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The charges against several McDonald’s franchises were as familiar as items on a Happy Meals menu: “illegally firing, threatening or otherwise penalizing workers for their pro-labor activities,” to quote the New York Times. What was novel about them was the news, first reported Tuesday by Associated Press, that the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel had found that the fast-food giant is responsible for these crimes when they are committed by the chain’s individual franchise owners. (Of 181 cases that came before the NLRB, 43 were found to have merit, 64 are still pending investigation and the rest were dismissed.)
This is big – very big. If there is any doubt, look no further than the Wall Street Journal’s headline for the story: McDonald’s Ruling Sets Ominous Tone for Franchisers. The reason for this “ominous” forecast is the knowledge that the NLRB’s findings could establish the principle that the corporation and the chain’s franchise owners are “joint employers,” sharing equal responsibility for their employees’ welfare – and equal blame when workers’ rights are trampled on.
» Read more about: NLRB: McDonald’s Is Responsible for Franchises’ Behavior »
For Oneil Cannon, breaking the color line of L.A.’s lily-white printers’ union didn’t simply mean facing a night of scalding verbal abuse during his first union hall meeting – moments before it began he’d been refused service at knifepoint at a nearby restaurant. Jackie Goldberg says her activist’s DNA was shaped less by Berkeley’s celebrated Free Speech Movement than by a little-noticed women’s conference held the year before the U.C. campus erupted. Peter Douglas’ journey from the frozen roads of war-torn Poland to Redondo Beach’s balmy Esplanade led the father of California’s Coastal Act to become a “radical pagan heretic.”
These and more than 40 other reminiscences by Southern California social activists have been recorded by Julie Thompson and her husband, Brogan de Paor, as part of an ambitious yet shoestring-funded project called the Activist Video Archive. So far the couple’s subjects have also included Haskell Wexler, Cheri Gaulke,
» Read more about: Setting the Record Straight: L.A.’s Activist Video Archive »
Whenever I hear something that sounds a little fishy, I always follow my mom’s advice to consider the source. So when two professors from Temple University touted a study praising the quality and cost effectiveness of private prisons, advocates wanted to know who funded it. Not surprisingly, it turned out that the private prison industry paid for the study, a fact conveniently missing from the professors’ early draft and media appearances.
In the Public Interest’s friend and colleague Alex Friedmann, managing editor of the monthly Prison Legal News and associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center, filed an ethics complaint with Temple University. In addition, ITPI and 15 other organizations demanded that Temple conduct an ethics review.
In response, Temple University has disassociated itself from the study. In addition, the methodology behind the study has also been called out for being misleading and its conclusions for being inaccurate.
I have a friend who is intelligent, thoughtful and holds a responsible position in a major firm. From time to time we exchange ideas about the condition of American society, particularly how the economy shapes our democracy these days. We often agree about the dimensions of the problem, but disagree about what should be done about it. When it comes to the inheritance tax, we stand at opposite poles.
He thinks that what a person has accumulated in their lives is theirs to do with as they please, period. If they want to hide it offshore in the Virgin Islands, fine. If they want to give it all away, fine. And if they want to just pass it along to their children, no problem. As far as he is concerned the 400 who own as much as half the American population can do whatever they want – it’s their money.
I’ve always thought the opposite.
America’s education system is unequal and unfair. Students who live in wealthy communities have huge advantages that rig the system in their favor. They have more experienced teachers and a much lower student-teacher ratio. They have more modern facilities, more up-to-date computer and science equipment and more up-to-date textbooks. They have more elective courses, more music and art offerings and more extracurricular programs. They have better libraries, more guidance counselors and superior athletic facilities.
Not surprisingly, affluent students in well-off school districts have higher rates of high school graduation, college attendance and entry to the more selective colleges. This has little to do with intelligence or ability. For example, 82 percent of affluent students who had SAT scores over 1200 graduate from college. In contrast, only 44 percent of low-income students with the same high SAT scores graduate from college. This wide gap can’t be explained by differences in motivation or smarts.
» Read more about: California’s Public Schools: Separate and Definitely Unequal »
Some of us, who as kids read Edward Everett Hale’s short story, “The Man Without a Country,” might wonder if its cautionary lesson about the dangers of renouncing citizenship could be applied to American corporations. They, after all, have been declared “people” by the Supreme Court – and so if companies, like the Army officer in Hale’s story, turn their backs on their country, do they lose their right to ever set foot on its soil again?
The question begs an answer as the new corporate fad of “inversion” takes off. This is the practice of an American corporation purchasing a smaller foreign one that makes the same products in order to claim the national “citizenship” of the purchased company. By doing so, the U.S. company dodges a tax bill from Uncle Sam without its CEO having to learn a single word of the language of his or her company’s adopted country.
