Unions
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1 in 10 Americans Unemployed
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Budget Crises, Development Woes Confront Mayors
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Hyatt-Worker Dispute Continues
Dirty Bathrooms
Published October 13, 2009 @ 02:44PM PT
I think that when people forget why it's so important to support workers' rights, they should think about what the bathrooms in their offices/schools/etc. look like on a Tuesday after a Monday holiday, and what kind of conditions we'd face if workers were on strike or constantly turning over or not showing up to do the good work we never think about on a day-in, day-out basis.
This message brought to you from MIT, at the end of the day, Tuesday, October 13, the day after the federal Columbus Day holiday.
50% of Americans Lack Sick Leave
Published September 29, 2009 @ 03:20PM PT
With a vaccine for the H1N1 virus still some time away, the lack of paid sick leave for almost half of all working Americans in the private sector is a potential public health crisis. Not only are these working adults likely to show up at work with potential infectious symptoms - or fear losing their job - they are likely to send sick kids to school for the same reason. Why is this on the Poverty blog?
Nationwide, the same trend holds: The proportions of workers without paid leave are higher in lower-wage industries, including food service, nursing care, and retail workers.
These are the folks we interact with on a regular basis - the person handing you your coffee or your morning bagel; the woman coming to care for your already infirm grandmother in her home.
I'm so sick of the argument that basic government regulation that protects public health and minimizes worker exploitation is bad for small business. I paraphrase a good corporate friend on Facebook - if you can't afford to pay your workers a living wage or benefits, you have a bad business model. And I'll add: as anti-poverty and economic justice advocates, we'd be happy to work with you to fight for a more equitable business climate for your small company.
15 states and cities are currently working on paid sick leave bills. Check them out and find out how you can support on-going campaigns.
Photo "Children with message in support of Paid Sick Days, Milwaukee - 2008" by Voces de La Frontera)
Victory: Hyatt Workers Given New Jobs
Published September 25, 2009 @ 02:23PM PT
Hyatt announced today that the 98 workers it "unceremoniously" laid off last month will be given new jobs in Boston at their previous rate of pay - the positions will be through the staffing agency that employs their replacements. This is a good but qualified victory: their current pay is guaranteed through the end of 2010, and Hyatt has extended their health benefits through March 2010. For workers who opt instead to go through a career retraining and placement program, they will receive their previous wages through March 2010 or until they secure new employment, whichever comes first.
Many thanks to those that joined the boycott against Hyatt; it was a small but important movement here at Change.org, and part of a much larger response in Massachusetts and beyond.
Join the Hyatt Boycott: Tell the Hotel Chain to Rehire Housekeeping Staff Now!
Published September 24, 2009 @ 06:30AM PT
On August 31, 3 Boston-area Hyatt properties laid off 98 housekeeping staff, many of them seasoned employees earning $15/hour, and replaced them with outsourced staff from a Georgia company that pays $8/hour and offers far fewer benefits. The hotel chain cited financial difficulties as justification for laying off these vulnerable workers, and threatened compromised customer service if they were forced to walk back this low-road economic decision. Particularly at issue is the false pretenses the housekeeping staff alleges in which they were laid off and tricked into training their own replacements, a charge the corporation denies.
MA Governor Patrick isn't buying it - and neither should you. Governor Patrick has enacted a boycott of Hyatt properties by state employees - a move more symbolic than financial in impact - but one that has already forced Hyatt to extend severance benefits and work more closely with laid-off workers on re-training and job placement assistance.
That's not enough - if we allow companies to pursue these low-road strategies, where they pursue profitability mainly through cutting worker costs through outsourcing to the latest lowest bidder - we're condoning the permanent insecurity of the lowest-wage, lowest-skilled workers, who are already hit hardest during economic downturns.
Join Governor Patrick and the National Employment Lawyers Association in this boycott - and send a letter to Hyatt President and CEO Mark S. Hoplamazian today, telling him that you don't support these low-road business measures and that you will not be patronizing Hyatt properties until these 98 housekeepers are reinstated.
