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Author: Sharon Zhang

  • Colorado Workers’ Strike Ends as Union Reaches Tentative Agreement With Kroger

    King Soopers grocery store workers walk the picket line as they strike at more than 70 stores across the Denver metro area on January 12, 2022, in Denver, Colorado.

    A strike waged by over 8,000 grocery workers in Colorado has ended after the union announced on Friday that it has reached a tentative agreement with King Soopers, which is owned by grocery giant Kroger.

    Union members will begin voting on the three-year deal on Monday. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 told workers that they are to return to work within a week.

    The terms of the agreement have not yet been made public, but workers will be given details in the coming days. Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, praised the deal.

    “After months of negotiations and after our members walked out on strike, we have reached a tentative agreement with King Soopers/City Market that addresses the company’s unfair labor practices and ensures that our members will receive the respect, pay and protection they warrant,” Cordova said in a statement.

    “This fight will always be about the workers. I could not be prouder of our members who put it all on the line to have their voices heard,” she continued.

    The strike was originally slated to last three weeks after the company claimed its offer from early January was its “last, best and final” one.

    The company says that the current agreement will improve wages, health care and pension plans for its workers. But the company also claimed that the offer workers rejected last week would have raised wages – even though the union said that the raise would have amounted to mere pennies for some workers.

    The union, which was at the negotiating table for months, has previously said that the company wasn’t negotiating in good faith; Cordova said that the company continually made proposals during negotiations that were even worse than the offer that kicked off the strike. Last Friday, Cordova said that workers’ demands were being ignored by the company.

    “King Soopers’ latest proposal contains numerous poison pill provisions, one of which would make wage rates proposed by the Company worth less than the paper they are printed on,” Cordova said in a statement on January 14. “Under this proposal, workers could forfeit daily overtime pay and some are looking at wage cuts of up to $3.34 per hour.”

    The company has faced increased scrutiny as a result of the strike. In a survey last week of nearly 37,000 Kroger workers – including those in Colorado – researchers found that thousands of the company’s employees don’t make enough money to get by. In a portion of the survey that included workers who were members of UFCW Local 7, 63 percent of respondents said that they don’t earn enough to pay for basic expenses like food and rent.

    Seventy-eight percent of workers in the same portion of the survey said that they experienced either low or very low food security. Meanwhile, 14 percent of workers said that they were currently experiencing homelessness or that they had been homeless at one point over the past year.

    The company is well aware that its workers have been experiencing financial hardship, More Perfect Union found. In 2018, an internal “State of the Associate” presentation informed Kroger executives that a large swath of the company’s workers were in poverty and relying on food stamps to survive.

    At least 1 in 5 associates were on government assistance, the presentation said. It also noted that in Ohio, where Kroger is based, a $15 an hour wage is required to afford to pay rent for a two-bedroom home. “On average, 2.9 full-time jobs paying minimum wage are needed to rent a two-bedroom unit,” the presentation said.

    Meanwhile, in 2020, Kroger paid CEO Rodney McMullen $20.6 million in compensation, including an over 45 percent raise in the same year that the company cut employees’ $2 an hour “hero pay” after giving it to them for mere weeks at the beginning of the pandemic.

    The company has been condemned by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who wrote a letter to McMullen on Thursday demanding that the company give workers a fair agreement after presenting an “unacceptable offer” in the latest negotiations.

    “Your company is making record breaking profits that are expected to exceed $4 billion last year alone. Kroger has provided over $1.5 billion in stock buybacks and dividends to enrich wealthy shareholders,” Sanders wrote. “This is precisely the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Police Arrest Rep. Jamaal Bowman During Voting Rights Protest at the Capitol

    Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y holds a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to urge the Senate to pass voting rights legislation on January 19, 2022.

    Capitol Police arrested progressive lawmaker Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) after he joined a demonstration for voting rights at the Capitol on Thursday, according to his office.

    “Today, Congressman Jamaal Bowman joined a voting rights non-violent direct action at the North Barricade of the U.S. Capitol Building and was arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police,” said Marcus Frias, Bowman’s director of communications. “We will provide more information and updates as we gather them.”

    According to police, protestors had begun to block one side of a barricade. The department claims it has arrested over two dozen people in relation to the protest. Un-PAC, the organization behind the protest, said that many of those arrested are young protesters, and that police have arrested them before for similar demonstrations.

    Bowman, who is Black, had visited protesters on Wednesday ahead of a crucial vote to amend Senate rules in order to pass legislation to expand and protect voting rights. “Our democracy is on the line, and the Senate must act and pass voting rights immediately,” he wrote. “We’re outside the Senate steps sounding the alarm.”

    Bowman is one of a string of other Black Democratic lawmakers who have been arrested in demonstrations for voting rights over the past year. Representatives Al Green (Texas), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Hank Johnson (Georgia) and Joyce Beatty (Ohio) were arrested in separate voting rights protests last summer.

    Bowman had joined strikers on the eighth day of their Hunger Strike 4 Democracy on Thursday when he was arrested.

    “Today’s action was a means of making a statement and taking a stand against political corruption. Despite 52 of our senators standing aside as our democracy crumbles, we will not,” Shana Gallagher, executive director of Un-PAC, told Truthout.

    “Young people don’t have a choice but to keep organizing to fix our broken democracy by getting big money out of politics, banning partisan gerrymandering, and protecting our freedom to vote,” Gallagher continued. “We will remember which side of history our Senators stood on, and which of them worked to deliver for their constituents, rather than for their ultra-wealthy mega donors and special interests.”

    Twenty-eight protesters for voting rights were arrested earlier this week.

    This is the second hunger strike for voting rights by Un-PAC demonstrators. Last month, the Hunger Strike 4 Democracy demonstrators traveled from Phoenix to D.C. after striking in front of the capitol building of their home state to no avail. The group, made up of university students, expressed frustration that Congress has failed to act on voting rights. Their first hunger strike lasted 15 days and was extremely taxing for the protesters.

    The goal of the strike is to push Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill would overhaul current election laws by making voting more accessible across the country with mail-in ballot expansions, implementing automatic voter registration and increasing transparency around campaign finance. Lawmakers had proposed a filibuster workaround to pass the legislation, but conservative Democrats Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) joined Republicans in blocking the effort on Wednesday night.

    “My question for Senator Manchin is: what is it going to take for you to actually represent your constituents?” said hunger striker and West Virginia University student Rylee Haught in a statement. “[W]e are desperate to end political corruption and for a functional, accountable democracy. Yesterday, you failed to deliver that, Senator Manchin. You are standing aside as our democracy crumbles. I will not give up on West Virginia like you did.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Dodges Question About His Failure to Cancel Student Debt

    President Joe Biden answers questions during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on January 19, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    President Joe Biden dodged a question about his campaign promise to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt at a press conference on Wednesday, frustrating debt activists and borrowers who have been begging for relief.

    A reporter asked the president a series of two questions toward the end of the press conference. “I have two really simple questions, I promise. You campaigned on canceling $10,000 in student loans,” the reporter said. “Do you still plan to do so and when?” The reporter then asked a question about the Electoral Count Act.

    “I’m happy to speak out,” the president responded. But he only addressed the second question, talking about reaching out to Republicans on election issues and negotiating across the aisle. He then left the podium, ending the conference.

    Debt activists have criticized Biden for “blatantly” ignoring the question. “Biden may have dodged a question today, but he won’t be able to ignore 45 million student loan borrowers if he attempts to turn payments back on in May,” said Braxton Brewington, press secretary of activist group the Debt Collective.

    “The president’s ignoring of a valid question on student debt and his failure to keep a campaign promise is unfortunately reflective of this administration’s failure – whether through incompetence or malice – to address the costly burden of student loans,” Brewington continued. “$1.8 trillion of crushing student debt is a major policy failure that Biden can fix with the stroke of a pen.”

    It’s unclear why the president has thus far refused to follow up on his promise to relieve student debt. Although Biden promised on the campaign trail to cancel up to $10,000 of student loans per borrower, his tone on the subject changed drastically after he took office.

    In early April of last year, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told Politico that Biden had asked the Education Department to prepare a memo assessing the president’s legal authority to cancel student debt through the executive branch. Klain said that the memo would be ready in the coming weeks, but the memo never materialized.

    For months afterward, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki maintained that the administration didn’t have any news on the memo. But in November, debt activists uncovered the document via a Freedom of Information Act request. It was dated April 8.

    Further, the contents of the memo were redacted, leading activists to speculate that the agency found that Biden has the legal authority to cancel student debt with “a stroke of a pen,” like many legal experts have emphasized.

    “The Debt Collective activists developed a theory: that the lawyers at the Department of Education had already written their memo, that they had advised Biden that he did have the authority to cancel debt, and that the Administration was keeping the memo quiet because they didn’t like its conclusions,” wrote The New Yorker at the time. “But this was mere speculation.”

    In December, Biden further sparked the ire of progressives and debt activists when Psaki announced that his administration would not be extending the student loan repayment pause, which was scheduled to conclude at the end of January. She went on to say that restarting loans was a “high priority for the administration,” a declaration that many debt activists viewed as callous.

    After Psaki’s statement sparked outrage, the White House reneged and extended the student loan payment pause for another 90 days; payments are now due to restart on May 1. Advocates for debt relief celebrated the announcement, but emphasized that it isn’t enough.

    “For at least a few more months, struggling families will be able to keep tens of billions of dollars in their pockets — costly student loan payments that the federal government continues to prove it doesn’t need to function,” Brewington said. “Next, the Biden administration should permanently relieve this financial burden on families and the economy by using his executive authority to eliminate all federal student debt.”

    Research has found that when student loan payments restart, borrowers will collectively lose out on $85 billion annually. This disproportionately affects Black borrowers, who typically hold a higher debt burden than their white peers.

    For many borrowers, student loans are a huge financial burden that can follow them for decades. Some borrowers have reported their debt blowing up to multiple times the original loan amount, even if they make payments on time.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Implies Sanders Is Obstructing Democratic Agenda – Not Manchin and Sinema

    Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders talks to reporters outside the West Wing following a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on July 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    In a press conference on Wednesday, President Joe Biden appeared to snub left-leaning lawmakers in his party, implying that it’s progressives – not conservative Democrats – who are obstructing the president’s agenda.

    The implication came after Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked the president why he is trying to “pull the country so far to the left” – a question that itself is disingenuous, as fearmongering politicians and right-wing media have continually painted centrist Democrats as radical in order to mobilize their own followers.

    In response, Biden rebuffed the idea that he has been pulling the country to the left. “You guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders,” he said. “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat and I have been. And mainstream Democrats have overwhelmingly – if you notice, 48 of the 50 Democrats supported me in the Senate on virtually everything I’ve asked.”

    The president’s answer is contradictory; in the same breath that he casts Sanders as a non-mainstream Democrat, he implies that it is only mainstream Democrats who are supporting his policies.

    It’s true that Sanders, who identifies as an independent but caucuses with the party, may not fit the mold of a so-called mainstream Democrat by current party standards, even though he has had an enormous hand in shaping the party’s agenda.

