On October 12, 2012, 70 women and community members from across Silicon Valley spoke out against Hyatt’s disrespect of women and their bodies in a protest at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. The action, which marks the one year anniversary of Hyatt’s firing of Martha and Lorena Reyes, featured a “Women’s Solidarity Quilt” bearing messages of support for the two sisters and stories of the struggles women face at work. Quilts, a traditionally female art form, have long represented women’s role as the social backbone of our communities and their solidarity for one another.
On November 18, 2011, Martha and Lorena Reyes each filed a retaliation charge against the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara with the federal agency, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). Their cases are still under investigation at the EEOC. The housekeepers were among many Hyatt employees whose faces were pasted atop bikini-clad images on the company’s bulletin board.
Just three days after the first Walmart employee strike in history, Walmart issued an internal memo entitled Response to Walkout/Work Stoppage that surprisingly cautions against any but the most gentle treatment toward strikers. The document, meant for the eyes of salaried employees only and dated October 8, was leaked by the Huffington Post yesterday.
The strikes began at the Pico Rivera store in California on October 5 and had spread to 28 stores by October 9. The internal memo sets forth a new policy of non-interference and adherence to the National Labor Relations Act, affirming the right of employees to strike. It specifically states:
Do not discipline associates for walking off the job… (Emphasis in original document).
Dan Schlademan, Director of Making Change at Walmart, spoke to the Huffington Post on the unusual document: “I’ve been doing this work for 20 years,
Following national strikes at Walmart stores and at warehouses in Southern California and Illinois, workers who move Walmart merchandise at those sites have just arrived in Arkansas to call for an end to a new wave of retaliation against employees at Walmart-controlled warehouses. The dozen-plus warehouse workers have come to Bentonville during Walmart’s annual “Stakeholder Summit.”
They plan to draw a stark contrast between the image Walmart projects and the reality that hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers throughout its supply chain face intense retaliation whenever they speak out about poor working conditions.
The workers will hold a media conference later this morning, after which they will deliver a petition signed by more than 150,000 people nationally to Walmart’s home office.
“Walmart cannot have it both ways,” said Guadalupe Palma, a director for Warehouse Workers United, a group committed to improving warehousing jobs.
» Read more about: California Walmart Warehouse Workers Reach Bentonville »
When a man makes millions a year and pays a paltry tax of 13 percent and then demonizes people too poor or too old to pay any, who’s the “moocher?” Well, that’s easy, but besides the really rich, those of us who are in the middle class also get lots of breaks. The federal tax code offers tax deductions that support our comfort, while the budget delivers subsidies that underwrite the way we live. Some of these are obvious, some obscure and some buried so deep we don’t bother to count them.
Let’s start at home. Homeowners receive the “home mortgage interest deduction,” which costs the federal treasury $84 billion a year. That’s at least twice as much as the federal government spends on affordable housing for the poor and working poor. But that’s just the surface. As a working minister, although I received a relatively low salary,
» Read more about: Middle Class Tax Breaks: An Invisible Lifeline? »
On the heels of growing Walmart unrest that began on Thursday, October 4 at the Pico Rivera Walmart in Southern Los Angeles, the first-ever strike in Walmart’s history, activists gathered at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart is holding its annual financial analyst meeting. As roughly 200 striking Walmart associates and community supporters rallied in Bentonville in the name of changing Walmart labor practices, an agreement was reached via OUR Walmart for an action aimed at Black Friday, the most anticipated shopping day of the year for consumers and retailers and the kick-off to the holiday shopping season.
On Wednesday morning, a tele-conference with striking Walmart workers and community supporters was staged to announce new calls for change at Walmart. At the helm was Daniel Schlademan, Director at Making Change at Walmart, who emphasized the push towards Black Friday. He was echoed on the call by Evelyn Cruz (Pico Rivera Walmart employee),
» Read more about: Walmart Workers Threaten Black Friday Action »
Seven million dollars may not sound like a lot to some large corporations, but that amount of money brought into the Long Beach economy each year could mean an economic boost to many people – restaurant owners and car repair shops, landlords and dentists, barbers and beauty salons, shoe stores and bike shops. Seven million dollars is the amount of money that economists at the Economic Roundtable estimate would flow into the Long Beach economy in the first year if Measure N passes and 2,000 hotel workers get a $13/hour minimum wage.
As a result of the wage increase, Measure N will bring in approximately $800,000 per year in increased state and local taxes to help run Long Beach’s schools, pave its streets and help pay for police and firefighters, among other things. And it is estimated that the increased spending power of the affected hotel workers could result in an estimated 85 local jobs created to support their buying power and the economic activity it could generate.
» Read more about: Measure N: Boosting the Long Beach Economy »
The recent summer was a time of troubled reflection for many families confronted by the kind of financial obligations that arise from an increase in energy use. They spent warm, restless nights worrying about the difficult decisions they’d have to make about how to spend their limited resources. As a canvasser for RePower LA, I was a first-hand witness to the struggles that Los Angeles residents are facing in their attempts to provide a decent-quality life for their families.
