT&T is “helping employees find other positions within the company.”
But many workers “described shock and confusion” when they were greeted with a scripted phone call informing them they had to work for a contractor or resign, according to the report. Some workers were told that they could not apply for other jobs inside the company.
Many workers at the company are already bracing for the worst.
"Folks aren't going on vacation, they're cutting back on their Christmas shopping. If you know that you're going to be losing your job, you don't want to spend the money,” one worker told Axios, which note that several other current or recently-fired workers “broke down in tears during telephone interviews.”
Some workers are guaranteed 12 months at the outsourcing company before they will be let go.
"The sad reality is you’ve just been terminated without your severance," an AT&T employee told Axios. "You’re at the mercy of a company that doesn’t really want you."
Sara Blackwell, a Florida attorney who represents workers displaced by foreign replacements, said AT&T’s move is the result of Trump failing to live up to his promise to protect American workers from companies that abuse worker visa programs.
"American workers are tired of waiting for President Trump to do something on this issue,” she told Axios. "They’ve gone from great hope in President Trump's administration, to great discouragement."
Current and former officials at the Department of Homeland Security who spoke to Axios agreed that not enough was being done by the administration and expressed frustration that foreign worker visa programs are “undercutting U.S. workers.”
Bipartisan efforts to reform the foreign worker visa program have stalled amid pushback from tech giants and other industries.
While Trump has failed to deliver the reforms that opponents of outsourcing have called for, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged every Democratic presidential contender to pledge to crack down on companies that outsource American jobs.
“Trump promised he would substantially reduce the trade deficit, stop the outsourcing of American jobs, and rip up NAFTA. He lied about all three,” Sanders said in a statement. “Since Trump has been in office, our trade deficit in goods has shot up to a record-breaking $891 billion. He has given out $50 billion in government contracts to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. He passed tax cuts that reward companies for offshoring even more jobs. And now more than 185,000 American jobs have been shipped overseas under his watch. We need a president who will actually fight for American workers, keep their promises, and stand up to the giant corporations who close down plants to send jobs overseas.”
“Lower taxes drives more investment, drives more hiring, drives greater wages,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told CNBC in 2017 as he made the rounds pushing Trump’s tax cut bill. “I know exactly what AT&T would do: We would invest more.”
Stephenson celebrated the signing of the bill by touting $1,000 bonuses for 200,000 of its workers.
“This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs,” Stephenson said at the time. “In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees.”
But the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents many AT&T employees, said earlier this year that the company cut nearly 28,000 jobs after the bill was passed. On Sunday, Axios reported that the company also plans to lay off thousands more workers “after assigning them to train their own foreign replacements.”
Many of the workers being replaced have been at the company for over a decade but are not being offered severance or early retirement, Axios reported. The company has already inked deals with major outsourcing firms, though a spokesperson insisted to Axios that AT&T is “helping employees find other positions within the company.”
But many workers “described shock and confusion” when they were greeted with a scripted phone call informing them they had to work for a contractor or resign, according to the report. Some workers were told that they could not apply for other jobs inside the company.
Many workers at the company are already bracing for the worst.
"Folks aren't going on vacation, they're cutting back on their Christmas shopping. If you know that you're going to be losing your job, you don't want to spend the money,” one worker told Axios, which note that several other current or recently-fired workers “broke down in tears during telephone interviews.”
Some workers are guaranteed 12 months at the outsourcing company before they will be let go.
"The sad reality is you’ve just been terminated without your severance," an AT&T employee told Axios. "You’re at the mercy of a company that doesn’t really want you."
Sara Blackwell, a Florida attorney who represents workers displaced by foreign replacements, said AT&T’s move is the result of Trump failing to live up to his promise to protect American workers from companies that abuse worker visa programs.
"American workers are tired of waiting for President Trump to do something on this issue,” she told Axios. "They’ve gone from great hope in President Trump's administration, to great discouragement."
Current and former officials at the Department of Homeland Security who spoke to Axios agreed that not enough was being done by the administration and expressed frustration that foreign worker visa programs are “undercutting U.S. workers.”
Bipartisan efforts to reform the foreign worker visa program have stalled amid pushback from tech giants and other industries.
While Trump has failed to deliver the reforms that opponents of outsourcing have called for, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged every Democratic presidential contender to pledge to crack down on companies that outsource American jobs.
“Trump promised he would substantially reduce the trade deficit, stop the outsourcing of American jobs, and rip up NAFTA. He lied about all three,” Sanders said in a statement. “Since Trump has been in office, our trade deficit in goods has shot up to a record-breaking $891 billion. He has given out $50 billion in government contracts to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. He passed tax cuts that reward companies for offshoring even more jobs. And now more than 185,000 American jobs have been shipped overseas under his watch. We need a president who will actually fight for American workers, keep their promises, and stand up to the giant corporations who close down plants to send jobs overseas.”
Amazon warehouse workers doing “back-breaking” work walked off the job in protest
Workers lifting hundreds of boxes a day say they fear being fired for missing work, and are demanding time off like other part-time workers.
By Shirin Ghaffary - vox
Updated Dec 23, 2019, 2:34pm EST
More than 30 Amazon workers at a Sacramento warehouse walked off the job this morning, demanding they receive paid time off.
Around 2:45 am on Monday local time, 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site.
These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. The actions have been organized by a group of workers on site called Amazonians United Sacramento, which led a successful campaign in the past to get multiple colleagues reinstated who were fired for missing work, in one case while the colleague was suffering the loss of a family member.
The recent walkout is also an escalation of labor tension at Amazon’s growing network of last-mile delivery centers, which are smaller warehouses where workers prepare packages that are then sent out to customers’ doorsteps. Most workers at the Sacramento site — as with those at other delivery stations across the US — are prohibited from working more than 30 hours a week. They often work up to that maximum amount allotted and sometimes more than that during peak shopping times. Workers say their shifts are physically grueling, involving lifting boxes of up to 50 pounds at a rapid pace, especially right before the holidays when they see their workload increase.
But because they aren’t working full-time hours, most of these workers do not receive benefits such as employer-subsidized health insurance, and they can be fired for taking off more than 20 hours every quarter. Amazon publicly promises its part-time employees paid time off on its own website (notably, though, the policy differs for California employees), as well as in its employee handbook, according to documents Recode reviewed.
When workers in Sacramento pointed this out to management, they say they were told the rules don’t apply to them since they are a specific subcategory of “class q” and “class m” logistics workers — a distinction they had previously never heard of and were given no explanation for.
“The fact is that Amazon is a trillion dollar company run by the richest man in the world,” the Sacramento workers said in the public petition, “and they intentionally give all class q part-time workers less benefits than regular part-time workers so that they grow the company at our expense. We’ve had enough.”
An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged that the company has received workers’ petition but did not immediately respond to a question about how “class q” and “class m” workers are defined, and why these workers are not eligible for PTO like other part-time employees.
The spokesperson said in a statement to Recode: “Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution. ... Benefits vary based on a variety of factors but if someone wanted to move to a role that offered regular, full-time benefits we expect to have more than a thousand of those roles in Sacramento throughout the year.”
