This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 30, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
In his new role as the chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for the minimum wage to be raised for the first time in nearly 14 years, saying that the old benchmark of $15 an hour is no longer enough.
On MSNBC on Sunday, Sanders said that it is time for the federal minimum wage to be raised to at least $17 an hour, if not more. This would be nearly 2.5 times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which was set in 2009.
“A couple of years ago, we fought to raise the minimum wage to $15. As a result of inflation, in real dollars, that should be at least $17 right now,” Sanders told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.
“Here’s the bottom line: you’ve got over 60 percent of the people in this country living paycheck to paycheck, tens of millions are working at starvation wages,” he continued. “It is not too much to ask the wealthiest country on Earth where we have massive income and wealth inequality, people on top doing phenomenally well, to say that in America, if you’re working 40 hours a week, you’re not living in poverty.”
In 2021, Sanders and progressive lawmakers fought to have a provision increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour included in the Democrats’ budget reconciliation bill. But the provision was dropped from the package due to uniform opposition from Republicans and figures like Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), and unwillingness from Democrats to overrule the Senate parliamentarian who ruled that the minimum wage wasn’t sufficiently related to the federal budget.
Because of extremely high inflation rates over the past year, $15 is about equivalent to $17 now. In fact, $15 an hour was already insufficient in 2021, many activists said; workers have been waging the “Fight for $15” since 2012, and research done in 2021 by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) found that a worker making $15 an hour working 40 hours a week wouldn’t be able to afford to rent an average two bedroom apartment in any state in the U.S.
If the minimum wage had risen with productivity in past decades, perhaps better reflecting workers’ contributions to the economy, the minimum wage would be over $23 now, economists say. If it had risen at the same rate that Wall Street employee bonuses have risen since the 1980s, meanwhile, it would be $61.75 per hour.
“The price of housing has soared in recent years. If you’re an average worker, my god, you’re paying $1,500 a month to put a roof over your head and your child’s head,” Sanders said. “The bottom line is — this is not complicated — you’ve got an economy right now that is doing great, fantastic, for the 1 percent. How about creating an economy that works for ordinary Americans? That means you raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”
With Congress dragging its feet on raising the minimum wage, the current value of the minimum wage is extremely low. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found last July that the value of the federal minimum wage has declined by 27 percent since it was established in 2009, reaching its lowest point since 1956. This has an effect not only on workers who are paid minimum wage, but also across the economy, as the value of the minimum wage has ripple effects across workers whose wages aren’t directly dependent on the federal threshold.
It’s unlikely that Republicans will pass legislation to raise the minimum wage any time soon, as the party is currently working on plans to put even less money in the hands of the working class. In this moment, however, Sanders said that it is important for Democrats to introduce legislation that puts on display the cruelties of the Republican agenda.
Though House Republicans are discussing cutting Social Security, Sanders told Velshi that he plans to introduce legislation this week that would increase Social Security payments by ensuring that the wealthiest Americans pay a share of their incomes that is equivalent to what the rest of the country pays into the program.
“I think our job in the Senate is to put concrete ideas on the table that the American people will say, ‘yeah, we should raise minimum wage. Yes, we should raise the benefits for low income seniors and improve the solvency of Social Security,’” Sanders said. “I think if we do our job, people will see the contrast between serious legislating and what goes on in the House.”
Striking Frame Group workers meet for a report back on negotiations with management in Bolton Hall in 1973.
Credit: David Hemson Collection, University of Cape Town Libraries
Democracy has a dream-like character. It sweeps into the world, carried forward by an immense desire by humans to overcome the barriers of indignity and social suffering. When confronted by hunger or the death of their children, earlier communities might have reflexively blamed nature or divinity, and indeed those explanations remain with us today. But the ability of human beings to generate massive surpluses through social production, alongside the cruelty of the capitalist class to deny the vast majority of humankind access to that surplus, generates new kinds of ideas and new frustrations. This frustration, spurred by the awareness of plenty amidst a reality of deprivation, is the source of many movements for democracy.
Habits of colonial thought mislead many to assume that democracy originated in Europe, either in ancient Greece (which gives us the word ‘democracy’ from demos, ‘the people’, and kratos, ‘rule’) or through the emergence of a rights tradition, from the English Petition of Right in 1628 to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. But this is partly a retrospective fantasy of colonial Europe, which appropriated ancient Greece for itself, ignoring its strong connections to North Africa and the Middle East, and used its power to inflict intellectual inferiority on large parts of the world. In doing so, colonial Europe denied these important contributions to the history of democratic change. People’s often forgotten struggles to establish basic dignity against despicable hierarchies are as much the authors of democracy as those who preserved their aspirations in written texts still celebrated in our time.
Coronation Brick workers march along North Coast Road in Durban, led by a worker waving a red flag.
Credit: David Hemson Collection, University of Cape Town Libraries
Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, a range of struggles developed against dictatorial regimes in the Third World that had been put in place by anti-communist oligarchies and their allies in the West. These regimes were born out of coups (such as in Brazil, the Philippines, and Turkey) and given the latitude to maintain legal hierarchies (such as in South Africa). The large mass demonstrations that laid at the heart of these struggles were built up through a range of political forces, including trade unions – a side of history that is often ignored. The growing trade union movement in Turkey was, in fact, part of the reason for the military coups of 1971 and 1980. Knowing that their hold on power was vulnerable to working-class struggles, both military governments banned unions and strikes. This threat to their power had been evidenced, in particular, by a range of strikes across Anatolia developed by unions linked to the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK), including a massive two-day demonstration in İstanbul known as the June 15–16 Events that drew in 100,000 workers. The confederation, established in February 1967, was more militant than the existing one (Türk İş), which had become a collaborator with capital. Not only did militaries move against socialist and non-socialist governments alike that attempted to exercise sovereignty and improve the dignity of their peoples (such as in the Congo in 1961, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965, Ghana in 1966, and Chile in 1973), but they also moved out of the barracks – with the bright green light from Washington – to quell the cycle of strikes and worker protests.
Once in power, these wretched regimes, dressed in their khaki uniforms and the finest silk suits, drove austerity policies and cracked down on any movements of the working class and peasantry. But they could not break the human spirit. In much of the world (as in Brazil, the Philippines, and South Africa), it was trade unions that fired the early shot against barbarism. The cry in the Philippines ‘Tama Na! Sobra Na! Welga Na!’ (‘We’ve had enough! Things have gone too far! It’s time to strike!’) moved from La Tondeña distillery workers in 1975 to protests in the streets against Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship, eventually culminating in the People Power Revolution of 1986. In Brazil, industrial workers paralysed the country through actions in Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, and São Caetano do Sul (industrial towns in greater São Paulo) from 1978 to 1981, led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (now Brazil’s president). These actions inspired the country’s workers and peasants, raising their confidence to resist the military junta, which collapsed as a result in 1985.
A group of striking textile workers demand an extra R5 per day at the Consolidated Textile Mill in February 1973.
Credit: David Hemson Collection, University of Cape Town Libraries
Fifty years ago, in January 1973, the workers of Durban, South Africa, struck for a pay rise, but also for their dignity. They woke at 3 am on 9 January and marched to a football stadium, where they chanted ‘Ufil’ umuntu, ufile usadikiza, wamthint’ esweni, esweni usadikiza’ (‘A person is dead, but their spirit lives; if you poke the iris of their eye, they still come alive’). These workers led the way against entrenched forms of domination that not only exploited them, but also oppressed the people as a whole. They stood up against harsh labour conditions and reminded South Africa’s apartheid government that they would not sit down again until class lines and colour lines were broken. The strikes opened a new period of urban militancy that soon moved off the factory floors and into wider society. A year later, Sam Mhlongo, a medical doctor who had been imprisoned on Robben Island as a teenager, observed that ‘this strike, although settled, had a detonator effect’. The baton was passed to the children of Soweto in 1976.
From Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Chris Hani Institute comes a memorable text, The 1973 Durban Strikes: Building Popular Democratic Power in South Africa (dossier no. 60, January 2023). It is memorable in two senses: it recovers an almost lost history of the role of the working class in the fight against apartheid, in particular the Black working class, whose struggle had a ‘detonator’ effect on society. The dossier, beautifully written by our colleagues in Johannesburg, makes it hard to forget these workers and harder still to forget that the working class – still so deeply marginalised in South Africa – deserves respect and a greater share of the country’s social wealth. They broke the back of apartheid but did not benefit from their own sacrifices.
The Chris Hani Institute was founded in 2003 by the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Chris Hani (1942–1993) was one of South Africa’s great freedom fighters, a communist who would have made an even greater impact than he did had he not been assassinated at the end of apartheid. We are grateful to Dr Sithembiso Bhengu, the director of the Chris Hani Institute, for this collaboration and look forward to the work that lies before us.
As this dossier went to press, we heard that our friend Thulani Maseko (1970–2023), chairperson of the Multi-Stakeholders Forum in Swaziland, was shot dead in front of his family on 21 January. He was one of the leaders of the fight to bring democracy to his country, where workers are at the forefront of the battle to end the monarchy.
When I reread our latest dossier, The 1973 Durban Strikes, to prepare for this newsletter, I was listening to Hugh Masekela’s ‘Stimela’ (‘Coal Train’), the 1974 song of migrant workers travelling on the coal train to work ‘deep, deep, deep down in the belly of the earth’ to bring up wealth for apartheid capital. I thought of the Durban industrial workers with the sound of Masekela’s train whistle in my ear, remembering Mongane Wally Serote’s long poem, Third World Express, a tribute to the workers of southern Africa and their struggles to establish a humane society.
– it is that wind
it is that voice buzzing
it is whispering and whistling in the wires
miles upon miles upon miles
on the wires in the wind
in the subway track
in the rolling road
in the not silent bush
it is the voice of the noise
here it comes
the Third World Express
they must say, here we go again.
‘Here we go again’, Serote wrote, as if to say that new contradictions produce new moments for struggle. The end of one crushing order – apartheid – did not end the class struggle, which has only deepened as South Africa is propelled through crisis upon crisis. It was the workers who brought us this democracy, and it will be workers who will fight to establish a deeper democracy yet. Here we go again.
Inflation surged in the spring of 2021, hit a 40-year-high rate of 9.1% in June 2022, and was still running at a historically high 6.5% at year’s end. Coverage of inflation has surged along with this rise in prices, with the volume of inflation coverage reaching levels not seen since the 1980s. One analysis (CAP Action, 12/22/21) found that in November 2021, CNN and MSNBC gave inflation roughly double the combined coverage of “jobs, wages and healthcare.”
Despite the New York Times‘ warning (11/8/22), Democrats lost a respectable nine seats in the House and actually gained a Senate seat.
Inflation has, unsurprisingly, taken center stage in the public consciousness. Voters in a pre-midterms poll (Data for Progress, 10/27/22) ranked it as their top issue by a solid 15 percentage points. The New York Times (11/8/22) noted that polling before the vote revealed “the highest level of economic concern headed into a midterm election since 2010, when the economy was coming out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” And exit polling put inflation at the top of the list of issues for voters.
Meanwhile, a debate has been raging over all things inflation: How high will it go, how long will it last, what should be done? Call it the Great Inflation Debate. Central to this debate has been the role of the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, and what it should do, if anything, to quell the phenomenon.
Many on the left, so-called “inflation doves” (e.g., Nation, 2/18/22; In These Times, 9/22/22; Chartbook, 10/26/22), have been highly critical of the Fed’s reliance on interest rate hikes—which notoriously work by “weakening workers’ bargaining power and forcing them to accept lower wages” (Slack Wire, 3/2/22)—as a response to price increases. More conservative “inflation hawks,” by contrast, have called for aggressive monetary tightening (i.e., substantial rate hikes) to silence the inflationary threat.
The opinion sections of media outlets would seem a natural place to host this debate. Doves on one side, hawks on the other. Now rumble! After all, what is an opinion section for, if not a wide-ranging debate that exposes readers to varied perspectives on a pressing issue?
Unfortunately, opinion sections at corporate news outlets are notorious for their failure to include progressive voices. As the Columbia Journalism Review (5/8/18) pointed out in 2018, despite the growing prominence of the left in politics, left-wing thinkers have remained poorly represented on major op-ed pages. The “virtually nonexistent” presence of socialists at these outlets contrasts sharply with readers’ calls for more left-wing voices and the popularity of socialism with the American public—recent polling shows over a third of Americans have a positive view of socialism (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).
The Great Inflation Debate offers yet another example of this marginalization of left-wing voices. At the Washington Post and New York Times, two of the most widely read establishment newspapers, the opinion sections have fallen short in providing readers with exposure to progressive voices on inflation. In one case, the failure has been abysmal. In the other, it’s been merely painful.
Hawks and hawks and hawks, oh my!
Larry Summers went full Bond villain as he declared from a tropical beach (Vice, 1/10/23), “There’s going to need to be increases in unemployment to contain inflation.”
The award for abysmal failure in the field of political balance goes to the Washington Post, where hawks reign supreme. Top hawk is Larry Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and devout neoliberal, whose inflation takes have been prominently featured on the Post’s opinion pages (2/4/21, 3/17/22, 12/19/22), including in pieces by the editorial board (3/20/21, 9/21/22) and other columnists (6/13/22, 12/14/22). Summers has morphed into an almost cartoonish villain over the course of the Great Inflation Debate, in one recent instance requesting a dash of unemployment while comfortably reclined, hands clasped, by a tropical beach.
Up until recently, when Summers (12/19/22) endorsed the Federal Reserve’s “approach of stepping more gingerly,” his op-eds for the Post have been appallingly hawkish. He was already declaring “tightening” as “likely to be necessary” back in May 2021 (5/24/21) and has consistently called for interest rate hikes over the last year (e.g., 3/15/22, 4/5/22, 10/31/22). Even after the Fed raised the cost of borrowing in March 2022 and signaled its determination to do so again six more times before the end of the year, Summers (3/17/22) reprimanded it for being insufficiently hawkish, stating, “I fear the economic projections of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) represent a continuation of its wishful and delusional thinking of the recent past.”
A core complaint of Summers’ is that the labor market is too tight, a polite way of saying that workers have become too empowered. Ironically, in the summer of 2020, not long before his descent into inflation hysteria, Summers had penned a piece for the Post titled “US Workers Need More Power” (6/28/20). Less than a year later, Summers (5/24/21) fretted, “Higher minimum wages, strengthened unions, increased employee benefits and strengthened regulation are all desirable, but they, too, all push up business costs and prices.” You see, he wants to help workers. But you know what really helps workers? Higher unemployment.
‘The power to quit’
Other Post columnists have not been much better. Jennifer Rubin (6/1/22) has invoked the specter of inflation to lambast Biden’s plan for student debt cancellation. Catherine Rampell (7/12/22) has complained about pesky state lawmakers’ plans for boosting residents’ incomes to shield them from inflation, dubbing these plans “actively harmful in the fight against inflation.” In the same article, she criticized student debt cancellation for its (negligible) inflationary impact and endorsed hiking interest rates instead. Rampell (7/5/22) has further lamented the Biden administration’s tendency to side with labor instead of pursuing policies that would hurt labor but would “modestly reduce pricing pressures.”
The Washington Post‘s Sebastian Mallaby (6/15/22): “To get inflation under control, the Fed will almost certainly have to cause a recession.”
Sebastian Mallaby (6/15/22, 7/15/22) has called for aggressive rate hikes in response to inflation, lauded Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell as “courageous” following his conversion to tight monetary policy, and argued that due to the high pace of wage growth, “the Fed will almost certainly have to cause a recession” in its fight against inflation. Henry Olsen (5/12/22) has taken abnormally high inflation as an opportunity to advocate cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and, like Summers, has worried (2/10/22) that the Fed’s rate increases won’t be large enough to reverse the low unemployment that “giv[es] workers the power to quit and seek better pay and working conditions elsewhere.”
Megan McArdle has provided some dissent in her columns. In one article from May (5/29/22), she stated the obvious:
It is, of course, bad to lose 8% of your purchasing power to inflation. But it’s even worse to lose a hundred percent of it to unemployment—and the collective suffering of those who lose their jobs is arguably much greater than the pains of households strained by inflation.
She concluded the piece by “wonder[ing] whether [it]’s possible” to “stabilize inflation and then lower it gradually” rather than causing a recession.
In other columns (5/16/22, 9/21/22), however, McArdle has dismissed the idea that corporate profiteering has contributed to inflation as a “conspiracy theory,” and has stopped short of sharp criticism of the Fed, opining that “it’s hard to blame them” for “tightening the screws.”
EJ Dionne, a self-proclaimed “inflation dove,” has likewise dissented from the cacophony of hawks at the Post, expressing in a recent column (12/14/22) his disappointment that the Fed has not signaled a pause in rate hikes. He nevertheless made sure to salute Larry Summers for correctly predicting a rise in inflation.
‘Imposing economic pain’
If columnists are mere mortal combatants, the editorial board might be seen more as a deity, descending from time to time to proclaim the victory of Reason and Justice. For the Post, Reason and Justice assume the earthly form of a hawk. Though the editorial board (8/27/20) approved of the more dovish turn at the Federal Reserve back in 2020, the rise of inflation has led the board to widen its wings and unleash its talons.
The Washington Post‘s first example of a “bad proposal” (4/15/22): “Democratic accusations that companies are driving inflation by price-gouging don’t pass the logic test.” This from a paper whose owner raised the price of Amazon Prime 17% after posting a $14 billion quarterly profit.
