Hello and welcome to another session of Labor Diary Rescue.
The GM plant I work at is going to be one of the plants that are expected to close later this year. I’m more than a little ticked off. Why is it that Michigan, once again, has to be the hardest hit? Is there some conspiracy in Washington to keep fucking us in the ass?
Anyway, diaries are below the fold. The Labor Diary Rescue is done every Monday and Thursday evenings. If you want your diary to be rescued, you must have a pro-union diary that has less than 100 comments, has the words "labor" or "union" in the title, and didn’t make the rec list or any front-page diary rescue.
Bendygirl shows that even the American Red Cross can be filled with greedy bastards in Red Cross Blood Money.
So, the Red Cross makes billions and billions on supplying 45% of the nation's blood, but is now fighting unions representing front line blood drive event workers. These are the same workers who put on these blood drive events, make them safe and then do it all over again at another location. These workers provide reading material, documentation throughout the blood drive, ask health history questions of donors, perform mini physical exams for donors, take blood, care for the donor afterward donation, pack up the blood, break down the event, and bring it back to the lab for processing and testing, only to do it again the next day or week, depending on their schedule.
Yellow dog in NJ makes it short and sweet: I thank the UAW.
I would like to take a moment to let all the UAW members know how much I appreciate the strides they made for many of us in the work force.
Eddie C keeps us updated on the strike at Stella D’Oro and asks us to boycott them in Photos from a Bronx Labor Rally: Boycott Stella D'Oro Now!
Excellent photo diary, btw.
There was no sign of The New York Times, Daily News or The New York Post at yesterday's show of support and I can't find anything in today's papers. But while information about these locked out workers has become hard to come by and there were no politicians to be found, there was a strong showing of community activist, members of other unions and single payer healthcare supporters.
Shirah is an excellent writer on labor issues. His latest work, Rep. Joe Wilson's (Anti-Union) War exposes one anti-union Congressman’s legislative battle against labor.
The point is: In their view collective bargaining and strikes are extortion and should be punished. They like extending the Hobbes Act to union collective bargaining and strikes, because the punishment is very high and could apply even for relatively trivial matters. This would weaken unions in many ways.
Now, they would never get very far with this argument if they came right out and admitted that they want to destroy unions and collective bargaining. As a result, the main part of their claim is that unon violence is an enormous and growing threat.
Unfotunately it’s too late to go to the rally described in this next diary, Broken Dreams and Cookie Crumbs, but Tula Connell does a good job detailing the battle between Wall St. and Main St.
When Brynwood Partners in 2006 took over the Stella D'oro factory in the Bronx, the Wall Street private equity firm had every reason to believe it would be easy to slash the wages, pensions, holidays and sick pay of the 136 bakery workers.
But the takeover brainos forgot one important fact: The workers are represented by a union, Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM). And throughout their more than nine-month strike, the workers have been strongly supported by their union brothers and sisters and by members of the community as they walk the picket line every day outside the plant where Brynwood now employs strikebreakers.
Laura at Working America gives her take on the strike as well in Working Life in a Biscuit.
What’s happening at Stella D’oro is a microcosm of the pressures that have hit working people in the U.S. and around the world in recent decades. When you wonder why median income fell by $2,000 from 2000 to 2007, for instance, think about things like this: the multiple sales of a company from family ownership to one corporate giant after another, with ownership becoming less and less connected to the business of making biscuits; the attack on the gains that union membership had provided workers despite the company long having been profitable with unionized workers; the "delay and indecision" of a National Labor Relations Board gutted during the Bush years and the overall weakness of American labor law. It’s not accidental that wages stay stagnant or get driven down. America’s workers aren’t losing ground because of some mysterious abstract thing called "the economy," they’re losing ground because of corporate campaigns against them exactly like the one Acuff describes here.
Union Review tells us about a victory for workers organizing in Union Organizing Victory for US Foodservice Workers.
After a yearlong fight with US Foodservice in Phoenix, the workers have finally won!
It was announced today that the workers won representation with Teamsters Local 104 after a fierce fight to claim their rights to organize. This following a settlement handed down by the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB settlement includes union representation for 250 workers and the reinstatement with back pay for employees terminated during the organizing effort. Region 28 of the NLRB cited US Foodservice for violating labor laws nearly 200 times during the yearlong battle to organize.
Two hundred times!? Are you fucking kidding me?!
Frank Askin does the math in EFCA - Did Someone Say "Undemocratic"? and contemplates the irony that a minority of Senators, who represent a minority of the American population are the one’s who claim that a secret ballot forced upon workers by the bosses is somehow a good thing.
Furthermore, some quick arithmetic also shows that those 40 Republicans actually represent approximately 36.3 per cent of the American population.
The latter figure is arrived at by adding up the total population of the 14 states with two Republican Senators (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming and Utah) and half the population of the twelve states with one Republican Senator (Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota)
The 36.3 million number is derived by dividing the population represented by GOP Senators, approximately 111.8 million, into the total U.S. population of 306 million
So which system is less democratic? Is it really more democratic to allow delegates representing 36 per cent of the country’s population to prevent legislation supported by Senators representing some 64 per cent, than to require an employer to recognize a union designated by 50 per cent of its work force?
Nextstep asks us if we will buy American in support of Obama and the UAW’s efforts to save the auto industry in Obama and UAW did their part, will you?. I say yes, yet I was already planning on buying American anyway!
Just as some people have purchased a Prius to make a statement about their support for the environment, purchasing a GM or Chrysler could become a way to make a statement of support for Obama and UAW workers.
Dantilson shows how Gov. Crist is screwing over those who get hurt on the job in Florida Governor Adds Insult To Injury.
Florida's Governor turned Senate candidate, Charlie Crist, has quietly signed into law a blatantly unfair new workers' compensation bill that was heavily promoted, surprise-surprise, by the Florida Chamber Of Commerce, and passed by the Republican-dominated legislature. This regressive legislation dramatically un-levels the playing field between workers injured on the job and the employers who deny their claims for compensation benefits.
We're not talking here about scammers trying to fake or lie about the severity of workplace injuries and make out like bandits. Insurance company investigators and attorneys know how to sniff those types out. We're talking about firefighters, police officers, and other hard-working Floridians whose only recourse once their worker compensation claim is denied is to hire a lawyer and file an appeal.
What the new law does to create such injustice is to put a cap on the fees that injured workers can pay the lawyer or firm that's handling their appeal -- a cap of $1,500 -- without putting any cap whatsoever on the fees paid by insurance companies to their own corporate attorneys.
Enjoy the diaries and treat the comments as an open thread.