The workers’ public letter also calls for Amazon’s local management team to meet with representatives from Amazonians United Sacramento, which has turned into the de facto organizing group for workers at the warehouse. Currently, the group says it operates as an independent worker organization not affiliated with any union.
An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about why, several weeks after the initial petition, management has still not met with organizers.
Amazonians United Sacramento is one of several worker-led groups that has organized in recent months at Amazon’s delivery stations, and it has had some recent successes in petitioning for better working conditions. In July, a group of workers in Chicago called Amazonians United DCH1 publicly came forward demanding rights for workers, including health care benefits and air conditioning on site. They had an early win when management agreed to send workers home with pay during a sweltering heat wave that they said made it unsafe to work.
Delivery station worker organizers in Eagan, Minnesota, walked out of work until their manager agreed to talk to his boss about demands related to time off. And Amazon workers in Sacramento successfully campaigned to get two colleagues rehired after they were fired for taking more unpaid time off than allowed, including one worker who says she was fired after taking off one more hour than permitted after her mother-in-law died.
“Any time you want to take time off to spend with your family, you have to hope an emergency doesn’t come up so that you don’t go over your limit of unpaid time off,” said one Sacramento DSM1 worker, who added that one of the most common reasons for people getting fired at the warehouse is for taking too much unpaid time off, often to take care of their loved ones.
While there have been reports of poor labor practices across Amazon’s supply chain — and incidents as severe as death on the warehouse floor — delivery station sites in particular have become a hotbed for worker activism. Unlike other larger fulfillment centers in suburban areas, these warehouses are largely in urban areas like Chicago, New York, Portland, and Sacramento. Workers are often the last ones moving around packages just before they’re put in trucks for final-mile delivery to a customer’s doorstep.
These workers say they’re arbitrarily classified as a subcategory of workers who don’t have the same benefits as their full-time colleagues at other facilities.
“We’re doing back-breaking warehouse work,” said a delivery station worker in Chicago. “So whether it’s someone working 40 hours a week who gets injured or somebody working 24 hours a week, it doesn’t matter. We just wanted to be treated equally as all of Amazon’s other part-time workers.”
As Amazon continues to grow an independent logistics network that will include more of these delivery stations rather than relying on contracted partners like FedEx, workers see a bigger fight ahead. Several workers said they were frustrated by Amazon’s statement that workers unhappy with their lack of benefits should acquire full-time jobs within the company, since many workers at delivery stations want to work more than 30 hours a week but are blocked by Amazon’s rules. Workers say the nearest Amazon fulfillment centers with full-time jobs can be hours away.
“This is what the economy is, part-time work is all we can get,” the Chicago worker said. “This is the reality of our economy, and we deserve paid time off.”
Around 2:45 am on Monday local time, 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site.
These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. The actions have been organized by a group of workers on site called Amazonians United Sacramento, which led a successful campaign in the past to get multiple colleagues reinstated who were fired for missing work, in one case while the colleague was suffering the loss of a family member.
The recent walkout is also an escalation of labor tension at Amazon’s growing network of last-mile delivery centers, which are smaller warehouses where workers prepare packages that are then sent out to customers’ doorsteps. Most workers at the Sacramento site — as with those at other delivery stations across the US — are prohibited from working more than 30 hours a week. They often work up to that maximum amount allotted and sometimes more than that during peak shopping times. Workers say their shifts are physically grueling, involving lifting boxes of up to 50 pounds at a rapid pace, especially right before the holidays when they see their workload increase.
But because they aren’t working full-time hours, most of these workers do not receive benefits such as employer-subsidized health insurance, and they can be fired for taking off more than 20 hours every quarter. Amazon publicly promises its part-time employees paid time off on its own website (notably, though, the policy differs for California employees), as well as in its employee handbook, according to documents Recode reviewed.
When workers in Sacramento pointed this out to management, they say they were told the rules don’t apply to them since they are a specific subcategory of “class q” and “class m” logistics workers — a distinction they had previously never heard of and were given no explanation for.
“The fact is that Amazon is a trillion dollar company run by the richest man in the world,” the Sacramento workers said in the public petition, “and they intentionally give all class q part-time workers less benefits than regular part-time workers so that they grow the company at our expense. We’ve had enough.”
An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged that the company has received workers’ petition but did not immediately respond to a question about how “class q” and “class m” workers are defined, and why these workers are not eligible for PTO like other part-time employees.
The spokesperson said in a statement to Recode: “Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution. ... Benefits vary based on a variety of factors but if someone wanted to move to a role that offered regular, full-time benefits we expect to have more than a thousand of those roles in Sacramento throughout the year.”
The workers’ public letter also calls for Amazon’s local management team to meet with representatives from Amazonians United Sacramento, which has turned into the de facto organizing group for workers at the warehouse. Currently, the group says it operates as an independent worker organization not affiliated with any union.
An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about why, several weeks after the initial petition, management has still not met with organizers.
Amazonians United Sacramento is one of several worker-led groups that has organized in recent months at Amazon’s delivery stations, and it has had some recent successes in petitioning for better working conditions. In July, a group of workers in Chicago called Amazonians United DCH1 publicly came forward demanding rights for workers, including health care benefits and air conditioning on site. They had an early win when management agreed to send workers home with pay during a sweltering heat wave that they said made it unsafe to work.
Delivery station worker organizers in Eagan, Minnesota, walked out of work until their manager agreed to talk to his boss about demands related to time off. And Amazon workers in Sacramento successfully campaigned to get two colleagues rehired after they were fired for taking more unpaid time off than allowed, including one worker who says she was fired after taking off one more hour than permitted after her mother-in-law died.
“Any time you want to take time off to spend with your family, you have to hope an emergency doesn’t come up so that you don’t go over your limit of unpaid time off,” said one Sacramento DSM1 worker, who added that one of the most common reasons for people getting fired at the warehouse is for taking too much unpaid time off, often to take care of their loved ones.
While there have been reports of poor labor practices across Amazon’s supply chain — and incidents as severe as death on the warehouse floor — delivery station sites in particular have become a hotbed for worker activism. Unlike other larger fulfillment centers in suburban areas, these warehouses are largely in urban areas like Chicago, New York, Portland, and Sacramento. Workers are often the last ones moving around packages just before they’re put in trucks for final-mile delivery to a customer’s doorstep.
These workers say they’re arbitrarily classified as a subcategory of workers who don’t have the same benefits as their full-time colleagues at other facilities.
“We’re doing back-breaking warehouse work,” said a delivery station worker in Chicago. “So whether it’s someone working 40 hours a week who gets injured or somebody working 24 hours a week, it doesn’t matter. We just wanted to be treated equally as all of Amazon’s other part-time workers.”
As Amazon continues to grow an independent logistics network that will include more of these delivery stations rather than relying on contracted partners like FedEx, workers see a bigger fight ahead. Several workers said they were frustrated by Amazon’s statement that workers unhappy with their lack of benefits should acquire full-time jobs within the company, since many workers at delivery stations want to work more than 30 hours a week but are blocked by Amazon’s rules. Workers say the nearest Amazon fulfillment centers with full-time jobs can be hours away.
“This is what the economy is, part-time work is all we can get,” the Chicago worker said. “This is the reality of our economy, and we deserve paid time off.”