The board was already preparing for a more hawkish turn in the spring of 2021, just as inflation was about to take off. In a March editorial (3/20/21), the board commented:
Everything depends on the Fed’s timely willingness to use its anti-inflation tools, even if it means imposing economic pain. We must hope both that the central bank never faces such a test of independence, and that it passes if it does.
The board went full hawk in early 2022, with a February editorial (2/16/22) declaring, “It is time for the Fed to get aggressive.” By April, the board’s impatience was palpable (4/15/22):
We have been urging a long-overdue half-point increase in interest rates for months. The Fed finally seems ready to take this decisive step at its May meeting…. But more bold moves will likely be needed later this year.
The board has maintained this aggressive posture as the Fed has come in its direction on interest rate policy. In a September editorial (9/21/22), the board noted that future rate hikes “will hurt, slowing growth and weakening the labor market. Unfortunately, there is no other good option.” In November, the board (11/1/22) made clear its perfect willingness to accept a recession in exchange for lower inflation. Along the way, it has repeatedly argued (6/1/22, 7/30/22, 10/22/22) against student debt cancellation due to its presumed inflationary impact.
Jeff Bezos, the multi-billionaire founder of Amazon who has owned the Post since 2013, is undoubtedly more than pleased with the near-universal hawkishness found on the Post’s op-ed pages. Amazon has been facing a worker insurgency since early in the pandemic, which has led to the first successful unionization of an Amazon warehouse, despite intense pressure from management to back down (In These Times, 5/23/22). The aggressive interest rate increases that the Fed has implemented, and that the Washington Post editorial board and many Post columnists have cheered, will have the predictable and intentional effect of weakening workers’ bargaining power. No doubt the Post’s columnists and editorial board are not consciously trying to serve Bezos’ interests, but if they were, they couldn’t do a much better job.
Bezos, in fact, has publicly expressed approval of one of his op-ed writer’s being on-message, retweeting a column by Catherine Rampell (5/16/22) that denounced the “demagogic rhetoric” of blaming “Corporate Greed” (in scare caps) for inflation—what she mocked as the “greedflation theory of the world.” (Defending herself against charges that she was carrying water for her boss, Rampell tweeted—5/18/22—”If Post writers are secretly channeling Bezos’s beliefs, we’re doing a terrible job at it, since our policy views are all over the map.”)
This came after Bezos involved himself in a public spat with the Biden administration over its call for heightened corporate taxation as a response to inflation. As Jacobin (5/23/22) put it:
If you were looking for a digital era version of Citizen Kane behavior, this is it—and it not so coincidentally comes right after President Joe Biden hosted Amazon Labor Union organizers at the White House.
The Washington Post is not exactly expected to be a friend of labor. But, as inflation has surged, it is nevertheless jarring just how anti-labor the Post has revealed itself to be. Democracy may die in darkness, but workers die in Amazon warehouses (Jacobin, 1/9/22; Popular Science, 9/2/22).
Doves…with claws
Yes, says Paul Krugman (New York Times, 8/23/22): “There don’t seem to be any realistic alternatives.”
The New York Times has taken a decidedly more moderate stance towards the inflation question. The editorial board has shied away from the bellicosity of the Post, primarily outlining its take on the proper response to inflation in one piece (4/29/22) from April 2022. This editorial, gravely titled “The Courage Required to Confront Inflation,” conceded, “It is time to raise rates.” However, the piece called for “a more measured approach,” and warned against “moving too quickly to confront inflation, or raising rates too high.”
The Times’ relative moderation on the inflation question is reflected in the writings of its op-ed contributors. The most prominent voice in the opinion section has been Paul Krugman, a Times staple who has supplied worthy dissent on important issues such as austerity in the past. Yet Krugman’s unwillingness to step too far left is obvious from his past criticisms of progressives, and it shows up once again in his editorials on inflation.
After his over-optimism in 2021 that inflation would resolve fairly quickly of its own accord, Krugman tacked right in his prescriptions in 2022. In a piece from January 2022, Krugman (1/21/22) pronounced, “it’s time for policymakers to pivot away from stimulus…. The Federal Reserve is right to be planning to raise interest rates in the months ahead.” But he cautioned, “As I read the data, they don’t call for drastic action: The Fed should be taking its foot off the gas pedal, not slamming on the brakes.”
Much like Summers, a central concern of Krugman’s has been the tight labor market. In one of his most recent columns on inflation (12/26/22), he wrote, “My concern (and, I believe, the Fed’s) comes down to the fact that the job market still looks very hot, with wages rising too fast to be consistent with acceptably low inflation.”
The tightness of the labor market has led Krugman to reject more progressive alternatives in the fight against inflation. For instance, in a column from August (8/23/22), he invoked the high level of job openings in his rejection of price controls. He concluded: “There are many good things to be said about a hot economy and tight labor markets, and we’ll miss them when they’re gone. But there don’t seem to be any realistic alternatives.”
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Krugman is that his knack for remarkable clarity in dissent from the mainstream is matched by a firm commitment to resisting the most radical conclusions. Krugman, in stark contrast to commentators like Larry Summers, has vociferously defended the Biden administration’s economic recovery policies, despite their contribution to inflation. Hailing the swiftness of the Covid recovery, Krugman (1/6/22) wrote in early 2022, “accepting inflation for a while was probably the right call.” In another column (2/3/22) from around the same time, he observed, “The costs of unemployment are huge and real, while the costs of inflation are subtle and surprisingly elusive.”
Yet as inflation reached higher, Krugman’s claws came out. In March of 2022, he wrote (3/21/22):
Now, excess inflation suggests that recent US economic growth has been too much of a good thing. Our economy looks clearly overheated, which is why the Federal Reserve is right to have started raising interest rates and should keep doing it until inflation subsides.
So, while Krugman is willing to ask whether a war on inflation is really worth the pain, his answer affirms the orthodoxy, workers be damned.
‘Too low for too long’
The New York Times‘ Peter Coy (8/26/22) recanted his dovish views on inflation: “It’s clear now that the Fed erred by keeping interest rates too low for too long, allowing inflation to get excessively high.”
After Krugman, the most frequent contributor to the Great Inflation Debate at the Times has been Peter Coy, who has provided somewhat more dissent than Krugman on inflation policy. For instance, in a column from March 2022, when Krugman (3/21/22) was advocating a series of rate hikes, Coy (3/16/22) featured an economist, David Rosenberg, opposing further rate hikes after the March one, the first since before the pandemic. Rosenberg provided a rare critique of Paul Volcker, the legendary Federal Reserve chair who slayed inflation in the 1980s (partially by sending the labor movement to the morgue): “‘People tend to forget that in the early 1980s Volcker was reviled,’ Rosenberg said. ‘And no one really knows if inflation was going to fall anyway.’”
In June, Coy (6/17/22) evinced “concern about the Fed’s newfound aggressiveness” and noted, “There are other reasons to think the US economy and inflation are beginning to cool off, even without extreme measures by the Fed.”
His concern has been complemented by an openness to alternative ideas. In October, for example, he recommended cost-of-living adjustments to help protect people against inflation (10/14/22). More recently, in a column (1/4/23) on class conflict and inflation, he displayed interest in incomes policy, which would involve wage and price controls.
Yet even Coy has revealed claws. Though he has been skeptical of rate hikes, he has nevertheless yielded to their necessity. In August, he wrote (8/26/22), “It’s clear now that the Fed erred by keeping interest rates too low for too long, allowing inflation to get excessively high.” That such a blunt instrument, one that has the predictable and intentional effect of weakening workers’ power, obviously must be used in the context of the current inflation is not in question among the Times’ foremost participants in the Great Inflation Debate.
Besides Krugman and Coy, both regular Times columnists, a spattering of other commentators have been awarded spots in the Times’ op-ed pages. Mike Konczal and JW Mason, progressive economists affiliated with the Roosevelt Institute, published a piece (6/15/21) in the summer of 2021 that criticized reliance on interest rate hikes as a response to a surge in demand, and warned:
There is a real political danger that policymakers will be pressured into seeing an economy with more worker power as something to be reined in, under the rationale of avoiding dangerous overheating.
A Times opinion newsletter (12/16/21) from late 2021 featured skeptics of rate hikes, with Eric Levitz noting, “Raising rates could actually make things worse,” and Adam Tooze commenting, “A broad monetary policy squeeze may be a high cost, low return proposition.” The Times has also run a more recent piece (10/4/22) by Tooze pointing out the substantial dangers that Fed policy poses for the global economy. Another notable progressive invite has been Ro Khanna, a California congressmember, who took to the Times (6/2/22) last summer to argue for a more holistic approach to lowering inflation.
There have been a number of other Times editorials written by progressives over the course of the Great Inflation Debate, but while left-wing voices are certainly more common at the Times than the Post, they do not receive serious amplification. There is no major columnist at the Times who has, over the past year and a half, not only written regularly on inflation but outlined a genuinely leftist response, one that does not involve deliberately throwing people out of work in order to reduce labor costs. While the Post may be a caricature of a hawk, the Times more resembles a dove…with claws.
Remember the left wing
James Galbraith (Nation, 2/18/22) points out that “since most American jobs are in services, those wages are also prices”—and that “suppressing wage increases for low-wage American workers is reactionary.”
Corporate outlets may have clipped their left wing, but that does not mean leftists have been silent. In reality, they have been significant participants in the debate over inflation—outside the Post and Times. The economist James Galbraith, for instance, outlined a compelling case against interest rate hikes in the Nation (2/18/22) back in February 2022:
Suppressing wage increases for low-wage American workers is reactionary. And it’s a result that can be achieved only by gouging those workers and their families on their debts and then cutting off their bargaining power over their jobs.
Galbraith urged his audience to recognize that progressive transformation of the economy
will put pressure on the price level. The “inflation” to come is just a condensed reflection of this reality. And the idea that “inflation is the Fed’s job” is just a way of denying that reality while dumping the unavoidable costs of adjustment onto American workers, their families, the indebted and the poor.
Rejecting the idea that the Fed should hurt workers to lower inflation, Galbraith advocated progressive remedies to high prices, including the redirection of resources toward more socially beneficial uses, the de-financialization of the economy, control of healthcare costs through Medicare for All, rent control and selective price controls.
A casual reader of the Times or the Post would almost certainly find this line of reasoning shockingly alien. But they would likely be quite familiar with the argument for interest rate hikes. Repetition has made the thought of weakening worker power seem commonsensical, while exclusion makes the idea of strengthening worker power sound radical.
Opinion sections at these outlets just so happen to prioritize views that line up with the interests of their owners’ class and against those of the poor. What readers get is not a real debate; instead, it’s indoctrination.
Back in October, TRNN spoke to graduate student-workers at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University about the growing grassroots effort to unionize grad students under the banner of Teachers and Researchers United. Since then, the union drive has continued to build momentum: After a supermajority of grad student-workers signed union cards in October and November, an official date for the union election has now been set. Eligible bargaining unit members will cast their votes on whether or not to unionize and affiliate with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) on Monday, Jan. 30, and Tuesday, Jan. 31. This election comes amid a wave of labor actions that are spreading throughout the world of higher education in the US, with recent and current strikes taking place at the University of California, The New School in New York, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and with other graduate student-worker unionization efforts happening at Northwestern University in Evanston, Northeastern University in Boston, and beyond. To get an up-to-date look at the unionization drive at Johns Hopkins, and to discuss where this rank-and-file movement came from and how it’s grown since our last report in October, Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez sits down with Jasmine Grey and Martin Yepes of Teachers and Researchers United in the TRNN studio in Baltimore.
Studio: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino, Darian Jones Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a preliminary transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
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, which means we don’t do ads, we don’t do paywalls, and we don’t take corporate cash. So we need each one of you to become a supporter of 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. Become a monthly sustainer of our work. It really makes a difference.
Back in October for a battleground Baltimore edition of The Real News Network podcast, I got to speak with Andrew and Caleb, two graduate student workers at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore, who have been deeply involved with the effort by graduate students to unionize under the banner of Teachers and Researchers United.
The current union drive was still in its early stages when we recorded that interview, but things have certainly picked up steam since then. In fact, a super majority of grad student workers signed union cards in October and November, and now an official date for a union election has been set. Eligible bargaining unit members will cast their votes on whether or not to unionize and affiliate with the United Electrical radio and machine workers or UE on Monday, January 30th and Tuesday, January 31st of this year.
This election comes amid a wave of labor actions that have been spreading throughout the world of higher education here in the United States with recent and current strikes taking place at the University of California at the new school in New York, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And with other graduate student worker unionization efforts happening at universities like Northwestern in Evanston, Northeastern University in Boston and beyond.
To get an up-to-date look at the unionization drive at Johns Hopkins and to discuss where this rank and file movement came from and how it’s grown since our last report in October, I was honored to sit down with Jasmine and Martin from Teachers and Researchers United in The Real News Studio here in Baltimore. Here’s our interview recorded just under two weeks before the pivotal union election is set to take place at the end of this month.
Jasmine Grey: Hi. I’m Jasmine Grey. I’m a third year PhD graduate student at Hopkins in the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology program. A mouthful. I have been working with the unionization efforts for graduate students at Hopkins for about two years now, and it’s been getting pretty real lately. So I’m excited.
Martin Yepes: I’m Martin Yepes and I am in the program for Molecular Biophysics, third year. I’ve been involved with TRU since July of last year, and it’s a mouthful too, but bottom line is I’m a worker.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Well, Jasmine Martin, thank you both so much for coming down to The Real News Studio and chatting to us about this. As our viewers and listeners and readers know, you all have been in a really exciting unionization effort at Johns Hopkins, the mainstay of Baltimore, and a fixture of the city where academic workers like yourselves make the university run. And the last time that we checked in with the campaign to unionize graduate workers at Hopkins with the United Electrical workers under the banner of Teachers and Researchers United was when I got to chat with Caleb and Andrew for The Real News Podcast back in October, and it felt like things were really starting to pick up steam at that point. But as you said, Jasmine, a lot has happened since then and a lot is heating up now as you all have finally secured an election date.
The election is going to be taking place at the end of this month, January 30th and 31st. Folks will be voting in person, and then we’re going to find out whether or not Hopkins workers are now officially unionized. So it’s a really exciting time and this is all taking place amidst a lot of activity going on in higher education in the labor movement writ large. So we’re going to dig into all of that, but I guess I wanted to start where we left off in October when Caleb, Andrew and I got to talk a bit about the campaign up until that point. So I was wondering if you all could save for Real News viewers and listeners like what’s happened since October to now, as we approach the election date? Give us a play by play of what it’s been like on the ground over there at Hopkins.
Jasmine Grey: Awesome. So basically towards the end of October, we had our card drop rally over at the Homewood Campus, or we had around 400 graduate students come out, and we gave pretty inspiring speeches on all of the pillars that we are focusing on for our campaign. We dropped cards and we hit super majority extremely fast. It was really shocking how many signatures we got so quickly. It was less than a month we got the super majority. So we’re really proud of that part of the campaign.
Maximillian Alvarez: And just to refresh, folks who are watching and listening to this, the threshold to trigger an NLRB election is 30%. So you all were maybe hoping to get past that, but then you ended up with a super majority. Yeah, that’s wild.
Jasmine Grey: So yeah, 60 plus percent grad students said we won union. So we’re pretty proud of that achievement. And then after that we got our election or we said that we were able to have an election, and then we started basically mobilizing another campaign for students to commit to voting yes when the time comes. And that was to get the word out that we have an actual election now and we need people to know about this election so that people can show up and vote when the time comes. So that’s a brief overview of where we’re at now.
Maximillian Alvarez: Martin, I was wondering if you could say a little more about just the vibe that you’ve gotten from within your department, the other folks that you’re talking to, and I guess any insights into how the university’s responded, the campus community has responded in that time.
Martin Yepes: Sure. If I’m talking about vibes, I’m talking about walkthroughs, which is our go-to way of reaching out to people that haven’t heard about the union yet, or people who do support but haven’t yet committed to doing something a little deeper. And like Jasmine, I was also really surprised at how good the numbers were, even though I was going from lab to lab building to building, introducing myself talking about things because I was expecting to meet people who were anti-union against the concept. In principle, they don’t like it. I’ve talked to a lot of people, I’ve walked through a lot of buildings, I’ve met almost nobody like that. The enemy’s apathy. People think that, “Even if we did get it, it wouldn’t change anything. Or, I believe in all those things, but I don’t know if I want to take time for my research to do so.” The vibe that I’ve been seeing is that there’s less of that now, and we feel pretty strong going into this election.
Maximillian Alvarez: Which is in and of itself, that’s a pretty significant shift from what even, I remember organizing on campus back when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, shout out to GEO. And the organizers at GEO did an incredible job. I was a deuce paying member, but there were campaigns that we were involved in, solidarity campaigns with the lecturers and all that good stuff. And I just remember so distinctly that it really did matter what departments people were in. And not to paint with too broad a brush, but in general, the humanities and social sciences were more gung-ho about joining a union. It took a little more convincing from people in the hard sciences.
And I think what’s been really interesting to see, not just at Hopkins, but especially there is this does feel like something that is spreading across the different departments. And I’m not going to say that those divisions aren’t there. I imagine they still are. People have different kinds of relationships with their advisors depending on what department they’re in. If you’re in a lab under a specific professor, it can feel like a much more intimate and high stake relationship to navigate than, say a humanities advisor you check in with every couple months. Am I reading that right, that there’s less of that interdepartmental division and factionalism that you’re seeing in this campaign?
