A federal judge issued a nationwide order late Friday barring Starbucks from firing union organizers—a ruling that affirmed a long-established law which workers say the coffee chain has violated hundreds of times since unionizing efforts were first launched in Buffalo, New York in 2021.
U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith ruled in Michigan that former shift supervisor Hannah Whitbeck must be reinstated in her position, which she was fired from in April 2022.
Whitbeck and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Detroit Regional Director Elizabeth Kerwin argued that she had been fired because of her involvement in union organizing at the store where she worked in Ann Arbor—one of 366 Starbucks stores across the U.S. where employees have organized to create bargaining units. Nearly 300 stores have won union elections so far.
Starbucks Workers United, the employees’ union, has accused the company of firing more than 200 employees in illegal retaliation for organizing.
The company claimed Whitbeck was fired for leaving 20 to 30 minutes early a single time without finding someone to fill in for her, but Kerwin argued that would have been a violation of Starbucks’ own policy of issuing a warning for such an incident. Kerwin also noted that Starbucks was aware Whitbeck was involved in unionization efforts.
Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the NLRB, said the nationwide order was significant.
“The district court’s ruling confirms that Starbucks continues to violate the law in egregious ways, thus requiring a nationwide cease and desist order,” Abruzzo toldBloomberg.
The NLRB has issued 75 complaints against Starbucks for unfair labor practices, including intimidating and retaliating against workers who are organizing.
“Firing workers for organizing is already illegal, of course,” said Starbucks Workers United, the employees’ union, of Goldsmith’s order. “But this decision is HUGE for getting speedy justice for those retaliated against.”
\u201cFiring workers for organizing is already illegal, of course. But this decision is HUGE for getting speedy justice for those retaliated against\u201d
— Starbucks Workers United (@Starbucks Workers United)
1676676620
Goldsmith ordered Starbucks to post physical copies of the order at the Ann Arbor store and to read it at a mandatory meeting. The company was given 21 days to file an affidavit declaring it had complied.
Starbucks reported a 31% annual growth in profits in 2021, the year workers began unionizing, as well as $8.1 billion just in the fourth quarter of that year. Still, the company has aggressively fought union efforts by holding captive-audience meetings with CEO Howard Schultz and threatening the rights of workers who get involved in organizing efforts. This past week, Starbucks refused to send Schultz to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on the company’s conduct.
Goldsmith’s ruling showed that the company “can’t just fire” its way out of listening to workers, said economic justice group Fight for $15.
\u201c@NLRBGC \u201cThe District Court\u2019s ruling confirms that Starbucks continues to violate the law in egregious ways, thus requiring a nationwide cease and desist order\u201d- @NLRBGC \n\nLove to see @NLRB push back against Starbucks’ intimidation tactics.\n\nUnionizing is a right!\n\n#UnionsForAll\u201d
Federal investigators revealed Friday that one of the nation’s largest food sanitation companies illegally employed at least 102 children in dangerous jobs at 13 meatpacking facilities across eight states, leading to $1.5 million in fines.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) said its Wage and Hour Division “found that children were working with hazardous chemicals and cleaning meat processing equipment including back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters.”
The probe determined that children ages 13 to 17 unlawfully worked for Kieler, Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc. at plants in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas.
Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said the child labor violations “were systemic” and “clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels.”
“These children should never have been employed in meatpacking plants and this can only happen when employers do not take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place,” Looman charged.
\u201cThe food sanitation company was employing children in the plants of well known companies like Tyson Food, Cargill, Turkey Valley Farms, and more. \nhttps://t.co/bpfX0BqfJ5\u201d
— More Perfect Union (@More Perfect Union)
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Michael Lazzeri, the division’s regional administrator in Chicago, said that “our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags.”
“When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults—who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children—tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” Lazzeri noted.
The DOL—which found at least three cases where illegally employed children were injured on the job—fined the company $15,138 for each child who was not legally employed, the highest possible penalty under federal law.
Some researchers have criticized the civil monetary penalties, which are set by Congress, as “woefully insufficient” to protect workers and to deter employers from violating labor laws.
“It’s really shameful that the level of fine is so low,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a research group that seeks to improve conditions for workers. “It’s not sufficiently toothy enough to prevent the use of child labor in the meatpacking industry.”
Despite such criticism, Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda framed the case as an example of accountability, delcaring Friday, “The Department of Labor has made it absolutely clear that violations of child labor laws will not be tolerated.”
“No child should ever be subject to the conditions found in this investigation,” Nanda said. “The courts have upheld the department’s rightful authority to execute federal court-approved search warrants and compelled this employer to change their hiring practices to ensure compliance with the law. Let this case be a powerful reminder that all workers in the United States are entitled to the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and that an employer who violates wage laws will be held accountable.”
In a lengthy statement Friday, Packers Sanitation Services said that it was “pleased to have finalized this settlement figure.”
“We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations,” the statement continued, noting internal audits and the hiring of “a third-party law firm to review and help further strengthen our policies.”
The statement highlighted that none of the illegally employed children still work for Packers Sanitation Services, and “the DOL has also not identified any managers aware of improper conduct that are currently employed” by the company.
\u201cRepublicans in Iowa are pushing a bill to roll back child labor protections.\n\nIt would allow kids as young as 14 to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants.\n\nWhat if\u2026and hear me out\u2026we paid adult workers a living wage and gave them benefits instead of hiring children to work?\u201d
The revelations come amid a renewed national debate about child labor laws sparked by Republican legislators in Iowa pushing rollbacks to allow children as young as 14 to work in jobs including animal slaughtering, logging, and mining.
The proposal in Iowa is part of a trend of GOP state lawmakers across the country advocating relaxed child labor laws in recent years.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The New York Times‘ Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2/12/23) describes Sen. Bernie Sanders as “wearing his trademark scowl” when she uses his becoming chair of the Senate health committee as an opportunity to ask him about running for president rather than about healthcare.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the new chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions—and the New York Times has something to say about it. In a piece by veteran reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2/12/23) headlined, “Bernie Sanders Has a New Role. It Could Be His Final Act in Washington,” the paper demonstrates once again (FAIR.org, 2/24/16, 10/1/19, 1/30/20) how the lens through which corporate media view progressive politicians colors their coverage.
Stolberg kicks things off by noting that Sanders has “made no secret of his disdain for billionaires,” and now “has the power to summon them to testify before Congress—and he has a few corporate executives in his sight.” On the list: Amazon founder (and owner of the Washington Post) Jeff Bezos and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Writes Stolberg:
He views them as union busters whose companies have resorted to “really vicious and illegal” tactics to keep workers from organizing. He has already demanded that Mr. Schultz testify at a hearing in March.
We might point out here that these “views” aren’t just Sanders’ opinion. Less than two weeks before Stolberg’s piece appeared, a judge ruled that Amazon violated labor law trying to stop unionization efforts in Staten Island warehouses. (Stolberg might also see her colleague David Streitfeld’s lengthy investigation published in the Times—3/16/21—headlined, “How Amazon Crushes Unions.”) The National Labor Relations Board had filed 19 formal complaints against Starbucks as of last August—as Stolberg herself acknowledges two-thirds of the way into the article—and just ruled against the company in a union-busting case in Philly.
‘Angry letter’
Bernie Sanders (seen here smiling in a TMZ photo—8/7/22) was once described by the New York Times (6/10/16) as “unkempt and impatient, often angry.”
But another passage caught our eye:
Mr. Sanders is clearly operating on two tracks. Last week, in a move that might surprise critics who view him as unbending, he partnered with a Republican, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, to call on rail companies to offer seven days of paid sick leave to their workers—a provision that the Senate defeated last year when it passed legislation to avert a rail strike.
But he also sent a curt letter to Mr. Schultz, giving him until Tuesday to respond confirming his attendance at the hearing. That followed an earlier, angry letter in which Mr. Sanders urged the Starbucks chief to “immediately halt your aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign.” A Starbucks spokesman said the company was considering the request for Mr. Schultz to testify and was working to “offer clarifying information” about its labor practices.
To the Times, this is a lesson in contrasts in which Sanders can sometimes be flexible and pragmatic, but at others “unbending” and “angry.” But the truth is that the “two tracks” here are actually following exactly the same script: calling on corporate bosses to treat their workers fairly, and if they don’t, asking them to come in for questioning.
Sanders issued his warning to Schultz last March when Schultz took over as interim CEO, writing, “Please respect the Constitution of the United States and do not illegally hamper the efforts of your employees to unionize.” Nearly a year later, with no progress, he’s calling Schultz in to testify.
In the case of the rail companies, local news station WAVY (2/11/23) reported that “Sanders promises if he doesn’t see change, he will question railway executives under oath in a Senate hearing.” Sound familiar?
The only difference between the two—and what really matters to the Times—is that in one case, a Republican joined him, which by corporate media’s definition makes it a flexible and pragmatic action, whereas in the other, no Republicans on the committee signed the letter. No bipartisanship? No pragmatism. It’s a golden rule for political reporters that encourages compromise for the sake of compromise, no matter what the public actually wants.
And it elevates empty rhetoric over more serious action. Asking big companies to be nice to workers is framed in a positive light, but trying to back it up with any more serious action gets you called out as “curt,” “angry” and “unbending.”
(We’ll let you decide for yourself if this standard-looking letter from the committee, giving Schultz a week to respond and a month to prepare testimony, is “curt.” It’s not clear what Stolberg was looking for to make it more polite; apologies for taking up a very important man’s time?)
The number of negative words used to describe Sanders in this one article is remarkable. In addition to “unbending,” “curt” and “angry,” he’s “combative,” full of “disdain,” a former “left-wing socialist curiosity” who “rants,” makes demands, has a “trademark scowl” and can almost never be seen smiling in the Capitol.
‘Ever combative’
Bernie Sanders “already has,” Stolberg writes, “provide[d] a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”
Bernie Sanders “already has,” Stolberg writes, “provide[d] a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”The end of the piece perfectly illustrates the eternal disconnect between Sanders and reporters like Stolberg:
With the recent retirement of Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat who served for 48 years, Mr. Sanders is finally the senior senator from Vermont. Asked how he felt, he said, “Pretty good.” Then, ever combative, he shot back, “How do you feel?”
“How do you feel?” Them’s fightin’ words!
Stolberg continued:
He said people who wonder about whether he will run again—and by people, he meant reporters—should “keep wondering.”
Why? “Because I’ve just told you, and this is very serious,” he said, wearing his trademark scowl. “If you think about my record, I take this job seriously. The purpose of elections is to elect people to do work, not to keep talking about elections.”
Just as they prioritize compromise over meaningful political action, political reporters consistently prioritize the horserace over substantive issues, all to the detriment of democracy. But those reporters cling to the fiction that they’re strictly observers—and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is dismissed under a steady stream of pejorative adjectives.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) are demanding that Kroger, the U.S.’s largest supermarket brand, address reports of and lawsuits over “systemic and widespread errors” in the company’s payroll system that labor advocates say have opened the door for the company to commit wage theft. The lawmakers say that Kroger’s latest failure to pay workers is part of a…
It’s been nearly two weeks since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in northeast Ohio thrust the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area into a non-stop waking nightmare. It will take weeks, months, if not years to appraise the damage of this train derailment on the population, on the rail workers and first responders, and on the environment. While corporate spokespeople and many in the media try to paint this tragedy as some freak accident, we know better… We know better because we have been listening to railroad workers. In this urgent mini-cast, we discuss the nightmare in East Palestine with Matt Weaver, who has worked on the railroad since 1994, is a member of BMWED-IBT 2624, and was recently chosen to serve as legislative director for his state.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Matt Weaver: Morning Max. My name is Matt Weaver. Matthew A. Weaver. I am a 28 year railroader. Currently I’m the legislative director for our members, the BMWED members in the state of Ohio. So the Brotherhood of Mans Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. I am the elected legislative director for Ohio. I’ve had a couple other positions with the union. Currently I am a carpenter foreman on the railroad and I am very concerned at the effects of this derailment and interested in seeing how the report comes back from the NTSP.
Maximillian Alvarez: All right. Well, welcome everyone to another special urgent episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. As y’all heard, we got the great Matt Weaver on. I’m so grateful to him for making time for this and you may have been seeing Matt around because he’s done some pretty incredible media spots of late, including on John Stewart’s podcast, some other mainstream media spots and it’s so, so good to see voices like his actually getting the attention they deserve in the mainstream media. Maybe if the mainstream media actually listened to workers this whole time, we wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of catastrophes like what we are currently watching unfold in East Palestine, Ohio.
Listeners have been asking us about it left and right. Of course, we all know the basics. A Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine earlier this month. That train that was carrying toxic materials including vinyl chloride, which was there was a quote, unquote “controlled release” burning up of that toxic substance. There’s a giant black death cloud hanging over the region right now. Fish and animals are dying. People are reporting ill health effects. It is an absolute nightmare and there’s so much that the media has not been focusing on until maybe the past 48 hours that is connecting this catastrophe to all the things that we were talking about with railroad workers like Matt over the course of the past year. And we haven’t had the honor of having Matt on Working People before, but I did have the honor of being on a podcast with him and the great Ed Burmila on the Gin and Tacos podcast.
So we’re going to link to that in the show notes so you guys can hear more from Matt and hear less from me. So I’m going to shut up right now and Matt is getting hit up left and we got a limited amount of time with him. So Matt, I wanted to just kind of turn things over to you with the time that we have. I do not want to ask you to speculate on anything that we don’t currently know. I don’t want to put you in a position that’s going to get you or anyone else in trouble. As you said, we’re going to be waiting for the details from the report. We’re still a lot about this situation that we don’t know, but I wanted to ask as a veteran railroader, as someone who has been focusing intently and speaking loudly and forcefully about the systemic issues on the railroads that have made disasters like this more likely, I was wondering if you could just sort of walk us through what you see in the horrific derailment of this Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine. What the root causes were, what the fallout of this is going to be?
Matt Weaver: It’s very frustrating, Max. I do agree. I cannot speculate on the exact cause yet, but the NTSB has released a preliminary news release saying that it was axle involved. So there was video of the hot box throwing sparks as much as 20 miles before the derailment. And then it goes back to precision scheduled railroading, the business model of the railroad industry for doing more with less. And lately it’s been doing less with less. We’re moving less freight, still record profits, but less freight, crunch time, skeleton crews. The big issue here may be car inspection times, machinist friends, car shop friends of mine they’ve talked about in the past, having two guys inspect a car taking four or five minutes to do so now it’s down to one guy pushing for 90 seconds, less than 90 seconds as little as a minute. But I can’t seen that in writing.
So I think that we really need to see the NTSB come up with a conclusive response and let’s prevent this. Let’s not have this happen again. I know as of late I’ve seen the reports of Obama era administration’s safety regulations being rolled back by the Trump administration, maybe breaking technology, saying it costs too much. The report was that it costs too much to install the new electronic control brakes. I don’t know a whole lot about those, but how much cost is it going to be to really clean this up and protect American lives? I mean, railroads don’t run through the backyards of wealthy people. So this is the working class who’s suffering from this. And I heard yesterday wells that were as shallow as 35, 40 feet that these people have been drinking out of. Those are going to have to be demolished. I hope those people have lots of bottled water.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, man. I mean it’s just like I seesaw between being just infinitely heartbroken for the people in and around East Palestine, for the crew on that train, for the first responders who we’re going to find out about the horrible health effects that they’re going to be enduring after this catastrophic derailment, right? Because it wasn’t just vinyl chloride. We’re finding from the EPA that there were more hazardous substances on that train that have already been detected in the soil and surrounding waterways. I mean, this is just a truly worst case scenario here. And I know that the reports from great outlets like The Lever, Breaking Points, so on and so forth, focusing on how the Obama administration really just caved and backed down from pressure from the freight rail industry. And then the Trump administration just gave the industry whatever the hell it wanted, and didn’t force these companies to implement electric braking systems, which may have mitigated this derailment disaster.