(Photo of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, one of the targeted hotels, by mathplourde)
Truthout Unionizes Virtually
Published September 19, 2009 @ 10:28AM PT
With little fanfare, at the end of August Truthout became the first online-only news organization to unionize, with employees joining the Newspaper Guild/Communication Workers of America. Organizers worked 80 hours/week for months to organize workers after card check signaled employees were interested in joining a union. Skype and Google Docs were essential tools in organizing the virtual company. "'We've certainly represented wire services for years that were far-flung, but we've never done any organizing where the group never saw each other or the organizers face to face,' [NG/CWA President Bernie] Lunzer said."
This is a really exciting development for today's workers and unions, as one of the major arguments against unionization now is that it's an outmoded form of workers' rights in an era of telecommuting, globalized companies, a service-based economy, and more flexible work arrangements. The desire for and success of unionization at Truthout reveals the flaws in these arguments - workers at on-line organizations, or workers in more flexible jobs, need the power to control their work hours, work-life balance and ability to negotiate with management just as much as workers centrally gathered on a shop floor or in a corporate office. In some cases, more so, as virtual work arrangements erase the solidarity possible in water-cooler chats or on company softball teams.
Organizers at Truthout credit their "progressive" Board of Directors for committing to card check as the single step needed for unionization. Congrats to the workers at Truthout, for their hard work and success, and for modeling for workers in the 21st century economy that unionization can work.
For those of you interested in learning more about the Employee Free Choice Act, the story is worth reading, as it breaks down very clearly the political struggle in Congress over card check.
(Photo of today's organizing tools by Peter Kaminski)
Norma Rae Inspiration Dies
Published September 15, 2009 @ 10:27AM PT
Crystal Lee Sutton, the workers' rights and union activist who inspired the Academy Award-winning movie Norma Rae, died yesterday of brain cancer. She was 68.
She was a 33 year old mother of 3 earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile manufacturing plant in North Carolina in 1973. "Low pay and poor working conditions had impelled her to take a leading role in efforts to unionize the plant. She was met with threats, she said." She was eventually fired for her organizing work.
Her final act of rebellion was enshrined in Norma Rae, played by Sallie Field - before cops ushered her out of the building, "“I took a piece of cardboard and wrote the word ‘union’ on it in big letters, got up on my worktable, and slowly turned it around,” she said... “The workers started cutting their machines off and giving me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very quiet.”
In less than a year 3,000 workers were unionized at 7 plants, including J.P. Stevens, in NC. Ms. Sutton went on to work as a union organizer.
In the final years of her life, she battled with her insurance company to receive the necessary cancer medications. Ms. Sutton asks to be remembered as a fighter for the working poor, and hopes she'll inspire her children and grandchildren to take up the cause in her honor:
"Stand up for what you believe in, not matter how hard it makes life for you," she said. "Do not give up and always say what you believe."
..."It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world," she said. "That my family and children and children like mine will have a fair share and equality."
Words for us all to live by.
R.I.P., Crystal Lee Sutton.
Remembering 9/11's Low-Wage Victims
Published September 11, 2009 @ 09:55AM PT
I came to my work in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast in part because I worked with survivors of the terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I worked for a non-profit, Seedco, that ran the Lower Manhattan Small Business Recovery Program - providing grants, loans and technical assistance to small businesses around Ground Zero. We were intimately and intensely involved with assisting commercial residents rebuild their livelihoods and their futures.
Frequently covered in the press since that horrific day 8 years ago are the families of the financial titans or workhorses who were killed in the building fires and collapse. Less frequently heard from are the survivors of the thousands of low-wage workers who supported the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) industry most associated with the World Trade Center. As we remember and grieve, I ask us to honor the restaurant workers, livery drivers, janitors and other low-wage workers who were disproportionately economically devastated by the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