Bosses Are Charged with Breaking the Law in Over 40% of Union Campaigns
BY MICHELLE CHEN - in these times
THURSDAY, DEC 12, 2019, 6:14 PM
There is a shocking level of illegal interference in U.S. union drives. (Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Labor unions are more popular than they’ve been in over 15 years. Yet a record-low number of workers belong to them. The gap between the public perception of unions and their actual membership illustrates just how difficult it’s become for workers to organize.
In a new report, the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found evidence that employers are increasingly brazen in seeking to obstruct workers' attempts to unionize. Records of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees private-sector labor rights and union elections, reveal that in more than 40% of the 3,260 union elections during 2016 and 2017, employers have been charged with unfair labor practices aimed at undermining electoral procedures and retaliating against pro-union workers.
About 30% of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges analyzed by EPI involved allegations of threats, surveillance or harassment of workers. Another 30% involved allegations of illegal discipline, with one in five elections marred by the charges of illegally firing workers for supporting the union. Workforce size is a factor: the highest rate of ULP claims—more than 50%—was seen among firms with potential bargaining units of 61 workers or more. The anti-union actions occurred at a higher rate during the two-year period than during the early 2000s.
This pattern of union busting could help explain why private-sector unionization has dwindled to just 6.4% in 2018. Ben Zipperer, co-author of the report, told In These Times that the study suggests “the hostile atmosphere towards labor, or basically the employer aggression against workers trying to form unions, is the main obstacle.”
In one case of election-related ULP claims, workers at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, who sought to unionize with UNITE HERE in 2016, just ahead of Trump’s election, charged their employer with a number of retaliatory actions, including tightening supervision or increasing the workload of some employees, and “disparately enforc[ing] its new Grooming Policy” to coerce targeted workers into changing their hair color.
Although EPI does not cover the outcome of the cases (charges are often dropped and litigation might drag on for years), the prevalence of ULP charges is telling. It’s likely that the employees who file a formal legal charge represent only the fraction of workers who have the resources and wherewithal to wage a legal battle with their employer. After all, the most successful union-busting campaigns may be the ones that never come to light because the workers have been thoroughly suppressed—or ousted.
“Employers pursue a variety of tactics that would otherwise be illegal or unfair, that never make it to the charging stage,” says Zipperer, “because it's a very difficult and lengthy process with little reward for the worker at the end.”\
Filing an unfair labor practice charge is the basic tool that workers have to hold employers to account under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To protect workers’ right to organize and maintain the integrity of union elections, under the law, employers cannot threaten to shut down a plant, or fire workers or take away their benefits if they seek to unionize. Bosses are barred from coercively interrogating workers about their union activities, or attempting to spy on them. The NLRA also broadly prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who support unionization—for example, by demoting or laying off workers who promote unionization to their coworkers.
While the NLRB should act as the central arbiter of labor relation, the agency has little leverage over employers that engage in union-busting. Typically, even if a company is proven to have acted illegally, the NLRB cannot force it to pay damages, beyond back wages and reinstatement. On top of those structural barriers, the current Republican majority on the NLRB ensures that whatever cases do go before the Board, there is a good chance they will result in an anti-worker ruling.
The overarching weakness of the NLRA is what it does not cover. Employers are free to deploy various anti-union tactics on their worksites, including broadcasting arguments against unionization and launching smear campaigns against the “third party” union organizers who threaten to undermine the workers’ relationship with their boss.
The market for anti-union tactics has given rise to a cottage industry of union-busting firms. Overall, EPI estimates that companies pour an estimated $340 million every year into “union-avoidance” consultants.
Among the top spenders are Nestle, Fedex, Mission Foods and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The anti-union consultancies specialize in flooding workplaces with propaganda as well as orchestrating so-called “captive-audience” meetings, in which companies pressure workers to attend anti-union lectures.
Allegations of intimidation, retaliation and disinformation are at the center of recent clashes at Google, Housing Works and Johns Hopkins University Hospital—a purportedly progressive tech giant and two nonprofits—where workers have accused their employers of using dirty campaign tactics to crush union drives.
The current unionization drive by Hearst employees has prompted the company’s executives to set up a microsite featuring pointedly biased explanations of the consequences of unionizing, according to Vice. Workers were warned, “All terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions would be up for discussion. No one can guarantee in advance what that contract would include.”
Last April, Labor Notes reported that at a captive-audience meeting at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, workers were bombarded with pro-business messaging from Gov. Bill Lee, who sang the praises of Volkswagen for bringing jobs to the state and telling workers it was best to “have a direct relationship” with the automaker, free of union interference.
While some aggressive anti-union practices are perfectly legal, EPI notes that the NLRA’s protections for workers' organizing rights can be strengthened simply by giving the law real teeth. The recently introduced Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would create civil penalties for abusive employers, ban captive-audience meetings and allow workers to press unfair labor practice claims in civil courts, rather than just the NLRB.
"One of the simplest things that we can do,” Zipperer said, “is we can actually make labor law matter by attaching meaningful and significant penalties to employers when they violate that law.”
Under the current legal framework governing union elections, the fact that unions remain so popular in public opinion surveys shows that despite the hostile political climate, workers still believe in the power of collective action. Imagine what might be achieved if labor law stopped getting in the way.
In a new report, the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found evidence that employers are increasingly brazen in seeking to obstruct workers' attempts to unionize. Records of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees private-sector labor rights and union elections, reveal that in more than 40% of the 3,260 union elections during 2016 and 2017, employers have been charged with unfair labor practices aimed at undermining electoral procedures and retaliating against pro-union workers.
About 30% of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges analyzed by EPI involved allegations of threats, surveillance or harassment of workers. Another 30% involved allegations of illegal discipline, with one in five elections marred by the charges of illegally firing workers for supporting the union. Workforce size is a factor: the highest rate of ULP claims—more than 50%—was seen among firms with potential bargaining units of 61 workers or more. The anti-union actions occurred at a higher rate during the two-year period than during the early 2000s.
This pattern of union busting could help explain why private-sector unionization has dwindled to just 6.4% in 2018. Ben Zipperer, co-author of the report, told In These Times that the study suggests “the hostile atmosphere towards labor, or basically the employer aggression against workers trying to form unions, is the main obstacle.”
In one case of election-related ULP claims, workers at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, who sought to unionize with UNITE HERE in 2016, just ahead of Trump’s election, charged their employer with a number of retaliatory actions, including tightening supervision or increasing the workload of some employees, and “disparately enforc[ing] its new Grooming Policy” to coerce targeted workers into changing their hair color.
Although EPI does not cover the outcome of the cases (charges are often dropped and litigation might drag on for years), the prevalence of ULP charges is telling. It’s likely that the employees who file a formal legal charge represent only the fraction of workers who have the resources and wherewithal to wage a legal battle with their employer. After all, the most successful union-busting campaigns may be the ones that never come to light because the workers have been thoroughly suppressed—or ousted.
