Work Struggles

Call center workers in New York overcame a brutal yet predictable anti-union campaign, but are stuck as management stalls first-contract talks. The National Labor Relations Board, with only two of five seats filled as the Senate dithers, is painfully slow to respond to workers' pleas. They and their union, the Communications Workers, aren't waiting, and took the fight directly to management Friday. Lead image:  Lead image caption:  Call center workers in New York overcame a brutal yet predictable anti-union campaign, but are stuck as managers stall first-contract talks. Workers aren't waiting for the labor board to respond, and took their fight directly to management Friday. Photo: Kate Doehring.

Byline:  Gregg Shotwell GM can’t live without parts supplier Delphi but can’t live with union wages. The United Auto Workers is trying break Delphi's master agreement, but didn’t anticipate rank-and-file anger, which has halted its concessions locomotive. Lead image:  Lead image caption:  Delphi workers are fighting demands for further concessions pushed by the United Auto Workers, which is trying to split apart the master agreement at the company. The International didn’t anticipate rank-and-file anger, which has halted its concessions locomotive. Photo: Jim West/jimwestphoto.com.

LabourStart headline - Source: Las Vegas Sun

I can remember it like yesterday, one of the great thrills of my sports-watching life. Tragically, Larry Morris, now living in a nursing home with dementia, can’t remember it at all. Absent a union that puts health and safety first for active and retired players, the NFL has discarded its injured performers.

For Immediate Release:
Brandworkers

February 1, 2010

Contact: press (at) brandworkers.org

Workers Rights' Group Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Beverage Distributor Over Alleged Labor Violations

Immigrant Workers Take a Stand for Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay

New York, NY-  A non-profit workers' rights organization filed a class action lawsuit on Friday alleging that a Queens-based drink distributor,
Beverage-Plus, is violating the rights of its immigrant workforce.
The lawsuit was filed in New York federal court on behalf of current and former delivery drivers and warehouse assistants who were allegedly denied minimum wage and overtime by Beverage-Plus, in addition to other rights violations.  The case is an effort of the Brandworkers Focus on the Food Chain initiative which is exposing abuses in NYC's food processing sector and was brought in association with law firm Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C.

"My co-workers and I work hard and now we are demanding to be paid according to the law," said Richard Merino, a member of Brandworkers who has been a driver at Beverage-Plus for six years.  "Wage theft is very damaging and we have chosen to tackle the problem by organizing together and taking collective action."

Lawyers for the workers will seek class certification to recover allegedly withheld compensation for current and former Beverage-Plus workers who have worked at the company in the last six years.  Maia Goodell and Anand Swaminathan of Vladeck Waldman are serving as lead counsel.

"Tens of thousands of recent immigrant workers labor out-of-sight in exploitative conditions processing and distributing food to New York's markets and restaurants," said Daniel Gross, the director of Brandworkers.  "Wage theft, abusive treatment, non-existent benefits, and hostility to organizing are endemic in the sector but workers' resolve to assert their rights is strong and growing.  Brandworkers Focus on the Food Chain will press on until New York's food processing employees win respect for their human rights and just recognition for their important contribution to our economy and our community."

Brandworkers is a New York-based non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees.  By providing workers with legal, advocacy, and organizing tools, Brandworkers ensures employer compliance with the law and challenges corporate misconduct in the community.  The Brandworkers Focus on the Food Chain initiative promotes a sustainable food system where workers' human rights are respected.

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By Eric Griffey - Fort Worth Weekly, February 3, 2010.

In late December, a small group of Starbucks employees blocked the drive-through window at the company's coffee shop at Rosedale Street and 8th Avenue for about 20 minutes, in protest of the rising cost of their healthcare insurance, low wages, and a litany of other issues. The protest signaled that a handful of local baristas had gone public with their association with the Starbucks Workers' Union - and it meant that, for a while on that afternoon, customers had to wait even longer than usual to get a cup of gourmet coffee. coverThe protesters said they didn't intend for the store to lose any business. They saw the move as a symbolic gesture, a message to the corporate coffee giant that they are willing to go to great lengths to improve their working environment. Although the protest hardly measured up to, say, the garbage workers strike in Fort Worth in 1999, it did get the company's attention. Organizers said that the company's top brass now has the Rosedale store under a microscope and that corporate officials visit frequently.