But I wanted to focus on the other part that you said, Matt, because this didn’t come out as much over the course of last year when we were all talking about the crisis on the railroads, right? Because I think a lot of the focus was on the engineers and the conductors, understandably so. But it was really important to hear folks like you talk about the maintenance of wayside. Talk about the car inspection side, the track maintenance side, and how that played into the larger discussion we were having. Can you just say a little more about that for folks who maybe didn’t hear that side of the story when we were talking about why the railroads are in such a crisis right now?
Matt Weaver: In my career, I’ve been on the railroad for 28 years. The business model of Precision Scheduled Railroading, PSR is decimating the manpower we’re down as much as 30% over the last 10 years in manpower of rail labor. So I see that it’s deferred maintenance. It’s often the bandaid on a broken leg style of repair and that’s kind of scary. We have a right to speak up and there are whistleblower protections and good faith challenges to things, but there’s been a lot of retaliation on rail workers, rail labor that we have our own law CFR 20109 whistleblower retaliation on railroads. I’ve actually had a case. So people are afraid to speak up because of things like this. And now back in the day when I hired him, we had six or seven guys on a track section gang, now it’s two or three. We had the bridge gang I hired on, we had six guys. Now it’s three or four. There’s not enough guys to do the work. And the work is being deferred till there’s an emergency when there’s a disaster. “Oh yeah, we’ll fix it now.” But preventative maintenance is not as popular with the shareholders as it used to be in the sixties and seventies.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, man, this is just what happens when you just do and commit to the just in time sort of production model. Again, everyone who listens to the show will know my rants about it, but we fucking told everyone that this was going to happen. You can’t just keep cutting operating costs year, after year, after year. Slashing the workforce in one of… That makes one of our most vital supply chains run year, after year, after year. We know the statistics, there used to be over 500,000 folks working on the railroads in 1980. Now there’s less than 150,000. The rail carriers have collectively cut 30% of their workforce in the past five or six years alone. They have done this to themselves and they have done this to rail workers, and they have done this to us because we are watching the, what happens when you keep throwing these preventative safety measures, these essential staff who are there to make sure that all the checks are in place, that everyone’s looking at, that you have people looking at the bearings on these trains, inspecting the cars, inspecting the wheels, inspecting the track, maintaining these parts of the infrastructure so that we don’t end up with catastrophic derailments like this.
And Matt, you said, because I think I have another interview coming out for Breaking Points with another friend of the show, Jay, a longtime trained dispatcher who we’ve interviewed a number of times on the show before. So listeners that’ll be out today, tomorrow, this weekend. But we talked about how he was looking at that same video you mentioned, Matt. The video where you can see the fire on the train like 20 miles outside of East Palestine. And again, we can’t speculate, but he said it looks like a bearing problem, which is something that these folks who are doing the car checks and the inspections would normally catch. But those workers have been slashed to the bone. And I just wanted to ask if you could say a little more about that there’s only 90 seconds that people have to check these cars. Could you just say a little more of what is supposed to be checked and how can you do that in 90 seconds?
Matt Weaver: So I’m not in the mechanical department. I’m in engineering. Bridges, buildings, and track. But the mechanical guys are in checking bearings, hoses, the knuckles. They’re looking at the rolling stock and they’re, their eyes on are what are finds this. There’s also discussions of hot box detectors that have been eliminated. I guess it’s not a federal law to have the hot journal hot box detectors. So we need to find out more about that as well. But it’s like real life Monopoly. In 1900, we had 132 Class 1 railroads, I believe. Now we’re down to seven pushing for a merger to make it six. And there’s the Monopoly board, four railroads on the board. And here we are. And society is going to suffer because of this. We already are about just in time shipping and shippers not getting their goods, and embargoes on shippers. The shippers were on our side and the STB hearings for, “You need to hire more people, you need to get this shit moved, pick up our cars.” But just before we were able to go on strike, the shippers kind of turned on us and demanded that Congress impose the PEB, which is very frustrating. The shippers, they’re serving the shareholders too, but damn it, we need to get our voice heard. And I appreciate you helping us do that.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, we’re here with you always, brother, through thick and thin. Again, I wish we were talking under less horrific circumstances, right? Last time we chatted, it was because scab Joe Biden was forcing, and Congress were forcing a contract down your guys’ throats, giving derail carriers and their Wall Street investors everything that they wanted. Now we’re talking about a worst case scenario with this catastrophic and toxic train derailment in East Palestine. And this stuff is, it’s not inevitable. We can avoid this. We can reinvest in the workforce that maintains this vital infrastructure. We can make our rail system better if we just actually listen to workers and stop letting Wall Street destroy this vital component of our supply chain. And… Oh, go ahead Matt, please.
Matt Weaver: No other industry in America has these profit margins. They’re so spectacular. They’re pushing for an operating ratio of 55. And if you talk about the fast food industry, they’re shooting for operating ratio ratios to get under 90. It’s absurd that they’re making so much money. They’re making so much profit. They can afford to do this better.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, they absolutely can. They are making billions, and billions, and billions of dollars. And the other thing I want to say to folks, ’cause I got to let Matt go in a minute. Again, please follow railroad workers. Follow Railroad Workers United stay on top of this because what you will see is that yes, this catastrophic derailment in East Palestine is where the eyes of the nation are right now. But these derailments are happening all over the place. Like Norfolk Southern itself had two derailments the same week that Biden and Congress forced that contract down rail workers’ throats. We posted about it on the Real News Network Twitter account. You can go find it. And so Matt, I just wanted to sort of ask before I let you go, for folks who are watching this and feeling helpless, and scared, and infuriated about all this, what can they do to help? What can they do to support you and your fellow railroad workers, and just any sort of closing thoughts that you had about this situation and the larger cluster mess that we’re in right now?
Matt Weaver: At this point in time, Railroad Workers United, railroadworkersunited.org is where you find on the website is doing a fundraiser for making movies and videos to bring these circumstances to light. Just started a GoFundMe. They had one prior to, for bargaining that did really well. And we are actually hiring videographers and people as staff, which is very unusual for a cross craft solidarity group that really has no building. We’re not the union. We’re a group of union workers working together. All of rail labor coming together because we know we have the same needs in common. So definitely go to railroadworkersunited.org and listen in. A new release came out today with a couple of the things and that John Stewart clip.
In a few days Austin Locke will walk back into the Queens, New York, Starbucks store he was fired from seven months ago. He’ll also get a wad of back pay, and money from civil penalties. Locke had a target on his back because he was involved in a union drive at the store, but his reinstatement didn’t come from the National Labor Relations Board. Instead, his case was taken up by the New York City…
For Disney workers, the “Magic Kingdom” is quickly losing its magic. The company recently announced that it was laying off 7,000 workers to cut operating costs, pulling the rug out from under thousands of employees who had dedicated themselves to their work at Disney. The layoffs were praised by the business community, including the billionaire hedge fund investor Nelson Peltz…
An alliance representing rail workers across the United States published an open letter late Thursday urging all of organized labor to support the nationalization of the country’s railroad system, arguing that the private and inadequately regulated industry has “shown itself incapable of doing the job.”
“In face of the degeneration of the rail system in the last decade, and after more than a decade of discussion and debate on the question, Railroad Workers United (RWU) has taken a position in support of public ownership of the rail system in the United States,” reads the letter, which was published as the small town of East Palestine, Ohio is attempting to recover from the toxic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train two weeks ago.
“We ask you to consider doing the same, and announce your organization’s support for rail public ownership,” continues the letter, which was addressed to unions as well as environmental, transportation justice, and workers’ rights organizations. “While the rail industry has been incapable of expansion in the last generation and has become more and more fixated on the operating ratio to the detriment of all other metrics of success, precision scheduled railroading (PSR) has escalated this irresponsible trajectory to the detriment of shippers, passengers, commuters, trackside communities, and workers.”
In its open letter, RWU—whose ranks include workers from a number of different unions and rail professions—noted that “on-time performance is suffering” and “shipper complaints are at all-time highs” as rail carriers prioritize their profit margins over all else.
“Passenger trains are chronically late, commuter services are threatened, and the rail industry is hostile to practically any passenger train expansion,” RWU’s letter states. The workforce has been decimated, as jobs have been eliminated, consolidated, and contracted out, ushering in a new previously unheard-of era where workers can neither be recruited nor retained. Locomotive, rail car, and infrastructure maintenance have been cut back. Health and safety have been put at risk. Morale is at an all-time low.”
The alliance also pointed to the White House-brokered contract that Congress forced rail workers to accept last year as evidence of broader industry dysfunction. At the center of the contract negotiations—which nearly resulted in a nationwide strike—was the issue of paid sick leave, which is denied to most rail workers due to PSR.
The solution, RWU contended, is to nationalize the rail industry, a step that would open the door to “a new fresh beginning for a vibrant and expanding, innovative, and creative national rail industry to properly handle the nation’s freight and passengers.” The organization is calling on allies to back its resolution supporting public ownership.
“During WWI, the railroads in the U.S. were in fact temporarily placed under public ownership and control,” the open letter notes. “All rail workers of all crafts and unions supported (unsuccessfully) keeping them in public hands once the war ended, and voted overwhelmingly to keep them in public hands. Perhaps it is time once again to put an end to the profiteering, pillaging, and irresponsibility of the Class 1 carriers.”
\u201cThe railroads, their CEOs, and the hedge fund robber barons will not listen, but railroad workers have the solution to managing and operating critical railroad infrastructure.\u201d
— Railroad Workers United \u270a (@Railroad Workers United \u270a)
1676575877
The derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine have catalyzed discussions on how to prevent similar disasters from occurring in the future. Some, including environmental groups and progressive lawmakers, have implored the U.S. Transportation Department to take urgent measures to improve rail safety, including modernizing critical braking systems.
But others have sided with RWU in arguing that while narrow reforms may be necessary as near-term solutions, they ultimately won’t be enough to solve the rail industry’s deep flaws, which stem from the prioritization of ever-greater returns.
“We demand that Congress immediately begin a process of bringing our nation’s railroads under public ownership,” the general executive board of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) declared in a statement late last month, just days before the fiery crash in eastern Ohio.
“Railroads are, like utilities, ‘natural monopolies,’” UE said. “The consolidation of the Class 1 railroads in the U.S. into five massive companies over the past several decades has made it clear that there is no ‘free market’ in rail transportation.”
“Our nation can no longer afford private ownership of the railroads; the general welfare demands that they be brought under public ownership,” the union added.
Read RWU’s full open letter:
Dear Friends and Fellow Workers:
In face of the degeneration of the rail system in the last decade, and after more than a decade of discussion and debate on the question, Railroad Workers United (RWU) has taken a position in support of public ownership of the rail system in the United States. (see Resolution attached). We ask you to consider doing the same, and announce your organization’s support for rail public ownership.
While the rail industry has been incapable of expansion in the last generation and has become more and more fixated on the Operating Ratio to the detriment of all other metrics of success, Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) has escalated this irresponsible trajectory to the detriment of shippers, passengers, commuters, trackside communities, and workers. On-time performance is suffering, and shipper complaints are at all-time highs. Passenger trains are chronically late, commuter services are threatened, and the rail industry is hostile to practically any passenger train expansion. The workforce has been decimated, as jobs have been eliminated, consolidated, and contracted out, ushering in a new previously unheard-of era where workers can neither be recruited nor retained. Locomotive, rail car, and infrastructure maintenance have been cut back. Health and safety have been put at risk. Morale is at an all-time low. The debacle in national contract bargaining last Fall saw the carriers ±after decades of record profits and record low Operating Ratios—refusing to make even the slightest concessions to the workers who have made them their riches.
Since the North American private rail industry has shown itself incapable of doing the job, it is time for this invaluable transportation infrastructure—like the other transport modes—to be brought under public ownership. During WWI, the railroads in the U.S. were in fact temporarily placed under public ownership and control. All rail workers of all crafts and unions supported (unsuccessfully) keeping them in public hands once the war ended, and voted overwhelmingly to keep them in public hands. Perhaps it is time once again to put an end to the profiteering, pillaging, and irresponsibility of the Class 1 carriers. Railroad workers are in a historic position to take the lead and push for a new fresh beginning for a vibrant and expanding, innovative, and creative national rail industry to properly handle the nation’s freight and passengers.
Please join us in this historic endeavor. See the adjoining RWU Resolution in Support of Public Ownership of the Railroads, along with a sample Statement from the United Electrical (UE). If your organization would like to take a stand for public ownership of the nation’s rail system, please fill out the attached form and email it in to RWU. We will add your organization to the list. Finally, please forward this letter to others who may be interested in doing the same. Thank you!
In solidarity,
The RWU Committee on Public Ownership
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Every Wednesday since Nov. 2022, over 1,000 healthcare workers in Madrid have staged walkouts in protest of working conditions which they say undermine their ability to provide proper care and threaten patient health. The striking physicians are demanding at least 10 minutes to see each patient in general medicine, and at least 15 minutes for pediatric patients. Deteriorating conditions are certainly linked to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but doctors also suspect that the state may be intentionally undermining the public healthcare system in order to introduce privatized healthcare. This video is part of a Workers of the World series on the ongoing cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producers: Sato Díaz and María Artigas Videographer and editor: María Artigas Translator and narrator: Marina Céspedes
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Reporter: Neither the cold Madrid winter, nor the rain is stopping the striking primary care physicians and pediatricians who have been taking to the streets of Spain’s capital every Wednesday since November. Over a thousand healthcare workers come together weekly to resist the deteriorating conditions in the country’s healthcare system.
Jaime Roel Conde: We have been on an indefinite strike for two months all family doctors and pediatricians who work in primary care in Madrid.
Protesters: (chanting) Public healthcare!
Fran García: The reason why we have called the strike is basically to have time for patients in the consultation room. 10 minutes in family medicine and 15 minutes in pediatrics. To have more time to listen to them calmly, make a correct diagnosis and give the correct treatment. Conditions are very precarious. We are seeing 60-70 patients per day. There are times when we have two or three patients at a time in five minutes. It is impossible to work if you have no time. It takes time to provide quality patient care.
Reporter: The healthcare workers, who were considered heroes during the pandemic, have now been forgotten by the Spanish administration, especially in the Community of Madrid, the territory that includes the City of Madrid, governed by the ultraconservative president Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Madrid’s investment in healthcare ranks last in Spain, having only invested 1284 euros per capita in 2022. For this reason, doctors are mobilizing and the doctor’s union “Amyts” has been on strike since November 21.
Jaime Roel Conde: Primary care is the foundation of the healthcare system. It is the gateway. All patients enter through primary care and we, by doing our job well, are able to solve 80% of our patients’ health problems. This prevents the hospital from collapsing and from having to deal with all the health problems. Therefore, what we do is to ration our resources. Also, we are the one pillar of the entire healthcare system that is dedicated to prevention, to solving problems before they appear.
Fran García: In the last 20 years, because this didn’t start yesterday, primary care work has been deteriorating little by little because more family doctors and pediatricians weren’t hired. Positions of those who retired or were transferred were not filled, thus overloading the colleagues who are currently working with the workload of the ones that left. In general there are problems with family doctors and pediatricians in primary care throughout Spain, but there are certain measures being taken in other communities that were not implemented in Madrid. They are trying to hire more professionals and trying to give a little incentive to those who are left with modules of hours at a slightly higher pay than in the Community of Madrid. In the Community of Madrid practically nothing is being done.
Reporter: Poor working conditions are causing stress, anxiety and other health issues in the doctors themselves, who have been increasingly using PAIPSE, a program that offers comprehensive care for healthcare professionals. About 200 doctors from Madrid use this service. In addition, more and more doctors are leaving Madrid for other communities where working conditions are better. However, this is not slowing down the doctors in Madrid from continuing with their demands: they are asking for an increase in public healthcare funding, for more doctors to be hired with these funds, and for patient consultation times to be extended to 10 minutes in Family Medicine and 15 in Pediatrics.