RePower LA is a coalition of community organizations, environmentalists, small businesses and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 that has been advocating for energy efficiency programs that create good jobs and provide services to struggling communities. During the long heat wave my fellow canvassers and I walked neighborhoods in Northeast Los Angeles to raise awareness about three existing and soon-to-be created energy efficiency programs, and to find people who could benefit from them.
» Read more about: RePower LA: Taking a Community's Temperature »
On September 30, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed six different economic development bills designed to get California’s economy going again, including the groundbreaking Senate Bill 1156, known as the Sustainable Communities Bill, which has been written about before in Frying Pan News. Despite the fact that the sustainable communities program would have reinvented the old redevelopment in a completely new image and restarted sustainable community project areas from scratch, the governor argued that he wanted to see the old redevelopment completely dissolved before starting anything new.
Undaunted, state Senator Darrell Steinberg – the author of SB 1156 – has vowed to reintroduce the bill at the very beginning of the next session (January, 2013) and get it passed through the legislature and signed by the governor early in the year. In fact, according to a letter sent to coalition activists, Sen. Steinberg has already reserved the first bill number available to members of the state Senate,
» Read more about: Development Coalition Vows Fight for New Bill's Passage »
Workers at hotels near LAX on Century Boulevard are supposed to be covered under a 2008 Living Wage Ordinance providing wages of at least $11.97 an hour. A new class action lawsuit alleges that the Holiday Inn LAX willfully violated a host of wage and hour laws — and workers have revealed that conditions at the hotel are unsafe for guests.
UNITE HERE Local 11, who are supporting bartenders, housekeepers, cooks and other Holiday Inn LAX employees, issued a press release on the new class-action lawsuit, that seeks damages for, “back wages, not respecting [employees’] right to take meal breaks, not reimbursing them for expenses incurred while performing their work, and failure to pay them the mandatory ‘Living Wage’ required for all LAX-area hotels.”
Workers allege that they worked over eight hours a day without being paid overtime, their time sheets were tampered with,
» Read more about: LAX Holiday Inn Workers Allege Living Wage Violations »
“Good morning, everyone. My name is Venanzi Luna and I’m on strike.” With those words, today’s rally at the Pico Rivera Walmart made history as the first ever strike of Walmart workers in the United States.
More than 300 people descended on the store to support the nearly 75 workers who walked off the job today to protest retaliation by the corporate giant. Associates from other stores across Los Angeles, including Duarte, Panorama City and Orange County also joined in the walkout and attended the landmark event. Associates who are members of the group Our Walmart were recently fired for speaking about the cutting of hours, reductions in health benefits and poverty jobs that force many to seek out public assistance programs to stay afloat.
Workers, joined by their spouses and children, cheered and nodded in agreement as fellow store associates talked about what they hoped to achieve by standing up.
» Read more about: Pico Rivera Rally Supports Walmart Strikers »
This legislative session brought some exciting victories as well as some deep disappointments. Labor accomplished big things this year that benefit all Californians but when it came to advancing worker protections, many of those bills were vetoed.
Successes:
» Read more about: State Labor Legislation, 2012: Wins and Losses »
A couple of weeks ago I sat in on a meeting of the leadership of some local hotels. These were not the hotel managers, but the leaders among the workers who clean the rooms, clear the tables, chop the vegetables in the kitchen, vacuum the rugs in the lobby and perform all the other back-breaking tasks that make a hotel comfortable for guests.These people – all from hotels with union contracts – face tough negotiations going into the fall and their workplaces could face serious competition from several proposed downtown hotel projects.
Nearly all these men and women, many of whom arrived wearing the uniforms of their hotels, spoke Spanish. This put me at a serious disadvantage because despite my efforts to learn this beautiful language, I can’t seem to speak it and I can hardly understand the rapid sentences thrown back and forth between people who all know one another and have worked together for years.
» Read more about: Found in Translation: A Union Contract's Strengths »
(The following message from Edward James Olmos is republished from the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, with permission. The concert mentioned took place Oct. 3.)
Forgive me, but I’m going to be blunt. Proposition 32, the so called “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act” is a misleading, cynical and unfair attack on working families and labor unions.
That’s why I’m standing with Working Californians and their No on Prop 32 campaign. And that’s why Crosby, Stills & Nash and Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman are joining Working Californians to play a special benefit concert in support of the No on Prop 32 campaign this October 3rd at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE. Want to come and join me?