Jasmine Grey: I guess for us, when we look broadly across all of the different schools from the humanities to the sciences, that is not happening. People are on the same page of we need a union, which is how we think we got to the super majority card signers so fast because across the board, everybody’s sake of this, basically. We deserve better than what Hopkins is providing us across the board. And perhaps what the differences lie is the different pillars that we stand for. Certain groups might think, “We definitely need a higher stipend.” While others think, “Well, I need transportation to be better.” So since the brush itself of what we are fighting for is so broad, that is why it resonates with so many students here. But when you zoom in, I feel like a little bit closer is when you start seeing those patterns of certain areas potentially having some difference in opinion on the unionization and difference in willingness to be a part of the efforts. But overall, I feel like a lot of us are on the same page.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Sorry. Please go ahead.
Martin Yepes: Yeah. I would say that there’s always slight differences in numbers. There’s departments that are harder to get into, lower number of organizers, what have you, and there’s this, I guess, cultural notion. It’s like, “Well, my research is more translatable to medicine or something, so I should get paid more than the person who…” If you ride the same bus as me, if you’re trying to figure out how to make rent and buy groceries and you don’t get overtime when you work a 60 hour a week, all the important things. We’ve got those in common. So what it says on the degree doesn’t matter.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah. Well, let’s drill down on that because I talked at length with Caleb and Andrew about this back in October, and that podcast that we did was before the card drive that you mentioned. So it was very exciting to publish that interview. And then I think the next week, see how many cards you all got signed? I was like, “Shit, this campaign’s got juice.” But I wanted to just remind everyone watching and listening where this campaign came from. What are those key issues that you all have been mobilizing around that have been able to cut through the very thick ideology that academia puts on people? Because it can still be hard to convince folks in academia that they are workers or that they deserve a union as much as anybody else.
So what were the key issues that graduate workers at Hopkins were facing that led so many of you all to feel like a union was the collective path to addressing these issues from, I guess, relationships with managers or department heads or cost of living or transportation? Talk to us more about what those sorts of key issues were that galvanized so many of you all to be part of this effort.
Jasmine Grey: I think a major, they’re all extremely important, but the one that I feel like resonated with majority of graduate students was a livable wage or a wage that is consistent with the cost of living, which it is not even close, and the variation across the entire school of that, what the stipend is, even though we’re all out here working 40 plus hours a week, usually the plus is there, but some people are getting paid significantly less. You could be honestly in the exact same space, but if they’re from a different program, they’re getting paid differently than you even if you’re doing the same work. And I think that discrepancy in that pillar is why it resonates with so many students at the school.
Another main pillar is fair or on time payments, which you wouldn’t think that’d be a problem. I expect my paycheck to arrive on time. But that hasn’t been the case for hundreds of students. And even more shockingly, students have not gotten paid on time several times in a row. So they’re missing their paycheck for a month. And the Hopkins basically says, “Sorry about that. Won’t happen again. Okay.”
Maximillian Alvarez: You’re you triggering me right now because I remember when this happened to me as a grad student at the University of Michigan, and they were just like, “Yeah. It’ll get there eventually.” I was like, “What do you want me to tell my landlord?”
Jasmine Grey: Exactly. I just can’t with that, but I’ll let Martin-
Maximillian Alvarez: An administrator told me, “Go get more credit cards.”
Martin Yepes: No way.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah. That was their response to me when I was like, “Look, I don’t have rich parents who can be helping me right now. I came to grad school from working in a restaurant in Chicago. I spent all the money I saved on my deposit for the apartment in the U-Haul. I don’t have any extra money now. I need my cheque on time.” And their response was, “Well, take out more loans or get credit cards.” And that’s how disdain they show for… Again, I don’t care if you’re watching this and you’re thinking, “Well, grad students don’t have as hard of a job as tree cutters in Maine.”
Whatever the fuck you think about that, pardon my French, that doesn’t mean you deserve to not get paid on time. To not be able to keep a roof over your head or buy groceries or have any semblance of a life outside of work, which you’re not allowed to have because you’re driving for Uber or you’re doing anything you can to just make the bills. And yeah, you really do see people’s true colors when they talk about stuff like this. They try to qualify your humanity based on the job that you have. And like you said, it’s like, “Look, doesn’t matter what we’re doing. We all should have a roof over our heads. We should have access to buses and we should be able to buy groceries.”
Martin Yepes: So to continue what Jasmine was saying about the plate pay issue, what really galvanizes people about it is that it’s insult to injury because you’re already not getting paid a living wage. And if you look into why it happens, it’s not because the person getting paid late did anything wrong. It happens for reasons. You got a fellowship, the source of your funding changes. Someone in an administrative office somewhere drops a ball. But then how do you handle that? Do you say, “We’re sorry about that. We’ll make it right.” More often than not, you get a scary email from someone saying, “You are no longer in compliance with whatever this is, and you have to get us this form. Or there’s going to be no record of your employment.” Or it happens because there’s delays in processing paperwork if you’re an international student. Again, insult to injury. It’s hard enough if you’re not making a living wage, you don’t have any savings, paycheck doesn’t come. What if not only do you not have any savings, you don’t have a base of support in this country yet?
That’s another thing that’s part of the platform. Better support for international students, ways of making sure that the fees that they incur for visas and stuff like that, it’s something that the university could cover. My program, PMB has a sister program, Jenkins, which is entirely international students, and that’s where the contrast is more visible than anywhere else, in my opinion. Because you have these group of people that are motivated for the same reasons you are. Take all the same classes you do, do all the same work at the same level that you do, except the responsibilities aren’t the same. PMB students, if they want to as a way of adding to their CV can TA, Jenkins students have to. It’s expected of them, and it’s nothing to do with the value of the work because we do the same work.
It has everything to do with the fact that international students are not in position to bargain as much as domestic students. And that’s what needs to change. As for the wood cutters, maybe my job isn’t as hard as their job, but if they’re unionized, I want to know how they deal with getting paid late on time, because it’s all about, “Well, what can one experience do to help or learn from the other.” One has nothing to do with better, worse, or harder, easier. So that’s the thing. If we have a position of privilege, we want to use it to open the door for everyone else.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. So Martin Luther King said, “All labor has dignity and every worker has rights,” and exercising those rights is something that we should all support. I don’t give a shit what they do. It’s really incredible to hear all this, especially given where we are now in the state of the labor movement, both here in the US and beyond, because as we’ve covered a lot here at The Real News Network, a lot of workers in different types of workplaces and different industries, including those that have been traditionally very hard to unionize fast food or the service industry in general. We’re seeing a lot of really exciting action taking place from Starbucks Workers United, the Amazon Labor Union, but also movements within existing unions like the UAW holding a referendum that would allow the membership to directly elect their international leadership. That was also a really pivotal move that happened last year.
We’re seeing workers strike and organize, but we’re also seeing shit really pop off in higher ed specifically. And we’ve also been trying to cover this as much as we can at The Real News, but we just had the University of California strike 48,000 academic workers at the time hitting the picket line, non-tenured track faculty at the new school. Like what you all are doing at Hopkins, we’re seeing grad student unions and unionization efforts at places like Northwestern, Northeastern, and then we’ve got the lectures across the United Kingdom going on strike. So it feels like something’s really happening here in higher education.
And I wanted to just ask you guys if that’s your sense too, and if there are exchanges that you’re involved in on the ground, conversations you’re getting into or vibes that you’re sensing, is there something different about this moment that you’re seeing through this organizing? Or for folks watching and listening, what would you say from the conversations you’re getting in what you’re seeing on campus of why folks on in higher ed are going to the map about this stuff?
Jasmine Grey: Yeah. In my opinion, I think, or in the experiences I’ve been through to date, recent times have been so crazy as we have seen in social media and the news. I feel like inflation is up extremely high, especially this year and last year, and paychecks haven’t really budged much more than their marginal two to 3% increase that is not consistent with the inflation. So people are unable to pay their bills across the entire country. I can’t really speak for the UK.
Maximillian Alvarez: No, cost of living crisis there too, we’re all getting fucked except the rich. Sorry.
Jasmine Grey: It’s so true. Everywhere. We do not have enough money to live a… What’s the word? I can’t think of the word. We don’t have the money to live the way that we all deserve as human beings. Our fundamental, I feel like right to living on this earth is being able to house yourself, eat food every day, have reliable transportation, which is another one of our pillars that I did mention earlier. Having access to reliable transportation. All of these things due to this shift in climate of the world are just not, the standard is not moving with what the people need. And people are angry justifiably about that across the whole world.
I had just thought of this as you asked. I feel like it has to do with as well, academia is becoming increasingly very slowly but more diverse, and people are not content anymore with the current or what had been done in the old days because the old day practices were for the majority, how the majority was, and they were comfortable with that. People who have a lot of privilege were typically the individuals entering academia, who had parents to pay for when their stipend wasn’t covering their meals. You could just ask your parents for a little extra money. Your car breaks down. You could ask your parents for some money.
But we have an increase of URMs entering in now. Not everybody has something to fall back on and that money to get from somebody else, and to be in academia these days, if you don’t have that extra pillow, it’s really difficult when you fall on hard times, an emergency happens. As I see your car breaks down, which happened to me. Expenses just come out of nowhere sometimes, and the stipend doesn’t cover that anymore. Maybe it used to, but not today.
Martin Yepes: And we don’t just want to survive. We want to thrive. I mean, we’re doing very specialized work, stuff that it takes years to learn how to do well, work that the university runs on. It would be nice to go to a place with a name like Hopkins and get more out of that than pizza and promises. But so far that’s the way it’s been. So we don’t look to the administration, we look to each other. We try to figure that out.
As for the larger labor movement, I take pictures of bacteria. I’m not a labor historian. The way that I’ve felt that it’s different is, again, on walkthroughs, on one-to-one conversations with people, I find that there’s something very powerful about talking to a person. And I don’t have to say to them, “Look, okay, here’s what a union is. Here’s what the bargaining does. Here’s like a contract could do.” And then all the way down the line. I could just say, “MIT is getting a raise. You don’t think you deserve one?” And then school spirit kicks it. Then people can point to something that they can understand and relate to, and then all of a sudden it’s not scary or anything, then they can see themselves as part of a union.
And I think that academia has a lot of things wrong with it. One of the things that’s good about it is that we’re all very used to using each other’s ideas. That’s kind of the point. So the way it manifests for us is that we’ve seen a winning strategy play out at other places that are not that different from the place that we work, where people not that different from us are doing things that a year ago I thought could not happen. So it’s there, but I can’t speak to the general trend.
Maximillian Alvarez: Sure. And even there, it’s like I’m hearing so many echoes in what you all are describing, echoes of other folks that we’ve talked to over the past year. Myself and my colleague, the great Mel Buer, who is now an associate editor here. We both talked to folks at Indiana University, the grad workers who were on strike last year. And one of the things that they were on strike over is the fees that you mentioned. They’re like, “It’s the university giving us a stipend and then charging 60% of that stipend back in fee. So it’s like they’re just giving us the money so we hand it right back. How does that make any sense?” And then you got to factor in rising rent costs and stuff like that.
So yeah, I think it’s important for folks to see how, even if this isn’t a unified movement, a lot of this energy is coming from similar sources. And it is exciting to see more folks in localized struggles learn from what’s working in other parts of the country or the other parts of the world. That in itself, I think is a really exciting development.
I’m speaking for myself, not for either of you, not for the folks at Hopkins, but one thing that I, that’s been on my mind, particularly as a former PhD student in the humanities, is that one of the biggest sticks that they had to beat us into subservient was the promise of an academic job. The belief that at the carrot at the end of that stick, if you just kept your head down, if you didn’t rock the boat, if you didn’t publish it in public, that was going to get you in trouble. If you just stayed the course and eventually were you rewarded with a tenure track job and you got to the point where you were protected by tenure, then you can try to change the system. That’s what they would always tell us.
And I think that so many of us dreamed that dream so hard and wanted it so bad that we did curtail our political activities. We didn’t rock the boat when we might have otherwise done so because that thought of fucking up my future and everything that I’ve worked for kept us in check. And it’s just been so heartbreaking for me, first to get spat out of academia striking out on the job market so many other people have before COVID. And then just watching it crater over the past few years and seeing so many people who had put so much time and effort into their craft, to their degrees, all job prospects within academia just disappeared. And I don’t want to minimize that, so that’s why I spent so much time talking about it.
But I do remember there was something liberating for me when I didn’t have that hanging over my head and I was like, “Well, fuck it. I can organize.” I’m on campus. I can publish what I want. If I don’t have to think about becoming a tenure track professor at some Ivy League College, suddenly it seems like there are more opportunities for me to do what I actually want. I guess there’s a long roundabout way of asking. Has that played a role in it, the shifts in higher education since COVID hit? How has that factored into folks, like the energy that you’re seeing on campus?
Jasmine Grey: I feel like with COVID, a lot of us, including myself, realized the value of our own lives. It’s so crazy to think about. Before I was just, “I’m working. I’m on my track to becoming whatever it is, I’m going to become.” But I think COVID made us slow down and realize that actually my life matters right now. People are dying of COVID. I could get COVID and die in the next week. I feel like that thought came across a lot of people’s head, and then we worked from home. We got to be with our families more often, and we actually realized, “I don’t just care about work anymore. I also care about all these other things.” And I feel like that’s a lot where the mental shift has come from, especially in our generation of academia, is that we realize that there’s more to life than working.
And I think that is a hard pill to swallow for some of the higher ups in academia, that to us, there’s more to life at least, even though I love my research, but I also love other things like drawing and going outside and seeing the sun. So that’s my take on what COVID did to the mindset and why seemingly not everybody’s on board with the straight through academia track as much as they used to be because, and there’s also so many more options now.
But yeah, my point is that our life now matters, and that’s why we are fighting so hard because who knows where I’ll be in 10 years? Will I be a professor? Will I be making this phantom amount of money that I keep being promised and why I should just suck it up right now? That’s argument, I can’t stand it because I feel like, yeah, now I matter, so I should be getting paid as if I matter to this university.
Maximillian Alvarez: That’s beautifully put. And I know I got to wrap this up and let you guys go, but I feel like maybe Caleb and Andrew and I spoke about this in that podcast for The Real News back in October. But this is another echo that I’m hearing not just in higher ed, but it’s in manufacturing, logistics, service industry, is COVID also showed us why it’s so important for bosses to not have unilateral power to make consequential decisions without any input from the rank and file. So when you have back in class orders coming from an administration that’s just prioritizing, I don’t know, tuition dollars or making calculations that benefit the university, even if they put students and instructors and TAs in harm’s way. I’ve heard a lot of folks say, “When those decisions were made and we weren’t being heard, it became more apparent than ever that we need a union or we need more structures to make our demands heard and to make the university respond to those same folk.”
I mean, Chris Smalls Walk led a walk out at Amazon over COVID safety policies. This is definitely, I think, on top of what you said so beautifully, Jasmine, of just confronting our own mortality and thinking about what we can do in the present. I think that COVID really has played a fundamental role in so much of the labor energy and mobilization that we’re seeing. And like I said, we are in the midst of a very exciting moment for you guys. You have an election date now. Obviously private universities try to look for as many ways as they possibly can to convince grad workers that they don’t deserve a union that in fact, they legally don’t have a right to a union yet. So we won’t get bogged down in that. But I just want to say for folks watching and listening elections happening January 30th and 31st, what if folks need to know on campus and off, and what can folks watching and listening to this do to show support for you all and Teachers and Researchers United?
Martin Yepes: As for the election, it is the 30th and 31st, if I’m not wrong. There are two four hour blocks on each day. First from nine to one, and then… What was it again?
Jasmine Grey: Four to eight.
Martin Yepes: Four to eight. Voting is going to be in person only, and there is going to be a voting location on each campus. And as of the latest information that is the school that you get your degree from. Reason that matters is because there are some programs where students are on different campuses. So it’s important to know where someone’s expected to vote. As for what other people can do to support. I’m having trouble with that one. I’ve been so focused on the bargaining unit and the-
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, I guess another way to ask that is have you gotten much support from the rest of the campus community? Are faculty signing statements or undergrads, anything that folks can be looking out for to even just vocalize support for the effort?
Jasmine Grey: Well, we have a Twitter page. You can retweet our lovely tweets from one of my friends, we’re all friends here, but yeah, one of my friends in my lab helps run the Twitter page. To retweet, I think a major help would be talking to your friends about the union and unionization and what that means and why you plan on voting yes. We have majority of graduate students that are planning on voting yes, when the election comes.
So if the fear is that, “It’s just me. I’m afraid of what my peers would think.” Your peers are going to think you’re awesome. Majority of us from the car drop, we see, especially less than a month super majority. People want this union. So if you’re on the fence, talk to somebody. Go to our website. If you search TRU JHU, it’ll come up. We have so many answers to questions that you might have or reach out to any of us. We’re all so willing. Me, Martin, Andrew, Caleb, literally everybody who’s super involved in TRU. We’re we’re excited to answer any question because I don’t know, we really believe in this. So yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Well, Jasmine, Martin, thank you both so much for sitting down with me here at The Real News. I really, really appreciate it. Give them hell on January 30th and 31st.
Jasmine Grey: We will.
Martin Yepes: We will.
Jasmine Grey: Why will we? Because when we fight, we win.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah.
Martin Yepes: And Baltimore’s a union town.
Jasmine Grey: Baltimore’s a union town.
Maximillian Alvarez: Couldn’t have said it better myself, baby. So 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.
Union Pacific, one of the largest rail corporations in the United States, said Tuesday that it brought in record revenue and profits last year as it successfully fought off workers’ push for paid sick leave.
The company reported $7 billion in net income for 2022 as a whole and said it spent a whopping $6.3 billion repurchasing its own shares—significantly more than the $4.6 billion it spent on employee pay and benefits last year.