Ana Isabel Díaz: Us professionals feel burned out by the situation we are going through, the stress at work and the patient overload. So much so that I am not going to be able to attend the whole protest because I have an appointment at PAIPSE today. PAIPSE is a program that provides comprehensive care for health professionals that currently treats a lot of primary care professionals, because we are all burned out due to the work situation we are going through. We are trying to raise awareness in the population, to make them see that we are not complaining about the money, we are not complaining for political reasons, we are complaining mainly because we are exhausted and we can’t take it anymore.
Protesters: (chanting) Now Madrid, Now we must clap our hands!
Adelaida García: I was alone at the health center for a period of time, without a substitute doctor to take over the other vacancy, I had to see around 40-50 children per day, between visits and phone calls, and on some occasion it was up to 70-80 patients. This makes it impossible to provide the children with the care they deserve.
Reporter: Doctors have even occupied a neighborhood association center in the city of Madrid. Since January 19th, dozens of doctors have been sleeping and occupying the building to pressure Díaz Ayuso’s government to accept their demands. The occupation, which began with 15 doctors, now involves about 150 healthcare workers.
Ana Isabel Díaz: Well, to support the lock-in protest, the truth is that we have the help of the neighbors who are amazing, who are wonderful, who bring us food. Our co-workers also come, they also bring food, they encourage us, they support us, the neighbors are great and the truth is that if it were not for them perhaps it would really be much harder. Well, this is the 14th day of the doctors’ lock-in. If us doctors have locked ourselves in and we have been here for 14 days, like I said, it is because we are extremely worried and we have to raise awareness in the population and realize that if we are doing this, which we should not have to, it is because we are very worried and have to find a way to make everybody aware of what is happening.
Reporter: The deteriorating conditions in primary care and pediatrics are leading to a decrease in patient care quality and disease prevention. Patients are being forced to go to hospitals and emergency rooms, which are becoming increasingly overcrowded which in turn, is leading to many people having to opt for private medical insurance. Coincidentally, the Community of Madrid’s conservative administration ranks first in private healthcare investment. They spent an average of 789 euros per capita in 2021 and are seemingly pushing the agenda of defunding public healthcare, in favor of the private sector.
Protesters: (chanting) These are the hands that take care of you!
Jaime Roel Conde: Well, what we are mainly asking for is that the Community of Madrid has to increase investment in primary care. Over the past ten years this investment has been declining more and more and we are losing more and more professionals, because the working conditions are not the most adequate. So we need more staff to be hired, we need a limit for the number of patients that can be seen in a day. We are asking for about 31 patients for family doctors and about 15 for pediatricians. And furthermore, what we are asking for is that a series of measures be taken to ensure the loyalty of doctors in training and to make sure that the residents who are trained every year in Madrid want to stay and work in Madrid. The suspicion we have is that the the Community of Madrid’s administration has a privatization plan. They begin to erode the primary level in order to achieve a poorer quality of service, and that finally results in the system gradually losing quality and thus achieving a progressive and surreptitious privatization.
Fran García: Well, we have to consider that if public health care fails, sooner or later private health care will fail. Private care does not have the capacity to take on all public care, so people should not believe that with a €50 insurance policy they will have everything solved. There will come a time when public care, public health, will fail, private care will overflow, and there will be services that cannot be covered because they do not have the support of public health care.
Ana Isabel Díaz: Many of the services are being privatized because they are not investing in primary care, so money is being given to the private sector to fill the private sector’s coffers, taking it away from the public health system. And that is much more costly. So we need that money to come to primary care, to the public health system, because it’s the fair thing to do for all citizens, and it does not discriminate on the basis of a patient’s bank account. It doesn’t matter if you have millions in your bank account or nothing at all, the health system will continue to take care of you and if you need a heart transplant, you will get it regardless of how much money you have. And if you need care for your child, you are going to get it no matter how much money you have. That is what we are fighting for.
Jaime Roel Conde: Public health is one of the fundamental pillars of the Welfare State. Here, in Spain, we have a Welfare State which could be better, but which has taken us many, many years to develop, and it is based on several fundamental pillars, one of which is health care. Health care is one of the backbone mechanisms of this society, because all Spaniards, all people residing in Spain, not only Spaniards, have the right to a health system, to a public health system which in principle is built to be a quality system, to ensure a better level of health for the population and that no patient, for any reason whatsoever, be exempted from this health system.
Reporter: The doctors’ fight is not only for their labor rights, but also for maintaining one of the social pillars of Spain: a public, free and universal healthcare system.
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In this special worker solidarity livestream from February 15, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke with workers involved in the ongoing unionization struggles and strikes at Warrior Met Coal, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Medieval Times, Temple University, and Hastings Schools food service, including Haeden Wright, president of UMWA Auxiliary Locals 2368 and 2245; Bob Batz Jr., interim editor at Pittsburgh Union Progress; Erin Zapcic, union steward for Medieval Times Performers United Buena Park; Austin Martin with the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA); and Laurie Potthoff, a cook at Hastings High School in Minnesota.
2022 was a year of intense labor struggle, and that struggle has very much carried over into 2023. If we want to see the labor movement grow, we need to be there for workers when it counts the most, and we need to do whatever we can to make sure they win their fights.
As multiple train derailments punctuate public concern about the safety of industrial freight trains and put mounting pressure on powerful carrier companies and the Biden administration, railroad workers are finally making some progress with their longstanding demand for paid sick leave that nearly led to a nationwide railroad shutdown in December. Train derailments are piling up. On February 13…
Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York, are seeking to form the company’s first union, the workers announced on Tuesday, with help from leaders of the Starbucks union effort that has seen prodigious success over the past two years. “We want Tesla to be the company we know it can be. Our union will further Tesla’s principles and objectives, including by helping to serve as the conscience of the…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), now in charge of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is pledging to go after executives for Starbucks, Big Pharma and railroads over their rampant greed — and he’s not afraid to use his subpoena power to do so. The pharmaceutical industry is one of his top targets, Sanders is saying, for working for decades to fleece the American…
On January 31st, France saw widespread strikes as workers across the country took to the streets to protest against the government’s proposed pension reforms. In Paris, the strike brought the city to a standstill as public transportation was severely disrupted, with only minimal services operating. Trade unions and left-wing political parties are at the forefront of the strikes, which are part of a larger movement against the government’s proposed reforms to the country’s pension system that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The government has pledged to press ahead with the reforms, but it remains to be seen how the situation will develop in the coming days and weeks. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer: T. Kelly Videographer: Timothée Zourabichvili Video editors: Timothée Zourabichvili & Leo Erhardt
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Narration: A coalition of major labor unions, opposition political parties, and activist groups are continuing their campaign of strikes and associated protests across France. On January 31st 2023, millions of people went on strike once again to increase pressure against Emmanuel Macron’s government’s plans to raise the retirement age two years to 64. The CGT labor union counted more than 500,000 protesters in Paris and more than 2 million nationwide, which was a higher turnout than the January 19th demonstration. Schools, transport networks, electricity production, and oil deliveries were all affected.
Stephane Destugues, General Secretary of the Steel Industry Federation: Today we demand a fair pension reform which takes into account all our pensions paid and the toil of our jobs. In our field, there is a lot of hard work, especially in the steel industry and factories, making it difficult to work until 64 years old. Of course, we have to do something for pension reform, but postponing the retirement age is not the right decision. In the next few years, young people will enter the workforce later and will also have to retire later. We should listen to all unions before we make these decisions, not just the congressmen, senators, and the government.
Atika Darras, Orly Airport Support Officer: I am demonstrating for myself, my children, all working people, and my grandchildren. My pension will be fine, but the problem is for future generations. The president gives power to the bosses while we are crushed. There is no hope with this president. He does not see the poor people who suffer, who wake up early in the morning to go to work and come home late at night. The bosses think they are heroes and can do what they want with their employees, but the employees are the ones who suffer. We will not give up!
Remy Clarac, a computer engineering consultant: We have come to defend the counter-project to the pension reform because we think it is unfair and we want to raise our voice. The delay of the retirement period is unnecessary, and we want the government to change its project. This reform is said to solve the economic problems of the pension, but in reality, it is solving other economic problems, and we do not want the workers to pay for it. We want to keep our pay-as-you-go system and not become like the USA. We want solidarity to be a higher value than profits and capital, and we want the government to listen to us and stop their project that only benefits the richest.
Narration: In 2010, right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. Macron’s current right-wing government has proposed sweeping reforms in a similar vein that were initially halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, with lockdowns and the 2022 election win behind him, Macron has tried again with the reforms.
Etienne/Jeanne, Spectacles Intermittent Workers: I am against this reform which is very unfair. More than 9 out of 10 current employees are against this project, and more than 60% of the population. For five years we’ve been fighting against this reform, and it’s still not over. It’s time for the government to listen to us and to the majority of citizens on issues of climate change, society, etc… and today there is a great citizen mobilization because of this reform. Parliamentarians are also mobilizing massively, against this very unfair reform. But the government still does not listen to us, so the only solution is to be in great numbers today, and really some kind of convergence of struggles. We really need to all be here, not only a part of the population, but the young, the old, the hospital workers, the teachers, the LGBT people… There really is an intersection that has to be dealt with to create a balance of power, because there’s no other way to get them to listen to us.
Gerard Eunice. Firefighter: Today we are in solidarity with many different professions, against this reform, which seems to us totally unjust and unfair. As firefighters, we enjoy a special status because of the dangerous nature of our work, and we want to defend it. But we are here in solidarity for all professions. Society continues to evolve and firefighters are faced with more and more dangers nowadays, during our missions, which sometimes involve difficult relations with the citizens. On the one hand, the state places medals on our coffin, but on the other hand the state is incapable of recognizing the danger of our work. This reform shows us once again the total disrespect for our professions. A European professional firefighter today has an average age of death of 66 years, so the least would have been to recognize this fact with this reform. But they haven’t done so. We have a government that only engages in dialog to get people to talk. If it’s just to get people to talk, it’s pointless. So today it’s a government that makes people talk while bragging about organizing reunions, but if it’s just about people expressing themselves without really listening to them. That’s not negotiation, that’s not dialog.
Narration: A poll by the OpinionWay survey group showed that 61 percent of French people supported the protest movement, a rise of three percentage points from January 12. The government has since failed to backtrack on the reforms. There was a significant police presence at the demonstration which ended with clashes with protestors, the use of tear gas and some arrests. More nationwide general strikes and protests are planned for later in February.
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Set in postwar London, Alfie features Michael Caine as a chauffeur bent on promiscuity. After impregnating his girlfriend he takes off on vacation. He continues his life of womanizing, but he can’t hide forever. A misfortune strikes and Alfie is forced to face the product of his ways.
This not the crux of the question, since I was a monogamous dater and monogamous husband. It’s more centered around the discordance and dissheveled nature of humanity in the Western world, which unfortunately is the litmus test for much of the world now, which is another conundrum for me: why the hell would Japan or Oaxaca or Istanbul give a shit about McDonalds, Disneyland, Top Gun and disposable diapers? How viral is Western consumerism and retail disease? How diseased are the people of the world to buy into a disposable culture, from the ketchup containers to the children to the old people?
Marketing, man, and that is a very sophisticated psychological end game. The end run around is the pervasive marketing of everything, and the fake quality of modern humans. All about selling or acting or putting on a show.
Yeah, I’m writing this on the heels of yet another attempt to have a job tied to some civil and social justice gig. I got the call for a 15 minute interview Tuesday, with the fair housing coalition of Oregon, working in four rural counties as an outreach-educator specialist, getting stakeholders (I despise that term) to get around a table, or in a room or on Zoom to understand the rights of renters, tenants, and home buyers.
Up my alley, and alas, I have worked around the housing “issue” for several decades, as an urban and regional planning grad student, and then with clients in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Vancouver, and on the Oregon Coast.
Two people interviewed me, and one big question was what I thought of how poverty has come about. Oh how it all ties into Capitalism, about the Gilded Age, about the first Anglo Saxons coming to this “New World” and exploiting the Original peoples. Exploiting as in murdering. Stealing land. Polluting the land. Moving them off the land. Re-educating them. Turning the real people into savages. Enslavement and denigration. Haves and haves not. You know, workers, laborers, even the professional managerial class, at the whim of the One Percent and the Five percent. You need poor people to make a buck, and you need poverty to be rich. You know, toil and labor to make the gilded ones money.
But it is deeper, sort of like economic sanctions on countries like Cuba or Venezuela — sanctions against the majority of people in Capitalism to pay the fines, fees, tolls, poll taxes, taxes, add-ons, service fees, tickets, violations, late charges, penalties, and the mortgages.
All those millions working hard to stay afloat, and then some medical emergency, some run-in with a lawyer or insurance company or the law, and bam, the semi-stable household is put into a spin — economic, spiritual and existential spin.
There will always be a PayDay monster lurking in Capitalism. There will always be scammers and legions of thieves who get away with it in CAPITALISM. Poverty makes millions of people money — cops/pigs, courts, judges, schools, governmental program managers, workers in all those so called welfare divisions. You get it! Take a child out of a home, and you will find dozens of workers and managers managing that Child Protective Services intervention-destruction.
In any case, I got a second interview, this time in front of seven people and with an hour to dog and pony my self into their midst. Provide a seven minute Zoom teaching modality or Power Point. Also tell us what a strategy would be to undertake an outreach program in Clatsopo, Tillamook, Lincoln and Columbia Counties. One educator and outreach honcho, and what would you do and who would you engage to get this off the ground?
One hour equalled five hours or more of prep. I actually called county commissioners in two of the counties. I did much research on all the places that might be engaged with low income folk or people of color. The obvious thing is to get into the faith communities, with support services like work source and Department of Human services departments, and even school districts and landlord groups.
Here, what I was being asked to get ready for:
Here are some details about the interview.
It will be about an hour long. The whole team will be there.
One question for you to prepare in advance: Talk about how you would conduct an outreach campaign to raise awareness of fair housing in rural Columbia, Clatsop, Tillamook and Lincoln Counties. Who do you think would be most important to reach and what would your strategies be for reaching them?
At the end of the interview, we will ask you to conduct a seven-minute training on any topic you like. We want to see what your facilitation style is like. We will make you a cohost on Zoom so if you have a PowerPoint to share, you can.
I talked to one woman originally from Michigan who was a county commissioner in Clatsop County. She had spent much time in Portland, and she told me that she had experienced living in Lansing, Michigan as a white woman who witnessed redlining and major discrimination against Black Americans in their attempt to get affordable housing.
She had that poster of Che on her wall.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
She gave me great insight into her county, and how the rural-urban divide has a crass and prejudice guiding mark — “These trust fund babies or super rich come into our Oregon Coast Communities and think that the IQ for our rural residents is 30 points lower than from their urban locales. Everyone comes here to be served and waited on, even for a couple of days. Everyone, even the struggling middle class, want that two or three days of pretending to be like the rich — fancy food, big hotel, and loads of beach fun and trinket buying.”
I even talked to the president of the Landords Assocation, and I interviewed another commissioner, with the eye toward their opinion on how an outreach campaign might work in their respective communities — counties with 27K, 50K, and 42K populations. Rich homes, arts, retired, and then the linen changers, the cooks, the medical technicians, the teachers, you know, coffee shop workers, bussers, cooks, even the simple laborers to keep those amenities and Martha Stewart homes, kitchens and decks prettified.
