In a far-reaching victory for hotel workers, a new labor agreement has been reached between the national Hyatt hotel chain and UNITE HERE, which represents Hyatt workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii and Chicago. The accord caps a long, tenacious fight by the union. In a memo emailed to union affiliates, UNITE HERE national president D. Taylor thanked union activists and elected leaders whose efforts over the last two years have led to “substantial wage increases and quality health and pension benefits.”
The two sides issued this joint statement last week:
National Agreement
Today Hyatt Hotels Corporation and UNITE HERE, the union of hospitality workers in the U.S. and Canada, announced a national agreement that resolves longstanding disputes between the two organizations. The agreement creates a framework for the company and the union to work together moving forward. Both UNITE HERE and Hyatt hailed the pact as a positive step.
Gallup and Pew concur: Just over one-half of Americans approve of labor unions.
In late June, the Pew Research Center released the results of its biennial poll on unions and corporations, and reported that 51 percent of Americans had a favorable view of unions—up from just 41 percent in 2011, the last time Pew popped the question. Pew’s new number is almost identical to Gallup’s, which found that 52 percent of Americans approved of unions when it last asked that question in August of 2012. Gallup polls on union approval every year and has reported a 52 percent approval rating each of the past three years. Before then, union approval had hit an all-time low for Gallup surveys, with just 48 percent in 2009.
(This post first appeared on the American Prospect and is republished with permission.)
» Read more about: New Polls Show Rising Approval of Unions »
While a new labor contract is still being negotiated, SEIU 1021 and ATU 1555 have already won the 2013 BART strike. Prior to last week, both unions faced an untenable choice: Accept another round of concessions demanded by BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] or risk alienating hundreds of thousands of BART riders by closing down the system. A successful strike would not be easy. It required rank and file solidarity, and the building of a strong community-labor coalition. It also meant withstanding an anti-union media blitz that framed the conflict as between a BART management that cared about riders and taxpayers, and a union workforce that only cared about “selfish” goals.
But as the dust from the strike clears, it is BART management that is under pressure to improve its offer. Both unions resume negotiations in a much stronger position than before the strike, and retain the option of striking again should BART still refuse to negotiate in good faith.
» Read more about: BART Managers Got Free Media Pass During Strike »
A basic economic principle is government ought to tax what we want to discourage, and not tax what we want to encourage.
For example, if we want less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we should tax carbon polluters. On the other hand, if we want more students from lower-income families to be able to afford college, we shouldn’t put a tax on student loans.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, congressional Republicans are intent on doing exactly the opposite.
Earlier this year the Republican-led House passed a bill pegging student-loan interest rates to the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, plus 2.5 percentage points. “I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the co-sponsor of the GOP bill, said.
Republicans estimate this will bring in around $3.7 billion of extra revenue,
» Read more about: Conservatives: Tax Students, Not Polluters »
I recently had the privilege of attending a banquet recognizing Walmart workers who have dedicated themselves to winning policy changes that affect the way they are treated by this retail giant. The event was held at the First AME Church of Los Angeles, which has been in the forefront of fighting for civil rights and social justice.
Many stories shared by the workers reflected the nightmare that is their Walmart employment experience. One very nervous young woman spoke of being seriously injured when luggage from a storage rack fell on her back. Her supervisors refused to administer medical attention or even call for an ambulance; she had to drive herself to a hospital.
There are warehouse workers at subcontracted facilities who find themselves working in trailers whose temperatures reach more than 100 degrees – such workers are faced with limited water availability and supervisors who don’t permit frequent breaks for employees to cool down.
» Read more about: Walmart Employees Recount Grim Working Environment »
(The following post originally appeared on the blog for Next City, “a non-profit media organization dedicated to connecting cities and informing the people who work to improve them.”)
Chicago labor groups are pissed. And they have a right to be. The Montreal-based company Bombardier Transportation was awarded a $1.14 billion contract to build more than 700 train cars for the Chicago Transit Authority, and the local workforce has been left out.
The greater Chicago area and Illinois were cut out of thousands of jobs on this public project, according to the Chicago Tribune, and nine labor and community groups have written a letter calling on the CTA to change the procurement process and include a requirement for local job creation for the next batch of rail cars — 846 cars to the tune of roughly $2 billion — set to be built over the next decade.
» Read more about: Chicagoans Say: Follow L.A. Metro’s Employment Plan »
Where will this century’s jobs come from? What can we do about youth unemployment and underemployment? How can today’s developed countries maintain their labor standards and environmental laws in the face of competition from China and Southeast Asia?
These are questions that keep parents awake at night worrying for the futures of their children. The usual answers offer little hope. No wonder today’s underemployed twentysomethings are so depressed.
To judge by the headlines, tomorrow’s good jobs will all be in high technology and the Internet. But the world only needs so many instant-millionaire app developers. For most young people, becoming an Internet millionaire simply isn’t an option.
The other booming area is the low-wage service sector. The world needs more caregivers, nannies, cleaners, gardeners and wait staff. So much for the knowledge economy.
