Honor Labor Day: Vote NO Recall and Support Essential Workers
If we manage to defeat the anti-labor Recall, there is a good chance that California might lead the way in checking the abuse of Amazon warehouse workers.
By Jim Miller
Here’s a Labor Day newsflash for ya: Any worker who votes yes on the Recall is a chicken for Colonel Sanders. OK, you may not have liked the French Laundry thing, but whatever you think of Gavin Newsom, he has been, on the whole, a friend of labor and an ally to working people, union and non-union alike.
Yes, there are some nits to pick, but the choice working people in California have in this election is whether they want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good or vote in their clear self-interest. The bottom line is this: if Newsom is recalled, he’ll be replaced by Larry Elder, a Trump Republican whose views on labor are reactionary.
Elder is against public sector unions, period, and his monied allies are the kinds of people who have been working to undermine the entire labor movement for decades. He says things like this: “The biggest myth about labor is that unions are for workers, unions are for unions.” Thus, at a time when a large majority of Americans have the most favorable view of labor they have had for decades as a result of the grave disparities in wealth exposed by the pandemic, a recall of Newsom would put an anti-labor demagogue in the statehouse in California.
Instead of honoring our essential workers by favoring things like Hero Pay, a Governor Elder would be an advocate of zero pay. Elder really did come out against the minimum wage suggesting that we shouldn’t have one. He’ll also walk away from the vaccination push, mask mandates, paid Covid sick leave, and other protections for frontline workers from the grocery store to the classroom.
Instead, you’d likely see the usual giveaways to business in the form of liability waivers, corporate tax cuts, and a lack of enforcement of California labor laws. Forget about any effort to support gig workers, fully fund education, protect renters, or push for equity in any way.
So please, fellow workers and friends, honor Labor Day by voting NO on the Recall.
Some Good News for Workers on Labor Day
If we manage to defeat the anti-labor Recall, there is a good chance that California might lead the way in checking the abuse of Amazon warehouse workers. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, Lorena Gonzalez’s AB 701 seeks to hold the online retail giant accountable:
An Assembly-passed bill is expected to reach the Senate floor this week or next to crack down on the opaque, algorithm-led and harsh warehouse work conditions often attributed to the Seattle technology behemoth.
The bill, the first such legislation in the nation, would require warehouses to disclose quotas and work speed metrics to employees and government agencies. It would ban “time off task” penalties that affect health and safety, including bathroom use, and prohibit retaliation against workers who complain . . .
The state legislation ratchets up the pressure Amazon already faces from an energized labor movement. The company crushed a campaign in April to unionize 6,000 workers at one of its warehouses in Alabama. In June, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced a nationwide push to organize Amazon’s delivery and warehouse employees, calling the company an “existential threat” to workers across the logistics industry.
This is a bill that deserves to gain steam fast and could set a new standard for other states to follow.
Across the country, in New York, underpaid and overworked service workers are striking back against Starbucks by organizing a union. Tired of understaffing, grueling work conditions, and abuse from aggressive customers, baristas are hoping that organizing will get the goods. According to the Guardian:
Fifty Starbucks workers in New York are trying to form a union, which would be the first in the US for the coffee chain if successful.
Last week, the group of workers in the Buffalo area publicly announced their union organizing drive and the formation of their organizing committee, Starbucks Workers United, in a letter to the Starbucks CEO, Kevin Johnson.
None of the more than 8,000 Starbucks locations in the US are unionized . . .
“They don’t have a company without baristas making the coffee,” said Kayla Sterner, a Starbucks barista who signed onto the union organizing letter. “We have been so understaffed and had to pick up all that slack by ourselves.”
The company has a record of opposing union organizing efforts. Earlier this month, an administrative law judge ruled Starbucks illegally fired two workers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in retaliation for union organizing.
If successful, this effort would be ground-breaking in the largely non-union, underpaid American service sector. If we are ever going to push back against the continually rising tide of economic inequality in America, this is the way to start—with those workers building power and insisting on a better standard of living and more dignity in the workplace.
It’s long past time workers’ rights returned to the center of the national conversation.
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If you’d like to celebrate this Labor Day by standing with essential workers, you can join me here:
Happy Labor Day fellow workers!
Lead photo ripped off from Carol Kim's Facebook page.