The lack of housing is huge, and affordable housing is few and far between. Of course I am a socialist, and these systems of oppression and exploitation have to go. Homes and apartments and mixed neighborhoods have to be run by us, the people, the new American government, and, sure a few can get in on building and designing, but there should never be a society where rents are artificial for investment and profits. A one bedroom apartment for how much in Seattle, Chicago, here? And what are those wages of the linen changers and hotel cleaners?
It will take so many tens of millions to strike against this super exploitative system, and we need a public commons, public utilities, public health, education and transportation. Housing has to be part of that, not some bogus HUD lie, which is predicated on which insane political party is in office. Safe, affordable housing. That human right!
Fact: In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), recognizing adequate housing as a component of the human right to an adequate standard of living.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. (source)
Oh, well, that job went the way of the Dodo, as many of my job applicatons have: “Hi Paul, Thank you so much for your time and energy today in the interview and the obvious passion you have towards social justice. We didn’t feel that you were the right fit for this position at this time and we are going to continue our search. Again, thank you for your time and energy. Sincerely, S…!”
There are those buzzwords — “energy” and “passion” and” social justice.” AND, “not the right fit.” I will not get into the errors of their ways, or the dynamics of being age 66 and being interviewed by all women except one, but all in 30 something age range, two hitting forty something. Spilt milk? Sour grapes? Come on, that missive-whatever-rejection-note tells me shit about the interview, what was missing, what I did right, about anything, really. Me thinks there is prejudice here, including age, gender and alas my white skin discrimination. I’m a communist, which I did not disclose, but certainly they might have Googled me, and then, you get the semi-half picture of me (right … little of what I write or how I express myself gives anyone doing a cursory search of men much to know about me — the real me).
Oh well, another interview bites the dust, another quippy essay in the can.
Note: For a Continuation of this diatribe around bandwagons and following the sheeple, go to Dissident Voice, “Let the Bandwagon Play On!”
On Jan. 5, the Biden administration announced new legal pathways to the US which include expanding the “Parole Process” for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans, a policy that will favor richer migrants. Migration from these countries has dropped since then.
The Sandinista party won the presidency of Nicaragua in January 2007 and from that time through 2020 there was only a trickle of migrants to the US – at most a few hundred a month. But that began to change in 2020 when Nicaraguans who crossed into the US and were encountered by the border officials found that they were not expelled, and instead given help with air or bus transportation to get to their final destination.
In February 2021 many of us, inside and outside of Nicaragua, began to hear the stories from people who crossed the border or from their family or friends that, once they crossed the border, they should just find a border official and they would receive help with transportation getting to the home of family or friends. The other news that traveled like wildfire was that there were jobs available and with pretty good wages (US$14 to 18 an hour). Since 2021 the number of Nicaraguan migrants increased substantially. And the dream of migrating north spread like a virus.
From Nicaragua’s population of 6.5 million, more than 163,876 Nicaraguans were “encountered” at the US border in FY2022 (Sept. 30, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022) — many times more than those who entered during the same period in 2020 – just 2,291, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. In FY 2021 there were 50,109. In the first three months of FY 2023 (Oct., Nov. and Dec.) there were 90,553.
This graph shows how migration from Nicaragua has grown in the last three years from a very low level in US fiscal year 2020 to a much higher level in the first months of fiscal year 2023, that is Oct.-Dec. 2022. Source: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended a record 2.2 million migrants at the southwest border in the 2022 fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Close to half were rapidly expelled under the Title 42 policy.
It is uncertain how many people are migrating to the U.S. from Central America. But the Migration Policy Institute says of the 3.4 million Central Americans living in the U.S., about 85% of them are from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 450,000 people arrived at the border in 2020, as the pandemic slowed world-wide migration. In 2021 the number nearly quadrupled to at least 1.7 million migrants who were expelled or detained in the U.S, or in Mexico. More than 189,000 arrived at the U.S. border in June 2021, the record for one month.
Under Title 8, which is what has been primarily used with Nicaraguan migrants in recent years, a person can be removed quickly or allowed to stay. Most Nicaraguans are released temporarily into the US while their removal cases (and possible asylum claims) are adjudicated. They have also been largely exempt from Title 42, unlike other Central Americans and Mexicans. Title 42 began under the Trump Administration as what they called a “Covid health-related norm,” and is used as an express mechanism to expel undocumented migrants. Under Title 42 when border officials encounter most people from Mexico and the northern triangle of Central America they are expelled to Mexico without immigration charges. The one good thing for these migrants is that they can try again, if necessary, multiple times; recidivism rates are now 26% compared to 7% in 2019.
The Biden Administration, like that of Trump, has spent more than half a billion dollars since 2017 in Nicaragua destabilization efforts in hopes of overthrowing the Sandinistas – the US’s perceived nemesis since 1979 when the Sandinistas overthrew dictator Somoza – a faithful ally of the US who took good care of US investors and oligarchs. US-imposed Sanctions in 2018 and 2021 are one way the US has turned the screws on Nicaragua’s economy. Many of the other mechanisms they utilize require hundreds of millions of dollars, and as more US citizens become aware of the progress for the majority in Nicaragua, like free universal health care and education, the best social infrastructure and roads in the region, greatly improved gender equity, low maternal and child mortality, 90% food sovereignty, 99.2% coverage in electricity mainly with renewable energy, the US may find taxpayers don’t want their money used on attempted coups.
Biden and the corporate media mouthpiece for the government have been trying to convince the US public that the Nicaraguan government is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security and part of what they call “the troika of tyranny” – along with two other maligned countries – Cuba and Venezuela. But this narrative didn’t jive with the fact that people weren’t leaving Nicaragua, especially when citizens of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have migrated in droves for the last thirteen years or more. Thus the uptick in Nicaraguan migration in the last two years allows the US government and media now to say, “ People are fleeing repression!” and constitutionally elected president Daniel Ortega “is a dictator.”
They don’t tell you that the US puts pop-up advertisements on Facebook and Instagram in Nicaragua about good jobs in the north, or that Nicaraguans are treated much better when they cross the border than their Central American brothers and sisters. With more Nicaraguan migrants it is easier now for the US to blame migration on the administration of the Sandinista government. However, from 2007 through 2020, all under the Sandinista government, a negligible number of Nicaraguans went north, a drop in the bucket compared to the high number of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
So it makes no sense that the Sandinista government is now the reason that people have recently migrated in record numbers, especially since every aspect of life has improved yearly from 2007 to April 2018 and again from late 2020 to date. The break in that trend included the US-directed coup attempt in 2018, the pandemic, and two hurricanes.
The New York Timesin December wrote that Nicaraguans were leaving because of violence. Nicaragua is the safest country in Central America and one of the safest in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has about one-eighth the percentage of murders as Honduras, and about one-fourth that of El Salvador and Guatemala. Nicaragua is the Number One country in the world for percentage of population who say they always feel at peace – some 73%!
In September 2021 US President Joe Biden said that “it is not rational” to deport to Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela migrants arriving from those countries… “I am now mindful of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The possibility of sending them back to those countries is not rational …”
In 2021 and 2022, Border Patrol Encounters were higher than in the past across the board and this has to do with the economic effects that the pandemic had on the majority of economies. Some elements more unique to Nicaragua that spur migration are two sets of US sanctions, two very damaging hurricanes at the end of 2020, and less work in Costa Rica.
The sanctions have been against individuals but also have limited multilateral loans, especially from the World Bank and the International Development Bank. The World Bank did not provide loans between March 2018 and November 2020. The sanctions have spurred migration – supposedly something the US does not want – so according to Tom Ricker in a 2022 analysis of migration from Nicaragua, the sanctions have backfired, leading to more migration north.
For at least forty years many Nicaraguans have worked all or part of the year in Costa Rica, many gaining legal status. But Costa Rica’s economy was hurt by Covid and fewer jobs in that country resulted in more people returning to Nicaragua than going to Costa Rica in 2020 and 2021. In 2021, over 5,000 more Nicaraguans left Costa Rica than entered it. Lack of jobs in Costa Rica, for those who have historically worked there, is one of the reasons for more migration north to the United States.
Other pull factors are the US labor shortage and the fact that Nicaraguans have been largely exempted from Title 42 at the US border. If people can successfully cross the border, the border guards help them get to their destination, they likely find work and, compared to their home countries, good paying work which allows them to send money home. Other pull factors are US companies advertising jobs to Nicaraguans on social media.
According to the US Chamber of Commerce, there are currently more than 10 million job openings in the US and only 5.7 million unemployed. In Minnesota there are only 43 workers for every hundred job openings. I personally know eleven undocumented migrants working in Minnesota. All these migrants had received the message from a friend or family member to simply look for a border official after crossing over; and now they are working in the US under Title 8. From what they tell me, at every hearing they are given more time to stay in the US without a final decision about their status.
About a fourth of migrants living in the US, some 11 million, are undocumented and 55% of those are from Mexico. The number peaked in 2007 and has since dropped slightly. The highest increase was from 1994 to 2000 with the signing of NAFTA which destroyed an entire sector of Mexican agriculture. The US Department of Labor National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS) estimated that 70% of the 1.8 million US agricultural workers were born in Mexico and that 70% of foreign-born crop workers are undocumented. So at least half of US crop workers are undocumented. US agriculture employs a higher percentage of undocumented workers than any other industry in part because pay in this sector is lower than in other sectors.
Biden’s latest immigration plan: brain drain and deportation
The new US plan for Nicaragua is “brain drain,” and will only benefit the Nicaraguans who are better off and more educated and not currently in the US under Title 8. On Jan. 5, the administration announced new legal pathways to the US which include expanding the “Parole Process” for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans. Up to 30,000 individuals could be accepted per month from these four countries. They must have valid passports, an eligible sponsor and pass vetting and background checks, can come for two years and receive work authorization. Those applying must have someone with legal papers in the US who agrees to provide financial and other support.
When the migrant arrives at the US port of entry, there will be additional screening and vetting. If granted “parole,” it will typically be for two years. Once granted parole, migrants may apply for employment authorization and social security numbers. By January 27, according to CNN some 800 Nicaraguans had been pre-approved for “parole” allowing them to travel by air, at their own cost to the US.
The same White House statement says that for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians, there will be “new consequences for individuals who attempt to enter unlawfully, increasing the use of expedited removal.” Individuals who irregularly cross the Panama, Mexico, or U.S. border after Jan. 5, 2022, will be subject to expulsion to Mexico, which will now accept 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries who fail to use these new pathways.
With the new pathway for more educated middle-class Nicaraguans, there will likely be more deportations back to Managua, or to Mexico and then Managua. Many of these people are from the dryer poorer countryside of Nicaragua where their earnings are low. Many have previously worked in Costa Rica, and will likely try their luck there again.
But what about all those unfilled jobs in the US, especially in the agricultural sector where Nicaraguans and others are picking up the slack? And what about the US administration’s claims that people are leaving Nicaragua due to repression?
It’s quite possible that, despite the new measures, Nicaraguans, like Cubans, will continue to be treated differently than their Central American neighbors and allowed to stay longer until a final legal decision on their cases. However, eventually it is probable that most will be deported.
This story originally appeared in Workday Magazine on Jan. 24, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
“A lot of the union busting that we’re seeing is very quiet. It’s very mellow,” says Ethan Tinklenberg, a Starbucks worker, or “partner” as the company likes to refer employees. “It’s not them making us take off our union pins or our union hats. It’s cutting our hours slowly but surely, while not promoting union leaders, and spreading misinformation about the union in conversation—but not directly, but just sort of slipping it in there with everything they say.”
Tinklenberg is a leader in the unionization effort at the 4712 Cedar Ave. location in Minneapolis, one of the top earning stores in the area. While he is energized and optimistic about the Starbucks union, he admits that union busting has been demoralizing, describing the company’s tactics as making the unionized stores miserable to work at, driving away union leaders, and draining workers of energy and enthusiasm.
Minnesota Starbucks workers interviewed by Workday Magazine attest to “soft” union-busting tactics that are on par with trends across the country: not giving unionized stores the same wage increases as non-unionized stores, not installing credit card tip readers in unionized shops, cracking down on dress code violations that never used to be enforced, cutting hours, denying promotions, and spreading confusion about the union.
OVER 270 UNIONS, NOT A SINGLE CONTRACT
Just over one year since the first union win in Buffalo, New York, 270 Starbucks stores have unionized, and counting. While Starbucks corporate has delayed and stalled at the bargaining table, workers across the country have continued the pressure on the mega-coffee chain, complicating its once-progressive public image. Through nationally and regionally coordinated strikes and actions, from the Red Cup Rebellion to a boycott of holiday gift cards, the unionized Starbucks workers are resisting the company’s efforts to wear them down.
Starbucks workers on strike outside a shop in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Isabela Escalona.
In Minnesota, the first Starbucks union was won at the 300 Snelling Ave. S location in St. Paul. Soon after, the workers at the 4712 Cedar Ave. location announced their union win, followed by workers at the 3704 Silver Lake Road NE location in St. Anthony. Later in the summer of 2022, stores at the Mall of America and 5122 Edina Industrial Blvd. in Edina saw successful union drives.
But the workers behind this wave of unionization in the state now face a stealth war on the part of the Starbucks. The company’s “softer” union-busting can be difficult to organize against, explains Tinklenberg. At times, leadership can come off as very friendly, and even seem supportive of the workers. Yet, management is “meeting with union-busting lawyers” on a regular basis, he says, and those lawyers are helping them organize to “deny workers better pay.”
Ethan Carlson, a barista at the 300 SnellingAve. S location, says that it feels like his store is “always perpetually understaffed,” causing stress for workers and customers. Yet, when the Starbucks workers went on their most recent strike on December 16, the stores conveniently were able to find enough managers and corporate staff to cross the picket line and keep the store running, he says, a resource that never seems to be available when workers are facing heavy workload and short staffing on an ordinary day.
Ethan Carlson, Starbucks barista, holding a sign at a picket line outside Starbucks in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Isabela Escalona.
Carlson is not alone in making this complaint. Workers at other stores have accused the company of intentionally under-staffing shops that vote to unionize as a form of retaliation.
Graciela Nira, a barista at the 300 Snelling Ave. S location and formerly the234 Snelling Ave. N location in St. Paul, says that, before the national wave of unionizations, Starbucks partners had a much more free-flowing communication with managers and frequently interacted with them on the shop floor.
However, since the unionization, corporate leadership is rarely seen in the stores, and when leaders are present, they will rarely speak directly with partners. Carlson adds that when he was first hired, management avoided even using the word “union”—sometimes referring to it as “the thing.”
Starbucks is part of a broader trend of companies with progressive branding—including Trader Joe’s, REI, local coffee shops and breweries, nonprofits, and museums—now confronted by an organized workforce. Companies’ anti-union responses, in many cases, have exposed the contradictions and limits of their proclaimed values.
On Starbucks’ website, under the tab “People,” appears a banner of a racially diverse workforce wearing masks, one person holding up a fist, one wearing a shirt with quasi-activist imagery and slogans. Underneath the banner reads, “Our aspiration is to be people positive—investing in humanity and the well-being of everyone we connect with, from our partners to coffee farmers to the customers in our stores and beyond.”
The corporation’s website is filled with humanistic tones that at times can be effective in portraying a progressive image in order to attract a more liberal-leaning customer base. While this strategy may have been successful in the past, the company’s response to unionization efforts have called this image into question.
A WORKFORCE RADICALIZED BY CRISIS
While Starbucks was once hailed as a fairly decent employer with better benefits than many of its counterparts, numerous workers contest that the wages and benefits are not enough, considering the company leadership’s massive wealth (Starbucks was described in the New York Times as one of the pandemic’s “winners”).
The pandemic served as a radicalizing force for many baristas, explains Nira. During a period of intense isolation from friends and family, going to work and being with other baristas was a rare moment of social respite. Nira described a strengthened camaraderie among the workers due to the isolation of early lockdowns. “It was the only place I was really going anymore … it was the only space to physically go,” she shared.
