Posts tagged income inequality
‘Battle royale’: Tesla and anti-union Musk make enticing targets for UAW’s next push
November 5, 2023 // Some current UAW members are already fired up to take on Tesla. “Go out west to California? Absolutely, I would go,” said John Jake Kincaid, a Stellantis employee in Michigan. “Show them our strength.” Still, fighting for a contract at companies with established relationships with union workers is a far different effort than starting from scratch. Several workers who were key to Tesla’s earlier union effort are no longer at the company. The Fremont plant’s history with the UAW predates the electric vehicle maker. For about 25 years, Toyota and GM operated the facility together in an unusual joint venture. It was a union shop. In 2009, GM pulled out of the partnership as part of its bankruptcy proceedings and in 2010 Toyota shut the operation down, throwing 4,700 people out of work. A month later, Tesla bought the sprawling 5.3 million square foot factory; the union didn’t come with the purchase.
Opinion: Bernie Sanders to Big 3 CEOs: “It is time for you to end your greed.”
September 19, 2023 // Bernie Sanders: "the average American worker is worse off today than he or she was 50 years ago."
Summer of labor: Why unions win pay hikes and new clout
August 10, 2023 // This year’s bargaining sessions tell the story. The mere threat of a strike won longshoremen, UPS drivers, and other blue-collar workers big pay raises. The 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, by contrast, have been on strike since May. Last month, the actors union joined them on the picket line. It’s the first time the two have jointly struck the studios since 1960 and the most closely watched labor action of the year. Almost 3 in 4 Americans say they’re aware of the strike, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released Aug. 3. Among the issues are revenues from web streaming and the use of AI to generate actors’ likenesses.
Democrats want to make the minimum wage $17 an hour and give nearly 28 million workers a raise
July 27, 2023 // Sen. Bernie Sanders is once again pushing for a higher minimum wage. Sanders, alongside 29 senators and nearly 150 House representatives, introduced new legislation to bring up the federal minimum rate for the first time since 2009.
Exclusive — Stephen Moore: Democrats Care More About Teachers’ Unions Than About Children
July 10, 2023 // Moore criticized Democrats for opposing school choice and said they “care more about teachers unions then than they do about kids.” In explaining school choice, he said, “It basically would take some of the money that the state legislators … appropriate for schools, and it allows the money to follow the backpack, the kids. It follows the kids to have a better opportunity to go to a Catholic school, or a charter school, or a map school or a science school or a Montessori school.”
COMMENTARY America’s seeing a historic surge in worker organizing. Here’s how to sustain it
September 7, 2022 // Likewise, strikes by public-sector workers in the 1960s produced state-level statutes endorsing collective bargaining. Similar policy changes will be needed to sustain contemporary worker efforts, both by fixing the basics of existing labor law to ensure that workers who want collective bargaining are successful in achieving contracts, and by opening up labor law to new forms of worker voice in workplace affairs and corporate governance. But legal changes won’t lead the process. As in the past, policymakers will respond to pressure for change coming from the workforce, a broad base of public interest groups, and ultimately some in the business community.
Donald Morrison: After losing ground for decades, unions regaining a foothold in American workforce
May 2, 2022 // Which, come to think of it, is why people are joining unions, as well as clubs, teams, rock bands and nations — not just for personal enrichment, but for the thrill of being part of something bigger, something better than our own flawed and lonely march through life.
American Companies Have Always Been More Anti-Union Than International Ones. Here’s Why
April 22, 2022 // But when unions are functioning well, Devault says, they aren’t just about pay—but about making sure that workers have more overall power in the workplace. “The pandemic has really changed the way people look at their work,” she says. “We’re starting to see now [that one of those changes is that] I want some say in what goes on in my workplace.” And when workers have more say, they can be more invested in their company’s future, too.
What a Surge in Union Organizing Means for Food and Farm Workers
March 25, 2022 // By organizing with the Warehouse Workers for Justice, many were able to get their jobs back and have their demands met. “What’s really interesting is that there’s a huge movement right now for worker centers and unions to work together ... to essentially surround the industry,” Oliva said. “So if an employer busts the union, the worker center emerges. If the worker center is unable to organize the workers, the union organizes them.”
US unions see unusually promising moment amid wave of victories
March 16, 2022 // Gebre said the nation’s unions should send far more organizers and money to back the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon. “The rest of the labor movement should be willing to lend a hand,” even if they don’t get any of the members, said Gebre, who was recently named Greenpeace’s chief program officer. “That’s what solidarity means.”