Fort Worth is the sixth city in the U.S. and the first in Texas to associate with the Starbucks Workers Union, which was started in 2004 under the umbrella of the Industrial Workers of the World, a century-old international union that takes a kind of class warfare approach and has had success in organizing in nontraditional industries, from bicycle messengers to food co-op workers.

Michelle Cahill, the group's organizer, said that she and others have seen firsthand the declining morale of their co-workers, as the company has been forced to make changes to cope with hard times.

The unhappy baristas feel as though the company, which is perennially listed on Forbes magazine's "best companies to work for" list, has lost its way, and is becoming more like a fast food chain - concentrating more on moving product than connecting with customers. "There are people in every store in the country who feel that the company isn't what it used to be," Cahill said.

But she said the union's goals have less to do with the overall direction of the company than with mistreatment of workers. Among their demands are better and cheaper healthcare, increased wages, more hours, and better working conditions.

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LabourStart headline - Source: News.am

LabourStart headline - Source: AFL-CIO

LabourStart headline - Source: Zim Online

Originally posted here

Andrew Nellis of the Ottawa Pandhandlers Union said the group has reached a settlement after filing a $1-million lawsuit against the city last year.

The lawsuit accused the city of violating panhandlers' constitutional rights by putting up a fence at the underpass across from Chateau Laurier. Nellis ended up being charged after he snipped a lock off the fence.

On Tuesday, Nellis said the panhandlers and city reached a deal but an agreement on confidentiality prevented him from going into details. Sounded like the settlement might involve allowing the panhandlers to use some property for a street art gallery.

Nellis is claiming victory.

"It won't be the first victory we have, either," he said.

In the same breath, Nellis said the panhandlers group plans to sue the city again if an updated nuisance bylaw comes into force for roads and sidewalks. The bylaw passed the transportation committee meeting Wednesday.

 

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Here’s my 2 cents on the NUHW win among the Kaiser Permanente professionals. In my view, it was the result of several key ingredients—but especially the existence of stewards councils that continued on their own even under the SEIU trusteeship:

Byline:  Paul Abowd

The Restaurant Opportunities Center has launched workplace justice campaigns in four cities aimed at flipping the low-wage, high-discrimination industry.

Lead image:  Lead image caption:  Servers and busers at the Detroit-area Andiamo chain complain of a raft of wage violations as well as racial and gender discrimination on the job. Their campaign is part of a nationwide push by the Restaurant Opportunities Center to raise wages and working conditions inside the expanding industry. Photo: ROC.

The meeting of G7 Finance Ministers in Iqaluit, Canada, this week needs to press ahead on financial regulation and restructuring of banks, as powerful global financial interests step up their fight against reform. While the meeting is not expected to adopt formal decisions, discussions there will influence the positions taken by the G7 countries at the June summit of G20 heads of government, also being held in Canada.

The meeting of G7 Finance Ministers in Iqaluit, Canada, this week needs to press ahead on financial regulation and restructuring of banks, as powerful global financial interests step up their fight against reform. While the meeting is not expected to adopt formal decisions, discussions there will influence the positions taken by the G7 countries at the June summit of G20 heads of government, also being held in Canada. Disturbing signs emerged at last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, where behind-the-scenes arm-twisting by powerful interests in the financial sector was used to warn governments and regulators that even limited steps to regulate would meet with strong resistance.

“Having filled their begging bowls with trillions of taxpayer dollars, the very same bankers who caused the crisis are now biting the hand that fed them. They are attacking the role of government, pleading for more corporate welfare and refusing to accept that the main purpose of banking and finance should be to support employment and growth in the real economy. Governments must stand up to them, and in some cases even to their own central banks and regulators, who seem only too happy to do the bidding of the finance sector at the expense of jobs, incomes and development,” said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.