    But Sanders has consistently rallied behind Biden since the president’s inauguration almost a year ago. In fact, Sanders has been Biden’s most stalwart advocate for priorities like the Build Back Better Act. Meanwhile, the two Senate Democrats who have obstructed nearly the entirety of Biden’s legislative agenda thus far are conservative “blue dog” Democrats.

    Indeed, Biden’s comment came just before conservative Democrats Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona delivered a fatal blow to one of the most pressing proposals on the Democratic docket on Wednesday night.

    After a year of fierce arguments over the filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) set up a vote on Wednesday to amend Senate rules in order to pass the Democrats’ marquee voting bill, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.

    The proposal would have allowed a talking filibuster on the bill to expand voting rights and increase campaign finance transparency, clearing the legislation – which has already been passed by the House – to pass in the Senate with a simple majority vote. Biden has endorsed the filibuster changes so that the party can protect voting rights as Republicans pass dozens of bills restricting voting rights across the country.

    However, Sinema and Manchin blocked the filibuster changes and the voting rights legislation. Although political journalists continually claim, with little evidence, that the two actually represent a less-outspoken faction of the party, Manchin and Sinema were the only Democrats who voted against the proposal, joining 50 Republicans in blocking the bill.

    After the vote, Sanders condemned the senators for obstructing Biden’s agenda in Congress. “It’s not just this vote” that Manchin and Sinema have blocked, he said, according to Talking Points Memo. “These are people who I think have undermined the president of the United States. They have forced us to go through five months of discussions which have gotten absolutely nowhere.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Says He’s Open to Supporting Primary Challengers to Manchin and Sinema

    Sen. Bernie Sanders answers questions from reporters at the Capitol on July 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Ahead of a crucial vote to amend the filibuster to support voting rights, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has said that he would be open to supporting candidates levying a primary challenge to conservative Democrats Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona).

    Sanders told reporters on Tuesday that he would consider backing primary challenges to the two filibuster holdouts when they’re up for reelection. The senators, who are basking in the praise and political contributions from conservative groups, stand in the way of nearly every Democratic priority currently before Congress.

    The Senate’s protracted battle on the filibuster is coming to a head this week. Schumer announced on Tuesday that he will bring a filibuster reform vote to the chamber after Republicans inevitably vote to shoot down the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which could take place as soon as Wednesday or Thursday.

    Though the two lawmakers aren’t up for reelection until 2024, both senators’ approval ratings have been falling fast as they stand in the way of Democratic progress – and an October poll found that Sinema would lose to progressive challengers if the election were held immediately.

    Sanders, who has previously expressed frustration with the two senators, condemned their opposition to filibuster reform in a Twitter video on Tuesday.

    “Right now, every Republican will be voting against us, and that’s pretty pathetic,” he said. “But what’s equally pathetic, as of now, two Democrats will be voting against us as well. I would hope very much that those two Democrats, Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin, will rethink their position and understand that the foundations of American democracy are at stake.”

    According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), the two lawmakers are the only Democrats in the chamber who still staunchly oppose any changes to the filibuster, essentially supporting minority rule. Some other legislators have said that they’re torn on the issue, but that they’re open to filibuster reform, which Sinema and Manchin are not.

    Schumer is proposing an implementation of a talking filibuster for the voting rights bill. This means that the bill will be able to pass with a simple majority vote after any opponents delay the vote by speaking on the Senate floor, if they so choose. Currently, bills must overcome a 60-vote threshold in order to pass.

    The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which is a combination of two voting rights bills that have both been passed by the House, would greatly increase financial transparency in campaign donations and restore provisions of the Voting Rights Act meant to protect marginalized voters.

    Voting rights advocates and progressives have welcomed Schumer’s plan, saying that it’s necessary to put senators’ views on the filibuster issue – which serves as somewhat of a proxy vote for voting rights – on the record. Sinema and Manchin have both already said that they will vote against the reform.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Polling Finds 67 Percent of Voters Support Banning Congress From Stock Trading

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi looks at her phone as she returns to her office after meeting with the family of George Floyd at the U.S. Capitol on May 25, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    A majority of voters support banning members of Congress from trading stocks while in office, according to new polling by Data for Progress.

    In a January survey of over 1,200 likely voters, 67 percent of respondents supported the ban. When presented with arguments for and against the proposal, that figure jumped to 74 percent, the poll found.

    According to the survey results, voters from across the political spectrum are largely in agreement on the issue. Seventy-five percent of Democrats, 76 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans supported a ban after hearing arguments in favor of the proposal. Overall, the issue won over the opposition by 55 points, with only 19 percent saying that they were either somewhat or strongly opposed to the idea.

    The poll results are similar to another Data for Progress poll conducted in February and March of last year, which also found strong bipartisan support for the ban.

    A Morning Consult/Politico poll released on Wednesday similarly found that a majority of voters are in favor of the proposal. Sixty-three percent of voters surveyed said that members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks; once again, support for such a proposal came from a bipartisan majority of voters.

    These polls add onto a small mountain of polls that have yielded similar results in recent weeks; most Americans, it seems, agree that members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks.

    Recently, some Democrats have been pushing for a stock trading ban for members of Congress. Last week, Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) introduced a bill that would compel lawmakers and their families to move their stock portfolio into a blind trust when they took office and divest from investments that couldn’t be put in the trust.

    The bill’s introduction came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) rejected the idea of banning stock trading for lawmakers, saying, “we’re a free market economy.” Her comments sparked rage and kicked off the effort among Democrats to pursue the ban.

    Pelosi is among the most active stock traders in Congress, and in 2020 gained an estimated $16.7 million with her husband, partly due to stock trading. She also consistently ranks among the richest members of Congress.

    Other lawmakers have waged similar efforts to ban stock trading. Last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) introduced a bill that would not only bar members of Congress from trading stocks, but also other top federal officials like judges and Cabinet members. Passing such anti-corruption legislation “is a no-brainer,” she said at the time.

    Lawmakers are privy to vast amounts of information that aren’t available to the public, which puts them at a distinct advantage when it comes to trading stocks. Trades made by senators who had advance notice of the impending economic turmoil at the beginning of the pandemic, for instance, have led to suspicions of insider trading. Other recent pandemic-related stock trading scandals at places like the Federal Reserve have also raised alarm bells, eroding public trust in lawmakers and their motivations.

    Last year, reports found that members of Congress traded about $300 million of stocks in total, with over a hundred members making at least one active trade in 2021. Overall, Congress beat the market last year. Meanwhile, stock ownership among members of the public is falling as owning stock is increasingly becoming an activity available only to the rich.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Oath Keepers Stored 30 Days of Supplies for January 6, Bracing for “Civil War”

    Men belonging to the Oath Keepers wearing military tactical gear attend the "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Members of the far right Oath Keepers stockpiled a cache of supplies and weapons in a hotel just outside of Washington, D.C., in preparation for the January 6 Capitol attack, federal prosecutors have found.

    According to the prosecutors’ memo arguing for the pretrial detainment of Oath Keepers member Edward Vallejo, he and other members of the so-called “quick reaction force” (QRF), transported weapons, ammunition and enough essentials to last 30 days into a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia. Vallejo, who hails from Phoenix, is facing a charge of seditious conspiracy; prosecutors say he “played a central role in the planned use of force in this plot.”

    The memo also says that the leader of the Florida Oath Keepers team, Kelly Meggs, dropped off “at least three luggage carts’ worth of gun boxes, rifle cases, and suitcases filled with ammunition” at the hotel on January 5. A North Carolina team brought rifles, which they kept in their cars in the parking lot.

    Surveillance footage further shows Vallejo and another member from Arizona wheeling in two large storage bins and a large, oblong bag into the hotel on the morning of the attack.

    Communications between Oath Keepers before the Capitol attack have revealed that the extremist militia group had been planning the attack for months and anticipated kicking off a war. Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the Oath Keepers, began riling up members for a “civil war” and a “bloody and desperate fight” only two days after the 2020 election.

    Hours before the January 6 attack, Rhodes messaged supposed co-conspirators that the group “will have several well equipped QRFs outside DC. And there are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios.”

    That day, Oath Keepers organized “military-style stacks” of extremist right wingers to breach the Capitol. Meanwhile, in Arlington, “quick reaction force” teams were “awaiting deployment,” prosecutors said.

    Oath Keepers were among the most heavily armed Trump militants that participated in the attempted coup. Over 20 suspected members of the group have been arrested on charges related to the attack so far. The group, which has long been loyal to Trump, was also evidently on guard during Trump’s inauguration day in 2017, monitoring the crowd for political opponents.

    In the days following the attack, Oath Keepers lingered in the area and were awaiting orders from Rhodes to potentially stop the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20. They made plans to further amass tactical equipment and weaponry in preparation for another attack.

    Indeed, after January 6, Oath Keepers were still discussing starting a protracted battle to keep Trump in office. Texas Oath Keeper Joshua James, who is also facing a seditious conspiracy charge, sent a message on Inauguration Day saying “After this…if nothing happens…its war…Civil War 2.0.” However, their plan to interrupt the presidential inauguration never came to fruition.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jan 6 Committee Hesitant Over Subpoenas Fearing Retaliation If GOP Retakes House

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy holds his weekly news conference in the Capitol on January 13, 2022.

    As the House select committee tasked with investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol prepares to subpoena Donald Trump’s allies to testify on their involvement in the attack, some members are privately hesitant to carry through with the plans because of GOP lawmakers’ threats to retaliate.

    As reported by The Guardian, members on the committee have recently become concerned that issuing subpoenas to Trump’s allies, including members of Congress, may be too forceful of a step. With GOP members refusing to comply with the investigation, committee members are hesitant to issue subpoenas, fearing that House Republicans may launch inquiries into Democrats if they retake the chamber.

    The committee has requested that Representatives Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) speak with the investigators, but the Republicans have refused the request. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has openly balked at the idea of his party complying with the committee’s requests.

    The committee wrote to McCarthy on Tuesday asking him to provide more information about his knowledge of the attempted coup. Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) has said that McCarthy is of particular interest to the committee because of a phone call he had with Trump on the day of the attack; the committee is questioning whether or not that call could illuminate information related to Trump’s state of mind that day.

    Other top officials like Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, have attempted to sue the committee in order to potentially stave off subpoena requests. Investigators have found that Trump officials and lawmakers have ties to the attack and its planners, but the extent of their participation is still unknown.

    Without the voluntary compliance of the Republican officials concerned, subpoenas may be the only route to unveiling certain insider information on the attack to Congress and the public.

    However, as the committee weighs whether or not to subpoena GOP officials, Republican lawmakers have already been plotting to launch investigations and other official legislative proceedings targeting Democrats, regardless of the probe into January 6.