Gone are the good jobs in manufacturing that used to provide steady employment to millions.
» Read more about: Good-Job Creation: A Path to Growth or the Road Not Taken? »
While the 2013 BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] strike involves current disputes over wages, pensions and worker safety, its roots go back decades. BART management and its workforce have long had a poisonous relationship. The 90-day 1979 strike/lockout is the most obvious example, and despite the last strike occurring back in 1997, bargaining always goes down to the wire with a work stoppage imminent. Why is this relationship so stormy? The chief reason is BART management’s historic insensitivity to its workers.
For over thirty years, BART’s primarily white management has disrespected its heavily minority workforce. And while compensation levels could reduce tensions over this lack of respect in good times, in the recent down years BART workers have gone backward. These workers (along with riders) have paid the price when the BART Board’s suburban majority long refused to raise revenue by charging for parking at its stations, and when BART squandered money on costly expansions rather than improving safety and service in existing areas.
The trucking industry likes to say, “If you have it, a truck brought it.” The industry’s point is that trucking is an essential and ubiquitous part of our economy.
This is true, so far as it goes. But trucks don’t drive themselves. And so at a recent meeting of the Carson City Council, a slightly different message was on display: If you want a good job, you’re no longer likely to find it in port trucking – at least not without a fight.
Carson, located 10 minutes north of Los Angeles’ harbor, is a major hub of port trucking: Fifty-two port trucking companies operate there — more than in any other Southern California city except L.A. and Long Beach; hundreds of truck drivers call Carson home and more than 1,000 port trucks are parked in town. The conditions of the industry impact the city profoundly — from road safety to environmental quality to jobs to tax revenue.
» Read more about: Carson Pledges Support for “Modern-Day Sharecroppers” »
As the number of American public- and private-sector workers belonging to a labor union reached an all-time low this past year, many of us sat on the sidelines scratching our collective heads, wondering why. Academics and economists will say it’s because the type of work Americans do is changing and, as we shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, union jobs in factories (those that haven’t already been offshored) are being replaced by nonunion desk jobs. However, ask an average employee or person on the street why fewer workers belong to a union than a generation ago. They will most likely say it’s because unions have lost their relevance, are outdated concepts or that they aren’t needed.
But how can the latter be true when the mean real wages of American workers are lower than they were in the 1970s, around the time that union manufacturing jobs began globally migrating south and to Asia?
» Read more about: Why Aren’t Unions More Appealing to the Public? »
The surprise announcement from the Obama administration that it will delay for one year penalizing employers that do not offer health coverage to their workers is the latest capitulation by the White House to big businesses that want to shirk their responsibility to help pay for health insurance. But the decision leaves huge unanswered questions about whether health coverage for uninsured workers will also be denied.
Yesterday, the Treasury issued a notice delaying for one year, until 2015, the requirement that employers of more than 50 full-time employees (three percent of all employers) report on whether they offer health coverage to their employees. The Affordable Care Act requires that these employers pay penalties when they do not offer qualified coverage or when their workers access coverage through the new health care exchanges. The Treasury’s notice does not change the legal requirement that employers provide coverage,
» Read more about: Christmas in July: Big Companies Get Obamacare Reprieve »
The New York Times recently characterized the economic recovery that officially began in 2009 as a “golden era for corporate profits.” Indeed, corporate profits doubled between 2008 and 2011 and reached a record high.
However, these increased profits have fueled inequality and come at the expense of worker compensation. Profits are now a larger share of total national income, and wages and benefits are a smaller share than at any time since the 1960s. Over the last four decades productivity gains have overwhelmingly accrued to business and not labor. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that between 1973-2011 productivity increased by 80 percent, but median hourly compensation by only 11 percent.
The recovery has not lifted up those at the bottom of the income distribution, nor has it increased opportunity for the middle. According to the Women’s Foundation of California, one in three families in the state (with family members reporting a combined work effort of 39 or more weeks annually) are the working poor who earn less than $45,397 a year.
Twice in the last five days, President Barack Obama referred to divestment — the controversial strategy to bring about social change by pressuring corporations to behave more responsibly.
On Tuesday, Obama mentioned divestment during a major speech at Georgetown University outlining his plan to address climate change. And on Thursday, at a press conference in Senegal, Obama recalled his involvement during college in the anti-apartheid movement, which relied heavily on divestment to push companies to boycott South Africa until it dismantled its racist system.
Was the one-time student activist signaling his support to the current generation of campus radicals who are calling on universities to divest from energy companies that promote fossil fuels? Was the former community organizer embracing the movement to dump stock holdings in order to compel corporations to be more socially responsible?
“I’m here to enlist your generation’s help in keeping the United States of America a global leader in the fight against climate change,”
The victory in the state Assembly was a narrow one, but a victory nonetheless for Governor Jerry Brown and opponents of California’s troubled enterprise zone program. The zones reward companies with $750 million in annual tax breaks for relocating their businesses to depressed parts of the state – and for replacing their workforces with newer, usually lower paid ones. Thursday, the Assembly approved a bill already passed by the state Senate that would radically overhaul the program.