“Employers pursue a variety of tactics that would otherwise be illegal or unfair, that never make it to the charging stage,” says Zipperer, “because it's a very difficult and lengthy process with little reward for the worker at the end.”\
Filing an unfair labor practice charge is the basic tool that workers have to hold employers to account under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To protect workers’ right to organize and maintain the integrity of union elections, under the law, employers cannot threaten to shut down a plant, or fire workers or take away their benefits if they seek to unionize. Bosses are barred from coercively interrogating workers about their union activities, or attempting to spy on them. The NLRA also broadly prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who support unionization—for example, by demoting or laying off workers who promote unionization to their coworkers.
While the NLRB should act as the central arbiter of labor relation, the agency has little leverage over employers that engage in union-busting. Typically, even if a company is proven to have acted illegally, the NLRB cannot force it to pay damages, beyond back wages and reinstatement. On top of those structural barriers, the current Republican majority on the NLRB ensures that whatever cases do go before the Board, there is a good chance they will result in an anti-worker ruling.
The overarching weakness of the NLRA is what it does not cover. Employers are free to deploy various anti-union tactics on their worksites, including broadcasting arguments against unionization and launching smear campaigns against the “third party” union organizers who threaten to undermine the workers’ relationship with their boss.
The market for anti-union tactics has given rise to a cottage industry of union-busting firms. Overall, EPI estimates that companies pour an estimated $340 million every year into “union-avoidance” consultants.
Among the top spenders are Nestle, Fedex, Mission Foods and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The anti-union consultancies specialize in flooding workplaces with propaganda as well as orchestrating so-called “captive-audience” meetings, in which companies pressure workers to attend anti-union lectures.
Allegations of intimidation, retaliation and disinformation are at the center of recent clashes at Google, Housing Works and Johns Hopkins University Hospital—a purportedly progressive tech giant and two nonprofits—where workers have accused their employers of using dirty campaign tactics to crush union drives.
The current unionization drive by Hearst employees has prompted the company’s executives to set up a microsite featuring pointedly biased explanations of the consequences of unionizing, according to Vice. Workers were warned, “All terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions would be up for discussion. No one can guarantee in advance what that contract would include.”
Last April, Labor Notes reported that at a captive-audience meeting at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, workers were bombarded with pro-business messaging from Gov. Bill Lee, who sang the praises of Volkswagen for bringing jobs to the state and telling workers it was best to “have a direct relationship” with the automaker, free of union interference.
While some aggressive anti-union practices are perfectly legal, EPI notes that the NLRA’s protections for workers' organizing rights can be strengthened simply by giving the law real teeth. The recently introduced Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would create civil penalties for abusive employers, ban captive-audience meetings and allow workers to press unfair labor practice claims in civil courts, rather than just the NLRB.
"One of the simplest things that we can do,” Zipperer said, “is we can actually make labor law matter by attaching meaningful and significant penalties to employers when they violate that law.”
Under the current legal framework governing union elections, the fact that unions remain so popular in public opinion surveys shows that despite the hostile political climate, workers still believe in the power of collective action. Imagine what might be achieved if labor law stopped getting in the way.
Disney Sued by Labor Union for Failing to Pay Living Wage: Employees Have to ‘Live in Their Cars’
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim.”
Tarpley Hitt - Reporter, daily beast
Published Dec. 11, 2019 4:42AM ET
There’s an old Walt Disney quote, a favorite of workplace morale posters and business self-help books, that goes: “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” These days, there are a lot of people making the Disney dream a reality—a study of the Disneyland Resorts last year found that 27.2 million people visited the California theme park in 2016 alone, thanks to the 30,000 workers who keep the place up and running.
But a new class action lawsuit, filed Friday in California Superior Court and announced in a press advisory Monday, argues that the Walt Disney Company, worth approximately $130 billion as of this year, failed to pay hundreds of those workers a living wage. The complaint was filed by five Disney employees on behalf of more than 400 hospitality workers, accusing the Walt Disney Company and several affiliates (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc., Sodexo Inc., SodexoMagic, LLC, and 100 unnamed Does) of “unlawful conduct and unfair business practices.” The plaintiffs are asking for back wages, restitution, and damages, which their attorney, Randy Renick, said may be significant. “With the back pay,” Renick said, “we’re talking millions of dollars.”
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, or on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim,” said Kathleen Grace, a plaintiff in the case and a Starbucks barista employed by Sodexo, which Disney contracts to operate its backstage food and beverage services. “It’s really sad to see. A lot of times, they’re choosing to feed their families or put gas in their car to come to work.”
The case concerns an initiative called Measure L, which Anaheim voters passed in November of 2018. The ballot measure requires resort employers that received tax rebates from the city to pay their employees a $15 living wage. The new wage was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2019, and increase by one dollar each year until Jan. 1, 2022. By 2023, the code states, the wage increases would change to reflect rising costs of living. The ballot measure was backed by the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions, a group of 11 local unions representing 17,000 workers, or more than half of Disney employees. In a press advisory Monday, the CRLU came out in support of the workers’ class-action case.
The complaint argues that Disney and its contractors took “massive” subsidies from the City of Anaheim, but did not alter their wages or overtime pay to reflect the new law. Grace, who came out of retirement in August of 2016 to work for Sodexo, said she makes $14.25 an hour. Many of her co-workers, including food servers, banquet servers, bellhops, and doormen at the three Disney hotels, earn as little as $12 an hour. Other plaintiffs in the case include Thomas Bray, a bell person at the Disneyland Hotel, who earns $12.25 an hour; Regina Delgado, a cashier at the Plaza Inn restaurant inside the Disneyland theme park who made $12 an hour until October; Alicia Grijalva, a make-up stylist at the park who earned $12 an hour until July; and Javier Terrazas, a banquet event server who makes $12 an hour.
“We shouldn’t have to struggle living paycheck to paycheck,” Grace said. “We all are trying to pay our rent, feed our families, get gas to drive here and there. We shouldn’t have to make the choice between putting gas in our car to get to work and feeding our family.”
When Measure L was first drafted, Disneyland Resort fell squarely among the employers it would affect. At the time, Disney had two deals with the City of Anaheim which would have qualified them for the living wage law: a $267 million tax rebate to build an additional luxury hotel; and a 30-year entertainment tax break in exchange for investing $1 billion into their existing resorts. Just one month before the measure passed, however, Disney terminated both agreements, leaving their status under Measure L uncertain. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted that the last-minute pull-out effectively ensured the billion-dollar corporation would not have to pay workers a living wage.
But those weren’t the only deals Disney has made involving public money. A Los Angeles Times investigation from 2017 found that the company had secured rebates and other incentives from the city worth more than $1 billion (Disney disputed the estimate). In the lawsuit, the workers specifically point to a subsidy from 1996, when Disney received over $500 million in tax rebates from Anaheim to help build California Adventure, the second Disney-owned theme park after the original Disneyland. The bulk of that money came in the form of municipal bonds, borrowed from the Anaheim Finance Authority, which were used to construct a $108 million parking facility. Since its construction, Disney has kept all the revenue from the garage, which low estimates put at around $35 million annually, but leases the garage from the city for just one dollar a year. “Disney got a rebate of the best kind,” the complaint states. “It got its taxes back before it paid them.”