    If the GOP retakes Congress, some Republicans are planning to launch impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden; some are threatening to investigate and issue subpoenas over subjects like Biden’s pandemic response, his Afghanistan withdrawal, immigration policies, and even the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

    Though legitimate criticisms may be directed toward Biden over many of these subjects – with, perhaps, the exception of Hunter Biden, who has garnered a bizarrely fervent obsession from the right wing – the GOP threats appear to be nothing more than retaliatory moves.

    The relative failures on the part of Biden and his cabinet on immigration, COVID response and foreign affairs are similar to those of Trump and his administration; both presidents have failed to quell the pandemic and both have implemented exceedingly cruel immigration policies. It’s unclear what criticisms the GOP could direct toward Biden’s failures that wouldn’t also apply to actions perpetuated and supported by Trump and the Republican Party.

    By contrast, the January 6 commission is investigating an attempted coup to invalidate the will of tens of millions of voters that was orchestrated in part by the country’s own Republican president and, potentially, sitting members of Congress. Trump’s impeachment proceedings, meanwhile, investigated offenses by the former president that similarly threatened the fabric of U.S. democracy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • World’s 10 Richest Men Doubled Their Wealth as Many Lost All During Pandemic

    Portraits of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg

    As most of the world’s population suffered under a deadly pandemic, the world’s 10 richest people doubled their wealth while the world’s billionaires added $5 trillion to their collective wealth, a new report by Oxfam finds.

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, billionaires have been profiting greatly from the global economy, the report’s authors wrote. Since March 2021, billionaire wealth has risen from an already high $8.6 trillion to $13.8 trillion and previous reports have found that the 10 richest people alone account for hundreds of billions of dollars of that growth in wealth. This is a larger growth in billionaire wealth than that of the last 14 years combined.

    “A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began,” the report reads. “The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.”

    The report’s authors wrote that such growing economic inequality is a result of purposeful choices by government officials.

    “This is not by chance, but choice: ‘economic violence’ is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people,” the report continued, noting that women and non-white people are particularly susceptible to poverty and its deleterious effects.

    They estimate that 21,300 people each day are dying partly as a result of inequality – or about one person every four seconds – an estimate that they characterize as “highly conservative” based on poverty-related factors like food insecurity, a lack of health care and gender-based violence.

    Black Americans have especially suffered during the pandemic, the report points out; if Black Americans had the same life expectancy as their white peers, 3.4 million Black people in the U.S. would still be alive today. This number has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

    The climate crisis is also a growing concern, the report says. Oxfam conservatively estimates that 231,000 people will die each year in poor countries due to the climate crisis by 2030. This is similar to previous estimates, though other research has found that climate crisis-related extreme weather is already killing millions of people every year.

    The report, which was released in time for the 2022 Davos Agenda economic forum, is scathing in its analysis of the mechanisms by which extreme inequality is being perpetuated.

    “There is no shortage of money” to help reverse this trend, the report authors wrote. “That lie died when governments released $16 trillion to respond to the pandemic. There is only a shortage of courage to tackle inequality, and the wealth and might of the rich and the powerful, and a shortage of the imagination needed to break free from the failed, narrow straitjacket of extreme neoliberalism.”

    Oxfam recommends an immediate tax on billionaires’ pandemic gains in order to provide aid to people in poverty. A 99 percent tax on just the pandemic wealth gains of the 10 richest men in the world, for instance, would raise $812 billion for that purpose.

    U.S. progressives reiterated their call for taxing the rich in reaction to Oxfam’s report. “Tax the billionaires. Invest in the working class,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

    Even if a wealth tax were to be levied just on American billionaires, the results could be transformative. A report by the Americans for Tax Fairness found that the U.S.’s nearly 750 billionaires gained $1 trillion in wealth in 2021 – a tax-free gain of 25 percent. Their collective wealth, the report found, is about $5.1 trillion, or enough to fund the Democrats’ extinct Build Back Better Act two times over.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Three More Starbucks Locations in Buffalo Will Soon Vote on Unionization

    The Starbucks logo is displayed on the exterior of a store on October 29, 2021, in San Francisco, California.

    Three more Starbucks stores in the Buffalo, New York, area will soon get a union election, a regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) official ruled on Friday. Their elections will mark seven total union elections held at corporate-owned Starbucks locations so far over the past months.

    NLRB acting regional director Nancy Wilson wrote in her decision that the vote will happen store-by-store, rather than on a regional basis encompassing 19 stores, as the company had petitioned to water down the vote. Ballots will be mailed out on January 31 and are due back by February 22.

    Workers at three New York stores – in Cheektowaga, Amherst and Depew – filed their petitions to unionize in November. If successful, they will join Starbucks Workers United, a Service Employees International Union affiliate. They would join the two Starbucks locations, also in the Buffalo area, that recently voted to form a union.

    Starbucks workers in Mesa, Arizona, are currently in the process of conducting their union election, as ballots were mailed to workers on January 14. The NLRB similarly ruled against holding regional elections, saying that the election there would be held store-by-store.

    The elections come during a watershed moment for the labor movement among Starbucks employees. Locations across the country have been filing to unionize at an incredibly fast pace.

    Over the weekend, Starbucks workers in Baltimore and at Chicago’s Hyde Park and Downtown La Grange locations announced that they are filing petitions for an election, joining the roughly 18 stores across nearly a dozen states that have filed to unionize so far over the past months.

    Workers at Baltimore’s North Charles Street Starbucks location wrote in their letter to CEO Kevin Johnson that Buffalo was an inspiration for their union campaign. They further cited the dangerous working conditions imposed by the company, with “chronic understaffing and a complete lack of agency,” as well as pandemic concerns as a reason for the workers to organize.

    The two unionized Buffalo locations “have provided a clear path for us to organize ourselves,” the workers wrote. “We’ve run ourselves ragged in increasingly stressful working conditions without reaping any of the benefits, and the only way to improve these conditions is to organize as a unified working class and assert democratic control over our workplace.”

    Hyde Park workers said that customers have “become more aggressive” as the pandemic has dragged on, and the company has failed to recognize employees’ efforts as frontline workers. “[W]e feel that profits have become more important than our well-being, health, and safety,” they wrote. “Even amidst one of the worst global health crises, we have been discouraged from staying home when sick.”

    Being encouraged to work while sick seems to be a recurring complaint from Starbucks employees across many locations. As More Perfect Union uncovered last month, the company even forced a worker, Brittany Harrison, to work while sick with cancer and denied her paid sick leave. She was ultimately fired because she spoke out about the company’s union-busting practice as her store was unionizing.

    The company has indeed been interfering with workers’ unionization efforts. Last year, it sent company executives to store locations in Buffalo to intimidate workers and potentially encourage them to vote against the union; the company has also flat out told workers to vote against forming a union and held mandatory anti-union meetings to discourage workers from voting “yes.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Demands Private Equity-Backed Firms Answer for Role in Rising Rent Prices

    Senator Elizabeth Warren is seen in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on September 28, 2021.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is demanding answers from housing corporations with backing from private equity, who she says are involved in inflating housing prices for both renters and buyers.

    Warren sent letters to CEOs of Progress Residential, American Homes 4 Rent and Invitation Homes to condemn rent hikes and rising house prices that she says are a result of corporations’ growing influence on the housing market. Her aim is to determine whether or not these businesses have been taking advantage of current housing shortages.

    “Our country faces an unprecedented affordable housing supply shortage,” she wrote. “Decades of underinvestment, coupled with restrictive zoning and other practices that undermine construction, have allowed the demand for housing to far outpace the availability of homes, resulting in a shortfall of nearly four million homes and rapidly increasing costs for renters and first-time homebuyers.”

    In her letters, Warren pointed out that the three companies have been acquiring homes and increasing rent at a rapid pace. American Homes 4 Rent is “keeping affordable housing out of reach for American families,” she wrote, by increasing rents by over 10 percent for single family rentals.

    “Considering the history of complaints made against you by your tenants for cutting corners on maintenance requests and excessive fees, I fear that these poor business practices have also contributed to your increased revenue,” she said, noting the company’s nearly 66 percent net income growth from single family rentals over the past year.

    Invitation Homes and Progress Residential are acquiring homes at a rapid pace, the lawmaker noted. Invitation Homes has accelerated its pace for buying homes, spending over $700 million and buying approximately 1,700 homes in the third quarter of 2021 alone.

    Meanwhile, Progress Residential buys up to 2,000 homes every month and has even automated its house acquisition. The company can now assess a home within 15 minutes of its appearance on the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, Warren pointed out, and can make an offer within two hours of its listing. Further, the company focuses on buying homes valued at between $70,000 and $190,000 – homes that are within the price range for low-income families or first-time buyers.

    Warren said that Progress Residential residents have been reporting rent increases of as much as 30 percent over the past five years. In addition, the company is reportedly charging excessive fees despite not performing maintenance. The company also charges tenants a $200 “eviction administration” fee if it files to evict the tenant.

    Business practices by private equity and investment firms have contributed to the greatest one-year increase in housing prices for Americans since 2007, Warren wrote. Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that shelter costs rose by 0.4 percent in December – the largest contributor to the all items index rise of 7 percent last month.

    Partly because of global and Wall Street investors, it has become increasingly difficult for Americans to afford buying entry level homes. House prices began to surge last year, marking huge gains; home prices in October rose by 18.4 percent over last year, according to research released in December. Experts have said that the current market may be among the worst ever for first-time home buyers; the average home price at the end of September last year was up a whopping 30 percent from the same time in 2019.

    This has led first-time homebuyer purchases to decrease to 26 percent in November – down from 33 percent in 2020. It’s also forcing people to take incredible and risky leaps in home buying, as regular home buyers in some areas are having to send in bids for a house within hours and even waive inspection in order to obtain a house. Because investors can access listings before regular people can, many houses are being bought before they’re even publicly listed online.

    “Investors have been outcompeting first-time homebuyers because of their ability to make cash offers, which comprised over three-quarters of investor offers,” Warren noted. “These cash offers provide the additional benefit for investors of allowing them to pay 10% less on average than individual buyers.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders, Warren Demand BlackRock Intervene in Coal Strike for Fair Contract

    Hundreds of members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) march to the Manhattan headquarters of BlackRock, the largest shareholder in the mining company Warrior Met Coal, on November 4, 2021, in New York City.

    On Thursday, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) sent a letter to the CEO of BlackRock, demanding that the massive financial firm, which owns a large portion of Warrior Met Coal, intervene on behalf of striking mine workers in Alabama.

    “We hope you appreciate the kind of conditions that the miners at Warrior Met have experienced. The Warrior Met miners have worked up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week,” the lawmakers wrote to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm is Warrior Met’s largest shareholder. “The mines they work in are up to 2,100 feet deep and are extremely dangerous, releasing toxic, flammable and explosive methane gas.”

    Warrior Met Coal workers have been on strike since April of 2021, a strike that is potentially the longest in Alabama history; it has gone on so long that many workers have picked up other jobs to support themselves and their families during the strike, Labor Notes found. The 1,100 workers who initially went on strike have had to deal with routine abuse, including Warrior Met personnel hitting picketers with their cars.