» Read more about: Corporations Avoid Taxes With Inversion Scam »
It was an incredibly busy and rewarding time last week at Netroots Nation in Detroit. Sifting mentally through the countless conversations, workshops, speeches, text messages, Tweets, business cards and campaign “swag” I’ve accumulated, I struggled to find a common thread.
Then I visited the Detroit Industry Murals — one of Diego Rivera’s most famous works of art. Rivera’s amazing fresco murals reflect ideas of duality: contrasting managers and workers, mechanized industry and the natural world, and the positive and destructive potential of science and technology. Rivera beautifully illustrated these concepts between 1932 and 1933 by painting images of biochemical weapons and passenger planes, female fertility figures with South and North American characteristics, doves and hawks, orderly production lines and fiery furnaces.
Then, it clicked. For me, Netroots Nation 2014 has been about the duality of art and war.
» Read more about: Netroots Nation in Detroit: The Art of War and the War of Art »
Talk about a big tent: Carolyn Finney’s new book looks at some important but unexplored terrain in our national parks and conservation movements – the relative absence of African Americans. Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans draws upon the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, pop culture and the environmental justice movement to pose some provocative questions about the racialization of nature.
Was it a coincidence that Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964 – the same year as the signing of the Civil Rights Act? Why have environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Audubon Society remained overwhelmingly white in their memberships? How are African Americans changing the dynamics of environmental preservation?
Finney, an assistant professor with U.C. Berkeley’s Environmental Science Department, will discuss her book and its findings on Tuesday, July 22, 7 p.m., at a signing at Eso Won Books,
» Read more about: Carolyn Finney Discusses ‘Black Faces, White Spaces’ »
When asked by the Los Angeles Times to explain the movement to raise the minimum wage for the city’s hotel workers, one worker said, “At $15 [an hour], we can make it. We can live just a little bit better, not drowning all the time.”
It’s no surprise that hotel workers would be in favor of having raising their hourly minimum wage raised from $9 to $15.37, as is currently being proposed. Nor is it surprising that they’ve found support from the extensive network of liberal organizations and labor unions in the L.A. area. Less predictably, however, many members of L.A.’s business community, ranging from 750 small business owners to shopping mall developers Rick Caruso and the Westfield Group, have endorsed the proposed legislation as well.
In a letter to Councilmember Mike Bonin, Westfield co-CEO Peter Lowy indicated his organization’s support for such a measure. Lowy described Westfield’s experience with the living wage requirements currently in place at Los Angeles International Airport and said that “the continued growth and prosperity of this City is vital not only to [Westfield’s] centers,
» Read more about: L.A. Hotel Workers Move Closer to $15.37 Hourly Minimum Wage »
Isabel Mejia was 17 years old when she arrived in the United States from El Salvador, having fled her home country for reasons even the most hardened immigration opponent might have trouble dismissing. Some local gang members had decided to conscript her as the “gang’s girlfriend” — to force her into a life of sexual slavery. At home, the situation was no better: She had been a victim of domestic sexual violence. Faced with rape, death or flight, she chose to flee.
Today, Isabel (not her real name), now 18, lives in a small apartment in Southern California with her aunt. Her respite is only temporary. After crossing over the Mexican border into Texas, she had been captured by Border Patrol agents and held in a Houston detention facility before being released into her aunt’s care. Some time in the next few months, she will go before an immigration judge and, with the assistance of a pro bono attorney,
As a nation we often talk about the importance of educating our children, but sometimes we talk the talk more than we walk the walk. In Michigan, a year-long investigation conducted by the Detroit Free Press showed that Michigan taxpayers pour nearly $1 billion a year into charter schools but fail to hold the schools accountable.
The investigation found that the lack of oversight allowed charter schools to cheat students out of a good education. The Free Press found “wasteful spending, conflicts of interest, poor performing schools and a failure to close the worst of the worst.”
In Michigan, specifically, the Free Press reports:
I wasn’t sure what to expect when arriving in Detroit, Michigan Wednesday. The city is heavy with symbolism in the American imagination – everything from Motor City and Motown to Broken Dreams and Bankruptcy. A recent article called Detroit “a mixed picture of hope and desolation.” Which side would reveal itself to me?
I craned my neck as the taxi cab sped along a highway. At first, I saw nothing special: clouds low and gray in the sky, SUVs on the road, overpasses and underpasses, and the occasional warehouse or big-box store.
And then I saw them: large, four- or five-bedroom, brick or wood houses alongside the highway. Every house was boarded up, caving in, spray-painted, overgrown with vines, or blackened with fire scars. The cab driver spoke angrily. “See those homes? It’s not safe there — looting and shooting. Do you see those homes?”
I did see them.
» Read more about: Coming Home to Detroit for Netroots Nation »
With his pressed jeans, vegan diet and runner’s frame, Jeff Farmer could be a high-tech entrepreneur. But his heart is with low-wage parking attendants, taxi drivers and truckers instead of corporate profits.