Although the vote was 54-16, passage required a two-thirds vote, since it amended a tax law; four Republican Assemblymembers joined 50 Democrats in voting for AB 93. The legislation now goes to the governor for his signature.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ Marc Lifsher, “Brown’s proposal, the centerpiece of his economic development strategy, all but eliminates the power of the state’s 40 locally controlled enterprise zones and replaces the program with a broader,
» Read more about: Enterprise Zone Bill Goes to Governor’s Desk »
David Acosta, a leader in the fight to improve warehouse working conditions, is back to work today. David was fired from his job as a forklift driver at a critical Walmart-controlled warehouse in Mira Loma, California at the end of May for allegedly violating a safety policy. David and his coworkers fought back against his unfair dismissal and retaliation by the warehouse operator, Schneider Logistics, for helping expose wrongdoing at the warehouse.
David is a lead plaintiff in a massive federal lawsuit that exposed millions of dollars in stolen wages. The lawsuit, of which Walmart, Schneider and the temporary staffing agencies that employed warehouse workers are defendants, helped end decades-long scheme to defraud workers.
“We know that Walmart is in control and now we will know the extent of their involvement to defraud workers,” Acosta said of the lawsuit.
In October 2011, workers who were jointly employed at the Walmart warehouses by Schneider Logistics,
For days before Thanksgiving, 2009, Santa Ana winds had been blowing up ash and dust from the massive Station Fire that recently burned north of Los Angeles. The scorching, high-pressure weather system seemed a suitable climate for L.A.’s financial meltdown as the city entered the third year of America’s recessionary slump. Inside City Hall on that Wednesday before the holiday, government representatives and members of the news media listened to the testimony of a man who was on his way to becoming one of Los Angeles’ most powerful figures. He was only 40, held no elective office and had started his job as the City Administrative Officer just three months before.
Yet on this Thanksgiving eve Miguel Santana held the rapt attention of the City Council and journalists as he delivered shocking news: Los Angeles faced an imminent shortfall of $98 million and, based on his projections, the city could be burdened by a $1 billion debt by 2013.
» Read more about: L.A. Budget Czar Miguel Santana’s Shaky Math and Polarizing Ideology »
The immigration reform bill likely to pass the Senate this week will pick up a few more votes because it commits the government to building a longer fence. Thanks to a Republican amendment, workers will erect an additional 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
But if we’re going to build a fence, is that really where it should go? If we have apprehensions about our neighbors to the south, are those the neighbors — and is that the south — that really present the United States with its most difficult problems?
By now, even the economics profession concedes that our openness to the developing world — call it the Global South — has played a role in depressing the incomes of U.S. workers. And depressed they are: Hourly wages fell 3.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013, the biggest drop since the government began measuring in 1947.
Yesterday’s historic Supreme Court rulings supporting marriage equality marked an important step forward for justice for all workers. Labor unions in California and across the nation have been strongly united for marriage equality for years. In fact, the California Labor Federation and 50 other labor organizations signed on to an amicus brief in support of marriage equality back when the challenges to Prop 8 first began nearly five years go.
Tim Paulson of the San Francisco Labor Council, which was one of the most vocal parties to the amicus brief, celebrated the announcement, which happens to coincide with the 43rd annual San Francisco Pride celebration that kicks off this weekend.
Here in San Francisco, where it all started, workers are celebrating this great civil rights victory. As we say, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Now all of our LBGT members and their partners can be treated with equal respect.
» Read more about: Labor Pride: Unions Celebrate Marriage Equality Ruling »
(Editor’s Update: Luke Dowling’s June 25 piece below references Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to restructure California’s controversial enterprise zone program. Last night the state Senate approved Brown’s initiative to transform the program. The next move rests with the Assembly, which is considering a Brown-backed measure that would create an alternative to the program.)
The fight over California’s enterprise zone program continued last Friday when John Burton, chairman of the California Democratic Party, proposed a measure for the November 2014 ballot which would give voters the power to eliminate the zones.
This proposal echoes concerns contained in Frying Pan News reporter Gary Cohn’s exposé of the rampant exploitation of the enterprise zone program. These zones are intended to foster the creation of jobs in economically distressed areas of the state by providing financial incentives to companies to move to those areas.
» Read more about: State Senate Approves Enterprise Zone Overhaul »
Business groups and their political allies have consistently attacked the idea of a minimum wage ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed it during the Depression to help stimulate the economy. And yesterday — the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which FDR signed on June 25, 1938 to establish the minimum wage as well as the eight-hour day, paid overtime and child labor protections — their contemporary counterparts are still at it.
A recent report by the National Employment Law Project and the Cry Wolf Project, Consider the Source: 100 years of Broken Record Opposition to the Minimum Wage, chronicles the history of unchanging sky-is-falling rhetoric by business interests opposed to minimum wage laws.
Even today, business groups and their political allies still complain that the minimum wage violates employers’ freedom to set pay levels, forces business firms to cut jobs or even file for bankruptcy,
» Read more about: Raising the Minimum Wage for the Most Good »