    The United Mine Workers of America members are hoping to reverse concessions made in contract negotiations in 2016, including a pay cut of $6 an hour, worse benefits and more dangerous working conditions. Currently, the company has offered a raise of only $1.50 per hour over five years and has not budged on restoring health care and pension benefits.

    The company is also demanding the ability to fire workers who have engaged in so-called “picket line misconduct” – in essence, any worker who has been vocal on the picket line, including union leaders.

    “Basically, they went after all the union officials, strike captains, and people that’s been vocal on the picket line,” miner Brian Seabolt told Labor Notes.

    Sanders, Warren and Baldwin called the company’s platform outrageous, pointing out that Warrior Met is making these demands despite making billions and constantly rewarding shareholders with dividends.

    “While the extraordinary sacrifices made by the miners saved the company an estimated $1.1 billion over the past 5 years, the executives at Warrior Met and their Wall Street investors made out like bandits,” the letter reads. “Since 2017, Warrior Met has rewarded $1.4 billion in dividends to its wealthy shareholders while handing out bonuses of up to $50,000 to its executives.”

    Meanwhile, workers face dismal conditions, and are required to keep the mine operating 24 hours a day, including holidays. The company has violated mine safety regulations at least 40 times since 2016 and fires workers for missing over four days of work.

    “In our view, this is precisely the type of corporate greed that the American people are growing increasingly disgusted with,” the lawmakers wrote.

    Sanders has gone directly to CEOs of major corporations on labor issues before. Earlier this month, he sent a letter to Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the world’s richest men, asking him to compel executives at a steel plant owned by the conglomerate to offer workers a fair agreement.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Oath Keepers Founder Arrested on January 6 Sedition Charge

    Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, is pictured on February 28, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas.

    Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the extremist far right militia the Oath Keepers, was arrested on Thursday for his role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He is the first person to be charged with seditious conspiracy in relation to the attack.

    Rhodes, an army veteran and former lawyer, founded the extremist militia in 2009. The group specializes in recruiting veterans, soldiers and active police officers. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers played a major role in the coup attempt, as members of the group were among the most heavily equipped with paramilitary gear in the crowd that day.

    The Oath Keepers leader was arrested on Thursday, along with 10 others. They join over 700 people who have been arrested in relation to the attack so far, including over 20 suspected members of the Oath Keepers facing January 6-related charges.

    Federal agents have been investigating Rhodes since at least last spring, when he participated in an interview with the FBI against the advice of his lawyer. In that interview, he denied his and his organization’s role in the attack, claiming that he didn’t direct Oath Keepers to breach the Capitol threshold.

    But federal prosecutors say that they have evidence of deep connections between Rhodes, who prosecutors refer to as “Person One,” and the attack’s planning. This evidence includes communications records showing that Rhodes began sending messages encouraging people to oppose the certification of the election results as early as November, shortly after the election.

    “We aren’t getting through this without civil war. Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit,” Rhodes wrote in a group chat. “It will be a bloody and desperate fight. We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”

    Documents show that Rhodes continued to incite fellow right-wingers in the following weeks. Two days before the right-wing coup attempt, he posted an article on the Oath Keepers website urging members to “stand tall in support of President Trump’s fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup.”

    Testimonies from Oath Keepers themselves also cast doubt on Rhodes’s claims. For about six months, Oath Keepers members have been cooperating with prosecutors. According to The New York Times, at least four Oath Keepers have said that the breach of the building was premeditated and that the goal was to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump.

    This is in direct opposition to what Rhodes has said in interviews. “We had no plan to enter the Capitol, zero plan to do that, zero instructions to do that, and we also had zero knowledge that anyone had done that until after they had done that,” Rhodes told The Washington Post last year.

    Other Oath Keepers leaders who were present at the attack were also involved in its planning. Jessica Watkins, Oath Keepers member and leader of the Ohio State Regular Militia, actively recruited militia members and urged them to stand by Trump in the months before the attack. On November 17, Watkins sent a message saying that she would “fight, kill and die for our rights” if Biden became president. In January of 2021, Watkins became one the first far right militants to be indicted in relation to the attack.

    Beyond the January 6 attack, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers have proved to be a loosely organized but dangerous group. During 2020’s movement for Black lives, Oath Keepers members would regularly flock to protests armed; Rhodes has condemned activists in the movement for Black lives and has used the movement to recruit police officers.

    Though originally founded on antigovernment sentiments, the Oath keepers shifted toward nationalism when Trump was elected, adopting debunked conspiracy theories that have proliferated on the political right. Recent leaked member rolls have revealed that some supposed Oath Keepers members hold state and local office, indicating that the extremist group may be creeping into the mainstream Republican party.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ohio Supreme Court Rules That GOP-Drawn District Maps Are Unconstitutional

    Demonstrators gather outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 3, 2017, in Washington, D.C.

    Ohio Supreme Court justices struck down Republican-drawn district maps in the state on Wednesday, ruling that they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The state’s redistricting panel will now have 10 days to redraft the maps.

    The decision was made 4 to 3, with one Republican justice breaking from her party to rule with the three Democrats. In the majority opinion, Justice Melody Stewart wrote that the maps didn’t match statewide voting preferences, which were 54 percent for Republicans and 46 percent for Democrats in the past decade.

    “[T]he commission did not attempt to draw a plan that meets the proportionality standard,” Stewart wrote, adding that the commission’s maps unfairly favored one party.

    Although the justice didn’t specify which party, the maps were drawn by Republicans. Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2015 aimed at preventing partisan gerrymandering; the redistricting commission will have to redraw maps to obey that amendment.

    The decision was celebrated by voting rights advocates who have argued in lawsuits that the new map is unfairly biased toward the GOP and that the map violates the Voting Rights Act by suppressing Black voters.

    “The Ohio Supreme Court took an important step in rejecting the cynical partisanship that was behind the Republicans’ gerrymandered state legislative map,” Marc E. Elias, a voting rights attorney who represented plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, told The Washington Post. “Our fight for fair maps and voting rights continues in Ohio and around the country.”

    The news was also celebrated by Alicia Bannon, who aided plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits and who serves as the Judiciary Program director for the Brennan Center for Justice.

    “The General Assembly maps entrenched a GOP supermajority and flouted clear partisan fairness requirements in the Ohio constitution – abuses that especially impacted Ohio’s Black, Muslim and immigrant communities,” she said in a statement. “The commission is now tasked with drawing replacement maps. We will be watching to ensure that all Ohioans get the fair representation they are due.”

    Indeed, plaintiffs had accused the redistricting commission of ignoring the fact that Black voters have historically had their voting power diluted by district maps. Voting rights advocates pointed to a September hearing in which a Republican mapmaker told the commission that “legislative leaders” instructed him to deliberately disregard racial data in drawing Ohio House and Senate districts.

    The bipartisan redistricting commission, which is made up of five Republicans and two Democrats, was created in order to help quell partisanship in map drawing in the state. But lawmakers were able to sidestep the commission, allowing the Republican-controlled legislature to draw what experts said was an extremely gerrymandered map.

    The map gave heavy favor to Republicans, further entrenching previously red districts and ensuring that more competitive districts were still right-leaning. It also took one surefire seat away from Democrats, creating a high possibility of 13 Republican seats and only two Democratic seats in the state, FiveThirtyEight found.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jon Ossoff Introduces Legislation to Ban Members of Congress from Trading Stock

    Sen. Jon Ossoff attends a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee markup in Dirksen Building on June 16, 2021.

    On Wednesday, Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) introduced an anti-corruption bill that would ban members of Congress and their families from actively trading stocks.

    The Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act would compel members, along with their spouses and dependent children, to put all of their stocks into a blind trust when they take office. Members and their families would also be required to divest any stocks that aren’t able to be put into a blind trust. Democrats say that the primary aim of the bill is to increase transparency and accountability to the public by lessening conflicts of interest.

    “Members of Congress should not be playing the stock market while we make federal policy and have extraordinary access to confidential information,” Ossoff said in a statement. The bill has garnered the support of government watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

    Measures to ban members of Congress from trading stocks are overwhelmingly popular with voters across the political spectrum. A recent poll of 1,706 likely voters found that, among respondents, 70 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of independents believe that members of Congress should be barred from stock trading.

    Last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill that is similarly aimed at curbing corruption. Warren’s bill would go slightly further, banning other top government officials from trading stocks, including the president, Cabinet members, Federal Reserve officials and federal judges. However, her ban wouldn’t apply to family members.

    If the bill proposed by Ossoff and Kelly is effective, it could prevent future scandals relating to stock trading among Congress members, including scandals like one involving Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia), one of Ossoff’s predecessors in Georgia.

    In 2020, the Justice Department launched an insider trading probe into Loeffler and Senators Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). The lawmakers made major stock sales just before the stock market dropped, shortly after receiving confidential briefings on the potential crash.

    Those investigations were eventually dropped, but stock trading scandals remain common among Congress members. Reporters found that 54 members of Congress failed to properly report their stock trades in 2021, a move that is in violation of the STOCK Act, which aims to prevent insider trading and increase transparency around the finances of Congress members. The STOCK Act charges around $200 for each violation, a fine that is relatively low for an institution infamous for housing millionaires.

    How effective the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act would be is unclear. The financial penalties for violating the proposed law are higher, as members would be fined the amount of their congressional salaries if found violating the law. According to the bill, the fines would be the “monthly equivalent of the annual rate of pay payable to the Member of Congress”; a typical member makes $174,000 a year, or about $14,500 a month.

    Though $14,500 is much heftier than the fee mandated by the STOCK Act, it still may not be enough to deter certain members from handing over control of their stocks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), for instance, owns millions of dollars’ worth of stocks; others, like Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), have traded tens of millions of dollars’ worth of stocks in the past year alone.

    The bill comes as somewhat of a snub to Pelosi, who defended members’ ability to trade stocks in December. “We’re a free market economy,” she said. “They should be able to participate in that.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Five Starbucks Locations Have Filed to Unionize Over the Past Six Days

    A Starbucks coffee shop is pictured on December 13, 2021, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.

    Starbucks workers are filing to unionize at a fast pace, with employees at five Starbucks locations in five different states having filed for a union election over the past six days.

    Workers in Eugene, Oregon, filed to unionize last Friday. Locations in Chicago and Cleveland soon followed with their filings. On Tuesday, workers in Hopewell, New Jersey filed their petitions; and, on Wednesday, workers at the North Monroe Street location in Tallahassee, Florida, also filed for a union.

    Tallahassee workers’ filing brings the total number of stores that have filed to unionize over the past months to roughly 18, with seven of those filings in just the past two weeks.

    The filings come amid a wave of unionizing activity among workers at the coffee company’s corporate-owned locations. Stores in 11 states have filed for unions. This is a remarkable pace; as Labor Notes reporter Jonah Furman noted on Tuesday, in the most active organizing sector in the U.S. last year, the cannabis industry, 13 workplaces filed for a vote over the entire year.