“Instead of buying back their own stock, UP should be investing in their employees by offering paid sick leave, reasonable schedules, and a better quality of life for railroaders,” Ed Hall, the newly elected president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, told CNN on Tuesday. “This is the only way the railroad will be able to solve their recruitment and retention problems and keep the trains running.”
Union Pacific was one of the major rail carriers involved in White House-brokered contract talks late last year that produced an agreement without any guaranteed paid sick days, rejecting a central demand of rail workers.
Labor unions representing a majority of U.S. rail workers rejected the proposed agreement and threatened to strike, but Congress intervened in the long-simmering contract dispute in December to impose the White House-backed deal on employees, sparking furious backlash from rank-and-file union members and progressive allies.
“President Biden campaigned on a week of paid sick leave for all working people, and then he had the opportunity right here but didn’t take action. He favored the corporations,” Matt Weaver, a rail worker and member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) in Ohio, told In These Times contributor Jeff Schuhrke, who detailed rail workers’ ongoing fight for paid leave and safety measures in a piece last week.
Facing continued pressure from employees and some activist investors, Union Pacific and other rail giants are “weighing offering paid sick days—or are already doing so—along with schedule changes and other steps to improve employees’ work-life balance,” Bloombergreported Monday.
“Costs will still be a key consideration for the railroads—and their investors,” the business outlet added. “Voluntary paid sick leave and more flexible schedules would add to the expense of the labor agreement, which over five years raises salaries by 24%, pays bonuses totaling $5,000, and adds one day a year of personal leave. That could come at the expense of dividends and share buybacks, which have soared in recent years.”
“Workers remain skeptical that they’ll truly benefit from the tradeoff,” Bloomberg continued. “Railroads historically have been quick to furlough staff during downturns, have required long hours with little flexibility, and have imposed strict attendance policies that allow the railroads to operate with fewer workers.”
As Railroad Workers United put it in a Twitter post on Tuesday, “Never take the Union Pacific at face value.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Faculty members at the University of Illinois Chicago suspended their strike on Sunday after reaching a tentative deal with school administrators that includes minimum salary increases for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track staff. “This contract contains important gains on the issues most important to our members,” Aaron Krall, president of the UIC United Faculty (UICUF) union…
The streets of France filled with outraged workers on Thursday as rail employees, teachers, and others walked off the job to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to overhaul the nation’s pension system by raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64. The union-led demonstrations — which ground significant portions of the country, including many schools and transportation…
Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded in a letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on Wednesday that the company immediately end its “ruthless union-busting campaign” as the coffee giant’s employees continue to face obstruction and retaliation while trying to organize—and win their first contract.
Sanders, the incoming chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee,
wrote that he has “serious concerns over Starbucks’ concerted and relentless campaign against its workers’ efforts to organize” and argued that the corporation’s management has displayed a “flagrant disregard” for employee rights and federal law.
Since December 2021, workers at more than 270 Starbucks locations across the United States have voted to unionize—and the union has achieved a remarkable win rate of over 80% even amid aggressive backlash and
illegal intimidation tactics from the company.
“There have been nearly 500 unfair labor practice cases filed against Starbucks and its affiliates,” Sanders noted in his letter to Starbucks’ billionaire chief executive, who is set to depart the company in April. “Further, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued 69 complaints in response to those charges and has sought emergency preliminary injunctive relief in five additional cases in the federal courts. These allegations include claims that you personally threatened a worker by saying, ‘If you hate Starbucks so much, why don’t you work somewhere else?’”
“These violations include discriminatorily discharging more than a dozen union organizers, attempting to interfere with workers’ right to distribute and wear union material, and refusing to bargain with the union,” the Vermont senator continued. “Remarkably, Starbucks argued that a preliminary injunction reinstating seven employees allegedly discharged for unionizing their store in Memphis, Tennessee was unnecessary because the union had prevailed in the election anyway.”
The new letter decrying Starbucks’ anti-union conduct is the
second Sanders has sent to Schultz in fewer than three months, but the latest comes as the senator is preparing to take charge of the Senate HELP Committee—a panel with investigative authorities, including subpoena power, that Sanders intends to use to spotlight corporate abuses.
“The American people know that workers have a constitutional right to form unions and that corporations that engage in illegal union-busting activities must be held accountable,” Sanders said in a
speech late Tuesday on the state of the U.S. working class.
In his letter on Wednesday, Sanders wrote, “Mr. Schultz, my request to you is simple: Obey the law. Sit down with your workers and bargain in good faith. Agree to a first contract that is fair and just. Stop shutting down pro-union shops and reinstate workers who have been fired for union organizing.”
“Sit down with your workers and bargain in good faith. Agree to a first contract that is fair and just.”
In
November and December, unionized Starbucks workers across the country walked off the job in an attempt to highlight the company’s rampant union-busting and pressure management to stop using well-worn stall tactics to sabotage contract negotiations.
Last month, the NLRB
said Starbucks unlawfully refused to engage in contract negotiations at more than 20 unionized locations in Oregon and Washington state.
Starbucks workers also say the company is imposing sweeping hours cuts following the holiday season, leaving already-precarious workers struggling to afford basic necessities.
Erin Bray, a union supporter from Starbucks’ University Way store in Seattle, said Wednesday that workers at the location are “contemplating applying for food stamps and partial unemployment (neither of which are guaranteed) just to keep roofs over our heads.”
“Some baristas were given ‘good-faith estimates’ of 35 hours per week, and Starbucks is deliberately shorting those baristas by implementing new labor metrics,” said Bray. “This just goes to show that our bosses’ promises aren’t worth a damn, which is precisely why we want fair scheduling policies written down in black and white as part of our collective bargaining agreement.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
This story originally appeared in Workday on Jan. 17, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
At the intensive care unit at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, nurse Kelley Anaas has cared for a lot of people who have gotten sick with Covid-19 during the pandemic.
“I took care of plenty of people who got sick at their work,” said Anaas, who has been a nurse for 14 years and is a steward with the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA). “I remember taking care of a woman five years older than me, who didn’t make it, who got her job working in a liquor store. Her family’s not gonna get a dime for the sacrifice she made and the choice she didn’t have. I saw the ramifications of that in a much more real way than, you know, lawmakers.”
The surge of collective actions by workers in 2022 indicates momentum in the labor movement. Much of this resurgence has been led by workers on the front lines of the pandemic, who have been most at risk when it comes to health and safety.
Of the hundreds of strikes that began last year, two historic ones occurred in Minnesota, where teachers and nurses withheld their labor to demand better working conditions, hold their employers accountable, and stand up against greed. It is no surprise that workers in teaching and nursing, feminized professions tasked with running institutions on which communities depend, have been militantly raising their voices and risking their jobs to alert their communities to the problems they are facing.
Jobs typically associated with women are considered to be “feminized labor.” Of course, not all teachers and nurses are women, but all workers in these professions still perform labor that’s devalued, because “women’s work” has historically not been rewarded and recognized in the way male-dominated work has. It’s not exactly blue-collar or white-collar work, but a third category often referred to as pink-collar work, a term coined by social critic Louise Kapp Howe.
“Many presume the skills women have in occupations like teaching or childcare work or nursing are innate and that women are naturally good at caring for people,” University of Vermont economics professor Stephanie Seguino told The 19th. “Therefore, there’s a sense that we don’t really need to compensate for that. So, it’s gender stereotyping that really holds down wages.”
Teachers and community members rallied at the Minnesota state capitol on March 9, 2022. A DFL trifecta in the Minnesota state legislature is looking to pass education legislation this year utilizing a $17.6 billion surplus. Photos by Amie Stager.
When women, who make up the majority of essential workers, belong to a union, they see improved wages and health benefits, and are more likely to work in safer and healthier environments.
When women, who make up the majority of essential workers, belong to a union, they see improved wages and health benefits, and are more likely to work in safer and healthier environments. According to the National Women’s Law Center, women are 77.2% of the workforce in the education and health services sector, which saw union membership increase by 6.3% between 2000 and 2020.
Workers in both healthcare and public education are essential, yet they’re being pushed out of their jobs by burnout, poor pay and conditions, and political attacks. However, tight labor market conditions, alongside public support, can give workers more power at the bargaining table. Workday Magazine spoke with one teacher and one nurse, who both went on strike this past year, about the struggles they’ve been facing as frontline, feminized workers during one of the bleakest times in history.
Teachers come prepared
“The groundwork for our historic strike had been laid by our leadership and membership in previous years getting more organized and mobilized,” said Marcia Howard, who has been an English teacher at Roosevelt High School for 24 years and is also the first vice president of Minneapolis Federations of Teachers Local 59 (MFT 59). “Because we are such a feminized profession, I believed that we would also be complacent, that we wouldn’t have the chutzpah to stand for ourselves. But something happened on the way to the strike—Minneapolis rose up in defense of Black lives.”
In March, around 3,500 teachers with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers went on a 14-day strike over the span of three weeks (teachers in St. Paul with the St. Paul Federation of Educators Local 28 also voted to strike but were able to reach a deal with their district). This was the first walkout in Minnesota since teachers went on strike illegally in 1970. It also followed the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, which inspired the largest political demonstrations in global history. By the time it came to the teachers’ strike, working people had already been practicing standing up for their community.
A sea of protestors donning blue hats and jackets moved through North Minneapolis on March 8, 2022.
Public sector workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), so whether or not they have the right to organize, bargain, or strike is determined by the law in their state. Public sector workers in some states do not have these basic protections. After teachers in Minnesota went on strike illegally in 1970, the state passed the Minnesota Public Employment Labor Relations Act (PELRA), providing the right to bargain and strike for public workers in the state (though, to this day, certain workers deemed “essential employees” do not have the right to strike). In public education across the United States, women make up 76% of school teachers, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics in 2018.
Forced to flee the workforce
Labor journalist Sarah Jaffe wrote in Rethinking Schools that the right has targeted teachers for urging the closing of schools during a deadly pandemic, and for teaching racial justice and sex education, and this has created a “pressure cooker” for teachers.
The Economic Policy Institute, a pro-union research organization, reports that the teacher shortage has only worsened since the pandemic, not because there is a lack of qualified teachers, but because the job offers low pay when compared to other professions requiring college degrees, and the work environments are stressful.
The system is breaking teachers faster than they can replace them, according to former Twin Cities teacher Katie Niemczyk, who was a teacher for 11 years before leaving the industry during the pandemic.
“It’s not an outlandish conspiracy theory,” Howard said of right-wing campaigns against teachers. “This capitalist society would find a way to squeeze every dime out and make public money go in private pockets. There are people making decisions that anybody from the outside would say it’s like they want people to flee the district.”
A disproportionate number of women left the workforce to care for family and children during the pandemic (child care and home care are also frontline and feminized industries in crisis). Gender roles are changing, but women are still largely made responsible for the health and wellbeing of our families and communities, through paid and unpaid labor and care.
The strikes by teachers and nurses also occurred during a time when the right to reproductive freedom and access to abortion has been under attack across the United States and denied by the Supreme Court, negatively affecting worsening economic situations brought on by the pandemic. And while more and more women are being represented as leadership in institutions such as elected offices, corporations, and unions, gender bias and inequality across the globe is pervasive. Having women in positions of power does not necessarily improve material conditions for all women.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Howard taught from her front porch. “It was during that time, when on May 25 of 2020, within 253 steps of my front door, George Floyd was lynched. It was filmed by a former student of mine, and my life dramatically changed,” she said. Howard took the next year off in a leave of absence. She’s been a leader at George Floyd Square, where the intersection of 38th and Chicago is still occupied in protest since Floyd’s murder, more than two and a half years later.
Weeks before the strike began, teachers rallied on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day in 2022 in front of the U.S. Bank Stadium, where Howard addressed the crowd: “Minneapolis has been the epicenter of a global social justice movement and what we have discovered is how interconnected all of it is.”
A world on fire
The last movie Howard showed in class in 2020 was Contagion. “When it became just me and a computer, and disembodied voices, with an icon of their initials, I had to reach back into my bag of skills. How do I get their attention? How do I keep it? How do I make sense?” said Howard. “In a world that seemed to have gone bad, the very first thing that I had to convey to them is that we were in a time outside of time. Between March and May 25, we have a pandemic, after May 25, our world is on fire. My job was to be their teacher, which meant I would turn on Google Classroom and keep it on all day, and make sure that they knew that they have somebody there, while my neighbor has had four of her family members die of covid.”
“In a world that seemed to have gone bad, the very first thing that I had to convey to them is that we were in a time outside of time. Between March and May 25, we have a pandemic, after May 25, our world is on fire.”
She returned to the classroom in the fall of 2021 after the teachers’ contract expired in July, and then her union went on strike in March 2022. Demands included raises for education support professionals (ESPs), recruitment and retention of teachers of color, and more mental health support for students.
The teachers knew ESPs, who are predominantly people of color, were receiving poverty wages and often had to work multiple jobs to survive. Howard said she would leave work, go to the grocery store, and see an ESP she worked with during the day working behind the counter.
After striking for three weeks in the Minnesota cold, teachers won raises for ESPs. They also won contract language prioritizing teachers of color over seniority in the event of a layoff, which Howard and MFT 59 president Greta Callahan defended on Good Morning America in response to criticism by conservative local media.
Mitchell Hamline University law professor and Bureau of Mediation Services arbitrator Joseph Daly told the Minnesota Reformer that the protections for teachers from underrepresented communities represents “landmark language” in collective bargaining.
Howard said that to be Black in education is to see the ways her identity is punitively used when teachers and students fail.
“You can bring up Black people and say they’re being failed by public education, or they are inherently failures, for anything you need it to be. It’s pliable,” she said. “Anyone who’s a teacher, the first thing you want to do is self-reflect. Any teacher can think about the ways in which they could have been better, the ways in which they could have changed the curriculum to reach every kid.”
Many students supported the teachers during the strike and walked picket lines, and their parents cooked food for the striking teachers. “I believe that our district did not expect us to get that breadth of support,” said Howard. “That gave us leverage in negotiation, because we knew that they could not bludgeon us with, ‘parents are upset that you’re on the line’.”
What is collective good?
According to the Gender Policy Report by the University of Minnesota’s Center on Women, Gender, and Public Policy, worker-led actions are vital for improving the economic situations for those in public service. But when teachers and nurses go on strike, they can be criticized for harming students and patients. One of the main reasons for the strikes this year was to bring attention to working conditions that make it difficult and sometimes impossible for workers to do their jobs safely and efficiently, which hurts students and patients.
“When you think about gender perspectives, being a teacher or being a nurse, what they hope is that we care so much about our charges or our patients that we’re willing to accept the bare minimum.”
Both teachers and nurses said they didn’t want to go on strike, but withholding their labor was one of the ways they could take action. “When you think about gender perspectives, being a teacher or being a nurse, what they hope is that we care so much about our charges or our patients that we’re willing to accept the bare minimum,” said Howard. “God forbid we stand for ourselves and say, can you pay us the professional salary commensurate with our education and our skillset? And then they look at it and say, what about the kids? Exactly! Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.”
Howard teaches International Baccalaureate courses, which are part of an advanced pre-college diploma program. What she focuses on is building psychological wellbeing and critical thinking skills. She just finished a unit on propaganda. “If we can get their critical thinking skills up to par, then they can suss everything else,” she said. “I want them to be able to wield the language, but I also want them to understand the way in which emotive language is used to manipulate them. You need to recognize…are you getting sucked in?”
Howard said as long as she’s breathing, she has hope for her profession. “Not everything can be about profit. What is collective good anymore?” said Howard. “What I see is public education, and I’m gonna fight for it with my last breath.”
Nurses come to the rescue
“I think I was naive enough to think that after everything that nurses went through the last couple of years, that our employers would kind of give us a break. That’s what they’re hoping for, that you’ll be too shocked or too tired or too complacent to fight it,” said Anaas. “It got hard during the post-vaccination part of the pandemic. So many people in the ICU were ending up there because they made a choice. Then you’d have family members on the other end of the phone telling you that you were lying to them as the breathing tube was about to go in, the doctors were lying, this is a hoax.”
In September, around 15,000 nurses with the Minnesota Nurses Association went on strike for three days across the Twin Cities and Duluth. It was said to be the largest private-sector nursing strike in history, and it was covered extensively by the media. In November, nurses voted to authorize another strike over the holiday season, but they ratified a contract addressing their main concerns of chronic understaffing and wages.
Unlike public educators, nurses often work in the private sector for nonprofit companies, so their collective bargaining rights are restricted in different ways. Under the NLRA, workers are not allowed to strike at a health care institution unless they give a ten-day notice. In Minnesota, teachers can only strike after negotiations reach an impasse.
“For the last three years, our employers limped along on our sense of duty to the profession or a sense of duty to care for human beings, and it’s okay that we’re done with that.”
The strike in September was Anaas’ fourth strike working with Allina Health. Conditions in the emergency room are unlike what she has seen over her 14 years at Abbott, she says. These include long wait times, patients being seen and treated in waiting rooms, and full units staffed with only one or two nurses, according to Anaas.
“For the last three years, our employers limped along on our sense of duty to the profession or a sense of duty to care for human beings, and it’s okay that we’re done with that,” Anaas said. “Everybody has different limits. Some of the people whose limits have been reached have left. And the rest of us are quickly coming up on limits.”
Red shirts, bandanas, wigs, and sunglasses showcase the spirit of the picket line at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, Minn. in September 2022.
Anaas said she likely would have been laid off as a new nurse during the 2008 recession. However, nurses with more seniority offered to use their paid time off and sick hours so newer nurses could continue working in order to secure the future of nursing. She went on strike with Allina in 2010 and became a union steward after.
