AFL-CIO on SCOTUS Voting Rights Ruling: An Attack on Freedom of Working People

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In a sharply worded statement, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler has blasted the May 9 decision of the US Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act as “an outright attack on the fundamental freedoms of working people.”

The Court decision, nullifying Section 2 of the law, has opened the door to widespread gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts, reducing the fair representation of Black and Latino voters and increasing the number of anti-labor right-wing Republicans in legislative bodies. The 1965 law, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, was passed after years of struggle by the Civil Rights Movement, with the support of organized labor, to outlaw the practice of voter suppression in states of the Jim Crow South. It has been instrumental in significantly increasing the number of Black, Latino, and working class officeholders in the southern states.

By gutting Section 2 of the law, the Court has erased the means of enforcing it, since it is virtually impossible to get a politician to admit that the gerrymandering is being done to deliberately reduce Black and Latino representation.

“When politicians – backed by the Supreme Court – are able to undermine our voices, they can dismantle everything we’ve worked for and further consolidate power for the corporations, billionaires and special interests at our expense,” Shuler declared. “The National AFL-CIO refuses to accept that future. We will keep fighting for legislative reforms, including on the State and Federal levels, to create a democracy where every worker’s voice matters just as much as the wealthy and well-connected. We will mobilize on jobsites, at doors and in the streets from now until November to elect candidates who will stand up for working people and against these attacks on our freedoms.”

Labor Press, 5/12

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Hands Across the Sea

Nike, the shoe and sneaker giant has been giving workers on two continents the boot. And workers in Asia and Oregon are now kicking back.

During the pandemic a few years ago, the sportswear company decided to reduce or cancel orders and lay· off thousands of workers – mostly women – across its supply chains in  India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. It ignored warnings from labor rights organizations that the move, accompanied by wage theft, left the workers, who had barely been making a living, now unable to afford food or rent. The company also ignored requests to discuss some compensation for the workers who went without pay for several months.

Now, five or six years later, the women are still feeling the fallout of the companies’ actions. Meanwhile, Nike engaged in stock buyback schemes that inflated its stock price and netted its executives juicy bonuses. Swasthika Arulingam, president of the Commercial and Industrial Workers Union in Sri Lanka, pointed out that Phil Knight, Nike founder and CEO, saw his “fortune increase by $28 billion while workers struggled to survive.”

At the same time, across the sea in the state of Oregon the same company is giving the boot to public school workers. The Portland Association of Teachers says that after Oregonians voted for a wealth tax in 2012, Nike “bullied” the Oregon legislature into calling a special session that granted the company a $2 billion tax holiday over 30 years. Losing out on $66 million a year, it said, has sparked a “funding crisis” in the public school system, undermining education statewide while dividends paid to Knight’s family, an estimated $460 million a year, could fill the budget gap nine times over.

“Our schools have been struggling for years to get adequate funding,” said one teacher. “There is no shortage of money in Oregon to adequately fund our schools. We can easily and fairly raise the revenue needed by raising taxes on the ultra-rich like Phil Knight and the corporations that are hoarding it, like Nike.”

Now the Portland Association of Teachers and the Asian Floor Workers Alliance have launched a joint campaign to get Nike to agree to a binding pact that funds Oregon’s schools and pays a living wage to its workers in Asia.

Stay tuned.

Labor Start, 5/2

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COURT ALLOWS TRUMP TO END UNION BARGAINING FOR FEDERAL WORKERS

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A federal appeals court Aug. 1 lifted a judge’s order blocking President Trump from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of the ability to engage in union bargaining with U.S. agencies.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold pending a further appeal an injunction issued by a lower court judge that had been obtained by six unions including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

Trump’s order exempted more than a dozen federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions. They include the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, and Health and Human Services.

U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco in June had issued the injunction blocking 21 agencies from implementing Trump’s March executive order exempting many federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions.

Donato concluded Trump’s order retaliated against unions deemed critical of the president and that had sued over his efforts to overhaul the government, including the mass firings of agency employees, violating their right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

But the 9th Circuit panel said Trump’s order on its face “does not express any retaliatory animus,” and it agreed with the Trump administration that the president “would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.”

Eliminating collective bargaining would allow agencies to alter working conditions and fire or discipline workers more easily, and it could prevent unions from challenging Trump administration initiatives in court.

Labor Start, 8/1

 

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MEDICAL RESIDENTS NOW A NEW FRONT IN UNION ORGANIZING

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Resident physicians at LA General in Los Angeles, California, rally outside the hospital on April 3, 2025, for a fair contract. DEANDRE JACKSON

Resident physicians are doctors who have graduated from medical school and are now on hospital staffs. They are akin to apprentices before becoming fully licensed. In many hospitals and emergency rooms they are the ones who deal with patients on a daily basis.

