Posts tagged walkout
A new union is born in the South
December 1, 2022 // USSW workers and staff are bullish on their new union, believing that its fusion of labor and human rights organizing will help them secure livable wages, stronger safety protections, control over their work schedules, and new respect for the African Americans and Latinos who make up the majority of their members. They are encouraged by the growing public approval for labor unions and the increase in worker protest during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among essential or frontline workers. They are also building off of nine years of organizing through Raise Up — the Southern expression of the Fight for $15 and a Union and an affiliate of the sprawling Service Employees International Union. Raise Up veterans like Gas and Smalls, and the Durham, North Carolina-based Ieisha Franceis and Jamila Allen, will be critical to the USSW's success. Beginning in September 2020 and continuing over the next year, Franceis and Allen led three walkouts that forced their employer, Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, to agree to their demands for raises, paid leave for employees in quarantine, and new sanitation procedures. Franceis was initially hesitant about striking, but she trusted the much younger and more soft-spoken Allen, who had been meeting with Raise Up organizers for a year and gently prodding her coworkers to take collective action.
Unions shifting to low-risk short strikes for workers to flex leverage during labor shortage
October 20, 2022 // Of the 302 strikes within the U.S. to this point this yr, 141 of the walkouts, or 47%, have lasted a day or much less, in keeping with the labor-action tracker at Cornell College’s Industrial Labor Relations Faculty. Solely 41 strikes, or 13%, have lasted 30 days or extra. By means of the identical interval in 2021, there have been 53 strikes of a day or much less out of a complete of 172 walkouts, or 31%. Brief-term walkouts restrict the danger that employers will rent everlasting replacements for aggrieved employees, stated Catherine Creighton, director of Cornell’s ILR Buffalo Co-Lab. “It’s positively a danger that workers face after they go on a long-term strike,” stated Ms. Creighton, who additionally has labored as a labor-relations lawyer. “It’s been discovered that in a short-term strike, you’re getting your message out to the employer otherwise you’re letting them know you imply enterprise. However you’re not essentially placing your job in danger.”
New ‘Striketober’ looms as US walkouts increase amid surge in union activity
September 26, 2022 // According to the labor action tracker at Cornell University, strikes in 2022 so far have significantly outpaced strike activity in 2021, with 180 strikes involving 78,000 workers in the first six months of 2022, compared with 102 strikes involving 26,500 workers in the first six months of 2021. The tracker recorded 41 strikes that started between 15 August and 15 September 2022, involving 35,250 workers.
Amazon workers at California air hub walk off job
August 17, 2022 // The workers, who are independently organized, are demanding a $5 an hour pay increase, improved health and safety standards and an end to what they described as "retaliation at the warehouse," according to a statement from Inland Empire Amazon Workers United. The group leading the local movement says Amazon is the largest private sector employer in the Inland Empire and alleges that the company failed to provide the community with quality jobs amid massive profits since the start of the pandemic. Amazon Air Freight Fulfillment Center,
Wired’s union threatens to strike
July 1, 2022 // They also want management to recognize staffers that work on the company’s “Gear” product reviews section as part of the union. “While Condé Nast owns our work, it's fair practice to allow writers and creators to share in the bounty when the work they produce is resold to others — and the company has agreed to that principle by giving full-time New Yorker writers a piece of the action when their work is reprinted by others, or sold to filmmakers,” Steven Levy, editor at large at Wired and a contributor there since the magazine's 1993 launch, said in a statement provided to Axios by the union. Amazon Prime Days, Matt Jancer, ”No contract, no clicks” pledge, The New York Times' products review site Wirecutter held a five-day walkout, in an effort to bolster negotiations with management in 2021. The group struck a deal with management weeks later. Miami Herald, Bloomberg Industry Group’s editorial union, BuzzFeed News, Vox Media, Lily Newman