Posts tagged Bernie Sanders
Engineers frustrated with rails even as others get sick time
May 9, 2023 // Across the industry, CSX has led the way by reaching agreements with most of its unions on sick time. Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific have also announced several sick time deals. Most of these deals provide workers with four days of paid sick time and give them the option to convert three leave days into sick time to give workers a total of seven sick days a year. One of the key remaining concerns for the BLET is that even where the railroads seem willing to give engineers sick time, the railroads generally still want to hold workers accountable for missing work under their strict attendance policies. So even if workers do get sick time, they may not feel free to use it because they would still be penalized for missing work although CSX has said it won’t punish workers for taking sick time.
Auto workers union and Sanders blast GM for wages at U.S. battery plant
May 2, 2023 // United Auto Workers (UAW) union President Shawn Fain and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday criticized a General Motors joint venture battery plant for paying workers much less than assembly plant employees even though it benefits from hefty U.S. government tax credits. Workers at the Warren, Ohio, joint venture Ultium Cells LLC plant start at $16.50 an hour rising to $20 an hour after seven years while union workers at a nearby Ohio GM assembly plant that closed in 2019 made $32 an hour or more.
Bernie Sanders praises shop workers, Ben and Jerry’s on union effort
May 1, 2023 // Workers seeking to unionize at a Ben & Jerry’s retail shop in Burlington, Vermont, the city where the ice cream brand was founded, announced Friday that the company has signed the fair election principles. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who has been a vocal supporter of Starbucks labor organizers, congratulated the Ben & Jerry’s workers at a press conference in his home city.
Senate panel advances Biden Labor nominee Julie Su
April 26, 2023 // “Today’s party-line vote is another reminder that Julie Su is no Marty Walsh, who advanced in a bipartisan 18-4 vote only two years ago,” said Michael Layman, a top lobbyist at the International Franchise Association, in a statement following Wednesday’s vote. The AFL-CIO is fighting back, running ads in Arizona and D.C. backing Su’s efforts to counter wage theft in California. The ads tell viewers that workers are “tired of getting ripped off by big corporations.” The labor federation is also mobilizing its members to lobby senators. “We’re going to defend Julie against these baseless corporate special interests attacks,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told reporters last week. “Every senator, especially those that haven’t yet said that they’ll vote yes, needs to be aware of how much this confirmation means to working people’s lives.”
Bernie Sanders offers his support to striking University of Michigan graduate instructors
April 21, 2023 // A judge, acting on behalf of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, ruled April 18 that the union should end the strike after it violated the current agreement’s no-strike clause. The union plans to continue striking and appeal the judge’s decision, said union secretary Karthik Ganapathy. The university wants to resolve the matters at the bargaining table, said university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald. “While the university has worked diligently to ensure that the negative impact felt by students is minimized, it is in the best interest of the entire campus community, especially our undergraduate students, for GEO to stop its strike and return to the classroom,” Fitzgerald said in a statement.
MGB Housestaff File for Official Union Election After Hospital System Declines to Recognize Union
April 12, 2023 // Committee of Interns and Residents, a local of the Service Employees International Union, is the parent union of MGB Housestaff United. Annie Della Fera, a communications coordinator for CIR, said while organizers had hoped for voluntary recognition, “it’s pretty common for them to reject recognition and instead have residents go through the NLRB election process.” Within hours of the request, MGB Interim Chief Academic Officer Paul J. Anderson wrote in a message that the hospital system would not recognize them, adding that the hospital prefers to “work directly with our trainees as individuals” on resolving workplace issues. “We agree with the NLRB and the federal courts, which have described the NLRB’s secret ballot elections process as the gold standard in determining whether a majority of employees desires union representation,” Anderson wrote.
Senate looks at labor laws which unions say interfere with workers’ right to organize
April 6, 2023 // These days, you know, a lot of union organizers are young and social media savvy, and they're speaking out loudly when they feel their labor rights have been violated. And also, under the Biden administration, the federal agency that enforces labor law has been pursuing a lot of these cases against employers.
AFT’s Weingarten goes all-in on progressive politics
April 6, 2023 // The annual “Share My Lesson” virtual conference is supposed to be a forum to discuss classroom instruction strategies, curriculum ideas, or lesson plans. Instead, Weingarten used the time to highlight partisan, political rhetoric. She began her address by painting a picture about teachers unions like AFT, as being “on the side of hope, of aspiration, of humanity,” in contrast to partisan politicians. “Teachers are stewards of society,” Weingarten said, “Teachers are nation builders.” Weingarten said too many politicians are trying to “drive a wedge between parents and teachers because you think it works as a politician to get you votes.” Weingarten, who has a track record of being an outspoken critic of politicians on the political Right, then focused much of her ire on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. She claimed that DeSantis is “leading this charge [against teachers]. They’re threatening teachers with felonies and jail time if they give their students the wrong book to read.”
The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins
April 5, 2023 // The practice of joining a workplace with the secret aim of organizing it is called “salting.” Westlake was addressing recruits at the Inside Organizer School, a workshop held a couple times a year by a loose confederation of labor organizers. At these meetups, experienced activists train other attendees in the art of going undercover. Speakers lecture and lead discussions on how to pass employer screenings, forge relationships with co-workers and process the complicated feelings that can accompany a double life. Most salts are volunteers, not paid union officials, but unions sometimes fund their housing or, later, tap them for full-time jobs. Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate that’s home to the new Starbucks union, hired Westlake as an organizer around the time the coffee chain fired him last fall.
Unions are having a moment. So why isn’t union membership booming?
March 30, 2023 //