    On Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified election results for the Genesee Street location in Buffalo, New York, with employees voting 15 to 9 in favor of the union. Along with the Elmwood location, also in Buffalo, two locations have voted to form a union so far. The union is disputing its loss at a third store, Buffalo’s Camp Road.

    Workers in Tallahassee and New Jersey expressed solidarity with other unionizing locations in letters to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, and sharply criticized the company for its union busting efforts.

    “We are aware of your partnership with the notorious union-busting law firm Littler Mendelson. We are not intimidated by such blatant tactics: we are emboldened to join our fellow partners across the United States as we stand for what is right,” Tallahassee workers wrote. “We are outraged that partners you claim to care so deeply about are being mistreated, gaslighted, and harassed in their own stores due to your union busting efforts.”

    Hopewell workers expressed a similar sentiment. “We are angered and disappointed by the blatant anti-union behavior you and other management have shown in stores who are simply trying to become equal partners in this company through unionization,” the workers said. Like many unionizing Starbucks employees before them, the Hopewell workers have urged the company to sign onto a list of “Fair Election Principles” crafted by the union, Starbucks Workers United.

    The company has thus far shown no interest in following such principles, which ask Starbucks to not interfere with the unionization process. Indeed, the company appears to be focusing on union-busting efforts in Mesa, Arizona, where a union election is slated to start next week.

    An email sent to Mesa employees by Andrea Streedain, regional vice president of the Western Mountain region for the company, which encompasses six states in the northwest, flat out tells workers to vote against unionizing. “We want you to vote no,” the email says, as uncovered by More Perfect Union.

    The NLRB recently handed the company a loss in its attempts to quash a union in Arizona. The company had moved to make the union district-wide – a classic anti-union move that would dilute the election to encompass stores that haven’t been embroiled in official organizing efforts. But a regional director of the labor board ruled against the company, allowing votes to proceed store by store.

    The company has pulled out other tactics to fight against the union. For example, Starbucks sent executives to Buffalo during workers’ initial union drive to surveil and potentially intimidate workers in organizing stores. Workers at the Depew location in Buffalo said that the company is scheduling employees erratically to disrupt employees schedules and throw a wrench in organizing efforts. It has also taken other moves to divide workers – something that the company dubiously claims the union would do – like closing organizing stores temporarily, supposedly for training purposes.

    And, as Tallahassee workers mentioned, the company has hired law firm Littler Mendelson to help in union busting efforts, which has been infamous for its decades-long mission of destroying union efforts. It is one of the biggest union-busting firms in the country.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Introduces Bill to Send N95s to Everyone as Biden Considers Mask Plan

    Sen. Bernie Sanders makes his way to the Senate Demcrats luncheon on October 19, 2021.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has introduced legislation to send N95 masks to U.S. households as the Biden administration drags its feet on plans to issue high-quality masks to all Americans.

    “Today I introduced legislation, along with more than 50 of my colleagues, to produce N95 masks, one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of Covid-19, and distribute them to every American for free,” Sanders said on Wednesday.

    Sanders has previously introduced similar legislation to Wednesday’s proposal. In July 2020 – just as health officials were recommending widespread mask-wearing – Sanders proposed sending high-quality, reusable masks to every person in the country through the United States Postal Service.

    Recent research has found that high-quality masks like KN95s or N95s are significantly more effective at preventing spread of the virus. As such, some health officials have begun recommending that people swap out cloth masks for more protective options like a surgical mask, KN95s or N95s.

    But even as lower-level health authorities have recommended better masks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stopped short of recommending them. Recent reporting finds that the CDC is currently weighing issuing such guidance. The guidance would say that, if people can “tolerate wearing a KN95 or N95 mask all day, you should,” according to The Washington Post.

    The Biden administration is also considering a plan to send high-quality masks, potentially including N95s or KN95s, to all who want them. But it’s unclear if that will come with obstacles like the administration’s recent plan to provide free at-home COVID tests nearly exclusively for people with private insurance, who would have to jump through insurer’s hoops to get reimbursements for the test costs.

    Sanders has advocated for Biden to make use of the Defense Production Act, which the president can use to compel manufacturers to create medical equipment for the pandemic, to make N95s. “Not all face masks are created equal,” Sanders said over the weekend. “N95 face masks are far more effective than cloth masks in preventing the spread of COVID. We must utilize the Defense Production Act to mass produce these masks and distribute them to every household in the country.”

    Indeed, if the CDC begins recommending use of high-quality masks, it would follow that the administration should take action to make such masks more readily available. Nearly two years into the pandemic, it is still difficult for consumers to discern where to purchase real N95s and KN95s, with countless fake or poorly contracted masks being sold online, largely on Amazon. The fakes are so convincing that, last year, hospitals and state governments bought millions of counterfeit masks, thinking they were made by 3M.

    Another problem facing consumers is that N95s and KN95s can be expensive. Cheaper models can cost $1 or $2 a mask, and some manufacturers say that people shouldn’t wear N95s for more than a few hours at a time. Last year, the CDC recommended that health care workers only reuse N95s up to five times, storing the mask in a paper bag for at least five days between uses, and only reusing masks in times of major shortages.

    Even if people follow these recommendations and wear masks a handful of times before disposing of them, the costs can add up. Compared to cloth masks, which are less protective but that many have been washing and reusing through the pandemic, workers may opt to continue using the cheaper cloth mask option over the recurring cost of N95s or KN95s.

    If the government is interested in preventing spread of the virus, the government should be providing high-quality masks to the public for free or low cost, progressive lawmakers have said. Members of Congress and their staffers are reportedly set to receive KN95s in response to the Omicron variant, with no such programs announced so far for the public, with people left to fend for themselves with no additional stimulus bills coming.

    Sanders’s proposal comes as COVID-19 case numbers are skyrocketing in the country, with the highest case rate by far throughout the pandemic. According to The New York Times, an average of over 761,000 people are currently testing positive for the virus each day as of Tuesday, an increase of nearly 200 percent over two weeks ago.

    New cases are driven nearly exclusively by the Omicron variant. The new variant is more transmissible than previous versions of COVID, and appears to be causing higher numbers of breakthrough cases, even in people who have been fully vaccinated and boosted. In other words, masking is just as important now as it has ever been, regardless of vaccination status.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Thousands of Workers at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores in Colorado Are on Strike

    Grocery store worker wearing mask arranges bananas

    Thousands of workers at King Soopers and City Market stores in Colorado went on strike Wednesday, protesting what union members say is an insufficient offer on wages and working conditions from ownership in their collective bargaining agreement.

    The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 rejected a contract from Kroger, which owns the two grocery chains, on Tuesday, and the strike is slated to last three weeks. According to the union, about 8,000 workers employed at 87 stores are striking.

    “Our plea remains the same: Stop these unfair labor practices, and respect us, protect us and pay us what we deserve,” said Kim Cordova, president of the union local, in a statement on Monday. “UFCW Local 7 members will remain on strike until the company agrees to cease its unfair labor practices and comes to the negotiating table in good faith.”

    Kroger claimed that the latest offer was the “last, best and final” one. But the union says that it contains provisions that are unacceptable to members and fails to address issues that workers have brought up related to the pandemic.

    The company hasn’t addressed concerns over wages, benefits reductions and worker safety during contract negotiations, the union says, and it “continues to demonstrate a lack of appreciation for workers who put their lives at risk in the midst of a global pandemic.” While the company offered employees extra hazard pay early in the pandemic, it took the $2 an hour “hero” pay away after just weeks, in May of 2020.

    Kroger says that the latest offer includes raising starting pay to $16 an hour, but Cordova pointed out that that rate is barely higher than the minimum wage in Denver, which is home to several King Soopers locations. Meanwhile, the company is looking to hire replacement workers, or scabs, for a higher rate.

    “That’s 13 cents over minimum wage, while they’re posting for replacement scab workers at $18 an hour,” Cordova told HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson. Last month, the union filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that it violated an agreement to not hire replacement workers. In response, the company has filed a lawsuit against the union, claiming that the union isn’t bargaining in good faith.

    The company’s offer also includes provisions to hire gig workers, restrict overtime and shorten time off for a leave of absence or injuries. Union members have rejected these proposals.

    During the pandemic, as Kroger marked record profits, the workers were suffering, Cordova said. “The companies were thriving, but our workers didn’t thrive,” she said.

    Know what our workers got? COVID. Attacked. Beat up. Spit on. Slapped. Overworked. And the company? They did great. They did absolutely great, sitting behind their desk doing their job by Zoom.

    Kroger, the nation’s largest grocer, has faced widespread scrutiny over poor labor practices through the pandemic. While median worker pay dropped in the first year of the pandemic, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen got an over 45 percent raise of $6.4 million, bringing his total compensation for 2020 to a whopping $20.6 million. Median worker pay, meanwhile, decreased by 8.1 percent, from about $26,000 to $24,000 annually.

    Though the company has bragged about raising its average worker pay to $16, it closed stores in Seattle and California, where local governance mandated that frontline workers get bonus pandemic wages. The company made record profits in 2020 and has similarly posted an increase in profits from pre-pandemic levels in 2021. The company is valued at over $34 billion, and made nearly a billion dollars in profits in the third quarter of 2021 alone.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fed Chair Jerome Powell Says Corporations “Are Raising Prices Because They Can”

    Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during his re-nominations hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    In a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that corporations may be raising prices arbitrarily to pad their profits while the public suffers under high inflation rates.

    Powell said that higher prices for commodities like groceries could be chalked up to corporate greed, at least partially. This statement echoes recent research that shows that businesses are seeing some of their highest profit increases since 1950, using inflation as an excuse to reach further into consumers’ pockets.

    The statement came as the result of prodding from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). During a confirmation hearing for Powell’s renomination to lead the most powerful financial institution in the country, Warren questioned whether or not the Fed chair believed that corporations were fleecing customers as corporate concentration is on the rise.

    “Does that increase in profit margins combined with greater market concentration in industry after industry suggest to you that some corporations may be passing along increased costs and, at the same time, charging more on top of that to fatten their profit margins?” Warren asked.

    “That could be right. It could also just be, though, that demand is incredibly strong and that they’re raising prices because they can,” Powell said.

    “Well, that’s the point. They’re raising prices because they can and not being competed down,” Warren responded. Consumers aren’t just offsetting inflation for raw materials for corporations, she pointed out – they’re also paying more out of pocket.

    This isn’t the first time Warren has brought attention to the issue. In December, the Massachusetts lawmaker sent a letter to large grocers that have been raising prices, expressing similar concerns regarding inflation. Kroger, Publix and Albertsons have been reporting high profits as grocery bills have increased by over 6 percent on average over the past year, Warren wrote.

    Reporters have pointed out that fears about inflation may be overstated, however. As Hadas Thier wrote for Truthout, wages are currently rising at a similar rate to inflation – meaning that worries about inflation, as sensationalized by conservative lawmakers and the media, could be a tool for corporations to create conditions for price gouging.