Central to their strategy is a move to push the whole issue of regulation and reform into closed-door discussions, including at the secretive Financial Stability Board set up by the G20 in London last April, which has yet to show any indication that it will support the kind of regulation needed. Governments, notably in the USA, France and the UK, have signalled plans for far-reaching change, and it appears that the financial sector, banking on the support of other governments, is betting on a drawn-out multilateral process foundering at some time in the future due to inability of governments to agree.

“Governments should work quickly to reach a cohesive global approach through the G20, and at the same time they should move forward with reform in their own jurisdictions, particularly in the US and the UK, the two homes of “light-touch” regulation, which has done so much damage to the lives of tens of millions of people,” said Ryder. “If the Financial Stability Board and other bodies mandated by the G20 to work out global solutions don't move fast enough or far enough, there will be a risk that some banks will try to flee to countries where regulation is lax, but that should not stop the obvious weaknesses in regulation of major financial centres being fixed by the governments concerned.”

“Regulation and restructuring of banking is critically important, and should be at the heart of a process of ensuring that banking and finance serve the real economy. The G7 Finance Ministers need to confirm that they will support the introduction of a financial transaction tax and a levy to insure against future bank failure, bring private equity and hedge funds into a proper regulatory framework and take action on bankers' pay and bonuses,” said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD.

The Financial Stability Board, which is working on the bonuses issue, has been consulting with the banks themselves on the question of bankers' compensation, but has not agreed to meet and discuss these or any other issues with the international trade union movement, even on an informal basis. Nor is it clear how the Financial Stability Board intends to implement G20 decisions on action from March 2010 against tax havens; what concrete steps they will take to bring hedge funds and private equity firms into line with minimum standards of transparency and accountability with respect to regulators; or what will be done on prudential regulation, other than continue with their existing unhurried plans for revision and implementation of the existing “Basel II” framework by the end of 2012.

With unemployment set to rise even further throughout 2010, trade unions are also calling for government stimulus packages to be renewed and re-focused onto maintaining and creating employment, with a strong emphasis on green jobs in particular. Government action to reduce fiscal deficits must not damage vital public services, with the transactions tax and other progressive tax measures needed to provide revenue to help fund social spending and development assistance at the same time as deficit reduction.

“Governments are facing a clear choice. They can act decisively and together to fix a broken global economy and thus fulfil their responsibility to govern in the interests of people, or they may choose to dodge that responsibility and do what the banks are telling them to do. There are already signs that governments are prepared accept higher unemployment and even greater inequality, and unless they go ahead with fundamental reform, they will also be accepting that another and possibly deeper crisis will become a fact of life. There is a real possibility of extreme social tension or worse if governments continue to put the interests of banks and finance ahead of jobs and social justice,” said Ryder.

The ITUC represents 175 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates. http://www.youtube.com/ITUCCSI

For more information, please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32 2 224 0204 or + 32 476 62 10 18

Photo: Martino

LabourStart headline - Source: Inter-Press Service

LabourStart headline - Source: Deutsche Welle

LabourStart headline - Source: BiaNet

LabourStart headline - Source: Reuters

Byline:  by Mischa Gaus

What happens when a guppy swallows a whale? In telecom, it’s meant service problems, then bankruptcy—which spells concessions for workers.

Lead image:  Lead image caption:  Photo: Rand Wilson

The slumlord at the GM-owned Delphi plant in Lockport, New York, turns off the heat every day between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. "Little Hitler," as the general foreman is known, thinks his dial-down saves GM money. Hammering pipes and raining asbestos may ring a different tune on the company cash register, but Little Hitler can’t see the dollars wasted for the pennies he’s counting.

Byline:  Mischa Gaus

Hospital work is thought to be recession-proof. No matter what the economy, people get sick and need care. The work is there, but at a cost: hospital workers and researchers say some hospitals are churning through a round of reorganization, strapping on more work, skimping on training, and trying to stuff contract concessions through.