Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/category/organizing/page/18/)
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.
After Republicans filibustered through the night and past dawn, the Senate passed landmark legislation Wednesday extending collective bargaining rights to 9,000 family child-care providers and 12,000 home health-care workers.
Fed up with wages so low that they often face eviction, and lack of power to fight for a decent living standard, thousands of New York City fast food workers staged a second 1-day walkout from their jobs, on April 4. The workers, led by the Fast Food Forward, a community-based organizing group, demanded living wages of $15 an hour – barely enough to survive on in New York – and the right to organize without employer interference. It was their second walkout. The first was last November.
Learn more about how child care workers plant seeds of hope for the next generation – and hear why they are seeking a voice on the job – in this new video.
Canvass workers at Sisters Camelot, a non-profit mobile food shelf and soup kitchen, are on strike after the organization’s managing collective refused to negotiate with the canvass union.
The number of union members nationwide declined by 398,000 from 2011 to 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. But there are many qualifications and caveats, the BLS economist who analyzes the data adds.
The Teamsters, after a long organizing campaign and extended bargaining, have won and ratified a first contract for a notable group of West Coast workers, 65 port drivers for the Toll Group at the Port of Los Angeles.
Big-box retailers like Walmart pushed their Black Friday sales to new extremes this year, but retail workers and their supporters are pushing back.
Four groups of Wal-Mart workers, fed up with bad working conditions, company high-handedness and refusal to listen and its low pay, defied the giant retailer and staged separate strikes in mid-September and early October.