Bill Bumpus an injury to one is an injury to all

Author(s):
Paul Johnston Excerpt:

On September 16, 2,200 clerical, blue collar, and professional workers in the Santa Cruz County chapter of Service Employees Local 415 walked out. Their employer was long committed to substandard wages, and now planning layoffs in response to a fiscal crisis. And there was only one solid pro-union vote on the county Board of Supervisors.

Available Online:
Yes

Author(s):
Liza Zador Excerpt:

After almost two years of working without a new contract, pressroom workers at the Union Tribune News in San Diego are winning the community over in their struggle for fair working conditions and better pay. Their employer, the Copley family, has refused to negotiate a fair contract with Graphic Communications International Union Local 404.

Available Online:
Yes

Source: In These Times

Source: NY Times

Source: LA Times

Above: Wall Street Journal Editor

The Wall Street Journal discovers today (!) that eight years of Bushonomics have been great for the richest 1% and bad for everyone else:

In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation’s adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group’s share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income…

According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation’s total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.

It must be awesome to live in a world where the idea that the Bush economy is massively tilted in favor of the very richest is new and shocking! The rest of us figured that out years ago…

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has joined other labor unions in announcing its support for three important pieces of legislation pending in the State House regarding the housing and foreclosure crisis. Click the headline to read more in a press release.

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When I walk into the office on Monday, the guys always ask me what I did over the weekend, and my answer is always the same: I played laser tag!...

Starbucks baristas union drive comes at key time

The effort to organize local latte-slingers could hurt the ailing chain

By Matt Snyders

published: July 23, 2008, City Pages

It was a typical, busy Thursday afternoon at the Mall of America's first-floor Starbucks, and Erik Forman was four hours into his shift. The slight, 23-year-old barista was soon approached by a vaguely familiar face: Caroline Kaker, the chain's Bloomington-based district manager.

She pulled him aside and led him to the adjacent Barnes & Noble. There, she broke the grim news: You're fired.

Forman was stunned. Sure, two weeks earlier, he had shown up a half-hour late and was issued a written warning. But that wasn't why Forman was getting the ax today. Management decided to deep-six him after learning that Forman had discussed the warning with co-workers.

"Erik violated terms of his June 2008 final written corrective action by discussing it with a peer," reads the notice of separation.

But there was another topic Forman had discussed with peers, one not explicitly mentioned in the write-up: unionizing.

A member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Forman had been in the process of organizing his co-workers under the IWW banner for nearly two years.

"It started with workers during their situations during cigarette breaks, during car rides to and from work," Forman recalls. "We first approached the IWW in September of '06. They helped us figure out how to build a strategy."

In 2004, the IWW took on a Starbucks in Midtown Manhattan, with modest success. In the following years, the list of IWW Starbucks Union affiliates grew to include five other shops in New York City; two in Chicago; one in Grand Rapids, Michigan; and one in Rockville, Maryland.

Shortly after the first union sprouted in New York, Starbucks higher-ups exchanged concerned emails, leaked to The Wall Street Journal, about how to handle the epidemic of unionizing. One, dated October 29, 2004, begins with a blunt introduction: "Below is a summary of the recent developments in New York City regarding our attempts to thwart a potential union situation," it reads.

In March 2006, the IWW accused the coffee giant of union-busting and filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Starbucks settled, agreeing to display workers' rights posters in three of its stores and to allow two fired workers back on staff.

"The reasons they gave for firing me were identical to what they did in New York," says Forman, who's also filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. "This is a pretty blatant example of union-busting. We've been planning on making our movement public for a while—so even though it comes as a blow, it's kind of a galvanizing blow."

On July 11, one day after Forman got clipped, five workers walked off the floor and approached the floor manager, Jason Lyons, with a petition demanding Forman's reinstatement. Lyons told them it was out of his hands.

Now Forman and the IWW stand poised to organize baristas throughout the metro. On Monday, July 21, they went public. Their demands include a living wage, "respectful" scheduling, and an end to the company's alleged union-busting.

Asked about Forman's allegations, a Starbucks spokesperson had little to say.

"We just received the charge [from Forman] and we're reviewing it," says Stacey Krum, on the phone from Seattle. "There's nothing we can offer right now."

