Hello and welcome to tonight’s Labor Diary Rescue. Diaries are below the fold.
The Labor Diary Rescue is done every Monday and Thursday evening, barring a bad internet connection, my insane work schedule, or Acts of God. In order to get rescued you must have a pro-union diary that has less than 100 comments, has the word “union” or “labor” in the title, and hasn’t been on any other diary rescue or rec list.
We have a lot of diaries tonight.
Andrew Sorkin really screwed the pooch on Morning Joe when he laid down the challenge to name one successful company that has union workers. Now he’s giving a half-ass apology and Laura at Working America is telling you about it in “Of course there are” successful unionized companies.
When something goes wrong with hedge funds or others in the finance industry, executives still collect their bonuses. But think how much you’ve heard about how teachers’ unions are one of the big problems with education today, standing in the way of efficiency. Think how much you’ve heard about auto workers being the problem in their industry—when they work for decades to earn what this one hedge fund guy takes in in an hour. And at least auto workers produce cars instead of the economic crisis that’s been the major thing to come out of Wall Street recently.
Amen.
UFW continues writing about the mistreatment of migrant farm workers in This Water is for Display Only.
The following is from a May 26th complaint the UFW filed on behalf of workers at Munger Farms, where 3 farm labor contractors employ more than 40 crews and 1,000 workers to harvest blueberries. Pickers are working hourly, but have a huge quota of 5 boxes a day--which forces them to work through their breaks, not drink water or go to the bathroom for fear of losing their jobs. This is not an imaginary fear. It happened to about 60 workers on May 26.
Just because the company is green doesn’t mean it’s worker-friendly. The Electrical Worker shows us one such instance of this in "Clean" Energy Company Treats Workers Like Dirt.
In April, OSHA issued citations against Covanta for violating fire safety rules and for "maintaining" electrical equipment with duct tape and cardboard. The citations--based on an October 2008 inspection of the Rochester plant requested by the utility workers--found that Covanta had improperly stored oxygen and fuel cylinders side-by-side on a welding cart with no barrier between them.
The labor board and OSHA findings don't surprise Thomas Koehler, business manager of Local 160, who says that Covanta has historically operated with a heavy hand leading to high worker turnover. With Local 160's contract with Covanta expiring next summer, Koehler hopes that government scrutiny will help force Covanta to be more responsible for employees and rethink its hostility to unions.
Union leaders are going after the banks. And RDemocrat is telling you all about it in Union Leaders Hitting Back for Working America.
From the "Things that refresh your day" category we have this story. It is no secret that corporate America has been lining up against working Americans on such essential initiatives as the Employee Free Choice Act, Universal Healthcare, Wages, outsourcing and other priorities. Well, now that Americans actually own most of these entities our friends in the labor movement are fighting back hard.
The Media Consortium reminds us that we still have a long way to go to protect working Americans in Weekly Audit: EFCA Vital for Recovery.
Severe economic inequality has persisted for decades in the U.S., but the current crisis is bringing things into focus. Unfortunately, while Wall Street excess and the corporate jet-setting of Detroit executives have dominated headlines and garnered plenty of justified outrage, the other side of the inequality coin has been largely neglected. As Katrina vanden Heuvel explains in The Nation, the routine exploitation of day laborers and domestic workers has grown even more pervasive since the recession began. Workers who managed to survive by laboring for predatory wages under abusive conditions now see those wages stolen with increasing regularity, as contractors simply refuse to pay up when the work is done. Huge portions of domestic workers are not only living below the poverty line, but subject to verbal and physical abuse. And as jobs have grown increasingly scarce, vanden Heuvel writes, speaking out against employer mistreatment has become a thoroughly daunting prospect for workers with no savings to help them endure unemployment. For the millions undocumented workers who are not protected by U.S. labor laws, an abusive work situation leaves them without any legal recourse.
Labor Historians had a convention, and Nuisance Industry is giving you the details on it in Labor historians united! LAWCHA 2009 Chicago report.
At a time when American labor has new hopes (with the possibility of the Employee Free Choice Act becoming law) and fears (with the threat of more job losses with the bankruptcies in the automobile industry and other economic troubles), historical perspectives on labor and working-class experiences remain as relevant as ever. The end of May brought the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) to downtown Chicago for a conference at Roosevelt University's Auditorium Building. Over four days, the conference (see the website at http://chi-lawcha09.indstate.edu for a full schedule) represented a broad array of topics on working-class and labor-related scholarship and activism, using the organizing theme of Race, Labor, and the City.
Prayer vigils are being held by progressive Christians in the hopes of getting EFCA passed. Employee Free Choice Act gives us the details (and pictures) in Prayer Vigils Across Indiana Draw Workers, Clergy Members Together.
On Thursday, prayer vigils were held across the country for the Employee Free Choice Act. In Indiana there were 3 vigils held in South Bend, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne. South Bend hosted the first vigil outside the Robert E. Grant Building downtown. The program included Chaplin Odell Hughes and Pastor Betty Hapson-Taylor, Nicole McLaughlin, a professor at Notre Dame and community activist, Vice President of the St. Joe Valley Building Trades Council Larry Harringer, and music provided by David James.
Waiting for lefty tells us about a time before the Family Medical Leave Act and when teacher’s unions were weak in (UPDATED 2x) Pregnancy cost my Mom her job. How MANY their LIVES?
A few years ago, a 20-something Republican classmate of mine remarked that the Women's Movement "was unnecessary." I set him straight with a little story of my Mom's first pregnancy.
In 1959, Mom was a newlywed public schoolteacher who got pregnant during her first teaching job. At the time, it was school policy and probably Pennsylvania state law that pregnant women were not allowed in the classroom if they were "showing." Pregnant women were required to resign within 3 months of conception. Mom got away with an extra month of income by not informing the administration for a month after she knew.
There was no maternity leave then. Teachers unions - when they existed at all - had little influence. And her job would not be waiting for her after delivery. She - and all women - were forced to surrender their livelihoods upon impregnation.
Gabacha shows us how unions are fighting for immigration reform in The Battle Begins.
One important thing to note is that labor unions affiliated with Change to Win and the AFL-CIO—the country's two largest union groups—were at a vast majority of the press conferences held today, signaling that labor is actually coming through with its oath in April to jump on the issue, adding ranks of union members to the battle. Traditionally, union leaders have been reluctant to address immigration, and last time reform was debated in 2007 labor could not come to an agreed position on the failed legislation.
Devtob tells us about the union busting tactics going on with a certain newspaper in Profitable newspaper wants to bust union.
Nationally, the newspaper business is in a depression, due mostly to the Great Recession's impact on advertising and partly to stupid decisions made by newspaper chains large and small.
But many newspapers are still profitable, if less so than before, on an operating basis, and some of them see the current crisis as an opportunity to screw their employees.
This diary will be about one such profitable newspaper -- the Albany Times Union (TU), the major daily for the Capital District of New York state, owned by the billionaire Hearst family.
That’s all, folks. Treat the comments as an open thread.