Graciela Nira, Starbucks barista, leads a chant at a strike in St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Isabela Escalona.
At the start of the pandemic, several Twin Cities metro Starbucks locations closed, and employees were given the option of either taking a severance package or working at another location, specifically stores with a drive-thru option. Nira explains that the early pandemic was one of the first instances where workers across locations in the region could share their experiences, compare and contrast different store policies, and brainstorm ideas of how to improve the store.
If the pandemic was the first spark, the police killing of George Floyd and Daunte Wright in Minnesota fueled the workers to demand more and start asking the tough questions of their store’s leadership. Starting in 2020, workers at the 234 Snelling Ave. N location began organizing around the demand to divest from police presence. Employees, after all, don’t have to have a formal union to band together to make change in the workplace. The divestment demand grew from a shared sense of solidarity and urgency brought on by the pandemic, says Nira.
Deemed “the city’s worst designed drive-thru” in St. Paul, the city mandated daily police intervention to control traffic at that location. The agreement between the coffee shop and the St. Paul police department raised some eyebrows from workers who questioned why the police officer had to be armed to direct traffic. Two workers told Workday Magazine that they were instructed repeatedly to pay out a police officer $200 in cash from the register at the end of their shift—filing the withdrawn cash under “store supplies,” and delivering it hand-to-hand in a Starbucks panini bag to the police officer.
Although the 234 Snelling Ave. N location does not have a union, the workers did win their demand for the store to stop using police to direct traffic and, subsequently, the drive-thru at the location was closed in April of 2021.
During the divestment campaign, two workers shared that when the 234 Snelling Ave. N store manager called each employee individually to ask what they needed to make the store “feel safer,” and if they wanted to transfer to other stores, emphasizing that they contact people or entities with the company to handle any problems.
While the workers of 234 Snelling Ave. N locations were not organizing a union, some workers still wondered whether this was a covert tactic of breaking up an organized shop that was willing to make bold demands of management. In hindsight, one worker sees management’s response as a foretelling indicator of how the store would slyly break up union drives and organizing efforts in the future.
Workday Magazine reached out to Starbucks corporate with all of the above allegations from workers and did not receive a response.
A REGIONAL APPROACH TO CONTINUE MOMENTUM
These experiences of collaboration across stores would prove important months later as workers faced fatigue from the company’s union-busting tactics. Some workers are touting the importance of regional solidarity to combat the very real problem of burnout. By joining forces with other stores in their area, linking their strikes, communicating between organizers, and sharing information, workers across local shops are joining together.
Nira says that one of the most potent organizing meetings is the weekly regional call, where workers are able to connect similar concerns across stores in their area, coordinate strikes, and connect with other local Starbucks union organizers.
Carlson notes that burnout is a real factor in this unionization campaign. However, by “coordinating efforts,” organizing strikes on the same days, and having communication between union organizers across regional stores, workers are fighting against the prolonged burnout that Starbucks seems to hope will slow the workers’ momentum, he argues.
Starbucks has yet to negotiate in good faith, according to many shops across the country. When Starbucks has come to the table, management often leaves only after a few minutes. So far, no Starbucks stores have reached a contract. Several complaints have been filed with the National Labor Review Board, and in November, the body petitioned a federal court for a “cease and desist” order prohibiting Starbucks from firing workers across the country for pro-union activity.
Meanwhile, workers are taking matters into their own hands by staging walkouts and strikes.
On the sunny morning of December 16, workers at the 300 Snelling Ave. S location, went on strike for the second time in 2022, demanding the company negotiate with them in good faith. The baristas picketed, chanted, made speeches, and received a steady stream of honks from vehicles passing by, as frazzled managers crossed the picket line to keep the store open.
The picket line was lively, and several union members from other areas were there in solidarity, including a teacher and an Amazon warehouse worker. An enormous inflatable rat was staged outside the store’s entrance on the sidewalk, bringing more cheer and energy to the crowd forming outside the store.
The workers atthe 300 Snelling Ave. S location were not alone in Minnesota: Workers at 3704 Silver Lake Road NE in St Anthony were also on strike for two days, part of a national work stoppage titled the “Double Down Strike” to demand Starbucks meet unionized workers at the bargaining table.
While a year is not exceptionally long for a first contract, Starbucks’ sheer power, resources, and unwillingness to move forward with unionized shops indicate a long fight ahead, testing the commitment and will of a relatively new and young movement. With varying tactics of legal battles in court, complaints to the NLRB, lateral organizing regionally, demonstrations, and strikes, the Starbucks workers don’t seem to be backing down anytime soon.
Massive mobilizations and strikes have been witnessed in the UK over the last couple of months against the Tory government for failing to tackle the ongoing cost of living crisis. Postal workers, railway workers, public service workers, barristers, dockers, garbage collectors, Amazon workers etc. have walked out and gone on strike to demand better pay and better working conditions. TRNN delves into the postal workers’ strike and its roots in over a decade of Tory austerity measures. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Videographer: Julia Schönheit, Alexander Morris Video editor: Leo Erhardt
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Amy: Times are very hard at the moment, but we cannot and we will not back down. I’ll finish on this. Some people say being a CEO is hard. Well, try being a postal worker then.
Reporter: This strike of postal workers is one of dozens taking place across the UK, with nurses, ambulance drivers, teachers, railway workers, and more walking out this winter amid a spiraling cost of living crisis.
Britain’s Royal Mail is in a royal mess. After 500 years as the postal system of the British state, it was privatized in 2014, leading to what these posties are calling an ‘Uberization’ of their work: worsening working conditions, less secure contracts, and bringing in agency staff to lower wages.
Eddie: We’re not asking for the world, we’re just asking to be able to pay our rent and put food on the table. You’ve got people going to food banks, it’s not on, it’s one of the richest economies in the world, it’s the UK. Not on at all.
Reporter: Eddie has been a postal worker or ‘postie’ for 15 years at Tottenham Delivery Centre in northeast London. Members of the Communication Workers Union or CWU have already endured 15 strike days in this bitter dispute, and this morning are turning out to their local picket line on one of the coldest days of the year, before heading down to a postal workers rally outside the British parliament. The cost-of-living crisis has been strongly felt by these workers.
Eddie: I’ve felt the pinch. I’ve had to go to my mum with the begging bowl to pay my rent, more than once. Thankfully I’ve got a family that looks after me. I’ve felt the pinch big time. I’ve nearly had to go to the CWU to ask about helping me out with my rent, and that doesn’t make me feel good. Give us what we deserve. We worked through the pandemic, we were treated as key workers, heroes, put our lives at risk. So, anyone that fits the criteria to get rid of and bring in new people on less terms, conditions and pay, that’s what they want. They want all the old boys and girls out.
Bus Chat: Don’t stress.
Last night was just horrible.
Listen, at the end of day, from our office, 5, 6, 7 people have left.
It’s not an error, nothing is an error. They do it deliberately to sign it, to get him to panic and sign it, send it off and they can get rid of him. That’s what they’re doing.
Reporter: Delivering letters has never been a particularly profitable business. Postal workers must deliver throughout the year, from every coastal cottage to mountain huts in the Scottish Highlands. It is a public service, not a commercial enterprise.
But all the Royal Mail infrastructure was sold off in 2013 for a mere £3 billion. Shareholders have already taken £2 billion out of the company, and the chief executive — the unpopular Simon Thompson — took home over £750K as salary last year, despite the privatized Royal Mail only making profit one year out of the last nine.
Meanwhile these workers haven’t had a pay-rise in years, and Royal Mail’s last pay offer was still 4-5% below inflation — effectively a real-terms pay cut.
Jane Loftus, Vice President, CWU: They say we’re losing millions. Well, stop paying agency, stop paying managers, stop hiring scabs. Stop it! So don’t come on telly pretending there’s something wrong with postal workers. There’s nothing wrong with us. It’s just the corporate greed of capitalism in the UK who are trying to smash not only our union, but every union member.
Tony: Right now, in the 30-odd years I’ve been working in Royal Mail, I’ve never seen anything like this that’s been going on. When you privatize a company, more than likely something will go up in price, the service will go down and the shareholder will profit. This is a company that’s made well over £750 million in the last financial year. They’ve given £450 million to the shareholders, and I don’t see no investment in this company at all. It has steadily gotten worse.
Ennis: They’re doubling our workload, I mean, on the walk I do, I’ve got at least 30, 40% added to it. They want to make it into a gig economy, basically. They want to make it the next Amazon where they focus on parcels and just leave the letters aside. We have a public duty to the people here to deliver their letters. You’ve got elderly people who are waiting for hospital letters.
Chanting: Da, da, da, da…
Fuck the Tories!
Da da da da…
Fuck the Tories.
Reporter: The Tories have been ruling Britain for 12 years, and the CWU are having to negotiate with a prime minister, Rishi Sunak, that models himself on Margaret Thatcher – famous for privatizing state institutions and her union-busting policies – and so talks are becoming more drawn out and bitter.
Striking workers are often accused of being luddites, opposed to modernization. Today, Luddite is used as a derogatory term, however the Luddites were a radical faction of textile workers in the early 19th century who destroyed textile machinery that was putting them out of work, not because they were against modernization but because it was done without their consultation or consent.
And it’s the same for these postal workers, who accept that technology can benefit their work, who agree with technological advances, but disagree with managers and CEOs pushing forward with so-called modernization without consulting the experts, the posties themselves.
Dave Ward, General Secretary of CWU: People come to me, and they go, ‘you do know that letters are not delivered as much these days?’. And we say, ‘hang on a second. Do you think we don’t understand that the world of communications is changing?’ But the day that you believe that modernization is that you replace this fantastic group of workers just because you want to have the race to the bottom. Because that’s why they’re asking us to agree. We cannot agree a situation where they kick you out the door and at the same time bring in workers on less pay, terms and conditions and agency workers to casualize this industry.
Compere: The police have given us a slip to tell us how many people they estimate to have visited Parliament Square today, and that is 17,500.
Amy: Royal Mail want us to spend less time with our customers and more time delivering parcels. They want to follow an Amazon business model where they have people working to the brink of death doing as many parcels as possible. They do not want us talking to customers. They don’t care about letters anymore either. For them, that’s dead. They want to purely focus on parcels and make as much profit as possible for their shareholders so their shareholders can get dividends. Too many people at the top are hoarding the wealth. Because the 1% keeping their wealth, a lot of them are in that building there.
So yeah, there is money to go around, this company makes a lot of money and we should be getting a fair share of it, so that we can live comfortably. That’s all we want is to live comfortably. I don’t, millionaire, I don’t want to be rich. We’ve got people that work for Royal Mail that are using food banks. Food banks. So they’re working people in poverty. No working person should be in poverty. You go to work, you shouldn’t be able to afford to feed your family. So yeah, we’ve got people really struggling.
Dave Ward: I’ve been out there, it’s been overwhelming. I just want to say thank you so much for being postal workers. You are great people. We will always stand with you, and we will win this dispute, let’s get marching!
Reporter: Posties will tell you that they take pride in their work, knowing the legacy that has come before them, five centuries of playing a central role in communities across Britain. In theory, technological advances should make their work more efficient, meaning they would have more time to spend with customers, listening to their concerns, and helping more junior members of staff. Royal Mail is no longer a public company and so any spare time is seen as profit lost — but the posties won’t allow this to change without a fight.
Tony: Everybody takes pride in this company. We love this company. Everyone will go…everyone who works for Royal Mail, every member of staff will go full out to help the customer out. I’m seeing a lot of experienced members of staff leaving the job, people who’ve done 30 years, 20 years, 15 years. And we’ve started to see a high turnover of staff.
Anthony: 45 years…I think it’s 45, 46, something like that. Started here in ‘78, 44 years. What are the good points about being a postman? Certainly ain’t losing weight. Yeah, it was always a secure job, you know, the pension. But you’d, just…that link with the community. A lot of the postmen now, they’re on like, a time limit. Everything’s…there’s no ‘stay in to talk to Mrs. Smith next door’ no more. That’s all gone. You can’t stop and chat now. Because you’re timed. We don’t have enough time. If I went back out delivering along the High Road, I’d never get finished. But maybe it’s because I’m old fashioned I’ll talk to anyone who wants to talk to me, I’ll talk to them. I’ll never get it finished.
Eddie: This is part of the job, we are part of the community. 15 years in the job, if I was to lose my job tomorrow, I’d be gutted — I’m fighting for my job. I love my job and I love being a postie. You know what, I am optimistic. I know that the dispute will end and I know that we’ll get a result, it’s just a matter of time. Stay strong is my message, don’t give up the fight as Bob Marley once said.
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The nationwide push to unionize Amazon began at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island last April, when workers voted to form the Amazon Labor Union. Amazon retaliated with spurious appeals to the National Labor Review Board to nullify the election. On Jan. 11, the NLRB ruled against Amazon and in favor of the workers—but the struggle of Amazon workers is far from over. JFK8 worker-organizers Michelle Valentin Nieves, Jordan Flowers, and Gerald Bryson join TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez for a discussion on the fight to unionize Amazon thus far, and what lies ahead.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. The Real News is an independent, viewer supported, nonprofit media network. We don’t do ads and we don’t take corporate cash, which means we need each one of you to support our work so we can keep bringing you coverage of the voices and issues you care about most. So please head on over to therealnews.com/support and become a monthly sustainer of our work today. And thank you so much to everyone who is already contributing. It really, really helps.
It’s been 10 months since worker organizers at the massive JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island shocked the entire world by becoming the first Amazon facility in the United States to successfully vote to unionize with the independent Amazon Labor Union on April 1, 2022. Now, a lot has happened in that time. That’s been 10 months, and war has raged in Ukraine, coups and attempted coups have taken place in countries like Peru and Brazil. We ran through an entire midterm election cycle here in the US, and yet Amazon workers on Staten Island still don’t have a union contract with the company. In fact, Amazon has taken every step imaginable to delay the process, fighting to throw out the results of the historic Union election victory in April, all the while turning on the screws, firing pro-union workers and organizers left and right, and allegedly retaliating against worker organizers for their involvement with the union campaign.
Now, Amazon has claimed from the beginning that the election results are invalid, accusing the National Labor Relations Board of “interfering” with the election and arguing that the Amazon Labor Union organizers “intimidated” workers into voting for the union.
But on Jan. 11 of this year, the NLRB issued a seismic ruling, throwing out Amazon’s spurious claims and finally, officially certifying April’s election results. So what does this all mean for workers on Staten Island, and for their fight to hammer out a fair union contract with the company? And what can folks around the country and around the world do to support them in their ongoing struggle? To talk about all of this and more, I couldn’t be more honored to be joined today by three of those worker organizers involved with the Amazon Labor Union Campaign, and who have worked at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, including the great Michelle Valentin Nievez, Jordan Flowers, and Gerald Bryson. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today on The Real News Network.
Michelle Valentin: Thank you for having us.
Jordan Flowers: Thank you for having us.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, it’s truly an honor to have all three of you on the call today, and I know that you’ve got a lot going on in your own lives and your working lives with your organizing, so we really appreciate you all taking the time to sit down and chat with us, because Real News audiences have been very invested in this struggle. They want to see you guys win, they’ve been following this since, if not before, the union election victory in April, and they want to know what’s been going on since then and what this ruling from the National Labor Relations Board means for the campaign.
So we’re going to dig into all of that in a second. But before we do, I wanted to take a step back and get viewers and listeners acquainted with you three. So can we go around the table and just get to know this great panel? Could you all say a little more about who you are, how you came to work at Amazon, what your involvement in the union campaign is, and what it meant to you when you all won that historic victory in April of last year? So Michelle, why don’t we start with you?
