OCTOBER BITS AND PIECES

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DOCK WORKERS SUSPEND STRIKE

After striking for just a few days, dock  workers at Atlantic and Gulf ports suspended their strike action until the end of the year unless negotiations between their union, the International Longshoreman’s Association, and the US Maritime Alliance, representing the shipping industry, reach a contract by then. (See item on Labor News page of this website.)  ILA members have been working under a six-year contract that expired Sept 30. During that time they have seen their real income deteriorate during the pandemic when many ports could not operate. The workers unload cargo from ships docked in the ports They are seeking substantial pay increases to make up for their losses and protection from automation severely cutting into their jobs.

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HAWAII HOSPITAL LOCKS OUT NURSES AFTER ONE-DAY STRIKE

In a brazen move to pressure nurses to accept a management offer, the management at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Hawaii locked out 600 nurses indefinitely beginning Sept. 14. The lockout began a day after the nurses held a one-day strike to protest the ongoing bullying tactics of the medical center in retaliation for nurses reporting unsafe staffing conditions and expressing their concern for the safety of patients.

The nurses, members of the Hawaii Nurses Association OPEIU Local 50, have been working without a contract since December 1st, 2023 and they refuse to give up on winning a contract that will hold the hospital accountable for unsafe staffing incidents.

Hawaii Nurses Assn bulletin. 9/14

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SEPTEMBER BITS & PIECES

AT&T WORKERS STRIKE, CITING COMPANY’S STALLING TACTICS

Accusing AT&T of deliberately delaying bargaining on a new contract, over 17,000 workers in nine southeastern states hit the bricks August 16 in a strike that has resulted in a tentative agreement. But the company has continued to stall on a final agreement. The strike involves technicians, customer service representatives, and workers who install and maintain the AT&T network. The union, Communication Workers of America, is seeking improvements in wages that take into account increases in the cost of living, keeping affordable health care, and protections for a younger tier of workers who are subject to forced overtime without notification. This practice by the company make it impossible for them to plan time with their families. The union has filed charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor  Relations Board on AT&T’s delaying tactics.

 AT&T strike, 9.10

 

HOTEL WORKERS STRIKE OVER STAFFING CUTS

Communication Workers of America

About 10,000 hotel workers went out on strike over the Labor Day weekend, disrupting services at 25 Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott hotels across the country. The strike by members of Unite Here was set to last for several days during the busy holiday week. It affects hotels in Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Honolulu and San Jose, California and could spread to Oakland, California, Providence, Rhode Island, and New Haven, Connecticut, among other cities. The strikers are demanding reversal of the cuts in staffing that hotels put into place during the Covid pandemic when travel was reduced. But after the pandemic when hotel business recovered, the hotels maintained the cuts to save money, causing an overwhelming work load for current workers. The union is also demanding increases in pay in an industry that is severely underpaid.

Hotel Workers,9/2

 

EV BATTERY PLANT WORKERS JOIN UAW

After a majority of the 1,000 workers at the Ultium Cells battery plant in Spring Hills, Tennessee, signed union cards to join the United Auto Workers, the company agreed to recognize the union. Ultium manufactures battery cells for GM electric vehicles. The union victory is part of UAW’s plan to insure that it will keep representing workers in places that make auto parts during the transition to electric vehicles. The union finalized a contract with another Ultium plant in June that included a wage increase for workers from $15 to $35 an hour over three years plus a signing bonus and health and safety improvements.

The Tennessean, 9/4

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PROJECT 2025: WHAT’S IN STORE FOR LABOR IF TRUMP WINS

Anyone who cares about bettering the lives of working people, including their right to form and build unions, should read the section on labor in Project 2025, the blueprint for the Trump administration, should they win the White House again. It was drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think-tank with close ties to Trump Republicans. And although Trump claims he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, its authors and those connected to it are people who will most likely occupy prominent places in any Trump administration.

That’s why we highly recommend the excellent analysis of its labor section in Workbites, a website dealing with labor and other current issues. You can easily access he article by clicking in this link.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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‘DON’T  GET PLAYED BY THIS SCAB BILLIONAIRE’: UAW PREZ WARNING TO WORKERS

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In response to attempts by Donald Trump and Republicans to pose as friends of working people, UAW President Sean Fain had some harsh warnings to workers about what a future Trump presidency would hold.

The warnings came after Trump, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention last week, called upon UAW members to fire Fain, its popular president, who had won for them the best auto workers contract in decades. During the strike earlier this year that produced the contract and saw President Biden join workers on the picket line, Trump appeared at a non-union auto plant and denounced the strike.

Fain lost no time in responding. “America’s autoworkers aren’t the problem,” he declared. “Our union isn’t the problem. The working class isn’t the problem. Corporate greed and the billionaires’ hero, mascot, and lap dog Donald Trump, are the problem. Don’t get played by this scab billionaire.”

Others reminded people that anti-labor actions were part and parcel of the Republican agenda, no matter what they may be saying in public now. One example cited was the action of former Wisconsin Republican governor Scott Walker, who withdrew the right of public sector unions to collective bargaining and outlawed dues checkoff at unionized shops statewide. Another was the actions of Trump while president in stacking the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union lawyers and backing a series of court cases to weaken collective bargaining.

Jonathan Weisman in NY Times, 7/19

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SOME HARD FIGURES ON CORPORATE GREED

According to the AFL-CIO, the following facts emerge regarding America’s largest corporations and their top executives:

  • At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in 2021 despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.
  • In 2022, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received, on average, $16.7 million in total compensation. This was the second-highest level of CEO pay in history for S&P 500 Index companies. It was 324 times more than then median pay of the average employee.

