Labor ‘Unrest’ Is Kind of A Big Deal
The levels of gaslighting, misinformation, rewriting history and warped analysis dished out to the public these days generally serves to promote an incomplete understanding of what’s going on in the world around us.
One area where the picture presented is incomplete concerns organized labor, a fulcrum making possible wage increases beyond the ranks of their membership.
Growing inequality in the US is pushing people with jobs into poverty; the ranks of unhoused humans are steadily increasing driven by the cost of living, and declining measures of public health are increasingly a burden for everyday people.
So today I’ll highlight a few areas of resistance to this downward cycle many people think is just a force of nature as opposed to a deliberate strategy deemed necessary for wealth growth.
A reordering of capitalism from selling, servicing, and making things/experiences as economic drivers to a fantastical casino-like marketplace, where businesses of yore are stripped down for parts, burdened with debt, and left no choice but to try and squeeze more out of their workforce.
The methods for this shift vary by time and place, but the results are bad for everybody but shareholders. I wish there was data for the number of big companies who used their emergency COVID funds for stock buybacks instead of paying employees. From what I’ve seen reported in the press, this was a common occurrence.
Some industries have shifted from income made by selling products to sticking consumers with paying for the privilege of using their products.
For instance, you don’t actually own the entirety of your Tesla, something most people only learn when they go to sell their car. The software and battery actually belong to Elon Musk, are deducted from its resale value; and the next buyer has to pay him again to use the car.
HP used to sell printers for cheap, looking for profits from sales of ink cartridges. People are doing a lot less printing these days, so the company profits from a stream of user data and doubling the price of cartridges. Should you buy a generic brand of ink, newer printers become bricked (unusable).
Some variation of these economic schemes are in play throughout the capitalist world.
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On the heels of a historic Teamster contract with United Parcel Service, 150,000 United Auto Workers have given 97% approval for a strike against the Big Three automakers should contract talks falter, effective September 15.
UAW demands include:
A 46% wage increase over four years
A 32-hour work week paid at 40 hours
Restoring cost-of-living adjustments
Expanding pensions
Increasing retiree benefits
Re-establishing retiree medical benefits
The right to strike over plant closures
Eliminating the two-tiered wage system, where new hires are paid significantly lower wages for doing the same work.
Think this is excessive? Automaker CEOs who have received on average 40% pay increases.
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A dozen union locals with members in seven states (including California) and the District of Columbia calling itself the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions are participating in a strike authorization vote starting August 26 thru the middle of September.
The united unions represent roughly 40% of the overall Kaiser Permanente workforce. More than 80,000 employees will be participating, should a strike be called, effective October 1..
The San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council will host a solidarity event for its members on Labor Day at Harry Griffin Park in La Mesa.
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Members of Unite Here Local 11 have been engaged in walkouts and picketing at a rotating number of major hotel properties in Los Angeles since July 4th. Roughly 60 union contracts are unsettled since expiring on June 30.
Now they are escalating their efforts by calling on large conventions to steer clear of the city.
Groups planning large-scale meetings are being asked to cancel or postpone them until the union has reached new deals with the hotels, or to move the events to another town.
One of the union’s co-presidents, Kurt Petersen, was quoted at HuffPost, saying:
Tourism is the most important industry [here]. If tourism doesn’t pay workers a living wage, then this city will continue to collapse, and the housing crisis will be even worse than it is now.”
A recent member survey by Unite Here Local 11 showed that more than half of workers said they had to move in the past five years, or will have to move soon, because they can no longer afford to live where they do.
As a result, the union’s primary demand is for an immediate $5-per-hour raise to compensate for the region’s escalating housing costs.
The 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count shows a 9% rise in homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles County (estimated at 75,518 people) and a 10% rise in the City of Los Angeles. (Estimated at 46,260 people).
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Graduate student workers at the University of California, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan have engaged in labor actions with uncertain endings.
Grad workers at U-M are voting on an offer guaranteeing a 20-80% raise for incoming grad workers, a living wage for PhDs, and a host of issues, from trans & parental care to abolition and harassment protections.
The results at the University of California, which saw the largest strike in higher education history, seemed promising until they weren’t.
A coalition of tens of thousands of academic employees, including student researchers and teaching assistants, represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) walked out for six weeks, ending in December, 2022. They were demanding better working conditions, improved wages, and improved grievance measures.
The strike settlement appeared like they’d won historic salary increases, along with greater protections for academic employees in the workplace. Actually achieving the desired results has been a struggle. Some schools were cutting positions to pay for the wage increases.
Others, like UCSD, were slow to implement the agreements. And retaliatory measures were taken against strike participants. Dissatisfaction with management tactics led to a protest at an university alumni awards celebration in May. The university then tried to sanction some of the student protesters with charges of misconduct, with a search warrant being executed at the home of one of the leaders.
The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has ruled against the university’s actions, finding evidence of retaliation in the arrests and student misconduct charges by UCSD.
This isn’t over, so expect more reports of protests at UCSD.
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Of course, the biggie, namely what’s referred to as the Hollywood Writers strike, is ongoing. The Writers Guild of America, which went on strike in May, was joined by the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in July.
At issue is the fundamental nature of how creators and their enablers are compensated for their efforts. The decline of network television combined with the rise of streaming services has put studios in the position where services formerly rendered are largely considered unnecessary. The rise of Artificial Intelligence systems meant it was considered possible to eliminate humans or relegate them to auditors or even utilize actor’s images and voice in future productions without their consent or participation.
The entertainment industry has undergone huge structural changes in recent years through mergers and technological advances. On one level, it has become increasingly profitable, oftentimes through non-entertainment financial moves. On another level, the streaming services have followed the Amazon template, meaning build it now and the profits will come later. Increasing overlap between the old and the new versions of the industry has put increasing emphasis on the profits not coming so much later.
As a result, management in its dealings with labor has become arrogant and hostile, believing they can starve the strikers into a submissive deal. The problems with this approach have been the combination of persistent actions and celebrity endorsements.
Picket lines become a different animal when popular personalities are leading the way. And this, combined with an effective espousal of their grievances, has kept the public engaged and supportive of the strikers.
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These are just a few of the higher profile events occurring in organized labor. The desire to organize has been embraced by a younger generation of workers, who are fighting corporations whose culture doesn’t even consider the possibility of unionization.
Eventually, companies like Starbucks and Amazon will come around, as the numbers of those organized are increasing. As with past labor struggles, this won’t be an easy task, especially with entities that consider themselves above the law.
Fortunately, the Biden administration has taken some steps towards righting the wrongs inflicted on labor in recent years, from cracking down on exploiting underage workers to regulatory changes of enforcement, anti-retaliation provisions, and tools to hold contractors responsible for wage violations.
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Friday’s Free For All Snippets
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Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump Via Politico.
There was a predictable partisan split among Democrats and Republicans, with nearly 90 percent of Democratic respondents seeking an early trial date and roughly a third of Republican respondents agreeing.
It was the reaction of independents, however, that may prove most ominous for Trump. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of independents said that Trump should stand trial before next November — a figure that suggests particular interest in and attentiveness to a case that effectively alleges that Trump tried to steal the last election. By way of a rough comparison, when we asked a similar question in June following Trump’s indictment by the Justice Department in Florida concerning his retention of classified documents, fewer than half of independent respondents (48 percent) said that the trial in that case should take place before next November.
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‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed Via the Guardian. Think he’s an outsider, not bought like he claimed in the debate? Think again.
Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.
But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.
Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.