As the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ national organizing director, Farmer doesn’t mind that his union has a reputation for being the biggest and baddest kid on the block. Farmer says that when workers organize they want to know they have an even chance to win against the abuses of some of the biggest international companies out there. With a good strategic organizing plan and by bringing the right people together, Farmer feels they can. Fresh from a five-day trucker strike at the Port of L.A. that was launched to win basic employee rights, the Teamsters are putting this approach into practice.
True to his roots as an organizer, Farmer believes unions have to be open to new relationships and ways of organizing.
After a long hiatus from the spotlight, the immigration debate has flared up once more. Following an incendiary incident in which anti-immigration protesters in Murrieta, California turned away buses of immigrants heading into a detention center, the issue is now receiving a significant amount of attention.
The protesters were responding to a recent influx of immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, specifically near Texas. The majority of these immigrants are powerless women and children who have been displaced due to dire circumstances in Honduras and Guatemala. Border patrols have been rounding up these refugees and transporting them to processing centers where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials determine their legal statuses. Because most of the facilities in Texas are at maximum capacity, these immigrants are being transported to other processing centers. This most recent surge of migration has become such a major humanitarian issue that President Obama has asked for $3.7 billion dollars to help solve the problem
At first glance the Murrieta episode seemed like a major setback for immigrant-rights supporters,
» Read more about: Immigration Reform: Murrieta and Its Discontents »
One hundred twenty port truck drivers, responding to a mediation initiative from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, agreed to end their strike Friday evening and are returning to work today. The Unfair Labor Practice walkout, which had no fixed end date, began June 7 against three harbor trucking companies (Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation) that port haulers allege commit wage theft, engage in workplace retaliation for union organizing and misclassify their drivers as “independent contractors” rather than company employees.
The five-day strike was unprecedented for its length – and for the bad publicity it splashed on the three companies, which have also been on the losing end of a string of labor court and National Labor Relations Board rulings regarding their treatment of truck drivers. The strike saw the brief shutdown of several marine terminals, an impromptu concert for the strikers by protest rocker Tom Morello and a secondary protest in Manhattan Beach aimed at the Skechers shoe company,
Friday ended an historic chapter in the life of the Los Angeles-Long Beach waterfront as 120 truck drivers toughed out a weeklong Unfair Labor Practice strike. The work stoppage was aimed at three companies (Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation) that port haulers allege commit wage theft, engage in workplace retaliation for union organizing and misclassify their drivers as “independent contractors” rather than company employees. Such a distinction allows the firms to treat their workers as second-class citizens and to avoid contributing payroll taxes to the state and federal governments.
With no end of the strike in sight, the week nevertheless drew to a close on a celebratory note, as seen in these photographs. A rally attended by the drivers and their supporters was held outside the Terminal Island facility of Yusen Terminals, where a cumbia band, Los Jornaleros del Norte, underscored the crowd’s high spirits.
» Read more about: Scenes From the Port Truck Driver Strike: An Historic Week Ends »
Last month Julian Bond, the pioneering civil rights activist and former Georgia state legislator, addressed an audience gathered in Jackson, Mississippi, to celebrate and analyze the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Bond’s speech appears for the first time here, with his permission.
In 1961, when Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Fourth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, he spoke of the “unity of purpose” between the labor movement and the movement for civil rights. He said:
[tabs type=[tab_title][tab]“Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth. » Read more about: Exclusive: Julian Bond on Labor and Civil Rights »
If you are even a semi-serious lover of film, then you probably have seen at least a few of Marlon Brando’s indelible performances in films such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, to name only a few. You probably also are familiar with Brando’s legendary appetites for women and food, the tragic arc of his family life and perhaps his controversial political stands.
What you likely don’t know – few do — is that the man widely regarded to be the greatest American actor of the 20th century had a brilliant, restless mind to go with his innate talent and stunning looks. No, Brando was not merely a hunk with a mysterious intuitive genius — he was a student of history and the human condition who read voraciously and wrote some of the most famous lines from his epic performances.
Throughout the course of the L.A./Long Beach port driver strike, Capital & Main will be running photos from the marine terminals and truck yards where drivers and their supporters have gathered.
One hundred twenty truck drivers who haul freight to and from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on an Unfair Labor Practice strike Monday against the three companies they work for. The work stoppage, which has no announced end date, was called to protest alleged retaliation by Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation, as well as the drivers’ long hours and low wages. Perhaps more important, the strikers are motivated by their determination to end the companies’ practice of classifying drivers as “independent contractors” – a status that allows the firms to treat their workers as second-class citizens and to avoid contributing payroll taxes to the state and federal governments.
» Read more about: Scenes From the Port Truck Driver Strike: Skechers on the Hot Seat »