“I saw that sacrifice that those nurses made for me, and had an opportunity to pay it forward,” she said. “The public isn’t coming to our rescue, the media isn’t coming to our rescue, because there’s two sides of a story to tell there too, right? We are the only ones who can rescue us.”
Heroism as compensation
The issues affecting nurses in the Midwest are affecting nurses across the country. Around 7,000 nurses at two of the biggest hospitals in New York City with the New York State Nurses Association went on strike for three days over safe staffing before reaching a tentative agreement last Thursday. Health care workers in the United States have been called “heroes” while leaders devalue and disinvest in their industry plagued with financial instability during a mass health crisis. Heroism is often used in place of compensation for those who risk themselves for the collective good. As essential workers throughout the pandemic have repeatedover and over again, being glorified in the public imagination is not enough, and it can even feel like a form of cruelty when more pressing needs are neglected.
Allina’s comment in November 2022 calling the strike vote “public theater” was a slap in the face for Anaas, who has become sick herself from working with sick patients. “The public theater was the ‘heroes work here’ signs outside the hospital while they weren’t giving us any kind of hazard pay,” said Anaas. “Me on a picket line on Christmas morning? That’s not theater.”
Nurses walking the picket line at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, Minn.
According to a data analysis by the Minnesota Reformer, four out of the five most dangerous professions in Minnesota involve nursing and residential care. “You’re kind of at a loss after you’ve talked to a nurse who’s been injured,” said Anaas. “This shouldn’t have happened. This isn’t what you signed up for. It’s terrifying.”
Selling their campaign to the public and lawmakers was not hard for nurses. “It was the first time where we really didn’t hear anybody yelling at us, ‘stop being selfish’,” said Anaas. “It was ‘keep going, keep fighting’. I wish our employers would remember that the public, our patients, know what they deserve, too.”
Unseen work
Although the nurses finally got their contract after nine months of negotiation, news of a proposed merger between Fairview Health Services, which partners with the University of Minnesota (disclosure: Workday Magazine is a publication housed in the the Labor Education Service, which is based at the University of Minnesota), and Sanford Health, a hospital company based in the right-to-work state of South Dakota, is causing concern for health care workers. “What happens when an employer buys our system? Is our contract recognized?” said Erika Helling, an RN at Fairview Southdale, at a press conference. “Do we need to fight all over again to keep the high standards and protections our contract provides to the practice of nursing and patient care?”
Minnesota’s state attorney general Keith Ellison has been hosting public meetings on the proposed mergers. In the first meeting, workers in attendance raised concerns about the effect the merger will have on employees and the care they provide, especially for those in need of abortion care, which is illegal in South Dakota.
“We believe every working person in Minnesota needs access to quality healthcare,” Minnesota AFL-CIO president Bernie Burnham said at the meeting, referencing an MN AFL-CIO resolution opposing the merger. “Ten years ago when Sanford and Fairview health systems first attempted to merge, attorney general Lori Swanson organized a public hearing to show that the merger was not in the public’s interest. We believe, at the MN AFL-CIO, that the merger is still not in the public’s interest.”
Nurses are going to continue pushing the Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act in Minnesota’s legislative session. “We will not stop fighting for staffing and against corporatization of healthcare,” said MNA President Mary Turner.
Anaas spoke at a press conference on December 15 announcing the ratification of the new contracts: “Now, we rest, for there is resistance in that, too.”
Anaas, whose mom was a teacher and dad was a firefighter, considered teaching as a career. But she saw the dissatisfaction in the teachers in her family. She figured nursing would satisfy her desire to care for people and educate them.
“Whether you’re a nurse or a teacher or an electrician or working in a grocery store, if you don’t give them a hard boundary, they will continue to walk over you,” she said. “So much of this feels beyond the struggle against our employers, but also the way we’re taking advantage of women and our sense of duty, our unseen work.”
Nurses at 55 National Health Service facilities across England launched a two-day strike on Wednesday after the United Kingdom’s right-wing government, led by Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, refused to open formal negotiations over pay and patient safety.
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Pat Cullen called the 12-hour work stoppages on Wednesday and Thursday—which come after nurses at dozens of NHS facilities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland participated in the union’s first-ever national strike in December—”a modest escalation before a sharp increase in under three weeks from now.” There is a strike fund, and picket line locations can be found here.
The nearly 500,000-strong nurses’ union announced earlier this week that if progress is not made by the end of January, members at 85 NHS facilities in England and Wales will walk off the job again on February 6 and February 7. RCN members in Northern Ireland are not slated to join next month’s walkout. In Scotland, strike action remains paused amid ongoing negotiations.
“Rather than negotiate, Rishi Sunak has chosen strike action again.”
“It is with a heavy heart that nursing staff are striking this week and again in three weeks,” Cullen said Monday. “Rather than negotiate, Rishi Sunak has chosen strike action again.”
On Wednesday, the registered nurse and union leader added: “People aren’t dying because nurses are striking. Nurses are striking because people are dying. That is how severe things are in the NHS and it is time the prime minister led a fight for its future.”
“Today’s record number of unfilled nurse jobs cannot be left to get worse,” said Cullen. “Pay nursing staff fairly to turn this around and give the public the care they deserve.”
\u201c\ud83c\udfb5 1, 2, 3, 4 \nWe won’t take it anymore\n5, 6, 7, 8 \nCome on @RishiSunak, negotiate\n\nA powerful and clear message from members at @StGeorgesTrust. It’s time the Government listened. \n\n#FairPayForNursing #RCNStrike\u201d
A 2021 study commissioned by the RCN found that in real terms, the salaries of experienced U.K. nurses have fallen by 20% due to successive below-inflation pay bumps since 2010. The current dispute is fueled by discontent over a proposed 4-5% raise, which fails to keep pace with the soaring cost of living, up by 10.5% in 2022. RCN is seeking a 5% raise above inflation.
According to the RCN, “Low pay is pushing nursing staff out of the profession and contributing to record vacancies.”
Because there are “tens of thousands of unfilled jobs,” Cullen said, “patient care is suffering like never before.”
As the union pointed out, the upcoming February strike dates coincide with the tenth anniversary of the final report of the Robert Francis inquiry, which documented the relationship between inadequate nurse staffing levels and higher mortality rates.
“Pay nursing staff fairly to turn this around and give the public the care they deserve.”
If the U.K. government invested in better pay for nurses, it “would recoup 81% of the initial outlay in terms of higher tax receipts and savings on future recruitment and retention costs,” the RCN noted, citing London Economics researchers.
“My olive branch to government—asking them to meet me halfway and begin negotiations—is still there,” said Cullen. “They should grab it.”
Also on Wednesday, the GMB union announced that 10,000 ambulance workers in the U.K. plan to strike on February 6, February 20, March 6, and March 20.
“Ambulance workers are angry. In their own words, ‘They are done,’” said GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison. “Our message to the government is clear—talk pay now.”
February 6 is set to become the first time in history that nurses and paramedics strike on the same day.
The past year has seen a surge in labor unrest across the U.K., with teachers in England and Wales voting Monday afternoon to strike on February 1, the same day 100,000 other public sector workers were already scheduled to walk off the job to demand improved pay and benefits.
The Tories further angered organized labor this week by advancing a bill that threatens to take away the right of nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, firefighters, rail workers, and others to strike.
Progressive critics argue that the Tories’ proposal to fire striking public sector workers who refuse to comply with a mandatory return-to-work notice amounts to a “pay cut and forced labor bill” and would constitute a “gross violation of international law.”
During a recent speech inveighing against the anti-strike legislation, left-wing Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said that the bill is about “shifting the balance of power: weakening the power of workers and making it easier for bosses to exploit them and for the government to ignore them.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Mount Pleasant, S.C. — Most of the 30 volunteers who work at the 130-bed, for-profit East Cooper Medical Center spend their days assisting surgical patients — the scope of their duties extending far beyond those of candy stripers, baby cuddlers, and gift shop clerks. In fact, one-third of the volunteers at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital are retired nurses who check people in for surgery or…
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state Democrats at a Bronx rally Saturday, just days ahead of what is sure to be a contentious confirmation hearing in which progressive lawmakers opposed to LaSalle’s appointment to lead the state Court of Appeals could be decided.
Progressives charge that Hector D. LaSalle is too conservative, anti-abortion, anti-labor and anti-due process and his appointment would tilt the state’s top court further to the right.
Jeffries, however, voiced his support for the judge, saying LaSalle is “highly qualified to serve as the chief judge.”
“Period, full stop,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries urged an “up-or-down” vote by the full state Senate. “It’s important for the entire New York state Senate to treat this nomination with the same dignity, decency and respect that every other nomination has received,” he said.
In December, the Democratic governor announced that she’d chosen the conservative judge as the next chief judge of the state Court of Appeals. Judge LaSalle is currently the presiding justice of the Appellate Division in Brooklyn.
The nomination was described as
“mystifying” and “horrible news” by legal experts, including public defender Eliza Orlins, who pointed to LaSalle’s record on abortion and labor rights as reasons that he was “potentially the worst of the seven nominees” the governor chose between.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Progressive lawmakers are working to let the nomination die in committee without advancing it to a full Senate vote. At least 14 Democratic senators have indicated they oppose his selection.
The confirmation fight pits the moderate Hochul against the party’s progressives.
Politico reports:
Progressives and labor leaders see the pick as a betrayal after many within their ranks worked to deliver vital last-minute votes to Hochul during the final frantic days of last year’s election. Some reluctant allies are regretting their decision.
“She promised us that we would have a seat at the table,” Jimmy Mahoney, the president of a statewide iron workers union, said at the state Capitol on Monday as labor leaders rallied against the nomination. “She put us on the menu. This is not right. The way it was rolled out, it was so unprofessional and backstabbing.”Democratic leadership in the state Senate warned the newly-elected governor in early December that there would be fierce opposition to a LaSalle nomination
LaSalle is currently the presiding justice of the New York Supreme Court’s Second Judicial Department, and as Alexander Sammon and Mark Joseph Stern
wrote at Slate, “his record as an intermediate appeals court judge demonstrates a deep hostility to the very values that Hochul claimed she wanted to uphold with this appointment.”
In 2017, LaSalle ruled that a so-called “crisis pregnancy center”—where people are pressured into carrying unwanted pregnancies instead of obtaining abortion care—should be shielded from the state attorney general’s investigation into whether the facility was practicing medicine without a license. The judge invoked the First Amendment when he ruled that “advertisements and promotional literature, brochures, and pamphlets that the [center] provided or disseminated to the public” should not be investigated.
He also joined other judges in 2015 in handing down a “shocking” opinion, Sammon and Stern wrote, that allowed Cablevision to sue union leaders for criticizing the company’s response to Hurricane Sandy, and ruled in 2014 that a criminal defendant should be blocked from appealing his conviction after the defendant claimed he’d been subjected to an illegal search.
Although Hochul claimed she was planning to nominate a chief justice who would help “defend against [the U.S.] Supreme Court’s rapid retreat from precedent and continue our march toward progress,” if LaSalle is confirmed by the state Senate to a 14-year term, he “would entrench a reactionary majority that would fight tooth and nail against the priorities of New York progressives,” wrote Sammon and Stern.
\u201cHakeem Jeffries remains a punchline, he\u2019s trying to prove all of Democrats\u2019 promises as lies by disgracing himself & backing Hector LaSalle.\n\nKathy Hochul, Eric Adams, and Jeffries seem to be in a competition for the GOP MVP slot that opened up when Sean Patrick Maloney was fired\u201d
\u201cThere’s this thing in the Democratic Party where they will absolutely bend over backwards for dudes like LaSalle with no justification beyond, “he deserves the job!! For Reasons!!!” https://t.co/t1LWDYNfMY\u201d
\u201c”As organizations, advocates, and scholars who work and write on issues of reproductive and gender justice, we are deeply troubled by the nomination of Justice Hector LaSalle to serve as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.”\n\nhttps://t.co/lFFweHRX7c\u201d
\u201cLabor\n\nLatinx leaders\n\n14 state senators\n\n@AOC and other federal officeholders\n\nAnd so many more. \n\nNew York progressives are fired up, and demanding the state senate reject LaSalle #TheCourtNYDeserves #StateCourtsMatter\u201d
— Alliance for Justice (@Alliance for Justice)
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This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
This story was originally published by Prism. Workers at the HarperCollins Union have been on strike for over two months, braving the fierce New York City winter and picketing outside the company’s offices. Now, sources say their labor is being outsourced to temporary workers. While some authors are crossing the picket line and continuing to work with “scab” — or strikebreaking — editors…
Migrant workers and advocates on Friday applauded a Biden administration policy to help protect noncitizen employees who are victims or witnesses of labor rights violations “from threats of immigration-related retaliation from the exploitive employers.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that noncitizens will be able to submit requests for temporary relief from deportation or…
Migrant workers and advocates on Friday applauded a Biden administration policy to help protect noncitizen employees who are victims or witnesses of labor rights violations “from threats of immigration-related retaliation from the exploitive employers.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that noncitizens will be able to submit requests for temporary relief from deportation or other immigration actions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “through a central intake point established specifically to support labor agency investigative and enforcement efforts.”
“This policy will change lives, but only if our local and national leaders stand with workers loud and clear, to make this policy a reality.”
DHS said that “for deferred action requests from noncitizens who are in removal proceedings or have a final order of removal, upon reviewing the submission for completeness, USCIS will forward such requests to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a final determination on a case-by-case basis.”
As Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, explained Friday in a blog post welcoming the announcement:
Given the current budget constraints of federal labor standards enforcement agencies—which are funded at just one-twelfth the rate of immigration enforcement agencies—the use of deferred action in this manner will encourage workers and whistleblowers to speak out without fear and will act as a force multiplier for underfunded and understaffed labor enforcement agencies, thereby assisting them in their mission to protect worker rights and hold lawbreaking employers accountable. This will make workplaces safer for all workers.
Organizations from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Immigrant Work praised the policy, with Haydi Torres, an organizer with Unidad Latina en Acción NJ, declaring that “this is a huge victory for undocumented workers and the labor movement.”
“Our fight goes beyond our immigration status, it is a fight for all the workers who sustain the economy of this country,” Torres said. “Without our hands there is no work.”
Yale Law School professor James Bhandary-Alexander, an attorney with Unidad Latina en Acción CT, said that “the threat of deportation is like a gun in the boss’s hand, pointed at workers and their rights.”
Workers’ rights leaders such as Victor Agreda agreed, saying that “the bosses always act like they have more power than the workers.”
While “my co-workers and I overcame our fear to denounce labor abuses,” Agreda said, “deferred action is labor justice for all workers who remain silent in the face of abuse.”
\u201cHUGE win for immigrant workers! This is a historic step for victims of workplace mistreatment and wage theft. This is only the start – we won\u2019t stop until there\u2019s #citizenshipforall! \u270a\ud83c\udffd\n\nMigrant workers can now be protected from deportation while disputing workplace abuse.\u201d
— NICE: New Immigrant Community Empowerment (@NICE: New Immigrant Community Empowerment)
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asserted Friday that “unscrupulous employers who prey on the vulnerability of noncitizen workers harm all workers and disadvantage businesses who play by the rules.”
“We will hold these predatory actors accountable by encouraging all workers to assert their rights, report violations they have suffered or observed, and cooperate in labor standards investigations,” he pledged. “Through these efforts, and with our labor agency partners, we will effectively protect the American labor market, the conditions of the American worksite, and the dignity of the workers who power our economy.”
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), said that “today’s announcement by Secretary Mayorkas is welcome news. Immigrant workers are critical to the success of our economy, yet they are among those who suffer the most exploitation and abuse at work, and then suffer further from intimidation and retaliation when they stand up for their rights.”
\u201cFor far too long, immigrant workers have had no one in their corner as they faced employers who threatened them with deportation and unlivable wages. This new guidance will help create fairer and safer working conditions for #OurComunidad and all workers.\u201d
Since then-President-elect Joe Biden announced Marty Walsh as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Labor in October 2021, migrant worker advocates have pressured the administration to ensure that its immigration and labor policies are aligned and to protect whistleblowers by removing the threat of deportation.
“From Las Vegas to Washington D.C., to Mississippi to New York, we have fought tirelessly to reach this moment,” Rosario Ortiz of the Arriba Las Vegas Worker Center noted Friday. “My coworkers and I have been fighting our case for more than three years, facing threats and intimidation on top of wage theft and health and safety risks as workers of Unforgettable Coatings Inc.”
“We’ve met personally with Secretary Walsh and Secretary Maryokas to call for these protections,” Ortiz said. “Today I am proud of my coworkers and our brothers and sisters across the country who have helped open a pathway for others in our circumstances to seek the protections that we have won.”
\u201c#BREAKING: #DHS announces new migrant workers whistleblower policy! It\u2019s a recognition of the many workers who launched the #DALE campaign demanding Biden protect rights of migrant workers confronting abuse + unsafe work – with work permits – not try to deport them!\u201d
— Justice Action Center (JAC) (@Justice Action Center (JAC))
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While celebrating the administration’s move, Unidad Latina en Acción CT director John Jairo Lugo stressed that “words without actions are not enough. This policy will change lives, but only if our local and national leaders stand with workers loud and clear, to make this policy a reality.”
National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) co-executive director Nadia Marin-Molina vowed that “we are going to fight like hell in the days and weeks ahead to ensure that every single worker who qualifies can get the benefit of this new policy.”
“We are going to fight like hell in the days and weeks ahead to ensure that every single worker who qualifies can get the benefit of this new policy.”
