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.

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By JoAnne Pow!ers

Advocates for workers’ rights joined with a wide coalition of activists last week, including supporters of women’s reproductive rights and access to healthcare for all, to protest at Hobby Lobby stores across the nation.  The protests come on the heels of last Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court Decision, in which the court ruled that the religious convictions of the company’s owners meant that it did not have to follow provisions of the Federal Affordable Care Act requiring employee health care plans to provide contraception coverage.

The police in the US can kill youth, especially youth of color with impunity. The murder and incarceration of youth of color in this country is at epidemic levels. We reprint this from the blog Dark Are The Days  for our reader’s interest. Please spread the word about yet another youth murder by police.  We are interested in what Kshama Sawant has to say about this issue and will contact her office to find out.  It is important that socialists stand in the forefront of the attacks on youth.

Oscar Perez-Giron and the Fight for Justice

 

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By Doug Cunningham

Johns Hopkins hospital is still refusing to meet 1199 SEIU’s demand that wages for 2,000 workers at the hospital be raised to $15 an hour for workers with at least 15 years experience. The union averted a planned strike by agreeing to a cooling off period and another bargaining session after the intervention of Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. The union says the latest Johns Hopkins hospital offer would still leave many workers relying on food stamps, Medicaid and other public assistance because of their low wages. No new bargaining sessions are scheduled for now.

By Doug Cunningham

The Laborers International Union of North America is calling for an investigation into possible use of child labor on a St. Paul Minnesota construction site. A formal complaint was made Tuesday to both the U.S. and Minnesota Departments of Labor. Tim Mackey, Business Manager of Laborers’ Local 563, says a youth who appeared 13 or 14 years old was seen doing work on the Cornelia Elementary School in St. Paul on multiple occasions. Mackey says kids should be sitting in classrooms, not building them. The youth was spotted moving and placing concrete blocks and cutting blocks with a concrete saw – without safety equipment or apparent supervision.

A large crowd of Philadelphia Gas Works workers and their supporters rallied outside City Hall on June 19 to stop the privatization of the city-owned utility. Utility Workers Local 686 organized the demonstration, which included a number of politicians and labor leaders, including Pat Eiding, president of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO. Speakers emphasized that the […]

This report ‘NO’ to privatization in Philadelphia appeared first on Workers World.

The Veolia Corporation’s campaign to break the Boston School Bus Drivers Union and rip up their contract is part of a broader austerity attack that targets the unions, public education and Boston’s African-American, Latino/a and immigrant communities. Workers World supports this all-important fight against union busting and austerity cutbacks. The mostly Haitian, Cape Verdean and […]

This report Boston: Fight union busting, racism appeared first on Workers World.