Still, the case hinges on the definition of “rebate.” In a report from October 2018, the Anaheim City Attorney argued that “rebate”—though not defined in Measure L or set at a fixed legal definition—meant “discount.” Under that definition, he wrote, the 1996 transaction did not qualify, rendering Disneyland exempt from paying a living wage. Disneyland spokesperson Liz Jaeger echoed the findings in a statement: “The union coalition is well aware that the City Attorney has previously looked at this issue,” Jaeger wrote, “and clearly stated that Measure L does not apply to the Disneyland Resort."
The theme park also alleged that all non-tipped workers already earn a minimum of $15 an hour and can get overtime pay. Grace and Renick disputed that claim, pointing out that two of the plaintiffs made just $12 an hour, and that many workers who make less than $15 an hour do not receive tips. “We are not tipped employees,” Grace said. “Sodexo doesn’t allow tips. I was told that was a Disney policy, but I’m not clear. We do not receive tips.”
“It’s important to know that the law doesn’t distinguish [between tipped or non-tipped employees],” Renick said. “You have to pay the minimum wage, or in this case the living wage, to all employees—whether tipped or not. California Constitution actually requires that… There are quite a number of folks in the class who are not tipped employees who are making less than $15 an hour.”
The 2018 survey of Disneyland Resort workers, or “cast members” as they’re called, found that 73 percent of employees “do not earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month.” Conducted by the Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and underwritten by the CRLU, the report surveyed more than 5,000 Disney Resort employees. More than half reported concerns of being evicted from their homes or apartments; two-thirds said they were food insecure; and 11 percent said they had been homeless in the past two years. In the latter category, 13 percent were living with young children.
But a new class action lawsuit, filed Friday in California Superior Court and announced in a press advisory Monday, argues that the Walt Disney Company, worth approximately $130 billion as of this year, failed to pay hundreds of those workers a living wage. The complaint was filed by five Disney employees on behalf of more than 400 hospitality workers, accusing the Walt Disney Company and several affiliates (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc., Sodexo Inc., SodexoMagic, LLC, and 100 unnamed Does) of “unlawful conduct and unfair business practices.” The plaintiffs are asking for back wages, restitution, and damages, which their attorney, Randy Renick, said may be significant. “With the back pay,” Renick said, “we’re talking millions of dollars.”
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, or on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim,” said Kathleen Grace, a plaintiff in the case and a Starbucks barista employed by Sodexo, which Disney contracts to operate its backstage food and beverage services. “It’s really sad to see. A lot of times, they’re choosing to feed their families or put gas in their car to come to work.”
The case concerns an initiative called Measure L, which Anaheim voters passed in November of 2018. The ballot measure requires resort employers that received tax rebates from the city to pay their employees a $15 living wage. The new wage was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2019, and increase by one dollar each year until Jan. 1, 2022. By 2023, the code states, the wage increases would change to reflect rising costs of living. The ballot measure was backed by the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions, a group of 11 local unions representing 17,000 workers, or more than half of Disney employees. In a press advisory Monday, the CRLU came out in support of the workers’ class-action case.
The complaint argues that Disney and its contractors took “massive” subsidies from the City of Anaheim, but did not alter their wages or overtime pay to reflect the new law. Grace, who came out of retirement in August of 2016 to work for Sodexo, said she makes $14.25 an hour. Many of her co-workers, including food servers, banquet servers, bellhops, and doormen at the three Disney hotels, earn as little as $12 an hour. Other plaintiffs in the case include Thomas Bray, a bell person at the Disneyland Hotel, who earns $12.25 an hour; Regina Delgado, a cashier at the Plaza Inn restaurant inside the Disneyland theme park who made $12 an hour until October; Alicia Grijalva, a make-up stylist at the park who earned $12 an hour until July; and Javier Terrazas, a banquet event server who makes $12 an hour.
“We shouldn’t have to struggle living paycheck to paycheck,” Grace said. “We all are trying to pay our rent, feed our families, get gas to drive here and there. We shouldn’t have to make the choice between putting gas in our car to get to work and feeding our family.”
When Measure L was first drafted, Disneyland Resort fell squarely among the employers it would affect. At the time, Disney had two deals with the City of Anaheim which would have qualified them for the living wage law: a $267 million tax rebate to build an additional luxury hotel; and a 30-year entertainment tax break in exchange for investing $1 billion into their existing resorts. Just one month before the measure passed, however, Disney terminated both agreements, leaving their status under Measure L uncertain. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted that the last-minute pull-out effectively ensured the billion-dollar corporation would not have to pay workers a living wage.
But those weren’t the only deals Disney has made involving public money. A Los Angeles Times investigation from 2017 found that the company had secured rebates and other incentives from the city worth more than $1 billion (Disney disputed the estimate). In the lawsuit, the workers specifically point to a subsidy from 1996, when Disney received over $500 million in tax rebates from Anaheim to help build California Adventure, the second Disney-owned theme park after the original Disneyland. The bulk of that money came in the form of municipal bonds, borrowed from the Anaheim Finance Authority, which were used to construct a $108 million parking facility. Since its construction, Disney has kept all the revenue from the garage, which low estimates put at around $35 million annually, but leases the garage from the city for just one dollar a year. “Disney got a rebate of the best kind,” the complaint states. “It got its taxes back before it paid them.”
Still, the case hinges on the definition of “rebate.” In a report from October 2018, the Anaheim City Attorney argued that “rebate”—though not defined in Measure L or set at a fixed legal definition—meant “discount.” Under that definition, he wrote, the 1996 transaction did not qualify, rendering Disneyland exempt from paying a living wage. Disneyland spokesperson Liz Jaeger echoed the findings in a statement: “The union coalition is well aware that the City Attorney has previously looked at this issue,” Jaeger wrote, “and clearly stated that Measure L does not apply to the Disneyland Resort."
The theme park also alleged that all non-tipped workers already earn a minimum of $15 an hour and can get overtime pay. Grace and Renick disputed that claim, pointing out that two of the plaintiffs made just $12 an hour, and that many workers who make less than $15 an hour do not receive tips. “We are not tipped employees,” Grace said. “Sodexo doesn’t allow tips. I was told that was a Disney policy, but I’m not clear. We do not receive tips.”
“It’s important to know that the law doesn’t distinguish [between tipped or non-tipped employees],” Renick said. “You have to pay the minimum wage, or in this case the living wage, to all employees—whether tipped or not. California Constitution actually requires that… There are quite a number of folks in the class who are not tipped employees who are making less than $15 an hour.”
The 2018 survey of Disneyland Resort workers, or “cast members” as they’re called, found that 73 percent of employees “do not earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month.” Conducted by the Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and underwritten by the CRLU, the report surveyed more than 5,000 Disney Resort employees. More than half reported concerns of being evicted from their homes or apartments; two-thirds said they were food insecure; and 11 percent said they had been homeless in the past two years. In the latter category, 13 percent were living with young children.
labor costs drive inflation but corporate greed is okay!!!
U.S. third-quarter labor costs revised down; productivity weak
Lucia Mutikani - reuters
DECEMBER 10, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growth of U.S. labor costs was not as robust as initially thought in the third quarter, suggesting inflation could remain tame for a while.
The sharp downward revision to labor costs, reported by the Labor Department on Tuesday, could also ease economists’ concerns about further pressure on corporate profits.
