Latest figures compiled by the AFL-CIO continue to provide evidence that the American workplace, in many instances, is an unsafe place. Particularly significant is the fact that, in a very large number of cases, workplace fatalities are the result of company neglect, particularly in non-union shops where there is no one to push for needed safety […]
“For decades, the labor movement’s efforts to halt its long slide have been – to speak plainly – an utter failure” writes Steven Greenhouse in The American Prospect (6/13). “The U.S. has gone from having 35 percent of its workforce unionized in the 1950s to 20 percent in the 1980s to just 10 percent today. […]
The Denver Post reports (6/2) that Colorado state regulators has found Southwest Airlines in systemic violation of dozens of state labor laws including paid sick leave for workers with Covid. Under Colorado’s Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, employers are required to provide paid leave for workers with Covid-19 illnesses and quarantines, or other injuries or […]
According to a Gallup poll taken last August, 68 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest number in more than 50 years. As of late May, the latest count in the drive to unionize Starbucks is 79 stores where the union won the election and only nine where they lost it. Now, […]
Efforts to unionize the giant Starbucks chain that began with two stores in Buffalo a few months ago is picking up momentum even though there is still a long way to go. As of mid-May, 78 Starbucks stores around the country have voted to unionize. And Starbucks is not the only one. The drive of […]
In the space of a few weeks in May, two Verizon stores in Washington state have voted “yes” to unionizing. Responding in typical fashion, Verizon is spending big on a campaign to break the union drive rather than negotiate with the union. Central to its strategy is the firing of union activists to intimidate workers. […]
All Three Joint Councils of the Teamsters Union in New York State have urged the state legislature to pass two laws aimed at protecting workers in warehouse industries like Amazon from some of the notorious corporate abuses they have suffered. In letters to the legislature and in a rally and two press conferences at the […]
As some 1100 workers walked out on strike May 9, CNH Industrial, which operates 13 manufacturing and engineering plants in the U.S., announced that it will cut off the workers’ health insurance as of May 11. It has also hired so-called “replacement workers” who were immediately ready to go even as the strike had barely […]
After its stunning victory at the massive Staten Island warehouse a few weeks ago, the drive of the fledgling Amazon Labor Union to unionize the smaller Amazon facility in Staten Island failed to materialize. The vote at the LDJ5 center was 998 to 380 according to the NLRB tally. The plant has about 1,600 employees. […]
One of the many problems facing American workers in recent years has been the lax enforcement of laws and rules meant to protect them. A very interesting April 29 article on the website of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and reproduced on LaborStart.org details how at union-organized shops these rules are more likely to […]