Farmworker Justice, which also applauded the announcement, pointed out that the policy “will have a particularly powerful impact among farmworkers, more than half of whom are either undocumented or on precarious H-2A work visas, and their families.”
“Farmworker Justice has supported advocate demands for these protections for many years, and we look forward to continued engagement with DHS as well as labor enforcement agencies to educate farmworkers and their advocates about the new guidance,” the group said. “We will also continue to advocate for comprehensive solutions that improve the lives of farmworkers and their families, including legislation that provides immigrant workers with a path to citizenship, protections against workplace hazards like extreme heat and pesticides, and the elimination of unjust farmworker exclusions from federal labor protections.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
After a three-day strike, the New York State Nurses Association announced it had reached tentative agreements with two hospitals that will strengthen safe staffing standards.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter has been tumultuous, to say the least. The chaotic rollout of a Twitter Blue feature that enabled users to impersonate corporations and public figures, a stampede of advertisers leaving the platform, thousands of Twitter employees around the world suddenly laid off, and a barrage of haphazard changes to Twitter’s services have all left users bewildered and frustrated. The consequences of Musk’s chaotic business dealings and workplace abuses are hard to enumerate, but with a wide variety of groups bringing lawsuits against the tech billionaire, the chickens may be coming home to roost.
Musk has deflected criticisms of his takeover of Twitter, opting instead to cozy up to the far right, from supporting their complaints about “wokeness” and “radical leftists” to sending troublesome winks and nods to alt-right conspiracy groups like QAnon. And the spillover effects are, well, spilling over: Musk’s erratic actions have spooked shareholders at Tesla, which has seen stock shares plunge ever since he took over Twitter as owner and CEO.
Yep. Came here to post that definition after I saw Musk write that. It’s definitely not an accident. He continues to signal to white supremacists. pic.twitter.com/m75dCnzRE2
Among his most concerning actions has been the series of mass layoffs Musk has conducted since taking over Twitter, which have prompted numerous lawsuits and legal actions from former employees. Right before the holidays, Twitter laid off the janitors who cleaned the corporate offices through a contracted company, leaving 48 janitors without income and health insurance.
“I can only tell you that I won’t have any healthcare. I won’t have money to pay the rent,” said Julio Alvarado, who worked as a janitor cleaning Twitter headquarters for a decade before being laid off in early December 2022. “We don’t know what we are going to do. These tech companies have everything. They need to do the right thing and put the people who keep them safe back on the job.”
“Overnight, we don’t have anything. How am I going to eat? How am I going to take care of my family?”
Adrianna villareal, former janitor at twitter
The workers were laid off without any severance pay and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu is currently investigating the layoffs, as city law demands companies retain workers for at least 90 days when switching contractors.
“Overnight, we don’t have anything. How am I going to eat? How am I going to take care of my family?” said Adrianna Villarreal, who worked as a janitor cleaning Twitter headquarters for 5 years before losing her job. “This is what happens when these billionaire companies don’t respect union work. It’s terrible.”
After initially cutting Twitter’s staff of 7,500 employees down to about 2,700 workers, Musk claimed in November 2022 that he was done with layoffs and looking to hire new workers. However, the layoffs continued, and Musk proceeded to fire half of Twitter’s policy team in December 2022.
The layoffs have prompted a flood of lawsuits from former employees and at least one investigation into the company by state agencies. Twitter is currently being sued by former women employees who allege in a class action lawsuit that the layoffs disproportionately targeted women, with the complaint citing numerous sexist comments Elon Musk made on Twitter as well as previous reporting on Musk’s alleged misogynistic treatment of women employees. Other former Twitter employees have filed a lawsuit over Twitter laying off workers en masse without proper notice, as state and federal laws require at least a notice of 60 days ahead of mass layoffs at large employers.
Elon Musk has a long record of violating labor laws, treating workers as disposable, and abuse and harassment toward employees at his companies.
Former employees have also filed a lawsuit against Twitter for not fulfilling promises of maintaining consistency with regard to providing severance and work-from-home options, and a judge ordered Twitter provide notice to all laid-off employees about the pending lawsuit. Another laid-off Twitter employee, John Barnett, is suing Twitter over claims the company canceled some of his stock options upon his termination. Twitter is also under investigation for violating city codes after the company installed beds in its offices; the investigation began shortly after an email by Elon Musk to Twitter staff went public, in which he encouraged workers to embrace ‘hardcore’ long schedules or leave the company.
Elon Musk has a long record of violating labor laws, treating workers as disposable, and abuse and harassment toward employees at his companies. At Tesla’s Fremont, California production plant, Richard Ortiz, an employee who was working to organize a union with the United Auto Workers at the plant, was fired in October 2017. Ortiz’s firing broke the union campaign—workers wearing pro-union shirts reportedly disappeared virtually overnight after Ortiz was targeted. In 2021, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Ortiz’s firing was unlawful and ordered that he be reinstated with back pay, and that Elon Musk delete a Tweet in which he threatened workers with the loss of stock options if they unionized. Tesla has been accused of firing other pro-union workers at the Fremont, California, plant and the company’s battery plant in Buffalo, New York, as well.
Former Tesla workers have also claimed they were fired for using maternity and sick leave. One Tesla worker won a $15 million settlement after they experienced rampant racial discrimination while working at Tesla as a contractor in 2017, and the worker rejected the settlement offer in order to bring the case again before a jury. A class action lawsuit was filed by 15 former Tesla employees in June 2022 alleging they were subjected to constant racial discrimination and harassment on the job. California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) is also suing Tesla over allegations the company fostered a work environment where rampant racism was permitted to occur unchecked for years.
Multiple former Tesla employees have also filed sexual harassment lawsuits against the company, alleging a culture of sexual harassment at Tesla and HR doing nothing in response to complaints of misconduct.
In May 2022, BusinessInsiderreported that Elon Musk allegedly paid a SpaceX flight attendant a $250,000 settlement after he exposed himself and propositioned her for sex during a massage.
Earlier in 2022, former Tesla employees filed a lawsuit against the company alleging 500 layoffs were conducted in violation of the WARN Act, alleging that a proper minimum advance notice of the impending layoffs (60 days ahead of time) was not provided to workers. At Tesla, Elon Musk also threatened to suspend unemployment benefits if workers didn’t return to work at the plant during the COVID-19 pandemic, in defiance of local COVID-19 protocols. Following the plant’s premature reopening, hundreds of COVID-19 cases were reported at the plant.
At Elon Musk’s SolarCity company, moreover, which was bought by Tesla in 2016, former employees alleged that they were fired after reporting millions in fake sales that resulted in a ballooned valuation of the company. Hundreds of SolarCity employees were laid off in the wake of the acquisition, with workers saying that they were blindsided by the layoffs, and that the performance reviews cited by Tesla to justify the layoffs never actually occurred.
In May 2022, BusinessInsiderreported that Elon Musk allegedly paid a SpaceX flight attendant a $250,000 settlement after he exposed himself and propositioned her for sex during a massage. Several former SpaceX employees filed NLRB complaints against the company after they claimed they were fired in retaliation for criticizing Elon Musk over the sexual misconduct allegations. A former SpaceX engineer also published an essay in December 2021 outlining a culture of harassment and sexism at the company.
Musk has responded erratically to these allegations and to criticisms of his public antics, seemingly throwing tantrums that involve suspending journalists on Twitter and making ridiculous claims and false promises that, in Trumpian fashion, become media “events” unto themselves. He has spent years benefitting and propagating a mythical version of himself to the public as a sort of technological savior, though reality repeatedly dispels these notions much to the chagrin of his ardent fanbase. It remains unclear if Twitter will survive his reign or what that will look like, but the cracks in the facade of Elon Musk’s wannabe persona of a real-life Tony Stark are slipping further away as he burrows further into the embracing arms of his sycophantic, far-right fanbase, and his irascible, even abusive behaviors—toward his employees and the public—are put on full display.
Over 7,000 nurses, represented by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and employed by two major hospitals in New York City, ended their strike in the wee hours this week on January 12. Management had returned to the negotiating table to meet the nurses’ primary demands for increased staffing and wage increases. These nurses, from Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 11, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a case that has the potential to upend the ability of unions to strike without facing retaliatory lawsuits from corporations.
The case, Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. Int’l Brotherhood of Teamsters, involves a concrete company that had previously attempted to sue a union over an action taken by its workers during a strike in 2017. Cement truck drivers had abandoned their trucks at the start of the strike, some of which had cement mixing in them, resulting in a financial loss for the company, which had to dump the concrete to avoid damaging the vehicles.
Federal standards stipulate that workers are not responsible for inadvertent financial losses that result from a strike. But Glacier Northwest sought to sue the union in state court, alleging that the action resulted in property damage that workers should have to pay for. The Washington state Supreme Court ruled that Glacier Northwest couldn’t sue in state court, however, saying the matter had to be resolved by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Glacier Northwest appealed that ruling to the federal Supreme Court, which heard arguments on Tuesday over whether the company can sue the union.
The union has also warned that, should the Court rule in favor of Glacier Northwest, it could expand the definition of “unprotected conduct” during strikes — if not in name then in practice — by allowing companies to sue countless times over the financial losses that may result from strikes. Workers may be less inclined to strike if they believe that they may face lawsuits as a result of doing so.
It’s currently unclear how the Supreme Court will rule — aside from Chief Justice John Roberts, conservative bloc justices, which comprise six of the nine seats on the Court, were relatively quiet during oral presentations from both sides. Still, recent anti-worker rulings from the Court indicate that justices will likely favor Glacier Northwest, allowing them to sue the union in Washington state courts.
Liberal bloc justices have suggested that they are sympathetic to the argument that the NLRB should hear the case first, noting during oral arguments that changing the jurisdiction where companies can challenge unions from the NLRB to state courts endangers the rights of workers and unions, including the right to strike.
The union has also warned that, should the Court rule in favor of Glacier Northwest, it could expand the definition of “unprotected conduct” during strikes — if not in name then in practice — by allowing companies to sue countless times over the financial losses that may result from strikes. Workers may be less inclined to strike if they believe that they may face lawsuits as a result of doing so.
Rakim Brooks, president of the progressive group Alliance for Justice, tweeted in support of workers and their union.
“I cant believe I have to say this: Workers have a right to strike!” Brooks wrote. “Freedom of assembly, and thus collective action, is guaranteed by the 1st amendment and protected by federal law. We can’t let right wing ideology strip us of our basic rights.”
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on January 12, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
New York City nurses and two major hospitals reached a tentative agreement on Thursday that the healthcare workers’ union celebrated as a “historic victory” after three days of striking for a fair contract.
The more than 7,000 striking nurses agreed to return to work Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center, privately owned hospitals whose management previously refused to accept the nurses’ central demand for safer staffing requirements—pushing the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) to leverage the power of collective action.
According to NYSNA, the tentative deal includes “wall-to-wall safe staffing ratios for all inpatient units with firm enforcement so that there will always be enough nurses at the bedside to provide safe patient care, not just on paper.”
“NYSNA nurses have done the impossible, saving lives night and day, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, and now we’ve again shown that nothing is impossible for nurse heroes,” said Nancy Hagans, RN, the president of the union. “Through our unity and by putting it all on the line, we won enforceable safe staffing ratios at both Montefiore and Mount Sinai where nurses went on strike for patient care. Today, we can return to work with our heads held high, knowing that our victory means safer care for our patients and more sustainable jobs for our profession.”
According to NYSNA, the tentative deal includes “wall-to-wall safe staffing ratios for all inpatient units with firm enforcement so that there will always be enough nurses at the bedside to provide safe patient care, not just on paper.”
“New staffing ratios take effect immediately in a historic breakthrough for hospitals that refused to consider ratios that nurses have been demanding for decades,” the union said. “At Montefiore, nurses will also return to work this morning after winning new safe staffing ratios in the Emergency Department, with new staffing language and financial penalties for failing to comply with safe staffing levels in all units. Nurses also won community health improvements and nurse-student partnerships to recruit local Bronx nurses to stay as union nurses at Montefiore for the long run.”
BREAKING: NYC nurses strike to end this morning in historic victory as tentative deals were reached with both @MontefioreNYC and @MountSinaiNYC Hospital. Nurses won concrete enforceable safe staffing ratios in both deals and will be back on the job.
The nurses’ fight for safe staffing measures and other changes drew national attention to Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore’s business practices, including their lavish compensation of executives.
“While Montefiore and Mount Sinai are technically nonprofits, they frequently act like large corporations—with massive investments on Wall Street and overseas, and providers sidelined from essential care decisionmaking,” The Lever‘s Matthew Cunningham-Cook reported earlier this week. “These nonprofit hospitals also boast huge executive salaries. Mount Sinai CEO Kenneth Davis made $5.6 million in 2019, the last year for which complete tax records are available. Montefiore CEO Philip Ozuah made $7.4 million in 2020. Montefiore disclosed providing an unnamed executive (or executives) with a chauffeur and first-class airfare in 2020.”
“In filings with the IRS, Mount Sinai disclosed that 15 executives made more than $1 million annually in 2019,” Cunningham-Cook added. “Montefiore disclosed ten in 2020, with all making more than $1.5 million.”
On the picket line with striking nurses on Monday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said he was “tired of living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, but we never have enough money for our workers.”
“If CEOs can double their pay,” Bowman declared, “we can give workers a fair contract.”
Of course, King was murdered by the Deep State on Steroids:
Both the Jowers and the Wilson allegations suggest that persons other than or in addition to James Earl Ray participated in the assassination. Ray, within days of entering his guilty plea in 1969, attempted to withdraw it. Until his death in April 1998, he maintained that he did not shoot Dr. King and was framed by a man he knew only as Raoul. For 30 years, others have similarly alleged that Ray was Raoul’s unwitting pawn and that a conspiracy orchestrated Dr. King’s murder. These varied theories have generated several comprehensive government investigations regarding the assassination, none of which confirmed the existence of any conspiracy. However, in King v. Jowers, a recent civil suit in a Tennessee state court, a jury returned a verdict finding that Jowers and unnamed others, including unspecified government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King. (source)
“Volodymyr Zelensky Talks Hopes of War Ending During Golden Globes Video Message: ‘There Will Be No Third World War. It is not a trilogy,’ the Ukraine president said in his impact video message.”
Think of that Goebbels-Mengele-Hitler moment, would you? I had a friend who was watching these multimillionaire frauds, the beautiful people (sic) would laugh at her and at me — she’s going through domestic violence hell, divorce hell, with systems that make the victim feel and be guilty. Me? I can write circles around most of those Holly-Dirt frauds, but alas, I am a communist, so, those frauds wouldn’t touch me with a social distancing stick of a thousand yars while all masked up and girdled up with a ZioAzovNaziLensky blue and yellow half assed flak jacket.
Imagine, how many Goyim, Gentiles, even Christians (not all UkroNazi’s are hard-core Nazis and Satanists) are not dead and wounded in the latest meat grinder the little dictator Zelensky is heading up? And he spoke to the Golden Shower Award Recepients while they, 12,000 were KIA-ed and another 13,000 wounded? Some of the UkroNazi soldiers had frostbite on many many feet and toes and fingers, while the multimillionaire war monger, Zelensky, spoke to the cocaine and 12-step Botox folk.
You think King would be angry?
No message of peace from Julian Assange’s wife or father? No real heroes of peace and reconciliation speaking at the dumb-down awards. No heroines of journalism at the awards, uh?
“A major effect of junk politics — its ceaseless flood of patriotic, religious, macho and therapeutic fustian — is to pull position after position loose from reasoned foundations,” writer BenjaminDeMott noted (Hedges and Hedges).
And so, all the creeps in politics, all the heads of corporations, the heads of universities, even military generals, and of course, the Press, Media, they are all two-bit actors, like ZioAzovNaziLensky. (Note: I went to the story on Golden Globes ZioLensky appearance, and it is absolutely disgusting. Sean Penn said the most ludicrous thing, and ZioAzovLensky said nothing, really, pure tripe. Read at your onw risk, and, of course, WWKD — What Would King Do?
And that my kind readers, I know for a fact, would be putting steam under King’s collar if he were around today to see this complete blasphemy of humanity actually entertaining nuclear war, limited strikes, and more war here, there, and everywhere. And a mixed race woman, as VP!
Here, enough of these fascists and perversions of humanity.
King:
The following (scroll down a bit) ran today, Jan. 11, in the little twice-a-week rag out here on the Central Oregon Coast —
It’s mellow for me, not exactly milquetoast, but still the reality if this USA and Canada are racist countries based on Anglo Saxon invasions and pogroms of genocide and land theft and subjugation and insanity. Get those Puritans and Smith Colony and Pilgrims and Mayflower folk here so the City of London to this day can hold it’s genocidal sway over much of the world, even in this post/new colonialism.
From Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it:
I have seen two generations of my people the…. I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must the soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that 1 can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, diey all cry out “Here comes Captain Smith!” So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all the in the same manner.
When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indigenous peoples. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indigenous land by declaring the area legally a “vacuum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing.
The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
*****
Heroes — A million of them, but for now, Paul Robeson, King and Malcolm X (NPR, be careful):
King would be proud of this hero,
Ana Belen Montes has repeated history by saying what she said during her trial 21 years ago: the US government’s policies against Cuba are very harsh and she behaved according to her conscience rather than the law. She added: “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”
If alive, King would be protesting and getting jailed for this hero:
The U.S. imperialists “want Alex Saab like they want Julian Assange to suffer,” charges human rights and international law expert Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, who the United Nations’ Human Rights Council appointed to serve as a special rapporteur.