Unit labor costs, the price of labor per single unit of output, increased at a 2.5% annualized rate in the third quarter. They were previously reported to have advanced at a 3.6% rate. Compared with the third quarter of 2018, labor costs grew at a 2.2% rate, rather than the previously estimated 3.1%. Growth in hourly compensation was also revised lower, to a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, down from the originally reported 3.3% pace.
Hourly compensation rose at a 3.7% rate compared with the third quarter of 2018. Last quarter’s gains in unit labor costs and compensation are in line with other measures showing moderate wage gains, indicating inflation will probably continue to run below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The U.S. central bank’s preferred inflation measure increased 1.6% in the 12 months through October, slowing from 1.7% in September. November data will be published later this month. Fed officials are scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is not expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday after reducing borrowing costs in October for the third time this year.
The government reported last month that after-tax profits without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustment, which corresponds to S&P 500 profits, decreased $11.3 billion, or at a rate of 0.6% in the third quarter. Profits were down at a rate of 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2018.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by Tuesday’s revised data.
PRODUCTIVITY FALLS
The Commerce Department also confirmed that worker productivity fell by the most in nearly four years in the third quarter as a rebound in hours, driven by a surge in the volatile self-employed and unpaid family workers component, outpaced output in the third quarter.
Nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 0.2% rate in the last quarter, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2015. Productivity was previously reported to have decreased at a 0.3% pace in the July-September quarter.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter productivity would be revised up to show it falling at a 0.1% rate. Productivity grew at an unrevised 2.5% rate in the second quarter. The government last month revised up third-quarter gross domestic product growth to a 2.1% rate from a 1.9% pace.
Compared with the third quarter of 2018, productivity increased at a 1.5% rate, instead of the previously reported 1.4% pace. Tepid productivity suggests the economy is unlikely to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of 3% annual growth.
Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 2007 to 2018, below its long-term rate of 2.1% from 1947 to 2018, indicating that the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation has slowed.
Some economists blame soft productivity on a shortage of workers as well as the impact of rampant drug addiction in some parts of the country. Others also argue that low capital expenditure, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the capital-to-labor ratio, is holding down productivity.
There is also a belief that productivity is being inaccurately measured, especially on the information technology side. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in October the U.S. central bank was “carefully assessing the implications of possibly mismeasured productivity gains.”
Hours worked rose at a revised 2.5% rate last quarter. That was up from the 2.4% pace estimated in November.
The sharp downward revision to labor costs, reported by the Labor Department on Tuesday, could also ease economists’ concerns about further pressure on corporate profits.
Unit labor costs, the price of labor per single unit of output, increased at a 2.5% annualized rate in the third quarter. They were previously reported to have advanced at a 3.6% rate. Compared with the third quarter of 2018, labor costs grew at a 2.2% rate, rather than the previously estimated 3.1%. Growth in hourly compensation was also revised lower, to a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, down from the originally reported 3.3% pace.
Hourly compensation rose at a 3.7% rate compared with the third quarter of 2018. Last quarter’s gains in unit labor costs and compensation are in line with other measures showing moderate wage gains, indicating inflation will probably continue to run below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The U.S. central bank’s preferred inflation measure increased 1.6% in the 12 months through October, slowing from 1.7% in September. November data will be published later this month. Fed officials are scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is not expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday after reducing borrowing costs in October for the third time this year.
The government reported last month that after-tax profits without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustment, which corresponds to S&P 500 profits, decreased $11.3 billion, or at a rate of 0.6% in the third quarter. Profits were down at a rate of 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2018.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by Tuesday’s revised data.
PRODUCTIVITY FALLS
The Commerce Department also confirmed that worker productivity fell by the most in nearly four years in the third quarter as a rebound in hours, driven by a surge in the volatile self-employed and unpaid family workers component, outpaced output in the third quarter.
Nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 0.2% rate in the last quarter, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2015. Productivity was previously reported to have decreased at a 0.3% pace in the July-September quarter.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter productivity would be revised up to show it falling at a 0.1% rate. Productivity grew at an unrevised 2.5% rate in the second quarter. The government last month revised up third-quarter gross domestic product growth to a 2.1% rate from a 1.9% pace.
Compared with the third quarter of 2018, productivity increased at a 1.5% rate, instead of the previously reported 1.4% pace. Tepid productivity suggests the economy is unlikely to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of 3% annual growth.
Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 2007 to 2018, below its long-term rate of 2.1% from 1947 to 2018, indicating that the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation has slowed.
Some economists blame soft productivity on a shortage of workers as well as the impact of rampant drug addiction in some parts of the country. Others also argue that low capital expenditure, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the capital-to-labor ratio, is holding down productivity.
There is also a belief that productivity is being inaccurately measured, especially on the information technology side. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in October the U.S. central bank was “carefully assessing the implications of possibly mismeasured productivity gains.”
Hours worked rose at a revised 2.5% rate last quarter. That was up from the 2.4% pace estimated in November.
‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Tue 10 Dec 2019 05.03 EST
‘Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not,’ said Scott Riley. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
About 4,000 US truck drivers notified on Monday Celadon was ceasing operations, leaving them jobless and without benefits
Andrea Smith has a daughter who turns eight on 20 December, five days before Christmas. Now the trucker’s birthday and Christmas plans have been thrown into disarray by the largest trucking firm bankruptcy in history.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen or if I’ll get to be home if I’m able to find another job quickly. I’m crushed,” said Smith, a truck operator for Celadon, hours after the giant trucking firm declared it was going out of business.
Smith is one of about 4,000 truck drivers across the US who were notified on Monday that their employer was ceasing operations after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing makes it the largest bankruptcy in trucking history.
The logistics carrier, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, reported annual revenues more than $1bn as recently as 2015. But a federal fraud investigation, huge debts and the “enormous challenges” in the industry, according to the chief executive, Paul Svindland, have forced the trucking company off the road.
Many of the truck drivers were left stranded in the midst of making deliveries, as they await receiving bus tickets from the company to return home, now jobless and left without benefits two weeks before Christmas. Their fuel cards were shut off, and many were reported left without any directions on where or how to turn in their rigs.
“We were lied to for months,” said Smith, who has worked for Celadon for a year. “We’ve been ignored, some stranded for days. I’ve still yet to hear from anyone at Celadon besides the message after midnight last night that was fleet-wide.”
Smith received the news about 50 miles away from her home in Centreville, Alabama. She explained the company asked her to drive her truck and leave it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she would receive a bus ticket back home, but she plans on leaving her truck at the Celadon terminal in Gadsden, Alabama.
Celadon has its own issues. The bankruptcy comes just days after Celadon’s former chief financial officer Bobby Lee Peavler and former chief operating officer Eric Meek were arrested and indicted on nine federal charges each involving a $60m fraud scheme, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants and falsify records. The company also has debts of $293m.
But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell.
A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.
About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.
The impact on workers is severe. Scott Riley of Anderson, Indiana, just started working for Celadon in August, and his health insurance coverage began 1 November. His $200-a-week health insurance plan left him with a $23 copay for the $1,400-a-month medication he needs to treat his diabetes. His wife’s $450-a-month medication was completely covered. Now, Riley and his wife, Jennifer, are left with no health insurance coverage, and unsure how they are going to afford their medication.