Get your free ticket for the No on Prop 32 concert with Crosby, Stills & Nash and Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman, at the link below:
https://action.truthonprop32.org/concert
The people behind Prop 32 wrote in giant loopholes and created special exemptions to give billionaire CEOs,
» Read more about: Edward James Olmos: Come to the Stop Prop. 32 Concert »
When we found out we were expecting twins in 2005, my husband was a teacher and I worked for a small non-profit. We were overjoyed but anticipated a tight squeeze in our small, two-bedroom apartment, where we lived with our 9-year-old son. We were lucky to live in California, where we could worry more about where to put twin cribs than how we would financially survive my maternity leave. That’s because, in 2002, California became the first state in the country to pass Paid Family Leave (PFL). This benefit has made a huge difference for thousands of families like mine who could not otherwise afford to take time off to bond with a new baby or care for a seriously ill family member.
Cassandra Engeman, author of a new policy brief, “Ten Years of the California Paid Family Leave Program: Strengthening Commitment to Work, Affirming Commitment to Family,” lauds the passage of Paid Family Leave as the first step toward filling a huge gap in public policy.
» Read more about: The Right to Care: State's Paid Family Leave Turns 10 »
Workers at a Southern California warehouse that moves Walmart merchandise returned to work after a 15-day strike that included a six-day, 50-mile pilgrimage for safe jobs.
By midnight Friday morning, workers from all three shifts at the 24-hour facility returned to work after winning safety improvements on the job and drawing a response from Walmart about poor working conditions in its contracted warehouses.
“We no longer feel like we are working in the shadows,” said Carlos Martinez, a warehouse worker who went on strike and participated in the 50-mile WalMarch from the warehouses in the Inland Empire to Downtown Los Angeles. “We’ve never had this much attention on our working conditions and I have never felt this much support. I feel ecstatic going back to work and proud that we have all stood together as a team.”
Though Walmart initially dismissed workers concerns about conditions on the job as “unfounded,” by the end of the six-day march,
» Read more about: Inland Empire Warehouse Strikers Return to Work »
The opponents of the proposed Long Beach Living Wage are just getting organized. They’ve run an ad on Craigslist offering “a very competitive hourly wage” of $15 an hour to fight a measure that would guarantee a modest $13 an hour and five sick days for about 2,000 workers –housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers and janitors — who labor in the largest Long Beach hotels. I find it ironic that the opponents of Measure N themselves are offering more than the Living Wage proposal would mandate, clearly aware that $13 an hour isn’t a high enough wage to attract even part-time workers. Yet their campaign messages suggest the hotel Living Wage could do drastic damage to the city’s economy.
“We’re going to reach out to the residents of Long Beach at the grassroots level, neighbor to neighbor and relay our message- No on N,” says the job posting. If theirs were truly a grassroots campaign they would have plenty of community volunteers lined up to talk to Long Beach voters.
» Read more about: Long Beach Living Wage Foes Seek Backers on Craigslist »
When you compare big business’ rationale for opposing an exclusive commercial waste franchise system with the proposal they’re pushing for now, the two are hard to distinguish.
Don’t Waste LA is calling for an exclusive franchise system to serve our businesses and apartment complexes, consistent with the path taken by 55 other Los Angeles and Orange County cities, along with San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Seattle and countless cities up and down the state. The coalition joins the City’s Bureau of Sanitation, the environmental community, waste experts and high-road haulers in arguing that exclusive systems are the only legitimate path for the city to reach its Zero Waste, clean air, job and health and safety goals.
On the other side, Angelenos for a Clean Environment (ACE), as pure an embodiment of “astro-turf” advocacy as has ever been seen in L.A., is a coalition organized by business lobbyist Cerrell Associates,
» Read more about: Hypocrisy or Incompetence? (What the Waste Wars Tell Us) »
In case you missed it—and that seems unlikely—Monday night we saw the beginning of the end of a labor dispute, and it only cost about $500 million.
The dispute in question is what has been an unfair fight between the National Football League owners and 121 referees who were locked out before the season began. Replacement refs were hired and fans have been complaining about poor officiating for weeks.
Monday evening, those replacements blew an end of the game call, giving the underdog Seahawks a victory on the very last play. You can check out the video here, and you can get some good context from the excellent L.A. Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik here.
The story has led people down many paths. There’s the sex angle, since at least some of the replacement refs came out of something called the Lingerie Football League,
» Read more about: The NFL Referee Lockout: One Very Bad Call »
Workers at a Southern California warehouse that moves Walmart merchandise filed a complaint with Cal/OSHA Monday detailing a high rate of injury associated with unreasonable quotas. They are seeking an immediate investigation of the facility.
The complaint, filed by Warehouse Workers United on behalf of two workers – one of whom is currently on strike to protest retaliation at the warehouse – documents repetitive lifting at extreme rates. These working conditions that have led to back injuries of multiple warehouse workers within the last year at an NFI warehouse in Mira Loma, California dedicated to moving Walmart goods.
According to the complaint filed with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health against employers Walmart, NFI, and staffing agencies Warestaff and Select: “The workers who do this work are required to perform at an extreme rate under the pressure of managers who aggressively pressure workers to meet quotas with threats,
» Read more about: Walmart-Contracted Workers Charge High Injury Rates »