Michelle Valentin: So I’ve been with the Amazon Labor Union for a little over a year, I’m the recording secretary. I’ve been with Amazon for four years. How I ended up with Amazon was, I was actually laid off from my employment, and I was going through difficulty getting a job. And it just so happened that Amazon was one of the places that I applied to when I was laid off. And that’s how initially I was hired, because it was close to where I lived. And at that time, those years ago, my daughter was just entering her first year of high school, so I wanted to get a job somewhere that was close to where I lived.
Because I was living in Staten Island and I was getting pretty tired of commuting back and forth to work, going to Manhattan every single day. It was an hour and a half, two hour commute. So that’s how I ended up in Amazon in the first place. And with the vote, because we did win by 523 votes, so it was a significant number. I was in my house crying, hysterical, with Kleenex tissues thrown around the house. I was really emotional. Everybody else was at the NOR building and I was in my house, just a mess. I was very happy, but it was a very emotional moment for me.
Jordan Flowers: Hello everyone. My name is Jordan Flowers, you can call me Jay. I’ve been working at Amazon JFK since opening day Sept. 26, 2018. I applied there once I left college. My mom was moving out, dad was moving out, so it was the only job that could help me sustain where I lived. And if people don’t know, I have lupus nephritis, which is an underlying health issue. And Amazon had been treating me unfairly. But pre COVID, I actually ended up leaving. Not leaving, taking a leave from Amazon because I didn’t like how they were treating me and my health issue. And I ended up staying out. When Chris Smalls, Derek Palmer, Gerald also, when we all walked out on March 30, 2020, to make a change at Amazon.
Maximillian Alvarez: And what was it like for you, Jay, when the results came in April that the union had won the election?
Jordan Flowers: So actually I was in that courtroom when they were doing the count. Me and Gerald were actually in the courtroom. Me, Gerald, Chris, and Derek. It was exciting. I cried, because for two and a half, three years, me, Chris, Derek, and Gerald were traveling the world explaining Amazon, showing the profits and propaganda Amazon was doing during COVID, showing how they were mistreating, the expenses he was making, even him flying in the spaceship. And how he stated on live TV that he thanks the workers for sending him the space, and letting him know that that money he used to go to space could have been in your pockets. So again, being a fresh union, I’m still learning – I’m only 24 – That a union is great, and especially in this type of work environment, with or without a health issue, Amazon’s going to treat you unfairly. So with this [inaudible], it meant a lot to me. So I definitely was in tears.
Maximillian Alvarez: Man, I was definitely doing a lot of dumb shit and not important shit like forming a union when I was 24, so kudos to you [laughs]. And Gerald, how about you?
Gerald Bryson: Hi everybody, I’m Gerald Bryson. I’m one of the co-founders of the Amazon Labor Union along with Jordan Flowers, Derek Palmer, and Chris Smalls. Also one of the co-founders of TCOEW, which basically enabled a lot of this stuff that we’re doing today. Basically, I was there, I’m not going to go through my whole story because it’s a long one, how I got involved, but I knew that this place needed a union since day one. I’m a retired industrial construction worker, so I was into building power plants, electrical plants, renovating coal mines, oil platforms, whatever. You name it, the companies I worked for, that’s the type of work I did, industrial construction. Oil fields, stuff like that.
But with that comes a lot of toll on the body and age, so I didn’t want that. So I had come home and I was working for different companies at home, and one day I ran into Jordan, and robotics. And a little light went off because I’m always… Me and Jordan live in the same building, and I ran into Jordan and basically he was like, I’m going to work for Amazon. I’m going to be in for some technology. And lo and behold, I went and put in an application at Amazon, got in there, I believe it was 2018. If I was still in there, I’d probably be there four years, four and a half years. Basically, when the pandemic came in, that’s when a lot of changes, a lot of people were worried, and had the pandemic going around.
It was me, him, Derek Palmer, and another guy, Bertram Price. He was our head manager. At any rate, even though I didn’t know how you were getting it. And I was working under Chris Smalls at that time. He was my assistant manager, my PA. And Amazon didn’t want people to know about it. They were instructing their PAs and managers not to tell the workers that anything was wrong. If somebody was to get sick and you were working next to them, they would just remove that person and not tell the other person. That’s what was going on. And at that point, I think Chris Smalls, he needs to take a lot of credit, because that’s where it really started for us. He took a stand as a boss and told us what was going on. He didn’t have to do that. I’ll always love him for that. But people were getting sick going home, and they wanted him to shut up. He couldn’t do it anymore.
They weren’t wiping the place down, they weren’t sanitizing the place, they weren’t giving us gloves, they weren’t giving us anything, no type of PPE to work properly and safely there. And that’s where this all started. They had a carnival one weekend. The world is shutting down for this pandemic, and Amazon was having a carnival in their lobby. And that’s when we had enough, we couldn’t take it anymore. Then that’s when we started to take a stand. I wasn’t even in the same department as them anymore. I had moved on to the department I wanted to go to for a long time, and I still stood with them when the time came. I was wrongfully fired, I was wrongfully terminated, but that’s where everything started.
I had been in several unions. Fight on your day off. It’s like something out of the movie Friday. Come on. So with that being said, we moved on with TCOEW and we started to protest Bezos’s mansions and embassies, and wherever he was in the world, we went. And that’s what impacted us and gave us the drive to come back. We always had the notion… I know I did. I’m a union man, I belong to several unions. So I always had the notion that that’s what we are coming back to do. And North Carolina, they had started RSW… What is it? RWDSU. What’s it? Yeah. Sorry about that guys. They started to make their move with North Carolina Amazon down there to unionize. And at that point, even though they failed, that’s when we decided we were definitely going back to JFK8 at that time to rally and start for the ALU.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and let’s talk about that more. And just for folks watching and listening, TCOEW is The Congress of Essential Workers, correct? And we’ll link to that in the show notes for this episode so you all can follow them. But I want to pick up on what Gerald was talking about, because I feel like this is something that a lot of people who support you all have had to learn themselves over the past year. Because I imagine you guys and many of your coworkers, a lot of people don’t know what goes into forming a union, getting a first contract. And when we have barely above 10% of workers in this country who are part of a union, I guess that’s not a surprise. But I think people have come to understand, watching what Amazon has done to fight accepting the results of the union election, all the reports that we’ve heard of, retaliation, people getting fired, people getting harassed and surveilled for their involvement in the union.
But we’ve also seen shit like with Starbucks. People are getting fired left and right there.
Starbucks is even closing down unionized stores. And they don’t have a first contract, either. So there’s all this delay, there’s all this bullshit that you have to put up with just to get to that first contract, which, for new unions, it takes over 400 days on average to get that first contract. That’s a long time to wait for that contract. So could you guys tell us a little bit more about what it’s been like for you in the time since the union election victory in April? What have you been hearing from other folks in the warehouse? What have you experienced? For folks who didn’t realize it was going to take this long just to get the election results certified by the NLRB, what has been going on in those 10 months since then?
Gerald Bryson: I just want to say, I’m going to let somebody else answer it. For some reason I was looking at something in North Carolina, and what I was talking about, where they had their election that was Bessemer, Alabama, just to clarify that. I’m sorry about that, guys.
Maximillian Alvarez: You good, Gerald. Thanks man. Michelle, why don’t you hop in, let us know what it’s been looking like for you in the 10 months since the election victory.
Michelle Valentin: So for the 10 months since the election, there’s been a lot going on. There’s been a lot going on because since the election happened, now we have to work on the structure of the union. And with that being said, it’s a lot of work, because not only do we have to now get the workers involved, but we also have to get a lot of information out, we have to speak to a lot of people. So the thing with us is that, whatever goes on inside of the building is according to Amazon policies, because again, we’re still employed by Amazon. So even though we’re trying to get the structure of a union started, we have to also abide by Amazon policies, we still have to abide by the rules of being employed, and things of that nature. So what happened since the election is that Amazon changed a lot of their policies. And because they did, that affected a lot of our organizing within the building.
So one of the main things that they did was literally, I think it was a month after our election, they changed the off-duty policy for employees. So the off-duty policy right now is you can’t stay within the building 15 minutes after your shift ends or 15 minutes before your shift starts. So that affected our organizing, because those of us that are still working there and we have access to the building, a lot of us were coming in early or leaving late or organizing during our lunch breaks. And the organizing is just simply a lot of conversations, handing out literature, getting contact information, people’s email addresses, people’s cell phone numbers. So that policy affected our organizing so much. So we were trying to get around that.
And the thing is that because, visually, we’re just there, because we have our ALU T-shirts, so we have ALU T-shirts, some of us wear vests. So they would watch us in the cameras, in the break rooms, wherever we were, to see where we were at any given time. If I was in the break room with Derek speaking to employees, because me and Derek, it’s very easy for us to work together because we’re in the same department. And that’s how Derek ended up recruiting me, is because we were in the same department, so we were around each other for hours at a time, because at that time, I was doing 10-hour shifts.
So speaking to our coworkers inside of the break room, it would usually be me and Derek and then we would have an HR person or one of the area managers come and say, hey, we have this off-duty policy and we see that you’re not scheduled right now, or you’re not on the clock right now, or you’re not scheduled to be here today. We need you guys to leave. So it wasn’t just the managers and HR asking us to leave the building, it was the interruption of these conversations, which are very, very important conversations that we’re having with the workers, because these are organizing conversations.
So let’s say, me and you, Max, we’re in the break room and we’re talking about, we’re going to have a meeting on Thursday and we’re going to do it at Make the Road, they supplied a space for us to have a meeting. And then you would have an HR rep or an area manager come and completely interrupt your conversation inside of the break room, which they’re not supposed to be able to do, because that’s protected by federal law. But because they implemented this off-duty policy… So there’s just little things like that. So we have to work our way around that. So now we have offsite meetings, we have more organizing happening at the bus stop, we have meetings that are happening in the union hall.
The organizing is very up and down. Sometimes we have a bunch of people that are showing up, and then sometimes we have not a lot of people showing up. And that has a lot to do with peak season, because again, the organizing goes according to what’s happening inside of the facility and what’s happening with Amazon. So in peak season, full-time employees, they’re mandated to work up to 60 hours a week. So some of them are doing five hours straight and they’re doing 12-hour shifts, five days straight. So a lot of the workers are exhausted, they’re tired, they’re in pain, they’re stressed out, they’re aggravated, and it’s extremely difficult to get people to come to offsite meetings in the middle of peak when they’re tired and they’re stressed out. Also, you have all of the new hires, and then you have the people that were there before.
We have a lot of workers that have stuck through us through thick and thin, and those are the long-term workers that have been there 2, 3, 4 years, that were there through COVID. People like myself, people like Derek, that we literally worked the entire COVID, before the vaccine, before all of that stuff was out. I would say it’s almost like a friendship type of a thing, we grew a friendship as coworkers because we went through that together. So that’s something that we bonded with, where there’s certain workers that come into meetings, and I’m very happy to see them because these are people that I’ve been working with for 2, 3, 4 years, and we’ve gone through a lot together.
The fact that it took nine months for us to be certified, that’s just another tactic that was going back and forth. I can’t get into details about it because it’s a legal thing, but let’s just say that it dragged on for a really long time. But the certification came through, and we’re super happy about it. And it’s really impacting our organizing in a very positive way. Because now that we’re certified, it’s like, now we’re certified, the government is recognizing us.
And so now Amazon has to come to the table, Amazon has to negotiate with us, Amazon has to speak to us. And again, within the facility it changes. Because for a lot of people and a lot of the corporate people in Amazon, they feel like, well, they’re certified, but we’re just going to put an appeal for it. So they’re already starting in. Even with the message that they sent from A to Z, I know I got one, I’m pretty sure Jordan got one because he still has access to the A to Z. But even in the message of A to Z that’s sent out to all the Amazon workers, Amazon is talking about, they disagree with the decision, and they’re going to appeal it. So they said that on A to Z, and they sent that message out to all of their workers. So again, they’re just refusing to recognize that this is what the workers want.
And then they’re making it a personal thing where it’s like Amazon against Chris Smalls and all of this stuff. Which yes, it has a lot to do with Chris Smalls, but it also has a lot to do with those workers. You can’t forget that it was won by 523 votes. That’s 523 workers that voted for this union. Whether Chris Smalls and Amazon and what’s going on, even besides that going on, there’s still 523 workers that voted to unionize, regardless of the fact. So again, we’re just going with this back and forth game of chess, where now the workers are getting to the point where, you know what? We won the election, we’re certified, now we’re going to start to get involved.
And I can’t speak a lot about what’s happening with the worker meetings, but there’s a lot more people getting involved with the worker meetings. There’s a lot of people that I have never seen before that are getting involved, and it’s a wonderful thing to have that and to have workers come to you, and you don’t even have to recruit them at this point. That whole conversation in the break room, at this point since we’re certified, we can almost bypass that conversation, and they’re just showing up to the meeting. And that’s something that’s beautiful to see, because they get the email or text message and boom, they’re showing up to the meeting. And that’s a wonderful thing, because they’re taking it upon themselves to actually participate and get involved with the union, to speak to us and to see what’s happening and to realize that they are the union.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. And of course, I want to stress for viewers and listeners, there’s a lot going on inside the union, inside the warehouse that we’re not going to ask about because, like Michelle said, it’s not just about what people can see from the outside, there are a lot of organizing discussions that are better kept within the union. There are legal issues that we have to tiptoe around because we’ve seen how much Amazon loves to weaponize the legal system. So I just wanted to emphasize for folks that I’m not going to ask our great guests here to comment on anything that would put them or the unionization effort at risk. And to also follow up on something that Michelle said, which is a lesson that all of us, I think, need to learn as we continue to invest in this struggle, report on, and read on and listen to the folks involved in this struggle is, we’re talking about a warehouse with over 8,000 people.
It’s not just Jeff Bezos versus Chris Smalls. Like Michelle said, there’s a lot of dynamics there. But this is a massive warehouse that I saw. Last time I was talking to Jay and Michelle, I was standing out in front of that massive thing. It’s like multiple football fields stacked on top of each other. There’s a lot of people who made this union effort what it was, and over 500 people more voted in favor of the union than didn’t. And so it’s a really big effort we’re talking about here. And Jay and Gerald, I just wanted to ask if you all had anything to add in terms of what it’s been like for you or your current and former coworkers in the 10 months since that union election victory?
Jordan Flowers: All right. So I know we’re in the same room so he pointed at me to go first. In my experience in the last 10 months, I was terminated last year, Sept. 26 or the 27. They said I voluntarily resigned, which again, they saying that I signed the document saying that I resigned when I didn’t. I was fighting to get disability and accommodations, which again, another tactic of union busting to state that I left. With the certification, it’s definitely a great thing. We bypassed. Like Michelle said, they have to come bargaining with us. And I would also like to take it a step back to even when Michelle said when they do their off-duty policies and they make their own rules, I could state that Jeff Bezos personally said that in the congressional hearing, that Amazon doesn’t know their own policies, that they make rules to abide by their favor.
So Amazon always has a trick to make sure that, in any circumstances, it could go their way. So like I said, with the certification, the 8,000 workers, a big facility. Again, JFK, it’s 14 fields side by side. It took a lot of effort, it took a lot of organizing, a lot of events, a lot of food, a lot of free shirts, and actively engaging, even bringing them to the office now. You’re starting to see more workers starting to come up and come to the office and utilize the resources that they have right now. Even us announcing that we have, what do you call it? Workers’ compensation. More workers are starting to come out with worker injury. So definitely with the certification, it’s definitely going to boost our impact inside the facility and the coworkers inside.