“I don’t know if I have enough medication to make it through for 90 days,” said Riley. “Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not. Honestly it’s just going to be cross your fingers and hope.”
Riley returned his truck to Celadon’s Indianapolis terminal on the morning of 9 December, where he said dozens of other drivers were left stranded, waiting to receive bus tickets to return home.
“We had no clue what was going on. Celadon themselves didn’t even alert drivers. We had to find out from different driving companies what was going on,” said Stephanie Floyd of Denton, North Carolina, whose husband, Travis, drove for Celadon. “It’s a stressful time of year to be out of work and with three small children it makes it harder.”
They have been frustrated and left in the dark, as she said Celadon wasn’t responding to inquiries from workers.
“It’s heartbreaking, trying to find another job on the drop of a dime, hoping to find something in time so we don’t miss a paycheck for bills and still be able to afford to buy our children stuff for Christmas.”
Celadon referred comment to a press release. “Our intent is to ensure drivers deliver their last loads safely and will then be instructed on where to deliver their equipment. I have no further comments,” said Celadon’s CEO, Paul Svindland, in an email.
Andrea Smith has a daughter who turns eight on 20 December, five days before Christmas. Now the trucker’s birthday and Christmas plans have been thrown into disarray by the largest trucking firm bankruptcy in history.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen or if I’ll get to be home if I’m able to find another job quickly. I’m crushed,” said Smith, a truck operator for Celadon, hours after the giant trucking firm declared it was going out of business.
Smith is one of about 4,000 truck drivers across the US who were notified on Monday that their employer was ceasing operations after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing makes it the largest bankruptcy in trucking history.
The logistics carrier, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, reported annual revenues more than $1bn as recently as 2015. But a federal fraud investigation, huge debts and the “enormous challenges” in the industry, according to the chief executive, Paul Svindland, have forced the trucking company off the road.
Many of the truck drivers were left stranded in the midst of making deliveries, as they await receiving bus tickets from the company to return home, now jobless and left without benefits two weeks before Christmas. Their fuel cards were shut off, and many were reported left without any directions on where or how to turn in their rigs.
“We were lied to for months,” said Smith, who has worked for Celadon for a year. “We’ve been ignored, some stranded for days. I’ve still yet to hear from anyone at Celadon besides the message after midnight last night that was fleet-wide.”
Smith received the news about 50 miles away from her home in Centreville, Alabama. She explained the company asked her to drive her truck and leave it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she would receive a bus ticket back home, but she plans on leaving her truck at the Celadon terminal in Gadsden, Alabama.
Celadon has its own issues. The bankruptcy comes just days after Celadon’s former chief financial officer Bobby Lee Peavler and former chief operating officer Eric Meek were arrested and indicted on nine federal charges each involving a $60m fraud scheme, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants and falsify records. The company also has debts of $293m.
But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell.
A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.
About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.
The impact on workers is severe. Scott Riley of Anderson, Indiana, just started working for Celadon in August, and his health insurance coverage began 1 November. His $200-a-week health insurance plan left him with a $23 copay for the $1,400-a-month medication he needs to treat his diabetes. His wife’s $450-a-month medication was completely covered. Now, Riley and his wife, Jennifer, are left with no health insurance coverage, and unsure how they are going to afford their medication.
“I don’t know if I have enough medication to make it through for 90 days,” said Riley. “Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not. Honestly it’s just going to be cross your fingers and hope.”
Riley returned his truck to Celadon’s Indianapolis terminal on the morning of 9 December, where he said dozens of other drivers were left stranded, waiting to receive bus tickets to return home.
“We had no clue what was going on. Celadon themselves didn’t even alert drivers. We had to find out from different driving companies what was going on,” said Stephanie Floyd of Denton, North Carolina, whose husband, Travis, drove for Celadon. “It’s a stressful time of year to be out of work and with three small children it makes it harder.”
They have been frustrated and left in the dark, as she said Celadon wasn’t responding to inquiries from workers.
“It’s heartbreaking, trying to find another job on the drop of a dime, hoping to find something in time so we don’t miss a paycheck for bills and still be able to afford to buy our children stuff for Christmas.”
Celadon referred comment to a press release. “Our intent is to ensure drivers deliver their last loads safely and will then be instructed on where to deliver their equipment. I have no further comments,” said Celadon’s CEO, Paul Svindland, in an email.
Harvard Grad Workers Are Striking Over Medical Debt and Sexual Harassment
BY Amy Littlefield, Truthout
PUBLISHED December 6, 2019
Graduate students at the wealthiest university in the world said they are foregoing dental care, facing thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs and struggling to get by on salaries as low as $18,000 in Boston, one of the most expensive cities in the U.S.
The unionized graduate workers at Harvard University went on strike Tuesday after more than a year of trying to negotiate a contract. On the picket line at Harvard’s medical campus on Wednesday, Tessa Green, a biophysics Ph.D. student, told fellow strikers, “If I had the rare subtype of asthma that I study, I could not be regularly treated by a specialist in that disease.” That’s because Harvard’s health plan limits students to six specialist visits a year outside of the university’s health services. Mental health visits are limited to 40 per year.
“It’s not OK that we cannot go to therapy once a week all year round, because I don’t know about you: My depression doesn’t disappear in the summer,” Caroline Keroack, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, said during the picket on Thursday at the medical campus. Keroack said she exceeded the cap on specialist visits after developing a mysterious pain in her side that turned out to be appendicitis. She is working two outside jobs and selling artwork to pay the costs.
“Mounting medical bills are sitting on my kitchen counter that I cannot pay,” Keroack said.
Organizers said that perhaps the most “egregious” sticking point in the negotiations is Harvard’s refusal to handle sexual harassment and discrimination through third-party arbitration, the usual process for grievances.
“Harvard wants to carve out sexual harassment and discrimination protections so they would be like promises in the contract that would be unenforceable,” said Emily Unger, a joint medical and Ph.D. student and member of the organizing committee for Harvard’s Longwood campus, which houses the medical and public health schools. This year, Harvard penalized at least two high-profile professors who had faced multiple claims of sexual harassment, including one who was allowed to continue teaching after being disciplined for the allegations in 1983.
“I think that it’s become clear that their system is failing,” Unger said. “Systems all over the place clearly have been failing, and we’re trying to propose a system that would work much better, that would be a neutral, third-party system.”
Harvard has claimed that using third-party arbitration for harassment cases would be “inconsistent” with Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education, and subject both victims and perpetrators to “cross examination.” But graduate workers said the approach is consistent with the law, has proven successful at other universities and would generate more trust among students than Harvard’s internal process.
The strike comes as Harvard has made national headlines for refusing to grant tenure to a prominent Latina professor, Lorgia García Peña. Students held a sit-in this week to support García Peña and demand the university create an Ethnic Studies Department. On the picket line at the Longwood campus Thursday, organizers said Harvard lacks a clear process for responding to allegations of racial discrimination, even though more than half of respondents to a recent graduate student survey said they had faced discrimination. Students who report race-based abuse have been told to bring their allegations to the Title IX office, which is intended to handle gender discrimination, or take it up with deans or department chairs, according to Lisa Xu, an organizer with the union who finished a public policy Ph.D. last year. “That’s exactly the situation that we think is untenable,” Xu said.
