Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/category/organizing/page/17/)
Something is stirring in places long forgotten or overlooked. Young leaders are emerging to take the fight to the boss as workers, immigrants and so many others are under attack. One of those voices speaking with vision, passion, accessibility and intellectual precision is Kooper Caraway.
Communication Workers of America (CWA) members held an action in downtown Minneapolis on April 15 to mark a full year of AT&T employees working under an expired contract. The significance of Tax Day brings attention to the $20 billion in tax break that the U.S. based telecom giant received last year under the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (signed in December 2017).
In lobbying for the tax breaks, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claimed that U.S. job creation would be a direct outcome, “By immediately lowering the corporate tax rate to 20%, this bill will stimulate investment, job creation and economic growth in the United States… If the House bill is signed into law, we’d commit to increasing our domestic investment by $1 billion in the first year in which the new rates are in place. And research tells us that every $1 billion in capital invested in telecom creates about 7,000 good jobs for the middle class.”
Yet instead of bringing job growth, according to CWA’s AT&T 2018 Jobs Report, in 2018 alone AT&T cut 10,700 jobs and announced that a further three call centers will soon be closed in the Midwest, while simultaneously sending thousands of jobs overseas where there are reports of outrageously sexist and often unsafe working conditions.
The AT&T Midwest CWA members as well as AT&T’s national Legacy T division have been in contract negotiations fighting to guarantee job security, as well as affordable healthcare and a secured retirement. But during an interview at the recent April 15 action, CWA local 7250 President Shari Wojtowicz says that job security comes before all other issues. “Working for the last year without a contract and not striking proves that we are invested in the success of the company and wanting it to succeed.
Fateh’s campaign workers consist entirely of University of Minnesota Twin Cities undergraduate students, with one student who just graduated this month. This marks the first all-student unit to unionize with the Campaign Workers Guild, announced the Guild in a press release on May 21.
On Saturday night, wealthy patrons will enjoy fine dining at Wayne Kostroski’s “Taste of NFL.” Meanwhile, employees of his publicly funded business Franklin Street Bakery face exploitation and labor strife. Conditions are so severe that on January 11th workers survived carbon monoxide exposure and poisoning.
Set against the most prominent and iconic sports spectacle in the United States a series of protests have been called to draw attention to structural inequities in Minnesota.
Adjunct professors at the University of St. Thomas, the third group of St. Paul college educators to file a petition to unionize with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are scheduled to have their ballots sent out on July 3.
Contract negotiations break down over drastic company-proposed 80 percent reduction in long-term retirement benefits for workers at at Cretex Shakopee faclity.
A group of more than 100 Wal-Mart workers from stores in northern California, Miami, Boston, Denver and elsewhere started an extended strike on Memorial Day against the retail giant.
After a debate that took nearly 10 hours over three legislative days, the Minnesota House of Representatives approved historic legislation Monday that extends collective-bargaining rights to family child-care providers and personal care attendants.
First, New York. Then, Chicago and St. Louis. And on May 10, Detroit. Fast food workers nationwide, poor, upset and disgusted by the huge contrast between fast food CEOs’ pay and their minimum-wage, no-benefit jobs, are walking out of their restaurants by the scores.