    During the hearing, Powell sounded the alarm on inflation, saying that it could throw a wrench into the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic and potentially hamper jobs recovery. This hearing comes ahead of January’s inflation report, which the Financial Times reports is expected to show the consumer price index rising annually by 7 percent.

    Powell also claimed during the hearing that the country no longer needs policies that were put into place as protection against the financial impact of the pandemic. During his tenure, Powell rolled back measures that were intended to protect the economy after the Great Recession, which has led economists to question whether he intends to protect consumers or whether he would rather throw favor to Wall Street through deregulation.

    Lawmakers, including Warren, have repeatedly criticized decisions that the Donald Trump nominee made during his tenure. But President Joe Biden renominated the Fed chair despite warnings that Powell hasn’t been doing enough to address the climate crisis and that he has a poor record on financial regulation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Second Starbucks Location Unionizes as Union Wave Sweeps Stores Across the US

    Pins are displayed at the Starbucks Workers United hub in Buffalo, New York, on November 16, 2021.

    Starbucks workers successfully unionized another store on Monday, making the Genesee Street store in Buffalo, New York, the second corporate-owned Starbucks location in the U.S. to form a union.

    The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified the results for the Genesee Street store in Buffalo after reviewing ballots that had been disputed by the union. The final count was 15 to 9 in favor of unionization.

    After a month of deliberation, the NLRB ultimately ruled against the inclusion of ballots filled out by employees from another store, which the company used in an attempt to pack the vote. Camp Street, a third store in Buffalo, voted against unionizing, though Starbucks Workers United is disputing the results.

    Workers at Genesee Street celebrated the news. “Words cannot describe how we are feeling right now,” Genesee Street shift supervisor Caroline Lerczak told WGRZ. “After months of anti-union meetings, intimidation tactics, and intense pressure to vote ‘no’, we can finally say we won our union. I would love to see Starbucks show some accountability for their actions and come to the bargaining table to negotiate with us now.”

    The workers faced a fierce union-busting campaign from the company, which sent executives to Buffalo to intimidate workers. The company also took drastic steps like shutting down unionizing stores temporarily, seemingly to make unionizing more difficult. This is in spite of the organizing workers requesting that the company follow Starbucks Workers United’s “Fair Election Principles” that ask the company not to interfere with unionization.

    As other stores kick off union campaigns, however, the company appears to be moving its anti-union tactics elsewhere. Workers at another unionizing location, Depew in Buffalo, have said that the company has purposefully scheduled workers erratically, seemingly to throw a wrench in organizing efforts and destabilize workers by forcing them to work inconsistent hours.

    The company also reportedly created unsafe working conditions by overstaffing, which doesn’t allow frontline workers to distance themselves from others in the face of yet another wave of coronavirus.

    However, the sheer number of unionizing stores may make it difficult for the company to wage a large-scale union-busting campaign at every store. Roughly 17 stores have filed to unionize in recent months, with more stores filing nearly every week since the first store, Elmwood in Buffalo, voted for unionization.

    According to the union, Starbucks workers at the Hopewell, New Jersey location were the latest to file. Three other stores have also filed to unionize in recent days, with workers in Chicago, Cleveland, and Eugene, Oregon, citing the company’s stated principles as reasons why executives should allow workers to organize.

    Employees have pointed to poor working conditions – including understaffing issues and being forced to come in sick – as a reason to organize. Indeed, Elmwood workers went on strike last week to protest unsafe COVID protocols. According to a letter from union members obtained by Vice, one barista at the location had tested positive.

    “We believe that Starbucks should close our store and pay our partners until we can re-open safely and fully staffed, with those who have been exposed having the opportunity to isolate and stop the spread,” the letter read. “We are on strike until we believe it is safe to return to work.” The strike ended on Monday.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Elizabeth Warren Demands Information on Fed Official’s Questionable Stock Trades

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a hearing at Dirksen Senate Office Building on August 3, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) recently sent a letter to Jerome Powell demanding more information on stock trades by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida after a New York Times report revealed that Clarida failed to disclose the extent of his trades just before the stock market crashed in 2020.

    Last year, Clarida reported moving between $1 million and $5 million into an investment fund, buying shares on February 27th, 2020 – the day before Chair Powell made a major announcement about rule changes at the Fed in preparation for the pandemic.

    However, Clarida recently amended that financial disclosure to reflect another potentially significant trade he made around the same time. The vice chair sold shares of the investment fund on February 24, just as stocks were plunging. Clarida defended himself when news of the February 27 trade came out, saying that the trade had been planned in advance, but the February 24 sale makes this statement look dubious, The New York Times reported.

    Though Clarida is departing the agency, Warren believes that this new information raises concerns about stock trades at the Fed in general. In her letter, she gave Powell a deadline of January 17 to provide all available information about Fed officials’ trades.

    “The Fed has failed to respond to two of my previous inquiries,” Warren wrote. “This refusal to provide information to Congress became even more troubling after a report last week in the New York Times revealed that one Fed official’s trades ‘went further than first disclosed,’ raising fresh questions about the actions and intent of Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida.”

    Warren went on to say that she is “deeply concerned” with the Fed’s refusal to be transparent about stock trades, “rais[ing] suspicions that the Fed may be failing to disclose the full scope of the scandal to the public.” She then cited a March 2020 email in which ethics officials warned Fed officials to refrain from trading stocks as the pandemic was rocking the market, for fear of such trades looking suspicious to the public.

    The Massachusetts lawmaker has previously requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) look into potential insider trading at the Fed. Clarida’s trade is just one of multiple scandals that have emerged from the Fed over past months, including one involving Powell himself, whose confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee is scheduled for Tuesday.

    Shortly after news of Clarida’s trades emerged, The American Prospect revealed that Powell sold between $1 million and $5 million in stock just before the stock market crashed in October of 2020 – at the time, the largest drop since the March 2020 crash. Powell had communicated with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin four times on the day of the sale, and days after, encouraged Congress to pass the stimulus package in order to help the economy recover.

    At the time, Warren advocated for her legislation to bar top politicians, including financial regulators, from being able to trade stocks. After news of the scandal broke, the Fed did take steps to ban its officials from buying individual securities, but trades like Powell’s are still permitted under the new rules.

    In her letter, Warren said that it is crucial not only for the SEC to investigate the agency, but also for the agency to release details of Clarida’s trades, among others, in order for officials to be held accountable by Congress. This demand is especially timely in relation to Powell’s potential confirmation by the Senate, to which Warren is vehemently opposed.

    “[T]imely release of this requested information is also critical so that Congress and the public can evaluate the full extent of trading in individual stocks by Fed officials, the extent to which Fed officials were warned of the risks from their trading, and whether the plans you announced to change the Fed’s ethics practices are sufficient to prevent future financial conflicts of interest,” Warren wrote.

    The agency’s “continued refusal to release this information severely compounds concerns about the Fed’s lack of transparency and your commitment to fully and honestly addressing the Fed’s broken ethics culture,” she went on.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Starbucks Workers in Chicago, Ohio and Oregon Join Unionization Efforts

    A Starbucks logo hangs in the window of one of the chain's coffee shops in the Loop on January 4, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois.

    Starbucks workers in Chicago, Cleveland and Eugene, Oregon, have filed to form a union, joining a wave of organizing efforts at Starbucks locations across the country just a month after workers in Buffalo successfully unionized.

    According to Starbucks Workers United, workers in 29th and Willamette in Eugene, Logan and California in Chicago and 6th Street in Cleveland recently filed to unionize. If these workers are successful, they will join the Elmwood location in Buffalo in being among the first of the company’s roughly 9,000 corporate-owned locations to successfully form a union.

    With the addition of these three locations, there are now approximately 16 stores that have filed to unionize, over a dozen of which have ongoing organizing efforts. Numerous stores in New York have filed, as well as stores in Seattle; Knoxville, Tennessee; Broomfield, Colorado; the greater Boston area; Mesa, Arizona; and a Wabash Avenue location in Chicago. One effort – Camp Road in Buffalo – failed, with workers voting against unionization.

    Like their fellow Starbucks organizers in Buffalo, workers in Chicago, Eugene and Cleveland cited Starbucks’s own purported social responsibility in their letters to CEO Kevin Johnson announcing their unionization efforts. Workers in Eugene said that while Starbucks has taken laudable stances on social issues, it has been failing its own workers through its union-busting campaigns.

    “Starbucks’ mission statement is ‘to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time,’” Cleveland workers wrote. “We at store 2390 believe there is no better way for the company to fully live its mission statement than through accountability and by respecting partners’ right to unionize.”

    Chicago workers expressed a similar sentiment, citing Starbucks’s “record profits” as a reason for the company to treat its workers better and allow them to organize. “For the better part of its history, Starbucks management’s relationship with its workers has been one predicated on the concept of partnership. However, without the ability to fairly negotiate wages and conditions, Starbucks and its workers can never have a true partnership,” the Logan and California Starbucks employees wrote.

    The company has indeed been marking record profits, with fourth quarter profits last year exceeding pre-pandemic profits by 11 percent, according to the company. But the profits seem to come at the expense of workers, who report poor working conditions and safety concerns regarding the pandemic.

    “Even while working in the midst of an ongoing health crisis, we do not feel we have been adequately cared for in terms of consistent guidelines or effective safety measures,” the Cleveland workers wrote. They also reported burnout and feeling like “cogs in a machine,” despite the company’s pledge to treat them as “partners.”

    Similar complaints have been lodged by the Elmwood employees, who went on strike last week to protest what they called “unsafe working conditions” due to COVID. “Starbucks would rather let loyal employees walk than address critical issues regarding COVID,” wrote Elmwood worker and organizer Michelle Eisen. “Corporate continues to put profits over partners.”

    The strike ended on Monday. Only a month ago, the Elmwood workers in Buffalo formed a union in the face of extraordinary odds, even as the company swarmed the store with executives and took other drastic steps to quell union efforts.

    Recently, Starbucks took a loss in its union-busting efforts in Mesa. Last week, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ordered that ballots for the Mesa election only be mailed to one store, rather than being mailed out to employees across the region. In arguing against store-by-store elections, the company was attempting to dilute the vote across stores that may not have been engaging in unionization efforts, leaving them susceptible to anti-union propaganda from corporate.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Workers at First Unionized Starbucks Walk Off Job to Protest Working Conditions

    Workers from the Elmwood Starbucks are pictured on day 2 of their walkout on January 6, 2022.

    On Wednesday, workers at the Elmwood Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York, walked off the job to protest working conditions, citing the company’s failure to address COVID-related safety issues.

    According to the union, workers are protesting because they have been forced to work through “unsafe working conditions,” facing health concerns and understaffing.

    Elmwood organizer Michelle Eisen called the walkout a “necessary stand.”

    “Starbucks would rather let loyal employees walk than address critical issues regarding COVID,” Eisen wrote. “Corporate continues to put profits over partners. We’ve had enough.”

    Eisen said in an interview with More Perfect Union that employees were stonewalled after sharing their concerns about COVID with the company over the past week.