The charges clash with Starbucks' image as a corporate paragon of social responsibility. The Seattle-based chain has staked its reputation on progressive values that play well with its well-to-do clientele. Starbucks was listed as No. 7 in Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" this year.

The most frequently extolled of Starbucks' labor practices is its healthcare program. It's one of the few major retailers to provide health insurance to part-time employees. But that comes with a couple of caveats.

First, in order to qualify, workers must log 240 hours per quarter. However, there are no guaranteed hours and many baristas complain of sporadic, unpredictable scheduling. As a result, only 65 percent of Starbucks workers, including management, meet the 240-hour minimum. Many of the remaining workers (particularly part-timers) decide not to buy into the plan; rent payments take priority over premiums.

Consequently, the company's health insurance plan covers less than half (40.9 percent) of employees. As organizers like to point out, that's less than the oft-demonized Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., which covers 47 percent of its workers.

"It's just incredible hypocrisy on this core identity issue," says IWW organizer Daniel Gross. "It's absolutely misleading. It's taken a sub-par program and turned it into a marketing advantage through spin and PR."

Last week, Starbucks released the full list of 600-odd stores expected to close in the coming months, including 27 in Minnesota. Sixteen of the doomed shops sit in the Twin Cities metro.The closings will affect some 12,000 workers nationwide. On Monday, Forman's former co-workers at the Mall of America's Starbucks walked off the floor and issued a letter to management demanding "just treatment of all employees affected by Starbucks' closure of stores nationwide." With an economy seemingly in free-fall and job security plummeting, unionization—for good or ill—enjoys more appeal than it did 10 years ago.

"This will be the biggest fire they've had to put out in a while," says Forman. "The economy is getting worse, people can't get by and are having to work 14-hour days. Management's biggest tool has always been the threat of firing. People are starting to think maybe that's a risk worth taking."

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I’ve written before about the Bush Labor Department’s glacial pace when it comes to taking action to protect workers’ health and safety. So naturally I was surprised to see a story in today’s Washington Post about how they are suddenly moving like lightning.

What are they moving so quickly on? Making it easier for corporations to expose workers to toxic chemicals:

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao’s intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title…

The department’s speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

It’s telling that this is the sort of thing they are hurrying to ensure they get done before George Bush leaves office, don’t you think?

LONDON—The queen assured her 59-year-old son, Prince Charles, that he was still special, and the baby would not replace him as the heir apparent to the crown.

You know, seminal American author John Cheever and I have a lot in common. He needed to drink a fifth of scotch before he had the courage to utter...

Today’s face of Employee Free Choice is Erin Harris of Albuquerque, New Mexico:

I asked Erin why she joined the One Million Strong for Employee Free Choice campaign, and here’s what she told me:

Talk of economics does tend to make most eyes glaze over, but in recent years I’ve finally taken time to educate myself and I urge others to do so. That working Americans haven’t been able to get ahead for a generation is the direct result of policies dating from the Reagan era, including the deliberate demonization of unions. The average person earns less, in real spendable terms, than s/he earned in the 1970s and must work harder and longer to get it, with no security and fewer benefits. An all-out class war has been waged against us and the rich have won decisively, producing a level of inequality not seen since the 1920s. We need not apologize for fighting back. Only through very strong unions can we force legislative changes to rein in the savagery of undemocratic transnational capitalism and rebuild a national economy that works for everyone.

Thanks for your support, Erin!

If you’d like to join Erin and the more than 300,000 other working men and women who are standing up for their rights at work, it’s easy to do — join the One Million Strong for Employee Free Choice campaign today!

Previous profiles in this series:

• Harold Appel (July 22)
• Ben Karnitschnig (July 21)

July 23, 2008 Asbestos Exposures Documented by Bruce Allen/CAW Local 199 Vice-President‏ Some 40 of our members have come forward to document their exposure to asbestos from the late 1950s up to the 1980s while working in the Brake Bonding and Caliper Assembly areas of the Components Plant. Asbestos brake linings were ground, drilled and assembled into [...]

Film critic Roger Ebert and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper have opted not to renew their contract with Disney, thereby ending...

DARFUR, IA—Residents of Darfur, IA reached out to the international press today, in an attempt to bring greater attention to...

Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland

Source: Boston Herald

Source: Massachusetts Jobs with Justice

Source: Boston Globe