They work very long hours under often stressful conditions. Their pay is low, considering their training and the importance of their work. That is why they have become a new front in labor organizing.

Across the country in the last few years medical residents have been unionizing and striking by the thousands. They comprise some of the largest new units to unionize in the United States. Some 40,000 of them are now members of Committee of Interns and Residents, a part of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“Medical residents are monumental to the care that patients receive,” declared Dr. Armin Tadayyon, a resident physician at the University of Buffalo’s affiliated hospitals who helped lead a strike last year of residents affiliated with another organization, the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, that resulted in their first contract. In an interview with Truthout, an online publication, Dr Tadayyon explained, “Our labor holds the hospital afloat. Most of the direct patient contact is with residents. If residents don’t show up to work, the hospitals are in crisis mode.”

Another resident interviewed, Dr. Mahina Iyengar of the Los Angeles General Medical Center, elaborated:

“In many hospitals you visit, the residents will be the people taking care of you. They’re the backbone of whatever hospital they’re working at.

“We pretty much do everything, depending on the specialty. We’re usually in the hospital before 6:00 am. We do multiple rounds a day with patients. We order medications, call families for information, consent patients for surgeries, perform surgery under supervision, talk to nurses, explain treatment plans, and much more. Almost all this day-to-day work is done by interns, residents, and fellows.

“ Resident physicians have been overworked and underpaid for decades,” said Dr. Iyergar, “as we’ve seen the consolidation and corporatization of health care. We’ve been taught over generations to just push through and ignore our working conditions.”

What prompted the change in residents’ attitude was the Covid pandemic where they were working 14 and 16-hour days and 80-hour weeks. Their collective realization of their exploitation by hospitals who were completely dependent on their labor led to their desire to organize.

 Unionization has helped residents advocate for better patient care and get funds for equipment and supplies that patients need. Patients are ill-served by attending physicians who are exhausted after putting in 16-hour shifts.

Now hospitals find that a new generation of residents are union-minded and wish to be part of the labor movement.

Labor Start, 7/21

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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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OCTOBER BITS AND PIECES

DOCK WORKERS SUSPEND STRIKE

The strike by dock workers at Atlantic and Gulf ports

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DOCK WORKERS STRIKE HITS EAST COAST & GULF PORTS

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Dock workers at Eat Coast and Gulf ports walked off the job Sept 30 after weeks of negotiations failed to yield an agreement between the International Longshoreman’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance, representing the shipping industry.

ILA members have been working under a six-year contract that expired Sept 30 and saw 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.

Even though a major strike like this one could endanger Democrats just before election, President Biden has said he will not seek a Taft-Hartley injunction against the strike. “Ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic,” Biden said in a statement. “It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well.”

Politico, 2 items, 10/1 and 10/1

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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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STRIKE BY BUILDING CLEANERS PROMPTS MANAGEMENT FEELERS TO BARGAIN

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In June it was a big demonstration in front of the office building at 529 Fifth Avenue, called by the Service Employees International Union. Hundreds of their members who work in the area, picketed in front of the building at 44th Street in Manhattan’s diamond district in support of their union brothers and sisters. We reported on this demonstration in an earlier post.

Now, just a few weeks later, a strike by the building employees beginning July 10 seems to have stirred the management to reach out feelers about bargaining with the union. At issue was the fact that management, Fifth City Realty, an affiliate of Empire Capital, had recently acquired the building and brought in a new contractor, L&J Janitorial, to manage its janitorial services, L&J then unilaterally tore up the contract that had been negotiated between the old management and SEIU. The new janitorial service,  then proceeded to cut the 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 action prompted a mass demonstration of hundreds of SEIU members and supporters on the streets around the building and a walkout by the buildings employees on July 10.

It didn’t take long for the owners and the janitorial contractor, which had adamantly refused to bargain with the union, to reach out to the union, potentially the first step in the negotiating process.

In response, then union agreed to temporarily suspend the strike but said that it’s still possible  for the strike to continue if L&J Janitorial delays negotiations or does not bargain in good faith with the union.

Labor Press, 7/13

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WE’RE BACK

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Many of you have been wondering why we haven’t posted any new items for several months, particularly since so much has been happening on the labor front. We’ve had some medical problems that prevented us from working on the website for a while.

But all is well now and we’re back and in good health. Below you’ll find some initial items that broke recently. Many more will follows. And thanks for staying with us.

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