    “They said under no uncertain terms that as long as there are enough employees to meet the needs of the business then everything was being taken care of,” she said. “We’re not going to go back into the store until we feel that we’re safe.”

    Starbucks workers have highlighted COVID-related concerns in the past. Workers say that they have been forced to come in while sick – a problem exacerbated by understaffing issues which have resulted in the company pressuring employees to come to work.

    The protest comes weeks after the workers voted to form the first-ever union at a corporate-owned Starbucks location. Elmwood workers have reported receiving gifts from all over the country expressing solidarity with their union, including handwritten letters, tips and even an engraved plaque from the New York State Public Employees Federation.

    Their win has inspired other Starbucks locations across the country to organize and even file petitions to unionize, sparking what could potentially become a wave of unionizations across some of the company’s 9,000 corporate-owned locations.

    The unionization came amid a major resurgence of the labor movement, with workers across the country waging strikes and organizing their workplaces despite facing massive opposition. Though workers at Kellogg and John Deere recently ended long strikes after agreeing on contracts, some strikes that began last year are still ongoing; steelworkers in West Virginia, for instance, have been striking for higher wages and better benefits since October.

    The Elmwood workers were joined by McDonald’s workers in Palmdale, California, who walked off the job on Wednesday to demand safer working conditions. Workers say that the company has failed to fix crucial equipment in the store like air conditioning, drainage and ventilation.

    “Short staffing and the breakdown of kitchen equipment make it harder to do our jobs; we get yelled at while [McDonald’s] continues to profit,” wrote Fight for $15 LA on Twitter.

    The renewed labor activism that has been springing up across the country has caught the attention and support of influential figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who held a town hall on Wednesday to mark 2022 as “the year of solidarity.” During the town hall, Sanders reminded striking steel and coal workers that they are not just fighting for themselves, but for workers across the country.

    “If they get away with slashing your health care – you’ve got strong unions, great unions – what do you think they’re gonna do to the guy who doesn’t have a union? If they’re able to slash wages and not keep up with inflation, what do you think they’re going to do to people who don’t have a union?” Sanders asked. “So by standing strong, you are representing not only your own membership, but also workers across this country.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Encourages Workers to “Rise Up and Fight Back” in New Op-Ed

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally with Peoples Action in front of PhRMAs Washington office on September 21, 2021.

    In an op-ed published on Tuesday, longtime labor advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) set a New Year’s resolution for himself and the working class: to “rise up together” and confront corporate power in 2022.

    2021 was a watershed year for the labor movement, Sanders noted in his op-ed for The Guardian. Workers for John Deere, Nabisco, Kaiser Permanente, Kellogg and more striked or authorized a strike last year, making strides toward fairer working conditions. Another major victory was won by Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, who formed the company’s first-ever union.

    “While the corporate-owned media may not be actively reporting it, working people all over the country, with extraordinary courage and determination, are taking on corporate greed, and they are winning,” Sanders wrote.

    Sanders detailed ongoing efforts in places like West Virginia, where roughly 450 steel workers at a company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Special Metals, have been striking since October. The company has offered “an outrageous and insulting contract” with no pay raises this year, while it quadruples health care premiums and reduces time off.

    The senator also pointed to a bakery workers’ strike in California, where about 100 workers – the majority of whom are Latina women – are striking against Rich Products Corporation for forcing them to work up to 16 hours a day. Employees at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, who work similarly long hours, have been on strike since April. After facing pressure from Wall Street investors during a restructuring deal, workers suffered a pay cut of over 20 percent on average in 2016.

    While refusing to treat their workers fairly, these companies have all raked in enormous profits, Sanders pointed out. Last year, Special Metals made $1.5 billion and Rich Products made $4 billion. Meanwhile, Warrior Met has paid out $1.4 billion in shareholder dividends since 2014.

    Workers currently face ever-increasing corporate greed, a devastating pandemic and a political system that is rapidly deteriorating – and as class warfare is “intensifying,” organizing is more critical than ever. “The stakes are just too high,” Sanders wrote. “Despair is not an option. We must stand up and fight back.”

    Change can be achieved through the labor movement and through transformative social movements, Sanders went on, adding that corporate greed and growing oligarchy are the enemy of these movements.

    “The greatest weapon our opponents have is not just their unlimited wealth and power. It is their ability to create a culture that makes us feel weak and hopeless and diminishes the strength of human solidarity,” Sanders wrote. “And here is our new year’s resolution. Like the thousands of workers who stood up and fought courageously in 2021, we will do the same. No one individual is going to save us. We must rise up together.”

    The lawmaker has been a staunch supporter of the labor movement for years, and has stood with workers as they fought for better conditions and wages in 2021. In November, he traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to stand with striking Kellogg workers in the 11th week of their strike; in late December, he sent a letter to Buffett asking the Berkshire CEO to intervene in his company’s contract negotiations by offering a fair agreement to workers.

    As 2021 came to an end, Sanders continually pushed workers to stand in solidarity with each other. “I’ve got news for the ruling class: you cannot have it all,” he warned on Twitter. “The working class is fighting back.”

    During his presidential campaign in 2020, Sanders made the labor movement a central plank of his platform, vowing to end so-called “right to work” laws and aiming to double union membership during his first term. Union membership has been declining for decades, and was at a dismal 10.8 percent in 2020. This has led to a decline – of about $3,250 – in the median workers’ annual wage since 1979.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Pushes Workers to Organize as Advocates Celebrate “Year of the Worker”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to striking Kellogg's workers in downtown Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 17, 2021.

    As labor advocates hail 2021 as the “year of the worker,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is encouraging workers to maintain the momentum by using their collective leverage to organize.

    On Wednesday, Sanders issued a warning to corporations and executives on Twitter. “For the ruling class, greed is a religion. They will cut back on workers’ wages, on workers’ benefits, on workers’ safety on the job — all for the sake of having more, more, more,” he wrote. “I’ve got news for the ruling class: you cannot have it all. The working class is fighting back.”

    Sanders’s statements come at the end of a consequential year for the labor movement. Over 100,000 workers authorized strikes this year, with workers at John Deere, Kellogg, and more – along with health care workers across the country – securing wins in contract negotiations with employers. This past year also saw workers organizing in solidarity against fierce anti-union retaliation from companies like Amazon and Starbucks, which have employed illegal union-busting tactics in response to workers’ demands.

    Sanders has repeatedly celebrated this year’s major labor moves – and on Thursday, he once again encouraged employees to organize their workplaces. “It’s true that corporate profits have never been higher. And still, they want more,” he said. “But there is another more important truth: there are a lot more of us than there are of them. Now is the time to organize. Now is the time to end their greed.”

    As the labor movement underwent a roaring resurgence in 2021, Sanders rallied with striking workers; in November, he sent pizza and a donation to striking Kellogg workers and joined them in Battle Creek, Michigan during the 11th week of their strike. He also praised Starbucks workers in Buffalo when they formed the company’s first-ever union, and slammed John Deere when it took drastic action to break its 10,000-worker strike.

    This week, Sanders sent a letter to billionaire Warren Buffett asking him to compel executives to offer a fair contract to workers in a manufacturing plant owned by Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway. About 450 metal manufacturing workers for Precision Castparts in Huntington, West Virginia have been on strike for nearly three months, since October 1.

    The workers, who make specialty parts used in aircrafts and other equipment, say that they’re pushing for better working conditions, health care and wages – but that the length of the strike has been taking its toll.

    The union expects to return to the bargaining table next week. Chad Thompson, president of the United Steelworkers Local 40 union, told The Associated Press that the company hasn’t been negotiating in good faith, and that the union would be open to agreeing to a fair contract. But “we don’t think they’re even being in the ballpark of fair,” Thompson said.

    Sanders condemned the company for treating its workers poorly. “At a time when this company and Berkshire Hathaway are both doing very well, there is no reason why workers employed by you should be worrying about whether they will be able to feed their children or have health care,” Sanders wrote to Buffett. The senator then asked the billionaire to intervene in negotiations and to present an offer to workers that is better than the ones they’ve previously rejected.

    “There is no reason why the standard of living of these hard working Americans should decline. I know that you and Berkshire Hathaway can do better than that,” Sanders continued.

    Buffett rejected Sanders’s request. “Our companies deal individually with their own labor and personnel,” he wrote back.

    According to Forbes, Buffett is the eighth richest person in the world, with $109.3 billion in wealth. Like other billionaires in the U.S., his fortune has only grown since the pandemic began; per Bloomberg, Buffett’s wealth has increased by $21.4 billion this year alone.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Administration Seeks to Overturn Trump-Era “Remain in Mexico” Policy

    A family arrives at an improvised camp of asylum seekers and refugees at El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on December 6, 2021.

    The Biden administration has requested that the Supreme Court review – and potentially reverse – their decision to uphold a Trump-era anti-immigration policy colloquially known as “Remain in Mexico.”

    The policy, formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), forces asylum seekers to stay on the Mexican side of the southern U.S. border while they await court decisions on their immigration status. Immigrant advocates have described the policy as cruel, saying that it forces people to live under dangerous and even life-threatening conditions while attempting to exercise their right to seek safe harbor in the U.S.

    Earlier this month, Republican-appointed judges in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from the Biden administration to end the policy.

    The ruling upheld a lower court’s “outrageous holding that a law from 1996 *requires* MPP — which didn’t exist until 2019,” pointed out Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. The judge who wrote the decision expressed “sheer contempt for the Biden administration [that] oozes off of the page at nearly every juncture,” Reichlin-Melnick went on.

    Earlier this year, Human Rights First found that the policy has been responsible for at least 1,544 public reports of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and other forms of violence against people who were forcefully returned to Mexico. This includes at least 341 reports of children who were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped when they returned.

    In the administration’s court filing on Wednesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas panned the 5th Circuit’s decision, saying that the agency has “been forced to reinstate and continue implementing indefinitely a controversial policy that the Secretary has twice determined is not in the interests of the United States.”

    Mayorkas said that the policy creates dangerous conditions for asylum seekers and that it does not advance its presumed purpose of detering illegal immigration – a goal that immigration advocates have pointed out is inhumane in itself.

    The lower courts have mandated enforcement of MPP “despite determinations by the politically accountable Executive Branch that MPP is not the best tool for deterring unlawful migration; that MPP exposes migrants to unacceptable risks; and that MPP detracts from the Executive’s foreign-relations efforts to manage regional migration,” the filing went on.

    On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden criticized Trump for the policy and vowed to end its enforcement. When the Biden administration reinstated the policy in December, they blamed the decision on the court’s orders.

    But the administration also expanded the policy in its reinstatement – a decision made by the administration and not ordered by the courts. As a result of this expansion, people from any country in the Western Hemisphere can be sent away while awaiting court arrangements, instead of just those from Spanish-speaking countries.

    Immigration advocates panned the Biden administration for its expansion of the policy. Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, called it a “shameful regression” which “flies in the face of its own determination that no number of changes could render this deadly policy more humane or provide the access to the asylum system that the law requires.”

