On December 22nd hundreds of California Cartage warehouse workers are having a union election. It's bringing temps together with direct hire warehouse workers as these workers stand up for their labor rights.
While they are boldly trying to organize to improve their wages and working conditions, they say their bosses are waging a nasty anti-union campaign.
This week, over 3,000 workers ranging from airport and fast-food employees to homecare, higher education, and childcare workers across Los Angeles took part in the nationwide Fight for $15 day of action to demand $15 an hour and union rights. The workers waged their most disruptive protests yet to show they will not back down in the face of newly-elected politicians and newly-empowered corporate special interests who threaten an extremist agenda to move the country to the right.
National Nurses United will join Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Chuck Schumer and other supporters of Medicare and Social Security in Washington D.C. Wednesday to demand hands off Medicare and Social Security.
They will deliver a petition opposing cuts to these vital programs. Martha Kuhl is an RN and Secretary-Treasurer of National Nurses United.
Workers - especially workers in unions - who voted Republican in November should pay special attention to this story.
In Missouri, New Hampshire and Kentucky Republican's controlling state legislatures are planning another assault on worker rights. They're preparing anti-union so-called 'right to work' laws designed to weaken worker organizations by bleeding dues money from them.
On Tuesday, 95,000 California nurses, teachers and other state workers voted overwhelmingly, 92 percent, to authorize a strike December 5th to protest what they describe as the state’s unlawful conduct and bad-faith bargaining.
Late Tuesday evening, a federal judge in Texas put a stop to new rules planned for December 1st that would extend overtime protection to an estimated 4.5 million workers and strengthen enforcement for another 8 million workers who should have already been eligible. Judy Conti, Federal Advocacy Coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, described the ruling as extreme and far outside the history of how this regulation has been implemented by the Department of Labor for literally the entire history of the FLSA.
A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order Wednesday evening putting an end to a strike by 250 cargo pilots working for ABX Air, a shipper for Amazon. The Airline Professionals Association, Teamsters Local 1224, began the strike Tuesday morning over years of severe understaffing and the airline’s refusal to hire back experienced, furloughed pilots. The strike had grounded 75 ABX planes and millions of pounds of cargo, as well as flights from other carriers at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport whose unionized pilots refused to cross the ABX picke
Sisters and Brothers –
This week has been bittersweet. We won Proposition JJJ for good jobs and affordable housing, Proposition 55 for a quality education for our kids, Measure M for a bigger, better transit system and Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger for County Supervisor. But, we came up short in the big one.
As we mourn this loss and learn the lessons only a defeat can teach, let’s carry this experience with us into our next fights like the one below.
[Michael Brune]: "The era of corporate trade deals is over. With all signals pointing to the end of the TPP it's up to all of us to answer the next question. What comes next? And we need a fundamentally new approach that prioritizes the needs of people and planet."
Sierra Club Director Michael Brune.
AFL-CIO Deputy Chief of Staff Thea Lee says the apparent defeat of the TPP trade deal creates a chance to overhaul trade policy in a more pro-worker direction - even within the context of a hostile political environment for unions.
A federal appeals court in Kentucky has upheld local county anti-union laws known as 'right to work'. The ruling reverses a lower court decision that had struck down Hardin County's anti-union law.
Kentucky AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan says unions will likely appeal to the full federal appeals court and if they lose there it's on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 'right to work' laws are designed to weaken unions by letting workers covered by union contract skip paying dues.