The AFL-CIO notes that the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay is important. A higher pay ratio could be a sign that companies suffer from a winner-take-all philosophy, where executives reap the lion’s share of compensation. A lower pay ratio could indicate the companies that are dedicated to creating high-wage jobs and investing in their employees for the company’s long-term health.

For full details, see AFL-CIO website items: Corporate Greed and Executive Pay Watch

 

 

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LATEST TOLL OF ON-THE-JOB DEATHS

According to figures released by the AFL-CIO, in 2021 343 workers died on the job each day due to hazardous working conditions, a total for the year of 5,190. In addition, an estimated 120,000 workers died from diseases related to their work like exposure to hazardous materials, toxic chemicals and the like and violence at the workplace claimed the lives of 120,000.

AFL-CIO Website, 7/14,https://aflcio.org

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HUNDREDS OF BUILDING WORKERS IN MANHATTAN RALLY AFTER WAGE CUTS AND FIRINGS

Photo: 32BJ SEIU

Hundreds of unionists, members of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, took to the streets June 26 in New York to rally against a new landlord’s action against building workers. The landlord, Fifth City Realty, an affiliate of Empire Capital, had recently purchased the building at 529 5th Avenue at 44th Street in Manhattan.

The new management has proceeded to cut wages of the buildings cleaners nearly in half to the city’s minimum wage of $16 an hour. cancelling worker benefits like family medical insurance and terminating long term employees, including full-time and part-time security officers and a fire safety director.

The rally was joined by building workers throughout the neighborhood in support. “This company is bad on many levels,” said Denis Johnston, executive vice-president of 32BJ. “They’ve been referred to as billionaire bottom feeders. They don’t care about workers’ rights, they don’t care about tenant services, and they have a reputation of not investing in their properties.”

“My wages have been cut almost in half to $16 an hour. They have cut our benefits. How will we survive? They want to take away everything we have fought for. But we are fighting back,” said an 18-year 32BJ member who works at the Fifth Avenue building. Another worker at the building, a security officer, defiantly  declared, “We can’t let greed win.”

amNY, 6/27

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AFL-CIO PRESIDENT LIZ SHULER: 2nd TRUMP TERM – A CORPORATE CEO’s DREAM AND A WORKER’S NIGHTMARE

“Donald Trump’s legacy is chaos and division—and his greatest accomplishment in office was a bloated tax giveaway for the wealthy at the expense of working people who make our country run. He oversaw the largest increase in outsourcing in a decade, put a union-busting lawyer in charge of the Department of Labor and blocked workers from receiving the pay we earned. Trump… would escalate his anti-worker crusade with the radical far-right’s Project 2025 agenda by eviscerating unions and hard-won contracts; slashing millions of union jobs; blocking workers from organizing; and drastically cutting wages, health care and retirement benefits.…

“Unions in our country are on the line in this election—and so are union members’ hard-won contracts. It’s simple: A second Trump term is a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, as quoted by Labor Start, 6/29

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JANUARY BITS AND PIECES

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UAW STEPS UP DRIVE TO UNIONIZE NON-UNION AUTO PLANTS

After gaining the best contract in decades for auto workers from the US Big Three a few months ago, UAW President Sean Fain announced that the union would be begin an organizing drive among the non-union auto plants in the country.

A second early result this month came in the form of an announcement by the union that more than 30% of the workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, have signed UAW authorization cards to be represented by the union in collective bargaining. The Tuscaloosa workers join workers at the Volkswagen facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in reaching the 30% goal, the first step in their union organizing efforts. If 50% sign up, the union will publicly rally and at 70% the UAW will demand recognition or call on the National Labor Relations Board to organize a vote.

Guadian,1/10

 

IS THERE A LESSON HERE?

Most national unions elect their presidents at their conventions held every few years. They are chosen by the delegates the locals send to the conventions. This indirect election of its top leaders has produced an undemocratic structure in most unions in which the leadership has only a remote connection to he rank-and-file members.

But developments in two unions may serve to be a harbinger of things to come. In both the Teamsters  and Auto Workers unions, the government intervened after a lengthy legal process and compelled an election by direct mail ballot of the entire membership. In the case of the UAW, the old guard leadership was sent to jail for corruption.

The result was leadership closer to workers directly on the production line. UAW President Sean Fain went around the country, holding meetings and sounding out workers on what they wanted in their new contracts. The process produced the best contracts for workers in decades.  The Teamsters contract with UPS, signed this past summer, made great gains for UPS drivers without a strike. UAW workers in factories of the Big Three US automakers are enjoying a contract not seen since the early organizing days of the union.

A valuable lesson that greater union democracy often brings greater gains for workers.

Labor Notes, 1/5

 

ON-THE-JOB INJURIES NOW HIT 10-YEAR HIGH

Almost 5,500 workers in the U.S. died from on-the-job injuries in 2022, the highest number in the past 10 years, according to a report released Dec. 19 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More than 70% of the victims worked in blue-collar jobs such as construction, driving trucks, and maintenance, and more than 90% were men.”These deaths could be prevented,” said Jessica E. Martinez, co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health “if employers listen to workers and adopt preventive and comprehensive safety measures.”

“Transportation incidents” accounted for more than 2,000 fatalities, about two-thirds of them in vehicle crashes. Falls, most commonly to a lower level of a structure, accounted for 865 deaths, and 839 came from exposure to poisons, electricity, or extreme heat. Older workers were most vulnerable, with 35% of those killed 55 or older.

Work Bites, 12/20

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