The strike at Harvard is part of a nationwide surge in organizing by graduate workers, who say they contribute crucial labor to universities as researchers and teaching assistants, but are compensated with poor pay and benefits. While Democratic presidential candidates have voiced support for graduate workers at Harvard and elsewhere, the Trump administration has sought to tamp down on the organizing. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a proposed rule in September to deny legal protections to graduate workers at private universities.
“The NLRB under the Trump administration is trying to take away our right to unionize, and I think that in the same way that we’re resisting other things the Trump administration is doing, we’re resisting this,” Unger said.
By slow-walking the union negotiations, “Harvard is kind of siding with the Trump administration on this,” Unger added.
Harvard has an endowment of about $40 billion, making it the wealthiest university in the world. But graduate students who work in Harvard’s labs and classrooms said the benefits of that wealth aren’t extending to them. Organizers said salaries for fully funded graduate workers can range from $35,000 to $42,000 — a paycheck that makes it hard to get by in one of the country’s most expensive cities. Salaries vary widely across departments, and some workers later in their programs are paid as little as $18,000 when the mandatory fees they have to pay are taken into account. Hourly workers make as little as $12 an hour, the state’s minimum wage; the students are demanding a minimum of $25 an hour for those workers.
Moreover, Harvard currently does not contribute to the cost of its dental plan, which is more than $500 a year, putting it off-limits for many, Unger said. At Thursday’s rally, Keroack said she hasn’t been to the dentist in two years after aging out of her mother’s insurance plan.
The Harvard students have drawn support not only from politicians but from other workers at the university, including construction workers, some of whom walked off the job on Wednesday to show solidarity. Among the speakers at Thursday’s rally was Jean Phane, a custodian and shop steward for SEIU Local 32BJ who said he had worked at Harvard for 22 years.
“We are with you and there will be one of us out here every day you come out,” Phane told the picketing graduate workers. In a follow-up interview, Phane said he and his colleagues face similar issues to the students, including harassment and unfair labor practices.
“We’re union, so we have to look out for each other,” Phane added.
The unionized graduate workers at Harvard University went on strike Tuesday after more than a year of trying to negotiate a contract. On the picket line at Harvard’s medical campus on Wednesday, Tessa Green, a biophysics Ph.D. student, told fellow strikers, “If I had the rare subtype of asthma that I study, I could not be regularly treated by a specialist in that disease.” That’s because Harvard’s health plan limits students to six specialist visits a year outside of the university’s health services. Mental health visits are limited to 40 per year.
“It’s not OK that we cannot go to therapy once a week all year round, because I don’t know about you: My depression doesn’t disappear in the summer,” Caroline Keroack, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, said during the picket on Thursday at the medical campus. Keroack said she exceeded the cap on specialist visits after developing a mysterious pain in her side that turned out to be appendicitis. She is working two outside jobs and selling artwork to pay the costs.
“Mounting medical bills are sitting on my kitchen counter that I cannot pay,” Keroack said.
Organizers said that perhaps the most “egregious” sticking point in the negotiations is Harvard’s refusal to handle sexual harassment and discrimination through third-party arbitration, the usual process for grievances.
“Harvard wants to carve out sexual harassment and discrimination protections so they would be like promises in the contract that would be unenforceable,” said Emily Unger, a joint medical and Ph.D. student and member of the organizing committee for Harvard’s Longwood campus, which houses the medical and public health schools. This year, Harvard penalized at least two high-profile professors who had faced multiple claims of sexual harassment, including one who was allowed to continue teaching after being disciplined for the allegations in 1983.
“I think that it’s become clear that their system is failing,” Unger said. “Systems all over the place clearly have been failing, and we’re trying to propose a system that would work much better, that would be a neutral, third-party system.”
Harvard has claimed that using third-party arbitration for harassment cases would be “inconsistent” with Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education, and subject both victims and perpetrators to “cross examination.” But graduate workers said the approach is consistent with the law, has proven successful at other universities and would generate more trust among students than Harvard’s internal process.
The strike comes as Harvard has made national headlines for refusing to grant tenure to a prominent Latina professor, Lorgia García Peña. Students held a sit-in this week to support García Peña and demand the university create an Ethnic Studies Department. On the picket line at the Longwood campus Thursday, organizers said Harvard lacks a clear process for responding to allegations of racial discrimination, even though more than half of respondents to a recent graduate student survey said they had faced discrimination. Students who report race-based abuse have been told to bring their allegations to the Title IX office, which is intended to handle gender discrimination, or take it up with deans or department chairs, according to Lisa Xu, an organizer with the union who finished a public policy Ph.D. last year. “That’s exactly the situation that we think is untenable,” Xu said.
The strike at Harvard is part of a nationwide surge in organizing by graduate workers, who say they contribute crucial labor to universities as researchers and teaching assistants, but are compensated with poor pay and benefits. While Democratic presidential candidates have voiced support for graduate workers at Harvard and elsewhere, the Trump administration has sought to tamp down on the organizing. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a proposed rule in September to deny legal protections to graduate workers at private universities.
“The NLRB under the Trump administration is trying to take away our right to unionize, and I think that in the same way that we’re resisting other things the Trump administration is doing, we’re resisting this,” Unger said.
By slow-walking the union negotiations, “Harvard is kind of siding with the Trump administration on this,” Unger added.
Harvard has an endowment of about $40 billion, making it the wealthiest university in the world. But graduate students who work in Harvard’s labs and classrooms said the benefits of that wealth aren’t extending to them. Organizers said salaries for fully funded graduate workers can range from $35,000 to $42,000 — a paycheck that makes it hard to get by in one of the country’s most expensive cities. Salaries vary widely across departments, and some workers later in their programs are paid as little as $18,000 when the mandatory fees they have to pay are taken into account. Hourly workers make as little as $12 an hour, the state’s minimum wage; the students are demanding a minimum of $25 an hour for those workers.
Moreover, Harvard currently does not contribute to the cost of its dental plan, which is more than $500 a year, putting it off-limits for many, Unger said. At Thursday’s rally, Keroack said she hasn’t been to the dentist in two years after aging out of her mother’s insurance plan.
The Harvard students have drawn support not only from politicians but from other workers at the university, including construction workers, some of whom walked off the job on Wednesday to show solidarity. Among the speakers at Thursday’s rally was Jean Phane, a custodian and shop steward for SEIU Local 32BJ who said he had worked at Harvard for 22 years.
“We are with you and there will be one of us out here every day you come out,” Phane told the picketing graduate workers. In a follow-up interview, Phane said he and his colleagues face similar issues to the students, including harassment and unfair labor practices.
“We’re union, so we have to look out for each other,” Phane added.
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.
CIRCA 1870: A CARTOON SATIRISING THE SWEATSHOPS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. ORIGINAL ARTIST: BY JOHN LEECH FROM PUNCH MAGAZINE. (PHOTO BY RISCHGITZ/GETTY IMAGES)
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.
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.
funnies