What is the great “crime” Alex Saab is accused of committing, that caused this South American diplomat to be physically pulled off of a jet while refueling at a remote African island, imprisoned, and reportedly tortured there for about a year before being kidnapped to the U.S.A.?
The U.S. has no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde. Saab was simply seized and flown to Miami without any notification to his lawyers or family. (Source)
And, King, if he were alive, what might he have been doing to free and condemn USA-UK-Sweden-Australia-The World for this hero? Assange.
King would be holding this book, and thousands of others, exposing the cruelty of Capitalism and USA:
Part One of review and discussion of Linda G. Ford’s Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart (Part Two)
I was born a protester … My mother had to go to the school a lot and talk to the principal.— Dorli Rainey
I am being jailed because I have advocated change for equality, justice, and peace. … I stand where thousands of abolitionists, escaped slaves, workers and political activists have stood for demanding justice, for refusing to either quietly bear the biting lash of domination or to stand by silently as others bear the same lash.— Marilyn Buck, at her 1990 sentencing (epigram in Linda Ford’s book, Women Politicals in America)
Yeah, I sure do miss King as a topic in schools, as a centerpoint to our thinking about war and materialism and predatory and parasitic capitalism! Here, today’s Op-Ed in our small rural county, Lincoln County!
MLK Jr. 56 years ago stated a point more relevant today than a half century ago: The systemic flaws of America have incubated the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
This MLK Jr. Day was so deemed by Congress in 1994 to mark the holiday as “a national day of service.” Martin Luther King was born Jan. 15, 1929. I’ve done plenty of service-in-service-community service projects with students over the 29 years of the day’s relevance: river clean-ups, working in food kitchens, getting blankets and tents to homeless folk, cleaning up graffiti, and having teach-ins and drive-by photo shoots of neighborhoods.
Here’s this German-Irish white guy (me) today writing about the power of not just King and his activism, but the power of so many people in the civil rights and anti-racist movement who transformed my point of view on so many global and national social justice issues.
In addition, King, for me, would not be so vaunted without my study of Malcolm X. Or Paul Robeson, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, and so many activists in the Black Liberation Movement.
For this county [with 89.1% white, .09 percent African American, 1.5 percent Asian, and then 4.1 percent American Indian and Alaska Native], the concept of not just celebrating King, but drilling down deeply into what he represents/-ed might fall on deaf ears. Putting him into historical context, i.e. learning about those around him before he rose to fame and afterward, adds to the value of King’s prominence.
I had a father who was shot in Korea as a 19 year old and then in Vietnam as a 36 year old. He was in two branches of military as a regular uniformed soldier; for 32 years total. He was always supportive of my journalism, my teaching, my college pursuits, but more importantly, he backed me on my activism. He was a student of history, and the history I embraced wasn’t what mainstream historians were delving into.
For example: Cesar Chavez and his work — National Farm Workers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers labor union. John Trudell, son of a Santee Dakota father and a Mexican mother, who was a poet, song writer, performer and activist.
In this county and in other places, just what does it mean to a majority of the country to give pause around King’s work? The “I Have a Dream” speech will be played in parts, over and over. I have emphasized his letter to clergy and other white leaders, in his jailhouse essay titled, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written in longhand April 15, 1963.
King’s letter: “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.”
He also penned from the jail, “The Negro is Your Friend.”
This third Monday in January marks the birth of Dr. King Jr. We need to go beyond a few lines played back from the “Dream” speech or some of the black and white images of his 1963 march on Washington
Throughout my college teaching – in heavily military populated El Paso, Tucson, Las Cruces, and Spokane, including instruction on military bases and posts – I got students to think deeper about King’s life, work, and teachings. Having students read, analyze and discuss his April 4, 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, delivered at New York’s Riverside Church a year to the day before he was assassinated, I ended up rallying sophisticated critiques of King’s impact on the USA.
It was the Vietnam War in King’s time, but my students were facing the Panama Invasion, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, contras in Nicaragua, dirty US-backed wars in Guatemala, Afghanistan, and so many other so-called interventions and these proxy wars. Some were Vietnam and Korea combat veterans.
This speech was eviscerated by mainstream Press, including the New York Times and dozens of large daily newspapers. That was the point of having this speech and the Jail speech looked at and parsed – self-critique as a people, as a nation.
King’s first point in drawing the connection between ending racism at home and curbing militarism abroad had to do with the waste of precious resources:
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”
My father was his soldiers’ advocate, having verbally defied some of the businesses in the South that refused to serve his fellow uniformed men in the Big Red One (Latino and Black Americans).
I never got to challenge my CW4 father with so much of history I absorbed. For instance, Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates that the United States is militarily still engaged in 85 countries, enabling or prosecuting wars in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and beyond. Maintaining over 750 overseas military bases have unfortunately spun spending for military purposes out of control, more than at the height of the Vietnam or Korean Wars.
If Dr. King were alive today, he would be expounding against the state of our foreign and domestic policies, and would despair at all this war mongering, especially now with China in America’s sights. An arms race with China is anathema to King’s hopes and dreams of a socially, economically and culturally just world.
King was the antiwar preacher, and he is so right about those triplets – militarism, materialism and racism.
The Tory government in the UK under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is mulling new anti-strike legislation that aims to crack down on the growing worker unrest spreading throughout the country. Faced with a historic cost-of-living crisis, workers across the UK made 2022 the busiest year for strikes and worker actions since the 1980s. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) have been at the forefront of Britain’s strike wave, as TRNN previously reported. They have been joined by countless workers across multiple industries, from university lecturers to mail carriers. The new anti-strike law in Parliament would force workers to cross their own picket lines to uphold a standard of “minimum service” while striking, effectively squashing the ability of workers to withhold their labor. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Gaz Jackson, RMT Regional Organizer for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, to discuss the strike wave and the Sunak government’s repressive measures.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
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, which means we don’t take corporate cash, and we don’t do ads. So we need each one of you to invest in our work so we can keep bringing you coverage of the voices and stories you care about most. So please head on over to therealnews.com/support and become a monthly sustainer of our work today. It really makes a difference.
Following decades of austerity politics and shameless corporate plunder, facing a historic cost of living crisis for working people and unprecedented political turmoil roiling the halls of government, workers across the United Kingdom have been standing up and saying enough is enough. Back in the summer, for my podcast, Working People, I had the honor of speaking with a group of members and officers of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, or the RMT, in the UK about the targeted strike actions rail workers were taking to address the systemic issues that, much like the railroad workers have been facing here in the United States, have led to declining quality of life for rail workers and declining quality of service for rail passengers, all while ensuring massive profits for rail companies.
Since we recorded that conversation, the RMT and its members have waged more strike actions, with the most recent two-day work stoppage occurring this past week, and the ground has continued to shake as tens of thousands of workers in other industries have hit the picket line in recent months, from university lecturers and posties working for the Royal Mail to construction workers and nurses. The Tory government, for its part, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is continuing its efforts to fight this incredible wave of working class unrest, not by addressing the cataclysmic issues that have immiserated the lives and livelihoods of working people, but by attacking their right to strike and attempting to force workers back into subservient.
As Ronan Burtenshaw writes at the Tribune, “2022 saw the greatest number of strike days in Britain since the early 1980s. This wave of resistance has inspired millions, but it has also led to a fierce backlash from the government. In addition to another round of austerity, their response now involves a new round of anti-union laws designed to impede the growing movement and prevent workers looking to industrial action as a solution to the cost of living crisis. The proposed laws are Draconian. Under the legislation, trade unions would have to ensure that a predefined, quote, ‘minimum service’ was maintained throughout any strike, seriously limiting the impact of industrial action.”
“In addition, it is proposed that named workers will be required to work by companies regardless of whether they wanted to strike or not. If trade unions do not encourage these workers to cross their own picket lines during strikes, the unions could find themselves liable for all losses suffered by companies in the course of these actions.” To talk about all of this and more, I’m honored to be joined today by Gaz Jackson, calling in from across the pond. So Gaz worked on the rails for 15 years as a train guard and now serves as the RMTs regional organizer in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Gaz, thank you so much for joining us today on The Real News, man. I really appreciate it.
Gaz Jackson: Good afternoon. Any time.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, man. It’s been real exciting to see your face on social media. I know you’ve been doing the media rounds, and you’ve been kicking, taking on all of these bullshit questions and really getting the messaging out there. It’s been really, really cool to see after we recorded that initial conversation back in July, and I actually wanted to sort of start there. Right? Let’s catch viewers up on what’s been happening with the RMT specifically since we recorded that panel episode for Working People near the end of July when y’all were doing … You were getting these targeted strike actions going. Obviously, things have kept going since then. So I guess for folks watching and listening right now, can you tell us what’s been happening with the RMT specifically since the middle of the summer?
Gaz Jackson: So what I wanted to do is roll back a little bit further than July. In March the 17th, on St. Patrick’s Day, 800 seafarers that work for P&O Ferries got dismissed instantly on the spot. The government promised that there was strength in law so workers in this country couldn’t be treated in the way that they did, and they failed to do that. I mean, it just goes to show that what the Tory government in this country are doing to the working class in the UK is to just treat us with absolute disdain. So going forward, obviously, with the RMT, we’ve managed to take 16 days of industrial action. So today, my general secretary and the negotiation team are meeting with the prime minister and the transport secretary to try and barter a deal.
My personal opinion, while it’s this driver in the operation and all closure of ticket offices on the table, we can’t deal with that. Other things in the negotiations, we can negotiate around, but when we’re talking about losing safety-critical trained guards and ticket office staff, we can’t agree a deal. Without these people on the railway, we won’t have a safe or accessible railway. That’s not acceptable for anybody, and it’s not acceptable for the passengers. Obviously, that means a lot of job losses. Our picket lines that we’ve had across the summer and into the winter have been absolutely fantastically supported. It’s getting difficult, because we’re going out at 4:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning in the cold, the snow, and the ice in the winter. But what I would say is the public support that we’ve received has been absolutely fantastic.
Just touching on what you said about the press and the way the press has been questioning what we’ve been trying to do, we’re used to it. We’re used to the press not supporting us. We’re used to the press giving us a difficult time. We’re used to the press asking us questions, questions that are really irrelevant, because a lot of the questions that we’re getting asked are irrelevant to what’s going on with the dispute. What’s quite interesting is when they talk about the dispute and they say, “Well, what about the pay rise?” Well, in reality, this dispute is about a lot more than just the pay rise. It’s about people’s jobs. It’s about people’s terms, conditions. It’s about the safety on the railway, and then it’s pay rise, also. It’s not just about pay.
The members that are in, currently in dispute with the train operating companies and network rail, this is the fourth year that they’ve not had a pay rise, and throughout the pandemic, all these people worked to move key workers around so we could keep the country functioning. Now, we’re not worth a pay rise, and they want to make people redundant and make the railway a less safe place. Now, I don’t think that’s fair. Our members don’t think it’s fair. They’ve been absolutely solid on the picket line, and our anti-trade union laws also have made us having to reballot our members twice. Because our ballot for industrial action is only valid for six months.
And so our members have said twice that they want to go out on strike, because they understand the severity of what the cuts the Tory government want to make to our railway. These people are proud people that have worked. A lot of people have worked on the railway all of their working lives, and they don’t want to see a substandard railway. They want to see a flourishing railway where people can move around the country for a decent price, on time, and get from A to B when they expect to. Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen, over in the States, the mess that the railway has been out on non-strike days, the amount of cancellations on the trains because they can’t manage the system that they’ve got now. So the people to blame for the demise of the British Railway is squarely with the private, privately-owned train operating companies. I think it’s really important that we get a nationalized railway again so we can make it work for the people.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that, because that’s been on my mind constantly. I mean, we covered the crisis on the US rail industry all throughout last year, and I felt like if I had hair left, I would’ve been pulling it out. Because it was driving me nuts to talk to all of these different railroad workers, hear them express just so much frustration, and anger, and sadness about what has happened to their industry, what has happened to them and their coworkers, just over years if not decades, where we are moving way less freight than we should be in the year of our Lord, 2023. The quality of life for railroad workers has been plummeting, and workers have been quitting in, reportedly, record numbers. The quality of service on the freight rail industry and the passenger service has been going down, and yet shareholder dividends, and stock buybacks, and corporate profits are through the roof. Right?
And so there’s a real kind of sickening parallel here to what’s been going on in the UK and what’s been happening in the US, and I hope that folks around the country and around the world are starting to wake up to the fact that that’s not by accident. That’s because these corporate vampires are destroying everything, and it’s actually workers who are standing up and saying, “We’re not going to let this go on anymore, because if we do, it’s going to be a continual race to the bottom.”
I know that we even spoke about this a bit on the podcast back in July, where you and the other great folks that we got to talk to really made that point clear, which is that we were starting this negotiation period. Before the strikes began, the rail companies were coming to you guys with, what was it, basically between a two and 3% pay raise, which, with the cost of living crisis and the inflation, is a pay cut. Then, they also wanted to continue slashing jobs, which is just like where we’ve been seeing here in the US, piling more work onto fewer workers, making the service … like degrading the quality of that service, pissing off the customers, the passengers, the workers. Everyone’s pissed off except the people at the top it seems.
Gaz Jackson: Well, I think it’s done quite deliberate. These companies are making the railway a nearly impossible place for the workers to actually work in, because they’re wanting them to work more for less. It’s unacceptable. Our members have got families at home, and they’re expecting them to work the days off just to keep the trains running. The railways always run underestablished , which basically means there’s not enough people to run all the services without overtime. People are entitled to have the days off to spend with their families and to do what they want to do on the days off.
The companies across the UK have been putting things out saying, “Well, workers are refusing to work overtime.” Well, no. We’re not. We just, we want to have a time with our family. Everybody’s entitled to that. We don’t live to work. We work to live. People want to be able to go out and be able to spend the money. Obviously, with the cost of living crisis that we’re currently going through in the UK at the minute, going into the fourth year without a pay rise is really hitting people hard.
The expendable money that people had pre-COVID is gone. Our gas and electric bills are absolutely through the roof. Our train tickets are astronomical. Our petrol, our fuel, our diesel is astronomical, as well. Everything’s going up apart from our wages. We don’t see a Tory MP struggling to feed the children. We don’t see Tory MPs struggling to put the heating on in the house. We don’t see Tory MPs struggling to fuel the car.
I’ll just give you a little example of how money is being sucked out of our railway and sent to foreign shores. In Germany, in August this year, you could buy a train ticket for 30 euros for a month, and it would be valid for four weeks. You could travel anywhere in Germany for 30 euros for a month, anytime, any train. Right? I’ll tell you why they could do that. Because in England, train operating companies, certain train operating companies are owned by state railways. So CrossCountry, for example, in the UK are owned by DB, which is the German state railway. They’ve pulled loads of money out of the British railway and sent it over to Germany so they can fund their railway. How bizarre is that?
If it was nationalized, we would be able to offer the same. It makes sense. If people have the money to spend in this country and move around this country freely, then people would do. It would benefit the tourist, tourism. It would benefit the commuters. It would benefit everybody in society. But for some reason, this government just seem to think that we’ll keep everything privatized, and then we’ve got no real responsibility, when in reality, as a government, you have all responsibility for everything that goes on in your country and within the companies that you farm these train operating companies out to.
So that’s just an example of [inaudible 00:14:13]. It’s a really, really bizarre system that we work under in this country. All this money that goes to these shareholders that aren’t even using the railway, because they’re not in this country, it’s really bizarre, and it really confuses me, how they think it’s acceptable. Because I don’t think it is at all.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and again, just the parallels between what you’re talking about there in the UK and the bullshit that we’ve been covering here in the US are really striking. That’s why it’s also really important that groups like Railroad Workers United … Real News viewers and listeners will know Railroad Workers United. We’ve worked with them and their members and officers quite a bit over the past year, but they’re calling for the nationalization of the rails here in the US, as well. I think they have a very valid case to make, because as I said and others said, last month when scab Joe, President Biden undercut the railroad worker unions and forced a contract down their throats to, quote-unquote, “avert a national rail shutdown,” essentially giving the rail carriers, again, the people who are destroying this industry and the workers who run it for the sake of their own profits, essentially giving them everything that they want, the media here in the US, like in the UK, everyone was like, “Oh. We can’t possibly endure the economic turmoil that a rail shutdown would cause, especially with Christmas and the holidays approaching, yada yada yada.”
I think the obvious point that railroad workers were making and I and others were making was if the railroads are too vital to our infrastructure, to our supply chain, and to our economy to, quote-unquote, “allow a national rail work stoppage to occur,” then they are too important to be in the hands of these private corporations and Wall Street blood suckers who are destroying the entire thing for profit. Right? I mean, there’s a real cognitive dissonance there, and I think that’s why it’s so crucial to see what you all in the RMT and what other workers across the UK are doing, which is you are using collective worker power to fight against these systemic issues. You’re drawing the connections between the degradation of the rails and the kind of cost of living crisis, the corporate plunder that has been happening across sectors in the UK and beyond, and the people who are responsible for that in the government and beyond.
I wanted to sort of drill down on that, and it’s something that I want us to cover more in the coming weeks and months here at The Real News, this sort of enough is enough movement that has emerged in the United Kingdom, where you have workers, like I mentioned in the introduction, in healthcare, in education, in the building trades, in logistics, in transportation, rising up around these key demands and using industrial action and building solidarity to really advance that cause.
So let’s give folks outside of the UK a sense of just how far this worker rebellion has spread and what it actually looks like over there on the ground. So could you talk a bit about what it looks like beyond the RMT, what the Enough is Enough movement really is, how connected these different struggles are, the posties, the nurses, the rail workers? How much are these workers, these workforces and these unions working together, and what sort of issues are mobilizing this many workers in so many different industries right now?
