By Doug Cunningham
Thousands of McDonald’s workers are taking their “Fight For $15” directly to the company’s shareholders meeting in Oak Brook Illinois. They rallied Wednesday and will again Thursday.
Five thousand workers turned out for the Wednesday rally.
McDonald’s is still refusing to adopt the $15 minimum wage for its workers, despite having spent $30 billion over ten years to buy back company stock.
By Doug Cunningham
Thousands of nurses will strike hospitals in California and Chicago April 30 and May 1st. The RN’s with National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association say staffing and patient care concerns are at the heart of their strike. More than 6400 RN’s will strike, some on April 30th, others on May 1st. The nurses say they are demanding policies that “give RN’s a stronger voice in patient care delivery.” Strike locations include Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center, Providence Health and Services Hospitals in Santa Monica and Torrance, California and five Sutter health facilities in Northern California. The nurses will also strike the University of Chicago Medical Center. The nurses planning to strike say patient safety and protections are compromised across the country as the corporate model of patient health care delivery relentlessly pushes for cuts to increase profits. Kaiser alone made a net profit of $4.3 billion last year. The nurses accuse Kaiser of engaging in an anti-union campaign to silence nurses advocating for patients. In Chicago staffing is also an issue, including what they say is the unsafe practice of rotating shifts for nurses.
By Doug Cunningham
The boycott campaign against Staples organized by the American Postal Workers Union was supported in Boston Wednesday by teachers who delivered a “don’t buy school supplies at Staples” message. Staples is being boycotted for taking postal jobs in a deal with the U.S. Postal Service to provide mail services at Staples stores. The Lynn Teachers Union joined APWU members in urging a Staples boycott. An August 27th rally is planned for City Hall Plaza in Boston. The APWU objects to outsourcing postal work to poorly trained, low wage workers at Staples. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers both support the Staples boycott in solidarity with postal unions.
By Doug Cunningham
Rabbis and religious allies are joining striking workers at the Israeli-owned Golan’s Moving & Storage in Chicago Tuesday for a prayer vigil supporting the workers. The rabbis are adding their voices to the demand that the company bargain in good faith with the workers to agree on their first union contract. the workers voted to join the Teamsters in December of 2013 but the company has consistently refused to negotiate with the union.
By Doug Cunningham
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee is busy working North Carolina fields this summer in an effort to organize 5,000 more workers. There are an estimated 30,000 tobacco workers in North Carolina. The “Respect, Recognition, Raise” campaign is an effort to sign up thousands of new members so tobacco worker conditions can be improved. The FLOC campaign focuses not just on agriculture employers but also on RJ Reynolds tobacco company and the entire supply chain for the tobacco industry. FLOC says tobacco product manufacturers control the entire supply chain by setting standards the growers must comply with.
By Doug Cunningham
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin says Governor Scott Walker’s health care policies have left 38,000 low-income people without health care coverage. Walker refused to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act and instead kicked nearly 63,000 people off Wisconsin’s low-income health insurance program BadgerCare. Walker promised these people would be transitioned into the health insurance marketplaces but instead 38,000 of them became un-insured.
By JoAnne Pow!ers
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Los Angeles and Long Beach were ordered to return to work Tuesday morning after walking off the job in solidarity with striking port truck drivers. After the longshore workers refused to cross the picket lines, a federal arbiter ruled that the action was a violation of their current contract. The 120 truckers are holding the Unfair Labor Practice strike over misclassification of the workers by three transportation companies as “independent contractors”, resulting in lower pay and fewer benefits than if they were properly classified as employees. The misclassification has been ruled a violation of U.S. labor law, and would prevent the workers from being able to form a union. The open-ended strike, supported by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is the third, following two shorter walkouts earlier this year. While ongoing contract negotiations prevented comment from the ILWU, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Vice President and Ports Division Director Fred Potter feels that the rank-and-file longshore workers and other union members are deeply committed to helping the striking drivers:
As of Workers Independent News air-time, trade unions in the United Kingdom are expecting over a million public sector workers to walk off their jobs Thursday in a coordinated strike against “poverty pay”, as well as concerns about pensions and workplace safety. Britain’s Trade Union Congress estimates that most public sector workers’ incomes have lost more than 4000 dollars annually following years of wage freezes. The massive strike is expected to include workers from all corners of the public sector, ranging from teachers to firefighters to civil servants.
By JoAnne Pow!ers
[Carrietta Hiers]: “I’m excited about the agreement. We gave the boss the proposals; they told us that our proposals took their breath away, and that we would never see fifteen dollars an hour.”
That was Service Employees International Union organizer Carrietta Hiers celebrating a fair wage victory for hospital workers at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. After a four-month struggle workers won a major victory in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. The hospital and SEIU 1199 reached a tentative agreement on a new four-and-a-half year contract which guarantees substantial wage increases to workers, with raises as high as 38% for low-paid workers over the life of the contract, and a minimum wage of up to 15 dollars an hour for long-time workers. The Union membership will vote on ratification at the end of this week.
By JoAnne Pow!ers
Truck drivers at three major California transportation companies went on strike yesterday morning at truck yards and marine terminals at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The indefinite strike over Unfair Labor Practices by the companies is an escalation following several earlier actions which lasted only one to two days. The workers are striking over firings, intimidation and other retaliation against workers for engaging in legal union activities protected under the National Labor Relations Act. While four billion dollars of cargo enters the nation through these ports every day to retailers such as Walmart and Home Depot, the workers struggle to make ends meet.