Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/author/jsee/page/5/)
With 72,000 more unemployed workers losing their jobless benefits every week, organized labor and its civic, religious and congressional Democratic allies turned to public pressure to push resurrection of the benefits through a hostile GOP majority in the U.S. House.
On one of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport’s busiest days of the year, the low-wage workers who make holiday travel happen put the public on notice they will no longer settle for poverty-level wages.
More than 40 protesters rallied on Tuesday, Nov. 26, under the banner of the Greater Minnesota Worker Center with the intention of generating awareness for alleged injustices by a local temporary employment agency, the Work Connection.
Labor Education Service is pleased to share a new curriculum produced by our staff in support of the campaign to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage. The curriculum consists of a trainer’s guide in PDF format and an accompanying PowerPoint. Handouts and pledge forms supplement the curriculum.
A Right Wing attempt to judicially outlaw card-check recognition, company neutrality during union organizing drives and even the right to worksite access if the firm agrees to it ran into an apparently skeptical U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 13.The case, brought by anti-union worker Martin Mulhall but backed and funded by the anti-worker National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, pitted Unite Here Local 355 against workers who – they claimed – objected to Hialeah Race Track’s agreement to those conditions during the union’s organizing drive there. In return, the union joined the track in campaigning for a pro-casino referendum in Florida. But the case stretches beyond one race track and one casino in Florida, Unite Here General Counsel Richard McCracken told reporters after the hour-long hearing before the High Court.That’s because the federal appeals court in Atlanta, siding with Mulhall and the Right to Work group, had ruled that granting card check, neutrality and worksite access to the union were “things of value” to Local 355 – and to all unions – and labor law bars firms from giving unions “things of value.” Doing so, the law says, is criminal.That part of the National Labor Relations Act “is a criminal statute” and a potential precursor to racketeering charges that could be leveled against unions during organizing drives if the justices side with Mulhall and the “Right to Work” group, McCracken explained after the High Court session. Other federal courts, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), have ruled for decades that card check, access and neutrality are not “things of value” to the union, and thus legal. The Right to Work group’s attorney, William Messenger, argued that card check, neutrality and access are, drawing skeptical questions from the justices.“There are some things that I think have value, even though they may not have market value,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor commented. “For example, bribing a union steward by offering him a favorable work schedule.”“Congress did not intend these three things to be read as ‘things of value,’” and thus illegal for companies to give unions under labor law, McCracken told the justices. “Agreements by parties to set the ground rules for an organizing campaign are not things of value,” he added. “Reading the policies of the (National Labor Relations) act as a whole, voluntary recognition “ of a union by a company “is not only permissible, but preferred,” McCracken then told Justice Stephen Breyer. “The three procedures here are only useful under voluntary recognition,” he added. “And the agreement here doesn’t recognize the union,” he said later.Chief Justice John Roberts strayed beyond card check itself, trying to get attorneys to say that card check coerces workers, a favorite Right Wing claim. Justice Department attorney Michael Breeden, speaking for the NLRB and the Obama administration and siding with the union, rejected that – as well as Roberts’ argument that card-check is more coercive than an NLRB-run election.“If a majority of the workforce wants to be organized and represented by that union, the argument here, as I understand it, is that this agreement taints that process by allowing the card check procedure that it has been argued exercises coercion against employees to support the union,” Roberts said.“Well, this court in the Gissel Packing case many years ago rejected that argument,” Dreeben replied, citing a case that occurs in virtually every NLRB ruling. “The contention that “card check agreements are inherently coercive has been rejected” both by other circuit courts and the NLRB itself, he noted. “Will you concede that they’re more coercive than a secret ballot?” Roberts shot back about card check. “I don’t think they’re coercive at all inherently,” Dreeben replied.“The organizer comes up to you and says, ‘Well, here’s a card. You can check ‘I want to join the union,’ or two, ‘I don’t want a union,’” Roberts said.
That’s the question Workday Minnesota asked delegates at the recent 2013 convention of the Minnesota State Retirees Council. Many replies included some version of “Scrap the cap” on income subject to FICA tax or “Avoid Chained CPI!” That’s the proposed alternative inflation measure for Social Security benefits that would, over time, actually cut the income of retirees and people with disabilities.There’s more to retirement security than keeping Social Security sound, but, since, Social Security payments make up, on average, 2/3 or more of income for half of American seniors, it’s not a bad place to start. And a secure retirement isn’t just an issue for senior citizens. As the You Tube video, Just Scrap the Cap (We’re Movin in!) [http://www.justscrapthecap.com] humorously illustrates, if senior 99 percenters lack the means to support ourselves, we’ll be looking to our adult children for help.For a quick update on Social Security’s sound finances and how to keep them in good shape now and into the future, check out the Economic Opportunity Institute’s The Straight Facts on Social Security.
This video captures the march of hundreds of people through downtown Minneapolis on August 21, 2013 to protest secret negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal that could jeopardize American jobs, wages, consumer safety, health care and environmental standards. Josh Wise, Director of the Minnesota Free Trade Coalition, Dan McGrath, Executive Director of TakeAction Minnesota and Larry Cohen, President of the Communication Workers of America International Union advocated fair trade rather than free trade and explored the issues behind the new fast track trade deal that would be another race to the bottom for working people around the globe.
This video combines segments of a Labor Education Service video about striking miners in Cananea, Mexico with a video by the United Steelworkers about the international cooperation between the Mexican miner’s union, Los Mineros, and the USW.
This video tells the story of the pivotal 1934 Truckers’ Strike in Minneapolis. The bloody struggle left four people dead and many more injured. It pitted the anti-union Citizens Alliance against the Teamsters fighting to organize Minnesota workers and raise the local wage rates. This conflict, together with others across the country, pressured the president and Congress to enact the National Labor Relations Act the following year. The NLRA became the basis for the nation’s collective bargaining system.
This video portrays over 1,000 AFSCME Council 5 members who rallied for their annual Day on the Hill at the Minnesota Stae Capitol on February 26, 2013 to urge the legislature to adopt Governor Dayton’s budget, a plan that would grow the middle class. Members of the public employees union explain how budget cuts have caused deterioration in services they provide and how a fairer taxation system could restore jobs and services for the people of the state.