Gerald Bryson: Basically, these guys covered mostly what’s going on. It’s an honor to be part of it. When they announced to us that we’re legally a union and everything else, it’s such an honor. We fought for years for this, for the whole thing. All in all, it’s all for the whole thing, for the better treatment of people. And for me, it’s an honor to be part of it. I can’t tell you what it really means. I’m still going through my own personal battles. I would like to clarify for the audience that that’s all Amazon and other big corporations are worried about is wins. We’ll just appeal this, we’ll just appeal this. When does it stop and it’s not an appeal anymore? We have to take a look at our own systems, our platforms that are supposed to help us. Like the National Labor Relation Board, they’re short on funds right now. This is a department of the government, short on funds. How’s this possible? How’s it possible that they are short on funds where they can’t give due process to what’s going on with everybody?
Because that’s what they were there for, everybody. And this is what we’re facing. Whether we want to realize it or not, we’re facing big corporations that have hammered down and taken funds away from us. This is all a political game. This is our own people we’re fighting against. This is our own government we’re fighting against. And that’s what we have to realize, man, everything we’re doing, we’re going to win or we’re going to get what we want. It’s just that simple. Amazon Labor Union is here to stay. Whether they want a deal and walk around, they’re going to have to sit down sooner or later. Like Michelle said, we got some things rolling around in our minds to get this moving properly. But they’ll probably appeal. And what everybody’s not realizing is when they appeal during that year, they’re prolonging their own fate, too.
Because they wanted to appeal, so that just gives more time. They’re still dealing with my personal case, you understand what I’m saying? And that’s what I’ve been going through. Appeal, after appeal, after appeal, after appeal. And they’re losing, losing, losing. For some reason, corporations believe in Ws. And right now, Amazon has no Ws against us. None. They’re 0-2 against me, getting ready to be 0-3, maybe 0-4, who knows? Against the ALU to 0-3. It’s crazy. What are you fighting for? And these are the things that have to be exposed to the public. What is Amazon doing at this point? Because Bezos will come out and tell you he’s trying to be a great person, a great humanitarian. I want people out there to understand what we’re dealing with. He gave $100 million apiece to three people when he got off his penis airplane.
He gave them all $100 million, yet he’s fighting Gerald Bryson for $39,000 a year. Now this year he turned around and gave somebody who was… I love her to death. I’ve known of this beautiful woman, nice person, but you are going to give Dolly Parton $100 million, but you want to fight Gerald Bryson in court for the little $39,000 salary again? You spent millions to fight Gerald Bryson in court. You spent millions to keep ALU from becoming a union, from becoming a fact. Millions. But you get off your plane, you do this, and you hand these people all this money, and that’s what makes you great. And people got to look at this. That’s what you really have to look at. These are the people that we’re dealing with. It’s crazy. You want to fight me for that little bit of money, so you’re willing to pay $50 million or better to lawyers to make sure that I don’t get a three-year salary of $39,000.
So that’s just something to think about, because it’s about Ws, as far as corporations are concerned. And right now, Amazon is way behind in Ws with us. And that’s where we’re standing. We’re going to move forward for the people and do the right thing. I didn’t get in this for myself. If I had got into this for myself, I probably could have sold out a long time ago. I’m in this for everybody. What we do now affects everybody, because you know what? This is one point of life. We all want our kids to be president of the United States and better, but some of them aren’t going to be there, they’re going to end up in labor jobs. So let’s make it comfortable for when they get there, that they have a sound union at least, and then maybe they can move on from there. Sometimes places like this are stepping stones. But you gotta make it comfortable enough that we can work, take care of our families, and do what we need to do to move on.
Jeff don’t want you to stay in Amazon no longer than three years. He wants you out. You have a cap off when you’re just a laborer. And those are the things that ALU is fighting for. I’ve been here five years, but I’m still making $22 an hour because I capped out three years ago. You understand what I’m saying? It doesn’t make any sense.
And it’s all modern day slavery. We have to look at it for what it is. The slavers didn’t leave us, they just made it better and made it more convenient. You have a place like Amazon that says, come on, we got a job for you. No matter if you was messed up two weeks ago or whatever, you can go to Amazon and get a job. As long as you have two arms, two legs and a torso, you’re good. Leave the head at home. You start thinking, you’re dangerous. That’s the way it is.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and I think that’s a real important message for everyone watching and listening to sit with. Regardless of what happens with this or any union election, the reasons that drove workers to band together to fight for a union in the first place are still there. People’s bodies are still being broken down, Amazon is still churning through flesh and blood human beings and then spitting them out when they have nothing left to give. They’re still screwing people out of their disability accommodations and unemployment checks. All of these issues are still plaguing workers, and so we cannot give up on them.
We have to keep showing up and keep holding companies like Amazon, like Starbucks, like Chipotle, accountable for what they are doing. We need to keep demanding that they actually respect workers’ rights and respect people’s democratic rights. Like Michelle was saying, it’s already an indictment on our system that workers could win an election fair and square, against all odds. And yet a corporation like Amazon, the second largest private employer in the United States, can use all of its money and all of its resources and weaponize the legal system to refuse to acknowledge the results of a democratically sanctioned election, and drag this process out.
So we have to keep showing up, is what I’m saying. And as we’ve all acknowledged here, the ALU is not going to stop fighting. We know that Amazon is going to probably try to appeal the latest ruling from the National Labor Relations Board. We don’t want to ask Michelle, Jay, and Gerald to give away what they’re planning to do next so that Amazon can know what they’re going to do next.
So I wanted to just round out by asking you all if you had any final words for folks watching and listening out there, other workers at other Amazon facilities, and ultimately, what can people watching and listening do to support you all, support the ALU, and make sure that they do what they can until you guys get that first contract?
Gerald Bryson: The ALU is going to move forward. It don’t matter what Amazon’s doing, we’re ready for them. We’ve been doing this. Nothing they do surprises us. They can appeal but so much. They’re running out of appeals, they’re running out of anything, because basically when you’re appealing, you have new evidence and stuff, they don’t have no new evidence for anything. They’re just running with the same old stuff. If any one of them is listening, holler.
Anyway, with that being said, I just want to say this, we as the people, everybody, if you’re working for Amazon, UPS, wherever you are working, I just need you to know that we are the power, bro. We are the people. We make this thing spin, not these one percenters. We make this globe move, we move the stuff, we make the stuff. And that’s what we got to remember. And we have to stand up for ourselves.
Yo, listen, when I went to Amazon and after walking home, feet swollen every day and all that shit, I had had enough. I was a problem child to them from the get because they were doing wrong from the get. And that’s what is going on all over. We have to remember who we are as a people and what we want to leave for our children, as I said, too. Not everybody’s going to be president or congressmen so let’s get it right, no matter if you’re rich or poor. Because I see plenty of rich people’s kids working certain places they shouldn’t be too. Maybe they’re the black sheep, I don’t know. But the point is that, like I said, not everybody’s going to be in a high position, and we end up in jobs like this, like Amazon and UPS and other places like that. And so what we’re here to do and what we all need to do is make sure that we’re taken care of right, that our families can survive on what we’re doing there. That our families can prosper, that we can prosper and move on to maybe a better job, schooling, whatever.
But we have to have a union to afford these opportunities, because these guys, they’re not going to give it to us. They don’t give a crap about us. They’re the 1%. So it doesn’t matter whether they’re white and powerful, because it’s not a matter of color with them, because they look down at their own people who do this, that are in these places. So we’re dealing with people that have one goal and one goal only, and that’s to fill their pockets and to take care of their family dreams or whatever it is. Whether it’s to fly the space or whatever the fuck, go to the next dimension, I don’t know. But basically, we have to stand up for ourselves. And so I’m saying that to everybody. If you’re working in a place like Amazon, it’s time to stand up. Bottom line. Generation you, baby.
Michelle Valentin: So I wanted to agree with everything that Gerald said, and I wanted to say that unions can be formed anywhere in any workplace by anyone. It just simply is your coworkers, yourself, having conversations, getting together to make things better at work, to create a better environment, to get better pay, to get better benefits. It’s possible for anyone to do this. It’s also very important that if you’re already in employment where you have an established union, that you get involved with your union. We have a lot of established unions out here that people are not involved with, people are not participating. They only come around when they have a grievance of some sort. And it’s an issue, because it looks bad across the board for all unions. So I’m speaking to everyone, because a lot of people feel that if they’re already in an established union or in this really big powerful union, that this doesn’t apply to them, but it actually does.
Let’s just say with the nurses strike right now, that’s an amazing thing that they were striking right there in Mount Sinai. My daughter was actually born there in 2003. So it’s like wow, to have my daughter born in Mount Sinai in 2003, and now 2023, to see all of those nurses out there striking, and it’s a really big deal. It’s a really big deal that you get involved with your unions, that you participate. If you see things going on with your union that you’re not happy about, then get involved with your union. Run for office, volunteer, show up to meetings, do things like that. To not just start up your own union and to create a new union and have an independent union such as ours, but also get involved with your current or present union as well. And anyone can do it. There’s a lot of issues involved here when it comes to Amazon.
There’s definitely, race does come into play, class does come into play. I feel like that’s a conversation for another day. But the race and the class does make a big impact with what we are dealing with here, where Amazon really feels that they can just do or say whatever they want. They feel like they don’t have to answer to anyone. They don’t have to answer to their workers, they don’t have to answer to the president of the United States, they don’t have to answer to the federal government. They feel that they have everyone in their pocket, they feel that everyone has a price tag. And when you are working with people, you have to put your coworkers first, and you have to put your coworkers needs first. Even sometimes if you don’t get along with your coworkers, there’s going to be times where you disagree. Plenty of times where I have run into disagreements with coworkers, but you can just agree to disagree, move on, and try to find solidarity and collective power.
Jordan Flowers: I’ll just keep it short and simple because they both hit it on the spot. But definitely support your local business. I still say this in my interviews to this day, that COVID is still around, not as high. But during COVID, COVID was high in Amazon, so we still worry about workers who are still catching COVID inside these facilities, and these are the same customers that are ordering from these facilities. So just be careful how you order, and again, definitely shop at your local business because what you can get at Amazon, you can get right at your local business up the street.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. So that is the great Michelle Valentin Nievez, Gerald Bryson, and Jordan Flowers from the Amazon Labor Union. Please do not forget about them. Follow them on social media, donate to their organizing funds, keep raising awareness about their organizing efforts whenever you can. Just do what you can to stay vigilant and stay supportive, because it’s going to be a long fight, and we need to be there for them. So Michelle, Jay, Gerald, thank you all so much for joining us today on The Real News. I really, really appreciate it
Jordan Flowers: Thank you for having us.
Gerald Bryson: Thank you.
Michelle Valentin: Thank you.
Maximillian Alvarez: For everyone watching, this is Maximillian Alvarez. Before you go, please head on over to therealnews.com/support. Become a monthly sustainer of our work so we can keep bringing you important coverage and conversations just like this. Thank you so much for watching.
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) are demanding answers from the U.S.’s leading restaurant industry group after an explosive New York Times investigation revealed that the group has, unbeknownst to workers, used millions of dollars of workers’ own pocket money to lobby against raising their wages. In a letter to National Restaurant Association (NRA)…
Employers are being charged with breaking the law in a huge portion of union elections, a new analysis shows, as union membership hits a record low across the U.S. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), employers were charged with breaking the law in 39 percent of union elections filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) between 2019 and 2022. These charges cover a variety of…
Thousands of Greek workers have mobilized against runaway energy and fuel prices in recent weeks. Although spiking fuel and energy prices are now a global phenomenon tied to inflation driven by corporate profiteering and blowback from failed sanctions against Russia, the crisis has been particularly acute for Greece due to EU-imposed privatization of its energy sector. TRNN reports from the ground as workers fight to increase stagnating wages in light of the cost of living crisis. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer: Christos Avramidis Videography: Alexandros Litsardakis Video editor: Leo Erhardt Translation: Danai Maltezou
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Reporter: In Greece, thousands of people demonstrate and many of them even burn their bills, having as their main demands decreases in prices and increases in wages.
Greece has seen one of the greatest increases in the cost of living in the EU, even though Greece ranks 19th out of the 26 EU nations in terms of wages.
Greece has the highest electricity price and the second highest fuel price in the EU.
One of their main demands is an increase in wages so that at least keep pace with the rise in the cost of living.
Giorgos Stefanakis: Workers have not received an increase in salaries in 15 years. They work for reduced wages and in many cases part-time. This means that the average salary is 500 to 700 euros, a situation that a working-class family can’t afford anymore and that was the main reason why on November 9th there was a very big national strike and today it escalated into a large rally here, in Athens, in the Syntagma Square.
Antigoni Mavromati: The whole summer during the high season we have been applying pressure on hoteliers to sign our sectoral contract with substantial increases. We mobilized repeatedly in all the hotels of Athens and we escalated this struggle into the very successful strike of November 9. We will continue to react. Our sectoral convention has been signed, we are not satisfied with it, because the 5.5% that is given us for 2023 can not meet our real needs. Inflation is much higher.
Reporter: Due to inflation, the most oppressed strata of the working class cannot even fulfil their basic needs
Vaso Akrivou: Unfortunately, we avoid going to the supermarket as much as we can. We probably cut out more of our diet, and we try to buy products that are as cheap as possible. From my workplace, two cleaners, the school guard and some teachers went on a strike because they considered this strike as very important.
Reporter: The huge electricity price plays the most important role and has two main negative consequences. Firstly, many citizens are not able to pay their bills and secondly, there are price increases in the economy as a whole.
Giota Statha: The privatization of the electricity market happened under the usual pretext used for all privatizations that is to say, offering better services to citizens and lowering prices as a result of the competition. That really didn’t happen. The provision of services has dramatically decreased.
Many people were left without power for days just from a simple snow last year and the prices have increased by 300% in the first 20 years of the privatization, while it is only over the last year, that wholesale prices have been increased about five times more.
Reporter: However, the negative consequences of this situation do not affect everybody. This is the official report published by an energy company as read by the workers who demonstrated outside their offices
Activist: I am going to read to you the 9-month report for the basic financial figures of the group.
This year’s turnover, compared to last year has increased four times over from 1,6 billion to 4,5 billion with profits that increased by 121% compared to last year.
Giota Statha: Electricity in Greece has long ago ceased to be regarded as a common good. Electricity is a commodity and is subject to market rules, the law of supply and demand. 39.2% of Greek citizens say… that they are unable to warm their household 50% in Greece is unable to pay electricity bills. This is a “first prize” for Greece, in Europe as a whole
Reporter: People have been burning their bills in many different cities [People Chanting: decrease the rent prices, raise the wages] and blocking the entrance of electricity companies.
Dimitra Rompoti: In order to buy the essentials so that you can provide yourself with food, body and house cleanliness and if one has a child all of those cost at least 100 euros. Who has 100 euros to spend for the supermarket every week? Nobody.
Reporter: The cost-of-living crisis affected the already poor working-class, whose situation had already worsened due to the memorandum agreements and the basic salary reduction implemented in 2013. The basic wage today is lower than it was in 2012
Dimitra Rompoti: Ιn Greece and before the surge in inflation that we have now it wasn’t that we had a minimum wage that could help us get through the month. Austerity policies started a long time ago. The minimum wage is currently gross 713 euros, as net income, that is 611. At least 300 euros per month for the rent, 100 euros per week for the supermarket. Do the math. We’re not making it.
Nikos Nikisianis: The official inflation in Greece may be 10% but the goods that are highly important for most people namely food, housing, electricity, have even higher increases. The increases were attributed to the international energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, and so on. The reality is that they have been influenced by international circumstances, but to a greater extent, they are attributed to the recent privatization of the power market in Greece. Private energy providers have the privilege of selling power at the most expensive price that they produce it. That is, if electricity from natural gas, for example, costs 300 euros, and electricity from hydroelectricity costs 30 euros all electricity will be sold at the price of the most expensive, i.e. 300 euros. This is the policy of the “Energy Exchange” which was imposed on Greece by the European Union, and it was implemented in an even more extreme way, obviously in order to increase the profits of these private companies.
Nikos Nikisianis in an activist action: To abolish the energy exchange.