    If the Supreme Court chooses to hear the case, the decision could have major consequences, Reichlin-Melnik said. According to the legal counsel, a ruling upholding the 5th Circuit’s decision could end up cementing the policy forever, although it’s unclear how the justices will rule.

    The overturning of the policy would be a win for immigration advocates, who have repeatedly called on the Biden administration to keep its promise to break from Trump’s oppressive immigration policies.

    The Biden administration has also continued to enforce a similarly cruel Trump-era anti-immigration rule known as Title 42, which allows the government to turn away asylum seekers on dubious public health grounds. Biden’s administration has used Title 42 to deport thousands of Haitian asylum seekers back to a country that is reeling from environmental devastation and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Florida Agency Spent $200K on PR Firm After Being Accused of Withholding Aid

    Mother kissing newborn baby's head in silhouette

    A Florida agency tasked with disbursing state funds to assist people born with neurological disorders was recently accused of withholding aid – but instead of pursuing change internally, the agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring a public relations firm, a new ProPublica investigation found.

    The Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association (NICA) spent nearly $200,000 hiring a PR firm while it was under investigation by ProPublica and the Miami Herald. The news outlets were in the midst of uncovering a “no, no, no culture” from the agency, one parent told reporters.

    That parent, Dan Bookhout, said that he constantly had to fight NICA for aid – so it was suspicious when the agency suddenly offered him a $30,000 device that would help his 5-year-old daughter walk. The agency also asked Bookhout to help promote the device to other parents.

    That offer appears to have been part of a strategy recommended by the PR firm Sachs Media. While NICA rejected requests for wheelchairs and other aid for people with disabilities, it solicited Sachs to help the agency get out ahead of reporting on its alleged corruption.

    “The Miami Herald has been conducting an investigation into NICA for several months, submitting numerous requests for public records and interviews,” Sachs executive Ryan Cohn wrote in an email to NICA in late 2019. “We see this as the path forward to win in the court of public opinion and to protect your mission and the future of the organization.”

    After offering the device to Bookhout, the PR firm placed two stories in a local newspaper, praising the agency and its offer to buy devices to help children walk. The agency also offered contact information for parents in the program to the firm, despite having previously withheld that information from parents who sought to form a community around taking care of children with disabilities.

    The agency, which has nearly $1.7 billion in funding, currently faces a state audit. NICA was created under a law that bars parents from suing medical officials, with the promise that they would receive financial assistance from the state – but reporters have found that families have largely been deprived of that aid. Instead, parents have had to fight to receive critical resources like drugs and blenders that make food more accessible. The agency has also repeatedly resisted distributing larger items like wheelchairs.

    Other investigations into the agency have come to a similar conclusion: ultimately, it appears that NICA’s priority isn’t distributing the assistance that parents were promised, but instead ensuring that it can continue to withhold aid.

    The Miami Herald found that since the agency’s founding in 1988, it has spent around $18 million on lawyers and lobbyists, often with the aim of engineering methods to decrease aid. They paid one pediatric neurologist $1.1 million, over the course of years, to prevent his own patients from receiving the aid that they needed, the Miami Herald reported.

    In response to these reports, the Florida legislature has issued reforms that mandate higher first-time payments and increasing other benefits. Parents say that there have been improvements since that bill was signed, but it’s unclear if the changes will be temporary.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Flight Attendant Union Criticizes CDC for Decision “Pushed by Corporate America”

    A masked flight attendant passes out refreshments on a flight from San Francisco, California, to Newark, New Jersey, on October 27, 2020.

    Flight Attendant union president and labor leader Sara Nelson is criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for changing its guidance on quarantining for COVID-19 after business leaders asked the agency to cut its recommendations by half, potentially at the cost of public health.

    Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International, accused the CDC in a statement of making its decision to benefit businesses that may be experiencing staffing issues, rather than stemming the spread of the virus.

    “We said we wanted to hear from medical professionals on the best guidance for quarantine, not from corporate America advocating for a shortened period due to staffing shortages,” Nelson said. “The CDC gave a medical explanation about why the agency has decided to reduce the quarantine requirements from 10 to five days, but the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring.”

    The statement comes after the agency cut its recommendations for quarantining due to COVID from 10 to five days even though many people may still be contagious past that period. The decision was announced shortly after Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky asking her to reduce the quarantine time for vaccinated people to five days. He complained that the longer quarantine period “may significantly impact our workforce and operations.”

    The CDC has denied that its decision was influenced by corporate giants. But some progressive commentators have also noted that Walensky won’t consider a vaccine mandate for airlines, in line with Bastian’s previous objections to such a requirement. Bastian said earlier this year that vaccine mandates for passengers would cause a “bottleneck” for airlines.

    Ironically, though Bastian has framed the easing of pandemic restrictions as helping businesses, allowing continued spread of the virus will only prolong the pandemic, which is still suppressing the economy. The current explosion of cases — with the U.S. breaking its previous record for daily case counts this week — has caused thousands of flight cancellations domestically and internationally during the busiest travel period of the year.

    It is an issue not only for travellers but also for aviation workers, who are disproportionately affected by COVID waves. Airline employees are forced to contend with rude and abusive customers who refuse to follow masking and other pandemic guidelines while being exposed to the virus at work. Indeed, airlines have attributed the spread of the Omicron variant to flight cancellations, saying that infections of staff and crew are causing shortages.

    Nelson pointed out in her statement that the CDC guidance is a labor issue, and that the health of the workers, and their ability to safely recover and protect their fellow employees from the virus by staying at home, is crucial.

    “If any business pressures a worker to return to work before they feel better, we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any ‘staffing shortages,’” Nelson warned.

    “We cannot allow pandemic fatigue to lead to decisions that extend the life of the pandemic or put policies on the backs of workers,” she continued. “Already the lack of paid sick leave creates pressure on workers to come to work sick. Corporations that fail to recognize this with paid sick leave, or pressure workers to come to work sick or face discipline, are failing their workers and their customers.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Elon Musk Brags About Owing Small Fraction of His $280B in Taxes

    Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition March 9, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

    Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, recently bragged about receiving an historic $11 billion tax bill this year, but the tax obligation is only due to large, complicated stock sales over the past months, which he will almost certainly end up profiting from.

    Earlier this month, Musk boasted on Twitter that he will owe the most taxes of any individual in a single year (though he is also among the richest people in history). But when the conditions surrounding Musk’s tax bill are detailed, his true intentions become clearer.

    In 2012, as part of his compensation as CEO of Tesla, Musk received the option to make future stock purchases at their 2012 value, regardless of their market value at the time of purchase. This allowed Musk, who doesn’t receive a traditional salary from Tesla, to purchase millions of shares in November, setting off a cascade of similar transactions over the next weeks. Early in November, he bought those shares for $13.4 million, despite being valued at $2.3 billion.

    The option to buy these shares at this price is set to expire next year. And the Build Back Better Act, if it were eventually passed, could levy further taxes on the transaction if he were to put it off until 2022, making the trade strategically timed.

    Since then, Musk has made other similar transactions, which are taxed as income. At that tax bracket, they are subject to a 40.8 percent tax rate. These transactions are what make up the bulk of his $11 billion tax bill, according to tax experts.

    He won’t have to reach too far into his bank account to pay these taxes; Musk also sold millions of stock shares in order to help cover the tax liability and has thus far sold about $16 billion worth of stock that could go towards covering taxes, though it’s unclear to what extent. On top of these sales, Musk is set to receive even more in compensation from the company this year depending on its end-of-year performance.

    The hundred-billionaire’s tax bill, thus, is a product of a maneuver to further pad his towering $280 billion net worth. It is only about 3.9 percent of his net worth, which may increase due to further stock transactions. It is also only a fraction of the record $36 billion he made in one day in October.

    Unless Musk continues to make further large stock transactions in the coming years, it’s also likely to be an outlier for him. Though media outlets are gushing about the tax bill and publishing unqualified headlines on the matter, Musk typically makes these moves to avoid paying taxes, which would explain why he’s bragging about this year’s bill.

    Leaked tax documents obtained by ProPublica earlier this year found that Musk paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, Musk’s “true” federal income tax rate was a mere 3.3 percent – lower than the average middle-income family’s tax rate each year.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • At Least 13 Republicans Who Participated in Jan. 6 Attack Are Running for Office

    Trump supporters gather outside the U.S. Capitol building following a "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    At least 13 Republicans who are running for public offices have been identified as participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

    Newsweek has compiled a list of GOP candidates who disclosed their participation in the day’s events through social media posts or comments to news outlets. Two of the candidates face legal charges in relation to the event.

    Mark Middleton, a candidate for the Texas House, is facing multiple federal charges in relation to the attack, after posting videos online about being among the first to breach the Capitol. Middleton is charged with counts of assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct, and more. His campaign website suggests that the far right candidate is running on a platform of secession for the state.

    In New Hampshire, Jason Riddle is running to unseat Rep. Annie Kuster, a Democrat in the House of Representatives. Riddle has pleaded guilty to theft of government property and parading, demonstrating or picketing in relation to the attack. He had allegedly stolen trinkets from the Senate parliamentarian’s office and drank from a bottle of wine there, according to a criminal complaint.

    Four other candidates are running for a seat in the House of Representatives. Teddy Daniels, who posted a video from the Capitol on January 6, is challenging Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. Derrick Van Orden, who has told reporters that he was at the attack, is also running to unseat a Democrat, in Wisconsin.

    In New York, Tina Forte is running to unseat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) – a challenge that will face long odds, as Ocasio-Cortez won her re-election in 2020 by more than 44 points. Forte livestreamed from the Capitol on January 6, saying, “we need to fight for our freedom, fight for our country, fight for our president, fight for our Constitution.”

    One candidate, Audra Johnson, is running to unseat Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan, a fellow Republican. Meijer did not vote to overturn election results in November 2020 and was one of the 10 Republicans in the House who defied the rest of their party in voting to impeach Donald Trump.

    Johnson’s challenge to Meijer reflects the Republican Party’s increasing hostility toward members who refuse to bow to Trump and the authoritarian brand of politics that he has helped make mainstream in the GOP. Earlier this year, GOP members had voted to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) from her leadership position within the party for refusing to peddle Trump’s election lies, despite the fact that she has often promoted other vile policies by Republicans.

    More recently, Republican officials have been provoking their followers to attack fellow Republicans who break from the party line. In November, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Michigan) shared a recording of a death threat he received over his “yes” vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, with a caller hurling profanities and labelling Upton as a “traitor” – the same insult that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) had used to label GOP members who voted the same way on Twitter.

    Several of the Capitol attackers are running for governor in several states, including Nevada, Nebraska and Michigan – the latter of which will challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who faced a kidnapping plot last year by far right extremists over her pandemic-related regulations.

    If elected, these candidates would join at least 10 other Republican participants in the attack who have been elected to state and local offices. Many of these officials enjoy support of fellow party leaders, according to HuffPost — a sign of the right’s ongoing radicalization.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.