Gaz Jackson: Yeah. So what I would say is I think that the RMT started the fight back, because we was the first out the gate. We was the first people to, obviously, ballot our members for industrial action. We’ve got 43,000 members that are obviously in dispute currently. Them people have took 16 days of industrial action, which has been absolutely fantastically supported, and then we got followed by the posties at the CWU. They’re absolutely fantastic, over a hundred thousand people out on strike. They’ve took a lot of action, as well, and then we’ve got the nurses. We’ve got the ambulance drivers. We’ve got the fire brigade. We have the barristers. We’ve even got even driving instructors out on strike. We’ve got people that would not normally take industrial action taking industrial action, like the NIU, the nurses union. They’ve taken industrial action for the first time in their history this year.
Nobody wants to take strike action. It’s the last resort. Nine times out of 10, we get a negotiated settlement that’s right for us and our people, because we’re allowed to negotiate with the companies. But I think what the issue is is the government want to really push down the working class in this country, as they probably are over in the States. You mentioned Biden. I don’t really know the detail in that, but from what I’ve read, he’s not fantastic, and he’s really done a number on you, if I’m honest.
That’s what the Tories are trying to do to us. They’re trying to put us in our place. When you look back at our history, certainly in the UK around the miner strike in the eighties, there’s so many similarities of what’s gone on there is happening now. The solidarity that’s been shown amongst the working people is absolutely fantastic. You know?
In the eighties, the nurses went out to look after the miners and stuff when they was out on strike and visited the picket lines. I’ve actually just been sent a badge today from one of my colleagues that commemorates the 1984 miner strike, which involves the RMT, which was then the NUR, because we refused to move the coal from the scabs. We didn’t do that. ASLEF, which are the train drivers union, they refused to move the trains, and obviously, the NUM, which is the miners union. So it goes to show how powerful people can be if they work together.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and you mentioned the Tories. Right? So let’s kind of focus on that real quick before I let you go, right, because I imagine our viewers and listeners, like myself, are very curious to understand just what the fuck these people are doing. Right? Obviously, it’s been a sort of high-stakes clown show from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to now Rishi Sunak. So there’s all this sort of political turmoil, and coming at the worst possible time if we’re talking about the economic crisis, the cost of living crisis, the strain that working people are under in the United Kingdom and beyond.
Then, as I mentioned in the intro, instead of taking government action, using the power that the government has to address the systemic issues that are torpedoing the quality of life for working people, what the Tory government is doing is trying to beat workers back into subservient and strip their rights to strike. So can we talk about this anti-strike law? What is it? What the fuck is Sunak thinking, and I guess, what is your and the RMT’s response to this?
Gaz Jackson: Yeah. So from my understanding, they want a minimum service requirement, which would mean, certainly from the RMT, it’d be someone like me that would have to go into workplace and say, “Right. We need five people to work today.” Then, if we couldn’t get the five people, the government would seize the union’s assets. We wouldn’t be able to function as a trade union. I don’t know the detail, but that’s what I’m guessing what it’ll be. Now, all I would say is on the strike days that we’ve had, we’ve had scab managers working on the railway providing a minimum service.
So why does that need to involve the trade union? Because the companies are still running an absolute skeleton service, which is a minimum service, which I would see as a minimum service. So I don’t see why it needs to involve the trade union. All I can see that is is it’s another beating stick to try and beat us down. The government have got a quite simple way out. They can tax the 1% a little bit more, and then they can afford to give everyone a little bit more, the working class of this country a little bit more money. I’m not an economist, but if people have got money in their pockets, they’ll go out and spend it, which will bring inflation down. It’s pretty basic and standard stuff. You know?
What the Tories are trying to do is trying to put us back in our place, and what we’re going to do is the working class, involving our trade union, the RMT and the TUC, is we’ll do what’s required. If we need to go to court, we’ll take them to court, and we’ll fight them to the better end. Because we can’t become slaves, because that’s what we will be. The slave trade in the UK ended in 1883. We don’t want to be going back there, do we? Because you withdraw … If you can’t withdraw your right to labor, then what have you got? You become a slave. That’s ultimately what it is. So you peel away the meat from the bones, and that’s what you become. You become a slave. If you can’t withdraw your labor, that’s what it is.
Maximillian Alvarez: Right. I mean, I don’t think that that is exaggerating at all. Right? Because this is what, again, we were hearing from a lot of workers here in the United States, especially on the railroads, which was like, “If we do not have the right to strike, then what are we?” Right? I mean, “We are on call 24/7, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We are essentially just living at the behest of our bosses and corporate overlords, and if we don’t even have the ability to exercise our right to withhold our labor, then yeah. What would you call that?” Right?
The other thing that really struck me is, again, when people were talking about, oh my God, the economic damage that it would cause if railroad workers went on strike or rail carriers initiated lockouts, and it’s like that’s the fucking point of a strike, is to hurt your employer economically, right, is to bring the gears of production to a halt so that you can force them to actually come to the bargaining table with serious proposals, which they currently are not doing. Like you said, no one wants to do this, but if it’s a last resort, if this is the only way to get the bosses to actually get serious at the bargaining table, then that’s what needs to happen.
What the Tories are doing in the UK is essentially trying to find a way to undercut the collective power of workers withholding their labor by ensuring that a minimum service has to be upkept for workers on strike, which is popping the balloon entirely. That’s the whole point of the strike, is to bring those gears of production to a halt. And so this is really, really serious stuff that could have really, really wide-ranging implications. And so I wanted to ask you, Gaz, just by way of rounding out, and I’m sorry for keeping you so long, but it’s … You know I could talk to you for days, but I wanted to ask where this is all headed and what fellow workers in and outside of the UK can do to show solidarity with y’all.
Gaz Jackson: So I’m hoping the dispute for the RMT ends as soon as possible. Like I said, my general secretary is currently in a meeting with the prime minister of the UK and the transport ministers. We’re waiting to see the white smoke to see if there’s anything come out of these meetings. If I’m honest, I’m not holding my breath, but I genuinely do hope that we can get something done. Because nine times out of 10, we do get things done with the companies, and I think we would do this time if the companies were allowed to negotiate properly without the hand of the government telling them what they can and what they can’t do.
Regarding … Inflation’s currently running at 14.2% in the UK, and what the government is saying is if we give everyone a pay rise, inflation’s going to go through the roof. Well, most people in the UK have not had a pay rise for coming into the fourth year, so that makes absolutely no sense. What giving people a pay rise will do is give people more spare money so they can go out and have a meal with their family. They can go out and do things and spend money, which will boost the economy. It makes absolute sense for the government and these companies across the UK to give everyone a decent pay rise, because we deserve one. The gas and electric, the heating, the petrol, the fuel, the food, the water, everything has gone up. The only thing that hasn’t is our wages.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, and I just want to really emphasize for folks watching and listening, there are strike funds that you can donate to, including the National Strike Fund for the RMT, which we will link to in the show notes for this. But other than that, please just keep your eyes open. Stay focused on this. Share tweets and posts and … from the RMT and its members. Make sure that people around the UK and around the world know about this and that we are standing in solidarity with our fellow workers across the pond. Gaz, I can’t thank you enough for taking so much time to chat with me about this, brother. I really, really appreciate it, and I wanted to send all of our love and solidarity to you and to the folks in the RMT. Keep up the fight, brother, and let’s have you back on soon. All right?
Gaz Jackson: Cheers, brother. Looking forward to it.
Maximillian Alvarez: So that is Gaz Jackson calling in from the UK. Gaz worked on the rails for 15 years as a train guard and now serves as the RMT’s regional organizer in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Gaz, thank you again for joining us. Keep up the fight, and to everyone watching, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off. 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.
Too many education activists have implicitly accepted the conventional wisdom that education’s purpose is preparing workers to compete for jobs in the global marketplace. Such a curriculum tends toward using standardized testing based on metrics set by international finance and governance organizations. Though there are important exceptions, many teachers, administrators and parents…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 10, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
In their new rules package passed on Monday, House Republicans moved to eliminate the union formed by congressional workers in recent years — a blatantly anti-worker move that signals their intentions for workers across the country under GOP House control.
The Congressional Workers Union, which has successfully unionized six offices so far, all belonging to Democrats, was given the go-ahead to unionize last year when Democrats voted to activate a provision in decades-old legislation that would allow the roughly 9,100 House staffers to unionize. Now, Republicans have voted to eliminate those unions in a largely party line vote.
However, it’s unclear if Republicans have the authority to eliminate the unions in this way. The union has been working to determine the legal authority that House rules packages can have over unionization; as The American Prospect and Roll Call have reported, experts on congressional rules are in agreement that the situation is complicated.
The legal reality depends largely on the way that the provision is written in the package; currently, it says that the resolution that afforded the workers the right to organize “shall have no force or effect.” It also depends on how the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights (OCWR), which oversees congressional unionization, decides to interpret that language.
“Though we are disappointed to see the GOP-passed Rules package include both anti-worker and anti-union language, we are not surprised and have prepared for attacks from the very same party that claims to value America’s working class.”
Congressional Workers Union statement issued on Jan. 9, 2023
According to Roll Call, it’s unlikely that the six offices that have unionized so far, belonging to Representatives Cori Bush (Missouri), Jesus “Chuy” García (Illinois), Ro Khanna (California), Ted Lieu (California), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico), will have their unions decertified. It’s also unlikely that the seven offices that have petitioned to unionize — including that of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) — will be barred from doing so.
But legal issues could still crop up, as it’s possible that either McCarthy or the unions will sue based on whether or not union elections continue, leaving the issue up to a federal court.
For the union, the practical reality is the same, regardless of how OCWR enforces the rules: The union is undeterred by the vote, it says, and they are determined to continue exercising their rights to organize regardless of which politicians are in power.
“Though we are disappointed to see the GOP-passed Rules package include both anti-worker and anti-union language, we are not surprised and have prepared for attacks from the very same party that claims to value America’s working class,” the union said in a statement. “What Kevin McCarthy and his aides fail to realize is that our organizing drive — which aims to elevate workers’ rights of staffers on both sides of the aisle — existed long before he cobbled together enough votes to win the Speakership, and it will continue after.”
By definition, congressional staffers are already “accountable” to their bosses. Being unionized doesn’t change that fact, and unionization only serves to give workers more control over their working conditions — not just for their own sake, but also for the sake of the public.
The union noted that the GOP’s move has only fueled organizers’ determination to fight. “We have no plans to stop our unionization drive, and this has in fact invigorated workers to want to utilize their collective power even more,” their statement continued.
To union members and labor advocates, targeting the union is a clear show that the GOP is far from being the workers’ party that it sometimes claims to be. Though the summary of the package states that the elimination of the unions would hold staff “accountable to the elected officials they serve,” this language simply echoes typical union-busting language that is frequently used by anti-union companies.
By definition, congressional staffers are already “accountable” to their bosses. Being unionized doesn’t change that fact, and unionization only serves to give workers more control over their working conditions — not just for their own sake, but also for the sake of the public. Creating better working conditions within the halls of Congress will attract more qualified congressional staffers, they argue, combating the “brain drain” of workers who leave Congress to take higher paying, less exploitative private sector jobs.
Rescinding the right to unionize — which is afforded to a majority of workers outside of Congress in the U.S. — would only be stripping workers of a fundamental workers’ right, the union says.
In their new rules package passed on Monday, House Republicans moved to eliminate the union formed by congressional workers in recent years — a blatantly anti-worker move that signals their intentions for workers across the country under GOP House control. The Congressional Workers Union, which has successfully unionized six offices so far, all belonging to Democrats, was given the go-ahead to…
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 9, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Over 7,000 nurses across two hospitals in New York City went on strike early Monday morning after contract negotiations broke down over the hospitals’ refusal to meet nurses’ staffing demands.
Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan walked out at 6 am, saying they are forced to work long hours with huge workloads that leave them burnt out, which could potentially put patients in danger.
The workers “have been put in the unfortunate position of having no other choice than to strike,” said Mario Cilento, president of the New York AFL-CIO, of which the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) is an affiliate.
Now, nurses are facing “short staffing that has reached critical levels and could compromise their ability to provide the best quality care to their patients,” Cilento continued. “[The hospitals’] treatment of these nurses is proof that all their words of adulation for their healthcare heroes during the pandemic were hollow.”
Management has offered raises of 19 percent over the next three years, as workers have been fighting for raises to meet high inflation rates.
Staffing, however, is the highest priority, workers and the union say. Workers say that they’re often forced to work through breaks and don’t have time for meals, while there are times when one nurse in the emergency department could be responsible for up to 20 patients, according to NYSNA President Nancy Hagans — far higher than the commonly accepted ratio of one nurse to three patients. Hagans says that Montefiore has 760 vacancies.
“I don’t feel like I’m doing a service to my patients,” Montefiore emergency room nurse Judy Gonzalez told CNN. “I have patients who grab my shirt, and I can’t help them because I have to do something else.”
Nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai in Manhattan walked out at 6 am, saying they are forced to work long hours with huge workloads that leave them burnt out, which could potentially put patients in danger.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has called for binding arbitrationto stop the workers from striking. Arbitration agreements, however, are often skewed toward employers and strip unions and workers of power; as such, while the hospitals supported Hochul’s call, the union rejected it.
“Gov. Hochul should listen to frontline COVID nurse heroes and respect our federally-protected labor and collective bargaining rights,” the NYSNA said in a statement. “Nurses don’t want to strike. Bosses have pushed us to strike by refusing to seriously consider our proposals to address the desperate crisis of unsafe staffing that harms our patients.”
One of last year’s largest strikes was held by nurses in Minnesota in September, when 15,000 nurses walked off the job to protest safety, salary and staffing shortfalls. The nurses voted again to ratify a strike three months later over the same issues, though that strike was averted when nurses voted to ratify a new contract that the union said would prevent reductions in staffing.
Amid the pandemic, health care workers have been under increasing stress and have quit their jobs in record numbers. This has led to increased labor activity; out of the 20 strikes recorded by the Department of Labor — which only records strikes larger than 1,000 workers — last year, four of them were nurses’ strikes. In 2021, meanwhile, Cornell University researchers found health care and social assistance workers made up over half of all workers involved in work stoppages in 2021.
On January 2, Damar Hamlin, Buffalo Bills forward and a National Football League (NFL) star, suffered cardiac arrest on the field during a prime-time playoff game, following a “routine” tackle. Millions of fans and other football players were in shock watching as paramedics brought an unconscious Hamlin off the field. Confusion ensued, and while NFL leadership wanted the players to come back to…
The December employment report showed a very strong labor market but much less evidence of inflationary pressures than in prior months. The unemployment rate fell back to 3.5 percent, its half-century low. The U-6 measure of labor market slack fell to 6.5 percent, its lowest level on record. At the same time, wage growth moderated. There was a sharp downward revision to the November data. With 0.3…
The U.S. Labor Department released data Friday showing that wage and job growth slowed in December as the Fed explicitly targets the labor market and worker pay in its push to tamp down inflation, which has been cooling in recent months.
According to the new figures, wages grew at a slower-than-expected rate of 0.3% last month, and November’s hourly earnings number was revised down from 0.6% to 0.4%—a trend that one observer called “bad news for workers.”
Pointing to the “huge downward revision to November wage growth,” Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote, “Hold the rate hikes please.”
“Hold the rate hikes please.” —Dean Baker, CEPR
While CEO pay has continued to surge, many ordinary workers across the U.S. have seen their wages lag behind inflation as living costs have risen sharply over the past two years.
Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said slowing wage growth is critical for Fed policymakers to consider as they mull additional interest rate hikes, which risk unnecessarily hurling the economy into recession.
“Wage growth decelerated in December no matter how it’s measured,” Gould noted. “Annualized wage growth between November and December was 3.4%. It is decidedly not driving inflation.”
Job growth, meanwhile, remained strong in December even as it cooled compared to the torrid pace of early 2022. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the U.S. added a better-than-anticipated 223,000 jobs in the last month of 2022, the fifth consecutive month of slowing growth.
The new jobs data comes days after the Fed released the minutes of its mid-December meeting, after which the central bank raised interest rates to their highest level in 15 years despite growing warnings from a range of experts about the potential for a damaging recession and mass layoffs.
According to the minutes, Fed officials are not yet satisfied with evidence showing that inflation is slowing significantly and intend to stay the course with higher rates. Central bankers also suggested they believe the labor market is still too tight and wage growth is too strong, reiterating their goal of “bringing down” the latter even as they admitted there are “few signs of adverse wage-price dynamics.”
“You know the Fed’s priorities are warped when they suggest too many Americans have jobs,” Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at the watchdog group Accountable.US, said Friday. “It seems the more Americans find work, the more the Fed embraces job-killing interest rate hikes that disproportionately hurt low-income workers and struggling mom-and-pop shops. And for what?”
“The Fed’s single-minded strategy has done little to blunt the real driver of inflation—corporate greed,” Zelnick added. “Across industries, corporations continue to mark up prices on working families despite posting record profits and rewarding wealthy investors with billions in giveaways. Raising interest rates only hurts American families in the long run by pushing the economy toward a cliff. Recession is not inevitable, but that depends largely on deliberate decisions made by the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell.”
Michael Mitchell, director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, echoed that warning ahead of Friday’s jobs report, cautioning that “as workers and families are struggling with higher prices, Chair Powell is hell-bent on bringing down wages and pushing more people out of work with his aggressive interest rate hikes.”
“If the Fed continues with its dangerous interest rate hikes,” Mitchell said, “we should brace ourselves for more hardship for working people and an unnecessarily painful recession.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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