Reporter: Videos go viral with activists singing humorous birthday songs and blow out candles for the minister that privatized the network inside electricity companies’ exhibition stands
Nikos Nikisianis in an activist action: The privatization of electricity has been the biggest theft to happen in the Greek state over the last decades.
Activists [singing birthday song]: Long live little Kostas and many profits.
Nikos Nikisianis: We wanted to target private companies that speculate on the Energy Market and specifically, [Kostas] Hatzidakis who was the first Energy Minister of New Democracy [governing party] and he consciously wanted to connect his name with the privatization company of DEI (Public Electricity Company) by promising that that once the privatization phase is over, consumers will have cheaper and better services of electricity.
Reporter: As a matter of fact, many people are not able to pay their rent or their debts in order to survive
Nikos Nikisianis: An average household, an average worker, a couple, 4.00-4.04 give a large of their salary, more than half of it, about 50%-60% , 4.05-4.09 to the cost of housing, i.e. rent, if they don’t have their own house 4.09-4.12 in loan servicing, if they own a house 4.13-4.15 and to the cost of energy and heating.
Reporter: The houses are being auctioned and funds are acquiring even the first residence. The worker’s unions have disrupted many auctions of people’s houses that the banks were trying to take. On November 21 the police broke the door of a low-income woman pensioner in order to evacuate the house. Immediately after, trade unions and general assemblies held a demo and threw police out of the house. A few hours later a big demonstration in the neighbourhood of Zografou in Athens was held. Τhe demo that had the banner of the trade unions in the first line confirmed that the pensioner is going to stay at her house.
Ioanna Kolovou: Thank you. Thank you so much for everything. Solidarity is our weapon. Solidarity will always be our weapon. My friends, thank you so much.
Chanting: No home in the hands of a banker. No home in the hands of a banker.
Reporter: After the demonstrations, the pensioner has remained in her house and no one has attempted to evict it again.
Activist: They received the first message, we will not let any vultures, any fund, to grab the homes of the workers, of our people.
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The January jobs report was far stronger than had been predicted, with the economy adding 517,000 jobs. There was also a big increase in the length of the average workweek from 34.4 hours to 34.7 hours, which led to an extraordinary 1.2 percent rise in the index of aggregate hours. The average hourly wage increased by 10 cents, bringing the annual increase over the last three months to 4.6 percent.
In his new role as head of the committee overseeing education policy in the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) says a top priority will be fixing what he says are “pathetically low” starting salaries for teachers across the U.S., potentially starting with legislation to set a nationwide base salary to ensure that educators are paid properly. Sanders told Education Week this week that…
Spiking inflation is generating a global cost of living crisis, and Britain is no exception. As workers across industries hit the picket lines to denounce privatization and demand action from the Tory government to raise wages, ambulance workers are now joining the fray—with a major strike action planned later in February. TRNN speaks directly with ambulance drivers and emergency medical personnel who say their real wages are falling as Downing Street’s schemes to further privatize the National Health Service only continue. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer, videographer, and video editor: Ross Domoney
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Narration: Amongst the soaring cost of living crisis in the UK, ambulance workers across England have gone on strike in an ongoing dispute over pay.
Ambulance worker 1: If anyone could caption this, this scene right now, with one word: solidarity. Full stop.
Ambulance worker 2: The government can see that we are all in need. Not just one of us, you know, not just two of us. All of us are in need. Again, it’s not really about just pay.
Narration: In the capital, London Ambulance Service UNISON members set up picket lines.
Ambulance worker 3: Ambulance, paramedics, technicians. UNISON members set up picket lines, ambulance, paramedics, technicians. All the staff here, even control, have decided to come out and strike, because nobody is listening to what we are actually experiencing at work at the moment. We haven’t got enough staff to man the vehicles. Which means the public aren’t getting the service that they deserve. We’re not being treated fairly by the government. Nobody’s listening to what we’re actually asking for.
Ambulance worker 4: I think people talk about the NHS being on the brink of collapse, and I think we’re past that. I think it has collapsed already. Currently we’re seeing hundreds and hundreds of calls, waiting pan-London with no ambulances to send. Patients are waiting hours and hours. When we arrive that they’re dying or dead already. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Ambulance worker 5: By having better pay we would be… We would be able to keep staff retention. A little bit better at the moment, we’re losing a lot of staff, because of the financial crisis that’s going on.
Narrator: Many ambulance workers within the NHS and inside the union, see their current salary as incompatible with the costs of rent, fuel and food in the UK right now.
Ambulance worker 5: We have people, that are earning say, £13 an hour. And they’re doing life saving… Life and death jobs. And you have people that work in a coffee shop. They’re on £13 an hour. Why would you stay in a very stressful job when you’re not appreciated, when you could do something else?
Ambulance worker 6: The 20 years I’ve been in the ambulance service and, essentially my money has been worth less year on year. Which, you know, is not ideal. I feel like 20 years service, that sort of loyalty needs to be, it should be rewarded. My money should be at least worth the same as it was last year. An inflation level rise is the bare minimum I feel like we deserve.
Ambulance worker 1: We’re just so busy all the time. It’s like constant. On an average of a five hour shift, which is six jobs, maybe seven sometimes. If they’re easy jobs to turn around quickly. But then you’re out. If they’re easy jobs to turn around quickly and then you’re out and then you’re out. Back to another job. Back to back to back. Or you’re standing in hospital queues. Patients and the public are getting frustrated at us. People just can be quite horrible. I’ve been assaulted, sexually assaulted, all sorts of things in my career.
Ambulance worker 3: Compared to when I joined 33 years ago, I’m absolutely, well devastated, really, about how the service has become now. It’s a job that I’m really proud to do. And it’s a job now that I feel I can’t do to the best of my ability, because we haven’t got the resources, we haven’t got the staff to take some of the strain of us. It is constant. You know, you don’t get the time to let down. Work life balance is all work and no home life now.
Ambulance worker 1: I mean, a lot of people now, a lot of ambulance workers, they’re actually leaving a lot earlier than they used to. Years ago, most people would stay and have a career, in the ambulance service for up to 7-8 years, maybe even longer. And now, people are only lasting about a year or two.
Narration: The strikes come at a time of unprecedented trade union action across the UK, with multiple labor disputes disrupting public services, in what many are calling the new winter of discontent.
Ambulance worker 5: Me and my partner, who also works for the ambulance service, have a young child, so she’s at the moment down to part-time and bills are going up, mortgage rates are going up, food rates are going up. So the the way it affects you, is the real world pay cut that we are having. When we might not have had a technical pay cut, but because of the inflation our money goes less. So, we can’t afford as much. We’re quite lucky we are both working. And we are very fortunate in that way. I do know people that are more affected than me. People having to use food banks and things like that. At the moment I’m not there, but, if inflation continues to rise, food bills go up, the energy crisis goes up further. Then yeah… our food allowance is dwindling at the moment and we’ve got a family to feed, as have so many people in the country at the moment.
Ambulance worker 6: Well, I’m more worried about the NHS because I feel that this government, is idealistically against the NHS. And they have during my lifetime, certainly, this government, the Conservative government, have, the classic playbook, have underfunded, denigrated and privatized sections of the NHS over and over again. So I’m concerned because I feel that if that pattern continues, we are going to end up with some kind of insurance based health system. Which most of us won’t be able to afford. I think a lot of us don’t maybe realize the costs involved in just having a baby, or breaking a bone. You know, these little simple things that we take for granted. If we keep going down the track, we’re going down at the moment. We aren’t going to have a free at the point of service NHS that people can afford. So it will be a system where the rich can afford to be well and the poor cannot afford to be unwell.
Narration: NHS bosses are braced for a massive day of strike action in February. Workers from five ambulance trusts in England and Wales will strike on February the 6th, if the disputes are not resolved. On the same day nurses will also stage industrial action.
Ambulance worker 2: Unite, get together and make a change.
Ambulance worker 4: We’re all in this together and the more we come together, the more likely we are to see progress.
Ambulance worker 3: The word solidarity to me means everybody joining together. We’re all fighting for the same cause. We’re like a big family here. And yeah, it’s just lots of love and everyone just looking out for each other.
Narration: In broken Britain, there is solidarity, amongst the ashes of a system that’s not working. The workers of the NHS deserve our solidarity. They are the ones who continue to save life.
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We are witnessing the rise of a unique brand of U.S. fascism, which has once again reared its ugly head and has made higher education one of its primary targets. This fascist attack on the university is made possible by the longstanding neoliberal withering of its institutions, which now rely mostly on underpaid contingent workers. The disempowerment of university labor runs hand-in-hand with a…
In November, the Office for National Statistics reported that more than 13 percent of businesses in the U.K. were experiencing labor shortages. That number has been something of a constant since the fall of 2021, when much of the economy began reopening after the extended pandemic lockdowns. In some industries, however, the numbers were far, far worse: more than one-third of restaurants and hotels…
Higher education workers are helping drive labor struggle right now. As last year closed out, a 48,000-strong grad worker strike flared up at the University in California. Not long after, across the country, adjuncts struck The New School in New York. On January 31, Temple University’s grad workers joined the ranks of that struggle. With a light winter rain sprinkling them, 750 members of TUGSA…
Schools closed and transport systems were thrown into chaos on Jan. 19 after France’s eight major unions joined forces to call a multisector strike against President Emanuel Macron’s proposed pension reforms. The unions and left-wing political parties are calling for the immediate withdrawal of the reforms, which would raise France’s retirement age from 62 to 64. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Production, videography, editing: Brandon Jourdan Associate producer: Daniel Murphy
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: On January 19th, 2023, millions of people across France went on strike in opposition to the government’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The General Confederation of Labor, or CGT union, estimates that 2 million people flooded the streets across France with 200 demonstrations nationwide, including at least 400,000 people marching in Paris.
Christian Colinet [protester]: We are here today in protest because firstly, increasing the retirement age by two years is unacceptable for us in our jobs the transport of goods, passengers, waste. So it’s impossible for us to work up to 64 years of age with highly strenuous jobs. So that’s why we are all here today to demonstrate, to say no to raising the retirement age no to contributing longer.
Clara Stemper [protester]: Yes, we already have professions that are extremely physical, that are very tiring, physically and psychologically We have colleagues who are exhausted. We have colleagues who are injured, who have back pain, knee pain or pain everywhere. We already have colleagues who have to retrain because physically they can no longer do the job. And now we are being asked to work even longer while we still have a job that is very physical and that demands a lot from our body.
Priscillia [protester]: In any case, we, in our environment, our sector of activity, medical care, they are trying to raise the retirement age to 64-65 years old. Already since COVID, it’s very difficult. People no longer want to work in the retirement home even in hospitals. Even us, the permanent staff, we cannot do it. Working up to 64 years old is not possible, physically and psychologically
Youlie Yamamoto [protester]: In fact, this pension reform, it is unjust, unjustified, illegitimate, ineffective. Why? Because in fact, this reform is a shortcut to the cemetery. They want to raise the retirement age even though it is not economically necessary to reform the pension system. It is an attack on our social security. That is to say, the retirement system, currently is a system of solidarity, of redistribution, which allows a majority of people to have a dignified and happy life after retirement, and so it is in fact a question of what kind of society do we want? It is also an extremely unfair reform because it will first hit the working class who have a shorter life expectancy, who have low-paying careers and who will already be dead [at retirement age] because at age 65, 23% of the poorest are already dead in fact.
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: While strikes are common in France, this strike was unique in that it brought all the country’s. major unions together in a united front, resulting in one of the largest mobilizations in recent history. It was the first time in 12 years that the eight largest unions came together to take coordinated action.
Youlie Yamamoto [protester]: It’s going to be a big movement. It’s historic because, already in France, what is very important is what is called the intersyndicale. It is when there is a unanimous, consensual coalition of unions, of all the unions, with all their different opinions. So we are on very broad, very solid very powerful political ground.
Guillaume Leonardi [protester]: Already that this was an inter-union mobilization is very strong, it means that all unions, as long as they are representative, so the five majorities came together. This is a strong message to the government. And today it is also a strong message to say that we are, all these unions, highly mobilized.
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: Striking workers, paralyzed public transport, halted train traffic, grounded international and domestic flights, impaired production at oil refineries, shut down schools and reduced power supplies.
Youlie Yamamoto [protester]: There are also strike notices absolutely everywhere, especially in very strategic sectors, including gasoline refineries. So, we know we have the means to hold on and bring down this reform.
Christian Colinet [protester]: Our comrades of the RATP transport, the public service sector quite important strike movements. So blocking transportation is the first step. I think in other professions like teachers, such as the territorial civil service, the state civil service or the SNCF, the RATP [transport], I think it is also a way to put pressure on the government so that we can be heard. This is to tell them that we do not want this reform
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: Despite the protests, President Emmanuel Macron vows to go forward with the proposed pension reforms. The vast majority of France is vehemently opposed to the reforms, with a recent poll showing 80% in opposition. The proposed reforms come at a time where rising food and energy costs are reducing the buying power of workers throughout Europe.
Youlie Yamamoto [protester]: So people are indignant. There are still 80% of the people who are against this reform. Again, the pension system, is the right to a dignified and decent life after a lifetime of work. So necessarily, given that there is this inflation crisis, This economic crisis is getting harder and harder for everyone. The end of the month is difficult so if life is hard, life after work is hard. It’s a catalyst, it’s not acceptable. And why is it not acceptable? Because there is a lot of wealth, there is a real issue of wealth distribution. We know that there, the figures for the CAC40 have fallen 80 billion paid out in dividends. In France, there is assistance to companies, 160 billion per year in aid to businesses. So there’s a lot, a lot of money circulating but not being shared. And the government prefers to fund that, rather than finance social security. So it’s deeply unfair. When you know that there is a lot of money that is circulating and that we can act on it, notably by taxing superprofits.
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: Since Francois Mitterrand cut the retirement age to 60 in 1982, there have been multiple attempts at pension reform, with many failing after being met by mass opposition. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé abandoned their plans for pension reform after weeks of militant strikes that were supported by the vast majority of the public. In 2010, President Sarkozy pushed the retirement age up to 62, following weeks of strikes and demonstrations. Macron’s earlier attempt to push through the pension reforms was derailed by the COVID 19 pandemic.
Guillaume Leonardi [protester]: When there is a force, a counter powerlike the trade unions which are normally this counter power which allows a dialogue that engages together all the expressions, the direct expressions of the workers when they are powerful, when they are important, and we have seen it in our country on the most big reforms, when there are many people in the street, well, the governments have heard us. Mitterrand heard us when at a time we were very much in the street and we maintained in 1995, we were heard because we were in the street a lot, because many people have said that the Juppé reform was not fair. And today, I think that to make them hear us we are going to have to mobilize more than the so-called 7% of employees that we represent.
Brandon Jourdan [narrator]: At the large demonstration in Paris, small clashes occurred near the front of the march between the black bloc and police. Police fired tear gas into the crowd, prompting angry chants:
[Everyone hates the police!]
[Everyone hates the police!]
After police retreated, the march continued. With Macron vowing to make pension reform a signature policy of the final term of his presidency, the workers are united in their plans to carry out a series of large strikes over weeks, with another large mobilization planned for January 31st. The CGT union has called for workers in the petrol sector to go on to 48 hour strikes in the weeks to come.
Clara Stemper [protester]: Afterwards, if they want to stick to this reform and continue to go in that direction, we will continue to mobilize because it is for us, and for our older colleagues for those of us who are younger, it’s for our children it’s for everyone in fact.
Christian Colinet [protester]: So we try to mobilize as many bodies as possible whether from the public or the private sector. We need to be all together and all the trade unions need to put pressure on the government.
Guillaume Leonardi [protester]: And now we’ll have to, if the government doesn’t listen we’ll have to stand our ground and show that we, we will fight to the end so that they will listen to us.
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