This California Federation of Teachers video narrated by Ed Asner explaining how the 1 percent influence the economy and politics, created the big crash, and should pay more taxes has
outraged Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Enough said?
A fair day's wage
- The football and baseball players unions have issued statements opposing the push for a no rights at work law in Michigan.
- Ten things to know about what happened in Michigan on Thursday.
- The strike by clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is over. This was a clear-cut case of union members fighting not for their own jobs as individuals, but for the preservation of good jobs for others:
At issue during the lengthy negotiations was the union's contention that terminal operators wanted to outsource future clerical jobs out of state and overseas — an allegation the shippers denied.
Shippers said they wanted the flexibility not to fill jobs that were no longer needed as clerks quit or retired. They said they promised the current clerks lifetime employment.
Workers did make concessions on jobs:
The union agreed to allow employers to eliminate 14 jobs over the next 3 1/2 years through attrition, stepping back from a long-held demand that every retiring worker be replaced by a new union employee. The employers had sought to eliminate a far larger number of positions.
- Call center manager to pregnant employee: We don't "pay you to pee". The worker, who lost her job during a high-risk pregnancy, is suing.
- Citigroup is cutting 11,000 jobs.
- California Labor Commissioner Reaches $339,716 Settlement for Unpaid Wages at San Francisco Restaurants. The settlement covers 28 workers at Tsing Tao restaurant.
- My former boss, Karen Nussbaum, on new organizations for workers:
First, a boss is a boss. [...]
Conversely, a worker is a worker. [...]
Finally, all these workers, however they’re classified, need to have freedom of association in all its forms, present and yet to be imagined. Why are we bound by a law that says the only way to have a voice on the job is to have a majority of the workers in your workplace vote for a union in the face of daunting management hostility? That’s not a standard for workplace representation in any other industrialized nation. Why shouldn’t workers be able to form small groups in their workplaces or citywide associations, say, of retail workers? Workers should be free to set standards for their work however they can: with their employer, with their industry, through private or public authorities.
- Speaking of which, the New York Times' Eduardo Porter on unionizing at the low end of the pay scale, like the fast food industry.
- Expensive clothing store Unionmade sells clothes that aren't actually union-made, and the AFL-CIO is asking it to cease and desist.
The letter from the AFL-CIO calls out the San Francisco-based clothing company for "misleading" its customers with its name and also for potentially violating the AFL-CIO's trademark handshake logo.
"The AFL-CIO finds your use of the UNIONMADE mark highly misleading as the dictionary definition and understanding amongst the public is that 'union-made' means 'produced by workers belonging to a labor union,'" the letter reads.
The letter, which was dated Nov. 29 and sent by the AFL-CIO's outside legal counsel, urges Unionmade company officials to "see Dictionary.com" for more details.
- The fight at Station Casinos continues:
Workers at casino-hotels owned by Station Casinos LLC and operated by Fertitta Entertainment LLC continue to pressure the company to let them organize freely, after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on October 2 unanimously and completely rejected the company’s appeal from the findings of an administrative law judge that it committed 87 unfair labor practices in its anti-union campaign.
Station Casinos, the worst labor lawbreaker in the history of the Nevada gaming industry, is privately owned by Deutsche Bank of Frankfurt and Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta of Las Vegas, among others.
- Will the Supreme Court make it easier for employers to avoid class action suits over wage theft and other illegal pay practices?
- American Airlines passenger service agents are getting their union vote.
War on Education
- Teachers being evaluated based on the test scores of students they never taught? Yup.
- @TeacherSabrina goes to an ALEC meeting: