People Before Profit blog

Cleveland teachers battle excessive testing mandates

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 15:06:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Hundreds of angry Cleveland public school teachers demonstrated for several hours outside the downtown office of the Cleveland Municipal School District May 26. They wore union T-shirts carrying the statement, "I don't want to strike but I will!" to voice frustration over mounting unresolved grievances as they seek a new contract.

Shari Obrenski, director of negotiations for the Cleveland Teachers Union (AFT Local 279) and a teacher at Jane Addams High School, said that 97 percent of the union's 4,500 members voted last month to strike when school resumes in the fall unless agreement on a new contract is reached.

Many of the problems stem from the policy of over-testing mandated by the state, she said. She said the testing distorts the entire education process, including depriving children of electives, career training , support staff and even libraries, as well as interfering with fair teacher evaluation and salaries of para-professional staff.

"Continual testing is like, if you are overweight, and, instead of addressing the problem, you keep buying new scales," one teacher said. "They don't want to face up to the real problem of poverty and generations of structural inequality."

The District has adopted a "site-based budgeting" system, allocating funds to each school based on enrollment and leaving funding decisions up to principals. Under pressure to get good test scores and avoid administrative takeover, principals often make arbitrary decisions that can have a serious impact on the children.

"Over the past two years 12 high school libraries were closed and elementary school libraries are now open only half a day," said one of the few remaining school librarians, asking that her name not be used because she feared retaliation. "The principals say libraries don't raise test scores."

Another serious concern is the restraints on wages for support staff, including nurses, psychologists and paraprofessionals, who assist teachers in classrooms and provide individual attention to students. "Paraprofessionals cannot earn more than $13 an hour and substitutes earn less than $9," Obrenski said. "These people are critical to public education. They need a living wage."

It was a bright sunny spring day, the last full day of the school year for the teachers and they were in a boisterous, militant mood, singing labor songs and chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho. All this testing has to go" and ""When educators are under attack, What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

They cheered loudly as public officials and labor leaders took the mike to offer encouragement. This included Cleveland city councilman, Brian Kazy and State Sen. Mike Skindell whose districts include the homes of many teachers, John Ryan, representing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore (Cleveland) AFL-CIO.

The demonstrators were also buoyed by drivers in the rush hour traffic who honked horns and raised fists in solidarity. Many teachers voiced hope that issues can be resolved and contract talks, currently on hold, will resume over the summer.

Photo: CTU 279 Facebook page

Coalition forms to combat wage theft in Minnesota

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:54:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI and Workday Minnesota) -- Several Minnesota labor and community organizations are forming a coalition to combat the growing problem of wage theft that costs workers millions of dollars every year.

The coalition held its first meeting on June 7 at the offices of CTUL, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha/Center of Workers United in Struggle, in Minneapolis.

Groups in the coalition include CTUL, which is a Minneapolis-based worker center, the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, the Service Employees State Council, and the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service, which publishes Workday Minnesota.

Formation of the coalition was prompted by Workday's recent series exposing the many forms of wage theft and discussing possible solutions. Wage theft is a nationwide problem, but the series exposed its prevalence in Minnesota and how it greatly harms workers and families.

On June 2, workers who have had their wages stolen spoke at a public forum sponsored by the coalition members and the Center for Human Resources & Labor Studies in the University's Carlson School of Management.

Robin Pikala, a home health care worker, continued to work even as her paychecks bounced. "I couldn't leave my clients," she said. "They didn't have anyone else."

Eventually her employer, Crystal Care, declared bankruptcy. "A total of $1.4 million was owed to 600 employees," Pikala said. "If it was you or I, we would be in jail if we robbed the state of $1.4 million."

Workers from construction, retail and the hospitality and cleaning industries had similar stories. They described being forced to work "off the clock" for no pay, not being compensated for overtime hours and simply not getting paid at all.

Kerry Jo Felder worked as a restaurant server for 25 years and saw her wages docked when customers walked out without paying or a dish was broken. "There are different ways that money is taken away from servers," she said.

Felder also worked at a store where she was required to punch in 15 minutes early without pay. The minutes - and lost wages - add up after weeks and months, she noted.

A common theme at the forum was the fact that many industries count on stealing wages from workers to fatten their bottom lines. Wage theft "is an intentional business model," said Jonathan Reiner of the Carpenters.

The Carpenters call this business model, used widely in residential construction and on many commercial projects, "payroll fraud." It is based on a complex system of subcontracting where workers are independent contractors and no one is an employee. Contractors and developers evade their responsibility to pay overtime, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, taxes and more, Reiner said.

Lucila Dominguez cleaned restaurants and stores, was never paid overtime and had to provide her own mop and cleaners. "They would always say you are an independent contractor and that is why you have to pay for your own materials."

By organizing through CTUL, she and her co-workers won back hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages. They also mounted a successful campaign to hold Target Corporation accountable for the practices of its cleaning contractors. Organizing was one solution discussed at the forum. Others included:

Better education among workers and the community
Better enforcement of existing laws against wage theft
Penalties for employers who steal wages
Placing the burden of proof on employers to document they are complying with the law
Publicizing good employers through a certification process
Forming more unions
Giving workers a stronger voice on the job

The new wage theft coalition will focus on identifying and implementing solutions.

"We want to get to the root of why wage theft happens" and not just "put out fires," said Brian Merle Payne, co-director of CTUL.

Barb Kucera is Editor, www.workdayminnesota.org

Photo: Carpenter Jose Ramirez and home health care worker Robin Pikala listen as Jonathan Reiner of the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters discusses the "payroll fraud" model of wage theft in construction. Workday Minnesota photo

Wage theft, labor law-breaking force L.A. port truckers into another strike

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:27:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES-LONG BEACH, Calif. (PAI) - Can you imagine working five weeks in a row and earning nothing?

That's what happened to Humberto Canales, one of several hundred Los Angeles-Long Beach port truckers forced to strike - again - in early June. Their 6-day walkout, spearheaded by the union they want to join, Teamsters Local 848, ended June 6.

The L.A.-Long Beach truckers are part of the nationwide mass movement of low-paid workers, including restaurant workers, fast food workers, retail workers and Walmart workers, who have had it and have taken to the streets to demand decent wages and the right to organize without illegal employer interference, harassment, intimidation and firings.

"I haul cargo from the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach to the warehouses of America's largest retailers," Canales explained in an open message to Internet users, urging them to sign a protest petition to both local officials and the firms involved.

"Recently I worked five full weeks in a row but took home exactly $0 each of these five weeks because my employer-XPO Cartage-falsely labels me as 'self-employed' so they can deduct the cost of diesel fuel, truck maintenance, insurance, and lease payments from my paycheck," he added.

The cartage firms have been misclassifying their drivers as "independent contractors" for years, despite driver protests and California court and state rulings against the practice.

Misclassifying truckers as "independent contractors" not only lets the company get away with forcing them to pay for their own fuel, maintenance and insurance, but also lets the firms get away with not paying Social Security and Medicare withholding taxes, unemployment insurance and workers comp.

And "independent contractors" don't have the right to organize and join a union, either.

But it's not just the truckers who were forced to walk out from May 31-June 6. Cal Cartage fired warehouse worker Fusto Torres on May 2, along with 100 other workers, "for demanding our rights and an end to wage theft." Before, he moved goods for Amazon.com. "The Port of L.A. must ensure that Cal Cartage follows the law on port property" - the port owns the land under the warehouse-or bring in a warehouse operator who will," Torres says.

The latest campaign, also run by the Change To Win organizing center , culminated with a June 6 march through south Los Angeles to the Cal Cartage warehouse. Besides Cal Cartage and XPO, the workers also were forced to strike Intermodal Transport, another cartage firm.

The latest forced strike, the 13th in the past two years, has produced results as other cartage firms in the L.A.-Long Beach area have come to agreements with the Teamsters, recognizing the truckers and warehouse workers as "employees" with the right to organize and join unions, said Fred Potter, director of the Teamsters' port division.

Potter told the American Journal of Transportation that more than 40 percent of Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor trucking companies now treat their drivers as employees, provide them with regular W-2 income forms, pay them negotiated wages and benefits and provide workers' comp.

Photo: Port of Los Angeles picket lines expanded and strike organizers say trucks filled with imported cargo were backed up from the L.A. and San Diego ports to the Mexican border. Justice for Port Drivers, Facebook

Teachers report: 2016 presidential campaign scares kids

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 13:16:00 +0000

A California fifth-grader has "full-blown panic attacks" in school because the student fears being deported.

A Muslim teenaged girl in Washington state had suicidal thoughts after her classmates repeatedly shouted anti-Islamic slurs at her. Some other chants elsewhere: "ISIS", "terrorist."

An Oklahoma grade school teacher reports: "My kids are terrified of (Donald) Trump becoming president. They believe he will deport them - and NONE of them are Hispanic. They're all African-American."

And a Michigan high school teacher has to keep defending the rights of minorities to hold different views in an atmosphere "where the rhetoric has set up a school community that is hostile to conservatives and the Republican Party.

"It makes it difficult if not impossible to take sides in my classroom because I can't be silent in the face of this rhetoric, lest I lose my students' respect or trust."

Welcome to the 2016 presidential campaign and its traumatic, scary effect on kids.

Rolling back educational progress

That's detailed in a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation's leading tracker and monitor of hate groups, crimes and bigotry. For years, the SPLC has also run a "Teaching Tolerance" curriculum for the nation's schools, which are still viewed as the top way young people are socialized into U.S. society's norms, including tolerance for minorities.

This year's presidential campaign has undone a lot of that progress, SPLC reports. And it's also traumatized millions of students, from kindergarten all the way through 12^th grade.

That's what the SPLC found in its informal online survey of the nation's teachers, from March 23-April 2. Some 2,000 responded. The poll data in Teaching The 2016 Election painted a bad enough picture. The 5,000 comments from the teachers made it even worse:

67 percent reported their students were concerned about what might happen to them or their families after the election. The fears came mostly from children of immigrants, Muslims, African-Americans, and children of color. As a source, 20 percent of teachers mentioned pre-sumed GOP presidential nominee Trump. Fewer than 200 combined named other hopefuls.

"Close to one-third of students in U.S. classrooms are children of foreign-born parents. This year they are scared, stressed and in need of reassurance and support from teachers. Muslim children are harassed and worried. Even native-born African-American children, whose families arrived here before the revolution, ask about being sent back to Africa...We heard of students from second grade to high school crying in class," out of fear, SPLC says.

A North Carolina high school teacher reports her "Latino students carry their birth certificates and Social Security cards to school because they're afraid they'll be deported."

Half of the teachers saw "an increase in uncivil political discourse" among students. "More than one-third have observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment."

Teachers face tough choices

Some teachers are tackling the problem. Many aren't. Others spend their time trying to reassure their students that they'll be safe. "Teachers in general are very protective of their students and sensitive to their pain," SPLC reports.

But 43 percent of the teachers, including half of the elementary school teachers, are avoiding teaching about the campaign altogether - even though normal presidential election years see classrooms festooned with red-white-and-blue bunting and age-appropriate lessons in history and civics. By contrast: "I try not to bring it up," an Arlington, Va., teacher says about the campaign, "since it is so stressful for my kids."

Some school administrators ban political discussions, with the report citing instances in Virginia and Colorado, plus one New England teacher who decided not to discuss the campaign because "I need my job, so I must walk this fine line."

Other teachers "are throwing caution to the winds" and talking about the campaign. They know it surrounds and impacts their students. "I am less neutral," said a Jersey City, N.J., high school teacher. "I want to reassure my students that I don't buy into racist rhetoric."

A teacher in Washington state said: "This is probably the first time I haven't been unbiased about" a political campaign. "My students need to know that some of what they are witnessing is not OK." Added an Indianapolis teacher: "I am at the point where I'm going to take a stand even if it costs me my position."

The campaign and its rhetoric pervade every classroom, as the kids talk about it with teachers, at home and with each other. "I am not a history teacher, but the issues of this election are spilling over into everything," a San Diego teacher said. An Arlington, Texas, high school teacher said her students tell her "they feel alienated from a particular math teacher who advocates for Trump." Other teachers reported students using Trump's name as a slur

The teachers want "factual candidate profiles, facts about the issues and fact-based explanations of policy differences (their emphasis)," the report says. Several teachers taught sessions about media coverage and fact-checking, discussing fact-checking websites. But some parents complain about those sessions, and about teaching students to think critically.

One positive point is a heightened interest in politics by students at all levels. Some teachers use that to instruct the students about the political process. But even then, there's a downside. "One thing that worries me is that this is the first presidential campaign my high school students are old enough to understand," said a teacher from Edmonds, Wash. "I hope they don't walk away thinking this is what politics is all about."

The report is available on the center's website: www.splcenter.org.

Photo: Young students celebrate their countries of origin. | Flickr (CC)

Labor board puts new limits on when employers may permanently replace strikers

Thu, 02 Jun 2016 13:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)-In a legal win for workers and unions, the National Labor Relations Board is sharply curbing employer justification for hiring and using "permanent replacements" for workers forced to strike for economic reasons.

In a 2-1 decision on May 31, involving the Piedmont Nursing Home in Oakland, Calif., and SEIU/United Health Care Workers West, the board majority said employers must prove they do not have other, unlawful, motives for permanently replacing striking workers.

The decision is extremely important. Especially since the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers strike - when GOP President Ronald Reagan fired all the controllers, who struck over safety issues, and permanently replaced them - employers routinely fire striking workers and bring in "permanent replacements," or threaten to, sometimes even before a strike begins.

That replacement threat in turn has had a chilling effect on the right to strike, which is theoretically legal under U.S. labor law. The number of strikes has dropped precipitously.

Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce wrote that in 1938, the Supreme Court ruled firms could permanently replace workers who strike for economic reasons if the companies establish "a legitimate and substantial justification for failing to reinstate striking employees by showing the strikers' positions have been filled by permanent replacements."

"However, the permanent replacement of strikers is not always lawful," Pearce pointed out. "The board will find a violation" of labor law "if it is shown that, in hiring the permanent replacements, the employer was motivated by 'an independent unlawful purpose.'"

The catch, Pearce said, was that over the years since 1938, the board and the courts had not enforced that standard, even though the justices reinforced it in 1964. Now, he said, the board will require employers to prove they lack illegal motives for replacing workers.

Neither the AFL-CIO nor the Republican-run radical right-dominated House Education and the Workforce Committee immediately reacted to the board's ruling in American Baptist Homes and United Health Care Workers-West, the official name of the NLRB case.

Pearce explained that nothing in the 1938 Supreme Court ruling or a 1964 High Court decision reinforcing it "suggested the employer's right was absolute, i.e., that an employer could lawfully replace economic strikers even if it did so for a purpose prohibited by the act."

In the 1964 decision, the justices said that "When specific evidence of a subjective intent to discriminate or to encourage or discourage union membership is shown, and found, many otherwise innocent or ambiguous actions" normal in business - such as permanent replacements -- "may, without more, be converted into unfair labor practices."

For a company to hire such permanent replacements, the board ruled in American Baptist Homes, it must prove it does not have "an independent unlawful purpose" for doing so.

Testimony from the nursing home's own executive director and its counsel shows "two reasons for its decision to permanently replace strikers: To punish the strikers and the union and to avoid future strikes. We find both reasons are independently unlawful within the meaning of" both Supreme Court cases, particularly the second one, Pearce said.

"This statement evinces an intent to punish the striking employees for their protected conduct, and plainly reveals a retaliatory motive prohibited by the" National Labor Relations Act, he stated.

The nursing home also decided to permanently replace the striking SEIU members because its executive director "assumed the permanent replacements would be willing to work in the event of another strike" and the nursing home did not want to again have to spend money to hire more temps and permanent replacements.

Pearce said the nursing home's motive is clear from its attorney's statement to the union that it hired permanent replacements "because it 'wanted to avoid any future strikes, and this was the lesson they were going to be taught.' This evidence establishes an additional independent unlawful motive, specifically a desire to interfere with employees' future protected activity," the right to strike.

Harvard law professor Benjamin Sachs, quoting his colleague Mark Kaltenbach in the OnLabor blog, noted that over the years, the board was lax in holding employers to standards the justices set in their 1938 and 1964 rulings about permanent replacements. Instead, Kaltenbach has pointed out, "the board...has been giving employers too much latitude in using permanent replacements" even since the second ruling, involving Hot Shoppes restaurants.

Now it's time to restore the meaning of those two Supreme Court cases and require employers to prove they don't have independent illegal motives for hiring permanent replacements, Pearce said.

Photo: Deviant Art (CC)

Labor campaign kills anti-worker measures in N.M.

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 16:05:00 +0000

SANTA FE, N.M. (PAI) - In a surprise to both state and national anti-worker right wing Republicans, intensive campaigns by workers, unions and their allies killed three hurtful anti-union measures in the New Mexico legislature.

"The session's ending, but we're just getting started," the New Mexico Federation of Labor exclaimed after right-to-work, repeal of prevailing wages for construction workers and a "pre-emption bill' to make it illegal for cities to set their own labor and wage laws all died.

Right-to-work lost in a state senate committee on a 5-4 vote, with the five Democrats outvoting the four GOPers. The other two bills were killed on the Senate floor. RTW never came up this year in the Republican-run New Mexico House. Had the prevailing wage ban passed, construction unions calculated workers' wages would fall by 30 percent.

"It is a shame that (Republican) Gov. Martinez and the New Mexico GOP wasted so much time this session with unnecessary attacks on working families and 'all crime all the time' bills that do nothing to address the root causes of crime in our communities," said State Fed President Jon Hendry.

"This session should have been a real opportunity to do good for the working people of New Mexico and pass proactive legislation that creates jobs, raises wages, and improves local economies.

"But, as long as anti-worker politicians control half of our state legislature, we won't be able to make the progress we need to get our state back on track. That's why we need you to stay active and engaged through Election Day," Hendry concluded.

He also asked workers to sign a petition thanking those state lawmakers who stood up for workers' rights.

"With anti-labor forces whipping through the country, New Mexico has shown itself to be an emerging labor stronghold - with tactics and pro-worker forces to be reckoned with," Sheet Metal Workers Local 49, which lobbied hard in the state, said.

"With damaging bills such as those designed to strip workers - union and on-union - of their union-negotiated prevailing wages and the so-called right to work bill being pushed by the Republicans, workers' rights in New Mexico are under serious threat.

"Yet Local 49 members were able to defeat this legislation and keep it from reaching the governor's desk. The winning effort saw Local 49 work in collaboration with the N.M. Building and Construction Trades Council, the New Mexico Federation of Labor and many other labor organizations.

"Labor's victory has left the Republican-controlled New Mexico house in shock - and aware of our political influence in the capitol," it added. Backers of prevailing wage used Local 49's factual material "to discredit claims by the partisan New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, which is staffed by anti-worker zealots.

"This fight is not over, but with everyone pulling together through the 2016 election to support candidates who support us, we will be more than ready when the attack begins again in the 2017 session."

Testifying against the right-to-work bill, which would have banned even fair share fees from "free riders" - workers represented by the union who choose not to join or pay dues - Electrical Workers (IBEW) Political Coordinator Brian Condit explained the fees can't include "non-chargeable" union activities like organizing and politics.

"If I am organizing or engaging other workers, that is considered non-chargeable," Condit said. "If I am involved in advocating for employees in my bargaining unit, that is considered chargeable."

Rachel Dworkin from Las Lunas, an IATSE Local 480 member and a Michigan native, said she did not want a rerun of what has happened in her old home state to come to her new home state.

"When I was growing up in Michigan as a teenager in the 90s, I knew many people who had very well paying jobs, working for the auto companies like Ford, for example. They had benefits. They were happy.

"Today one does not see that in Michigan so much anymore. One sees a lot of people with bachelor degrees working for 11 or 12 dollars an hour, living in poverty or near poverty, without health benefits. Today one sees a lot of people moving to other states for better opportunities.

"It makes me feel very sad to see that the same legislation that destroyed my home state might be brought here. We must make a stand here in New Mexico! It is important that we fight for the workers in our state and fight for our right to organize. 'Right to work' laws are not good for our country's future. It is not good for our state's future," she said.

"Right to work is really the right to squeeze working families," the New Mexico Education Association, the state affiliate of the nation's largest union, said. And its proponents, out-of-state corporate interests, are trying "to put our (educators') voices on 'mute,'" the group said.

"Wages in right to work states are $2.49-an-hour lower for minorities and $1.82-an-hour lower for Anglos than they are in states that allow workers to freely bargain for their rights and pay," the association noted. New Mexico is 47 percent Hispanic-American. "Supporters of Right to Work say passing it here will bring jobs. Not true. All it does is drive down pay and further put the squeeze on an already-struggling middle class."

Photo: New Mexico Federation of Labor

Aging in the fields: No alternative but to keep working

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 12:38:00 +0000

As soon as Anastasia Flores' children were old enough, she brought them with her to work in the fields. "Ever since 1994 I've always worked by myself, until my children could also work," she recalls. "In Washington, I picked cucumbers, and in Santa Maria here I worked picking strawberries and tomatoes. In Washington, they allowed people to take their children to work with them, and to leave them at the end of the row with the older children taking care of the younger ones."

She didn't think bringing her children to work was unusual. It's the way she had grown up herself. Today she's is in her mid 50s, getting to the age when she will no longer be able to work. Just as she once depended on the labor of the kids for her family's survival, she will still depend on them to survive as she gets old. Without their help, she will have nothing.

Anastasia was born in San Juan Piñas in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. The small town is in the heart of the Mixteca region, where people speak an indigenous language that was centuries old long before the Spaniards arrived.

In the 1970s and '80s, people began migrating from Oaxaca looking for work, as Mexico's agricultural policies failed. Anastasia, like many, wound up working first in northern Mexico, in the San Quintin Valley of Baja California. "I picked tomatoes there for five years," she remembers. "It was brutal. I would carry these huge buckets that were very heavy. We lived in a labor camp in Lazaro Cardenas [a town in the San Quintin Valley], called Campo Canelo. It was one room per family, in shacks made of aluminum."

Before leaving San Juan Piñas she'd gotten married and brought her first child, Teresa, with her to Baja. "I began to work there when I was 8 years old, picking tomatoes," Teresa remembers.

Anastasia then decided to bring her family to California, because her husband had found work there in the fields. "I needed money and I couldn't afford to raise my family in Baja California," she remembers. "There were three kids and I couldn't manage them. It was hard to bring the children across the border since they were so young, but compared to now, it was easier in the '90s. It only took us one day to cross."

"My memories of that time are very sad because I had to work out of necessity," Teresa says. "I started working in the United States at 14, here in Santa Maria and in Washington State. My mother couldn't support my younger siblings alone, and I'm the eldest daughter. I couldn't go to school because my mother had many young children to support."

Anastasia's son Javier, who was born in Santa Maria, shares those memories. "Whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields to get a little bit of money and help the family out," he recalls. "That's pretty much the only job I ever knew. In general we would work on the weekends and in the summers, during vacations."

The Flores family was part of a big wave of migration from Oaxaca's indigenous towns into California fields. According to Rick Mines, a demographer who created the Indigenous Farm Worker Study, by the 2000s there were 165,000 indigenous migrants in rural California, 120,000 of them working in the fields. "At that time there were few old people coming," he says. "And because almost everyone came after the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, they didn't qualify for the immigration amnesty and are undocumented."

Indigenous migration changed the demographics of the farm labor workforce in many ways, he explains. "A third of farm workers in the '70s and '80s shuttled back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. every year. Most were migrants, living in more than one place in the course of a year. That has all changed. The average stay in the U.S. now is 14 years."

Because indigenous workers are undocumented, going back and forth across an increasingly-militarized border is practically impossible. Many are stuck in the U.S. If they go back to Mexico, it's for good. As people grow older, some return because the cost of living there is lower. "But those who go back to Oaxaca depend on their family in the U.S. to send them money," explains Irma Luna, a Mixtec community activist in Fresno. "They come from towns that are very poor, so they don't have any income other than what their children can send them."

Collecting Social Security benefits is not possible, because people with no legal immigration status (an estimated 11 million people in the U.S.) can't even apply for a Social Security card. In order to work they have to give an employer a Social Security number they've invented or that belongs to someone else. Payments are deducted from their paychecks, but these workers never become eligible for the benefits the contributions are supposed to provide.

The Social Security Administration estimated in 2010 that 3.1 million undocumented people were contributing about $13 billion per year to the benefit fund. Undocumented recipients, mostly people who received Social Security numbers before the system was tightened, received only $1 billion per year in payments. Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, told VICE News in 2014 that that surplus of payments versus benefits had totaled more than $100 billion over the previous decade.

Recognizing this problem, the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, part of Oaxaca's state government, has established a fund for starting income-generating projects in communities with returning migrants, including greenhouses, craft work andcarpentry. Nevertheless, most older migrants returning home still have no support other than money sent from the U.S.

Many older indigenous farm workers don't intend to return to Mexico. "I've spent almost 20 years working in the fields," Anastasia says. "A long time. I'm 56 now. I hope I will eventually stop working in the fields, but I don't have land or a house in Mexico, so I plan on staying here. I'm used to living in Santa Maria. I have all of my kids here, so I want to stay where they are."

Anastasia is a single mother. Her former husband Lorenzo was an alcoholic. "After they deported him in 1995 I raised my kids by myself," she says. "It was difficult to support the children when I was a woman living on my own. It wasn't until my children were older that I was even able to stay with my newborn daughter after she was born. By then my oldest children were 14, 15 and 16 years old, and they could go to work with me."

Today Anastasia's children have problems of their own, beyond supporting their mother. Teresa can't work. "My body can't handle it anymore," she explains. "It got more difficult as time went by, because picking strawberries is very painful on your hands and feet. I kept going because I had to work for my family. But then I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was just twenty-two years old. Arthritis is usually something the elderly suffer from -- that's my understanding. My doctor told me told me I didn't take care of my body while working in the fields. I'm 32 years old and can no longer work. I try, but I just can't. I tried to apply for Medi-Cal, but I was denied because I am not a legal resident and don't have a Social Security number."

Javier can work, but he has dreams of his own. "I took predominately AP [advanced placement] and honors classes in high school, and got good grades -- mostly A's and B's. I never got any C's," he declares proudly. But while in high school he also asked for legal emancipation. "My family was very conservative and strong in their Christian beliefs. I couldn't do anything, and felt like I was trapped. I really wanted to go with my friends to dances. Plus I'm bisexual -- to them that's a sin and you're going to hell. I couldn't live like that. I left home and was homeless for three months."

Despite those disagreements, he eventually reconciled with them. "I'm proud of what my mom and older siblings did in order to get the family here and survive." He's also proud of his mother's indigenous roots. "Whenever I cut my hair I always bury it," he says. "I asked my mother why we do that, and she says it's because we fertilize the earth. When it rains, I get a bowl and fill it with rainwater and drink it, and talk with her as our bowls fill up. I always wanted to write a book about my mother and her folktales."

Meanwhile, Anastasia continues working, wondering how long she can last. "My hands will always ache," she laments. "They hurt to a point where I can hardly work. Right now I have a pain in my stomach that often doesn't let me work either. The hardest thing is mainly the weight of the boxes they ask us to carry. They're very heavy. But using the hoe is also hard. I got sick working in the tomatoes, but once I get better I'll go back."

Mines' study shows that Anastasia Flores' situation is shared by a growing section of the indigenous farm labor workforce. "The number of people over 50 has doubled, and it's now about nine percent. That means that 10 to 15,000 people in California are in this situation," he reported.

According to Irma Luna, "indigenous women especially start to worry after they pass 50. They depend on the fields, but the work is hard and as we get older, it gets harder. Crew leaders won't hire older people for many jobs. But the only other choice is to depend on your family, whether you stay in the U.S. or go back to Mexico."

"Our immigration laws, especially, are creating a desperate situation for indigenous farm workers," says Leoncio Vasquez, director of the Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development, a community organization among Oaxacan migrants in California. "They contributed to Social Security, but they can't get the benefits. If they go to Mexico, they can't come back. They have to work, because there's no alternative."

Photo: Anastasia Flores | David Bacon

United Auto Workers union endorses Clinton

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 10:43:00 +0000

DETROIT (PAI) - After what leaders said was an extensive poll of its members, the United Auto Workers board formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's candidacy for the U.S. presidency, in a vote just before Memorial Day.

The decision is notable because of UAW's past history as a beacon of progressivism, starting with its late and revered president, Walter Reuther. But the board said a majority of UAW members preferred the former Secretary of State over her more-progressive Democratic primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.

Indeed, even data collected by Sanders backers showed little formal UAW backing for the Vermonter on the local level.

Local 4121, a UAW local representing research assistants and teaching assistants at the University of Washington, formally endorsed him. And the CAP political action committee for locals in the Quad Cities of Illinois-Iowa sent a Sanders endorsement recommendation to the parent union.

"Hillary Clinton understands our issues on trade, understands the complexities of multinational economies and supports American workers, their families and communities," said UAW President Dennis Williams in a statement after the board vote.

He also took the pragmatic position that Clinton, current leader in the Democratic delegate race, would unify the Democratic Party in the face of billionaire businessman Donald Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee.

That may be easier said than done: Polls for Working America, the AFL-CIO affiliate established to contact workers who can't join unions but who agree with union goals, show 31 percent back Trump. News reports add 28 percent of UAW members do, too, citing his stand against job-losing so-called "free trade" pacts. Those pacts particularly hurt the auto industry.

Sanders also has opposed every single "free trade" pact during his 25-year congressional career. Clinton, as Democratic President Barack Obama's Secretary of State, was for the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, before she was against it.

And Sanders points out that Clinton has lost her opinion poll lead over Trump, as voters dislike both of them, while he enjoys a double-digit polling lead over the mega-mogul.

"Bernie Sanders has brought to this campaign a dialogue that has been needed for far too long. He has been, and remains, a great friend of the UAW, and of working men and women in this country. But, the fact is, Hillary Clinton has shown under pressure her ability to lead and get elected in November," said Williams.

He called both Clinton and Sanders "very good UAW friends" but said the union had to choose between them "and move forward as a united membership."

The union sent questionnaires to all political candidates of both parties, and none of the Republicans - Trump included - replied. That's similar to results other AFL-CIO unions got. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., early on, both replied to the AFL-CIO's questionnaire and appeared before the federation's executive council last year. But he was the only one.

Trump also wants to move UAW jobs to move to nonunion, low-paying states to compete with Mexican wages, the union said, leading Williams to comment that "Trump clearly does not support the economic security of UAW families."

Williams said Clinton stood up to attacks on collective bargaining, even in 2009 during her State Department service. He called her an advocate for expanding overtime rules and a believer in equal pay, paid family leave, and quality, affordable child care."

Clinton also "believes we need to protect workers against employer misclassification, wage theft, workplace exploitation and efforts to undermine retirement benefits" and "works to support good-paying manufacturing jobs here by opposing the TPP, and recognizes the need to address unfair, existing trade agreements" by appointing a special prosecutor on trade.

"A Hillary Clinton presidency will focus on collective bargaining rights and fair treatment of workers, including creating high standards for domestic sourcing and 'buy American' laws. She also will create tax incentives for our hardest-hit manufacturing communities and support skills training for America's workforce," Williams concluded.

Photo: UAW President Dennis Williams announced his union's support for Hillary Clinton. | Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP

Unions: New Verizon pact gives raises, halts outsourcing, adds jobs

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 10:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Some 40,000 Verizon workers from Maine down through Virginia marched back to work today after a company-forced 45-day strike won them raises, added 1,400 union jobs in the firm's call centers, forced union recognition in two stores in Verizon's rapidly growing wireless division and halted foreign outsourcing of other call center jobs in its tracks.

The workers - members of the Communications Workers and the Electrical Workers (IBEW) -- will vote on the four-year pact by June 17. It gives the workers a compounded 10.9 percent raise over its life, a $1,250-per-worker ratification bonus in its first year and at least $700 yearly per worker in corporate profit sharing over the following three.

And while Verizon won increases in workers' share of health care cost payments, the raises and the bonuses more than made up for them, the two unions said.

The highly profitable telecom forced its workers to walk on April 13 after nine months of fruitless talks on a new contract.

But given Verizon's multi-billion-dollar profits in recent years, its intransigent demands to shift jobs from the U.S. to Mexico and the Philippines - where call center workers would make $1.78 an hour with no overtime - and its refusal to recognize CWA at Verizon Wireless stores, the forced strike quickly became a nationwide symbol of runaway corporate greed.

Verizon demanded unlimited rights to send installation workers away from their homes for two months at a time, the right to transfer call center jobs out of the U.S., and to double the workers' share of health care costs. It also offered only a 6.5 percent raise over four years.

Under pressure from both Obama administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who brought the two sides together to restart negotiations, and negative publicity and dropping stock prices, Verizon finally settled and the unions won a lot more.

The pressure nationwide on Verizon came from major shareholders - including California and New York public worker pension funds-challenging its management and from solidarity protests from coast to coast. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., a Democratic presidential hopeful, joined a CWA picket line in Philadelphia and 20 U.S. senators urged Verizon to settle.

Praising Perez and Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Allison Beck for their role, CWA President Chris Shelton called the pact and its new jobs "a huge win not just for striking workers, but for our communities and the country. This contract is a victory for working families across the country and an affirmation of the power of working people."

IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson called the pact "a fair and mutually beneficial agreement that gets our members back on the job." IBEW represents 10,000 Verizon workers. CWA represents the rest. "When we stand together we can raise up working families, improve our communities and advance the interests of America's working people," Shelton added.

"Our children and our families have been depending on us to stand up for what's right and what's fair," Fitzgerald Boyce, a Verizon field technician in New York, told CWA. "Striking wasn't an easy decision for our families, but we knew that we had to fight to save good jobs and our way of life. We fought hard and we won."

"Because we fought together as a union, my kids will be able to see me at night. We were all so worried about the potential of transfers and more offshoring, but now Verizon is going to bring more jobs back. All American companies should be doing more to keep good jobs in the country," added Pennsylvania call center worker Christina Martin.

"For the first time, Verizon Wireless retail workers have a union and a fair contract," said Mike Tisei, a Verizon Wireless retail worker in Everett, Mass., one of two wireless stores CWA has organized. The other is in Brooklyn. The contract orders the firm to recognize the union at both.

"For the wireless retail workers who joined CWA in 2014, that means a better quality of life and meaningful economic security for our families. Today is a great day for my family and working families along the East Coast, and it's only possible because we stood together," Tisei told the union.

Other contract details include:

1) An immediate 3 percent raise on the first Sunday after ratification, followed by 2.5 percent yearly raises for three years, through August 3, 2019.

2) Defeat of Verizon's plan to close 31 call centers, cutting 700 workers. Instead Verizon will hire 1,400 new U.S. call center workers, 850 of them in the mid-Atlantic region, plus 100 more techs in the Potomac area. It will reclassify some "term" workers to regular full-time jobs.

3) "All existing job security provisions, including no involuntary layoff, forced transfer, and downgrade, were maintained despite the company's determined effort to eliminate them," the union fact sheet said. "Other employees are covered by existing provisions of the contract regarding layoffs, transfers, and other job protections which remain in full force and effect."

4) Required company-union meetings within three months of ratification to hash out differences on "training, productivity, performance requirements, forced overtime, performance feedback, scheduling issues, and monitoring."

5) An extra buyout clause. "Employees who elect to voluntarily leave the services of the company and are accepted under the special" plan "will receive one supplemental voluntary termination bonus of $40,000 in addition to the $10,000 stipulated in our agreements," the summary says.

Photo: Verizon workers, members of the CWA (pictured) and IBEW, achieved a major victory. | modernsara/Flickr (CC)

Court says workers can't be forced to sign mandatory arbitration clauses

Tue, 31 May 2016 12:28:00 +0000

CHICAGO (PAI) - A top federal appeals court has tossed out a health care software firm's mandatory arbitration clause that bans workers from invoking the National Labor Relations Act.

The May 26 ruling by the Chicago-based 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case involving Epic Systems Corp., a health care software firm in the suburbs of Madison, Wis., is a major win for workers.

That's because the judges not only upheld workers' rights to sue as a class under the NLRA for wage-and-hours violations, but also said that the Federal Arbitration Act does not override labor law either.

Corporations increasingly turn to mandatory arbitration clauses within individual workers' employment contracts, as well as in contracts negotiated with unions. The clauses prevent workers and unions from challenging corporate actions in court. And arbitrations are often stacked against workers, with the firms choosing the arbitrators - and with no appeals.

In the last year or more, the National Labor Relations Board has been tossing out such arbitration clauses, case by case and company by company. But the 7^th Circuit's ruling goes further. It tosses them out as a general violation of labor law.

Epic's arbitration clause was both broad and illegal, 7^th Circuit Chief Judge Kemba Wood wrote for the unanimous 3-judge panel. That's because, among other problems, Epic forced its workers to sign the mandatory arbitration clause as a condition of employment.

Jacob Lewis, a technical writer at Epic, first signed an employment contract there when Epic announced the mandatory arbitration clause and made it a condition for staying on the job, in April 2014. But when he later got into a dispute over pay, he sued under labor law, arguing the arbitration clause breaks the law by preventing him from getting overtime pay.

Epic's arbitration clause said wage-and-hour claims could be brought only through individual arbitration and that employees waived 'the right to participate in or receive money or any other relief from any class, collective, or representative proceeding,'" Judge Wood wrote.

Not only did it make signing the clause a condition of working at Epic, but the firm "gave employees no option to decline if they wanted to keep their jobs," the decision noted.

"We conclude this agreement violates the National Labor Relations Act and is also un-enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act," the judges said.

The 3-judge panel explained the NLRA's key Section 7 not only gives workers the right to organize, but also, quoting the law, gives them the right to "other concerted activities" of any type to protect themselves. The "other concerted activities" clause includes filing class action suits, the judges said. And it includes suing under the NLRA as a class if the company breaks wage and hours law.

Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act enforces the law "unconditionally by deeming that it 'shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer...to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7.'" And the board, the judges said, "is empowered. to prevent any person from engaging in any unfair labor practice."

Contracts "stipulating the renunciation by the employees of rights guaranteed by the NLRA are unlawful and may be declared to be unenforceable by the board," the judges said.

Citing cases going all the way back to 1939 - four years after the NLRA was passed - the appeals court noted that: "Wherever private contracts conflict with the (labor) board's functions, they obviously must yield or the NLRA would be reduced to a futility."

And the Federal Arbitration Act doesn't overrule labor law, as Epic claimed it did, the judges added. That's because while Congress passed that law to encourage arbitration, and indeed while arbitration of grievances is a key feature of many union contracts, lawmakers did not elevate the federal arbitration law over other federal labor laws.

"The NLRA prohibits the enforcement of contract provisions like Epic's, which strip away employees' rights to engage in 'concerted activities,'" Harvard Law Professor Benjamin Sachs wrote in a legal blog analyzing the case. "Because the provision at issue is unlawful under Section 7 of the NLRA, it is illegal, and meets the criteria of" an arbitration act clause that provides for non-enforcement of arbitration rulings.

"Even under the Supreme Court's recent arbitration cases, no arbitration agreement can require the waiver of substantive statutory rights," Sachs said. "Procedural rights may be waived, but not substantive ones.

"So, for example, although you might be required to waive your procedural right to bring an age discrimination claim in court, you cannot be required to waive your substantive right to be protected against age discrimination. Here, the 7^th Circuit correctly observes the right to act collectively is the substantive right provided by the National Labor Relations Act. Indeed, the right to act collectively is the heart of federal labor law," Sachs said.

No arbitration agreement can force a worker - union or individual - to waive that substantive right, he added.

Neither Epic nor business groups commented on the 7^th Circuit's ruling or whether they would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The AFL-CIO also did not comment. But two years ago, it noted the ruling by the 5-person majority of justices in the Hobby Lobby case-which let for-profit corporations use religious objections to deny contraceptive coverage to female workers - was part of "a disturbing trend" on the Supreme Court's part to "expand corporate rights and powers" including forcing workers and consumers into mandatory arbitration.

Image: Alliance for Justice, from the short documentary on forced arbitration, "Lost in the Fine Print."

Covered Bridge potato chip strike ends in “tremendous victory”

Fri, 27 May 2016 13:41:00 +0000

After more than five months on the picket line, the workers at the Covered Bridge Potato Chip company in Hartland, New Brunswick just won their first collective agreement. They held the line from the sub-zero depths of winter until the bright sun of spring shone down on their small eastern Canada town. In the words of striking worker Betty Demerchant, "It was a rough winter, but the weather is coming our way."

Outlasting the boss who originally said he would "never ever, ever" allow his factory to become a union environment, and who became infamous after telling workers, "Screw you and your f*cking union," the members of UFCW Local 1288P have achieved what their president Dan Smith is calling a "tremendous victory."

The strike and boycott of Covered Bridge began January 5th after more than two years of failed negotiations between the company and workers over the terms of the first collective agreement. Though the workers had been in a legal strike position since June of 2015, their representatives remained at the bargaining table for months afterward in an attempt to hammer out a deal. After the employer, Ryan Albright, started retracting his earlier offers and substituting even worse proposals in their place, it became clear that the only option left was to strike.

At issue was a lack of seniority protections which often left experienced workers pushed down the list for shifts so that the company could schedule lower-paid new employees first. Stagnating salaries, which for some workers stayed at the minimum wage rate even after years on the job, were another main sticking point.

All down the list, the members of 1288P achieved gains on every one of the major goals they had set out in previous negotiations. The new three-year agreement, which was ratified with 71 percent support, includes provisions for job security and seniority protections. It also provides new allowances for boots and clothing required for work, as well as a pay increase for employees.

The strike was a hard-won victory though, with Albright bringing in scab labor to fill positions in the snack processing plant and seeking legal action in an attempt to dismantle the union. In February, Covered Bridge filed an application with New Brunswick courts claiming that it had collected the signatures of 24 employees, or "statements of desire," expressing their wish to no longer be represented by the union.

The judge threw out the company's case, clearly implying that the signatures might have been coerced. Justice Terrence Morrison rejected the application, saying that the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board had been correct in its assessment that the statements of desire were not "the voluntary will of the bargaining unit employees."

In his opinion, Morrison went on to write, "The Board concluded that the section of the signatures by the applicant [the company] was tainted by employee perceptions of employer influence." Basically, the statements of desire were no good because the company had possibly collected them through either direct or implied coercion.

Carl Flanagan, the spokesperson for UFCW nationally, expressed hope at the time that the court's decision would bring Covered Bridge back to the table to reach a settlement. Albright and the company's management, however, still refused to bargain. The lack of legislation forcing employers to negotiate with unionized labor in New Brunswick (something most other Canadian provinces have in place), also contributed to the prolongation of the strike, according to the New Brunswick Federation of Labour.

The company returned to negotiations and concluded an agreement with workers, however, just days after the union's boycott went national. On May 17th, activists from UFCW Canada, supported by affiliates of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) across the country, carried out a National Day of Action to bring its boycott of Covered Bridge chips to the wider public. Leaflets spotlighting the strike and the struggle of the workers at 1288P were distributed outside major grocers and retailers from coast-to-coast. U.S. retailer Aldi was also petitioned by unions on both sides of the border to halt its contracts with Covered Bridge.

Albright had originally said that the strike by 1288P members was just a "small bump in the road." Five months later, it appears he underestimated the resolve of the workers in his plant. As Smith, the 1288P president said, "Through thick and thin and through one of the most frigid winters ever, they never lost faith and were ready to hold the line for as long as it took to get a fair first contract."

New Brunswick Federation of Labour president Patrick Colford announced, "I firmly believe that the five months was well worth it...this was a great victory for all workers."

At a time of austerity and after years of reversals for unions, the victory at Covered Bridge shows that united action can still deliver results even in an era when many have been eager to write the eulogy for organized labor. Solidarity ain't dead yet.

Photo: UFCW Canada

Tiffany Dena Loftin: Vision, solutions will strengthen labor movement

Fri, 27 May 2016 11:44:00 +0000

Tiffany Dena Loftin sums up the current state of the Labor Movement in five words: "We are on the defense."

As the racial justice program coordinator for the AFL-CIO's Civil, Human and Women's Rights Department, Loftin travels the country to talk to organizers about racial and economic justice in the Labor Movement and in the community.

"When I talk to organizers, I hear about a lot of problems," she said. "They tell me we've got right-to-work, our workers got laid off, our benefits got cancelled, the budget was cut, Congress didn't vote the way we wanted them to."

Loftin said that while those issues are important, organizers often times don't focus enough on being solution oriented and presenting what the vision looks like for the world they WANT to live in.

"If we want to build and recruit and strengthen our Labor Movement, we have to have a vision," she said. "We must invest in ourselves, always inspire other folks and work with the community."

Loftin recently applauded the work of four St. Louis-area Labor/community leaders on putting that concept into action. She served as the keynote speaker at the 24^th Annual Hershel Walker Peace & Justice Awards Breakfast held May 14 at the Painters District Council 58 Union Hall in St. Louis.

Wise beyond her years

At 27, Loftin is wise beyond her years on issues involving the Labor Movement, organizing campaigns, higher education and racial and economic justice. She has a dual degree in political science and ethnic studies from the University of Cailfornia - Santa Cruz and was active in her student government association.

After graduating, she was elected president of the U.S. Student Association where she led campaigns addressing student loans and the expansion of financial aid and helped in the coordination of registering 135,000 new student voters in 10 states.

Later, Loftin worked as a digital strategist in the Human Rights Department of the American Federation of Teachers. She was recently appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Commission on Education Excellence for African Americans in Higher Education.

In February 2015, the AFL-CIO formed the Racial and Economic Justice Commission in response to activism surrounding the Black Lives Matter Movement shortly after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and the resulting unrest. Loftin was hired to coordinate and manage the commission.

She organized a series of six nationwide, day-long meetings for the newly formed commission that brought together national and local labor leaders for frank, candid and honest discussions about race and the labor movement. One of the meetings was held in St. Louis.

Knowledge through experience

Loftin knows firsthand the benefits associated with belonging to a union, receiving fair wages and benefits and class divisions because she's lived through it. Both of Loftin's parents were members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and her grandfather was a Teamster for 20 years.

As a child, she grew up in a three-bedroom, two-bath house in a predominately white neighborhood. She attended a private school and her family had healthcare. At age 7, her parents divorced and her mother left her job with the union benefits because her father worked at the same company.

"Because of that change, we saw a huge class difference," Loftin said. "My mom was a single mother raising three kids. She worked two jobs, had no car and had to get on welfare, and we moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a predominantly Latino area where we attended public school and had to ride the bus."

At the time, she didn't really understand what had happened. She said it wasn't until she was in college and AFSCME workers there went on strike over contract negotiations that she fully understood the strength of unions. She participated in a hunger strike in support of the union.

"Unions protect workers, families and lifestyles, Loftin said. "Nobody should have to choose between working and having a good lifestyle."

That's why it is so important that the Labor Movement and organizers focus on building relationships in the community and developing solutions that lead to the vision of what they want the world to look like, she said.

"The Labor Movement has never won anything without the community," Loftin added. "It's important that the Labor Movement remembers and understands that it is accountable to the community it lives in."

Photo: Sheri Gassaway

Thousands of Fight for $15 activists descend on McDonalds shareholder meeting

Fri, 27 May 2016 10:21:00 +0000

OAKBROOK, Ill. -- Workers of every age, race, and gender united from across the nation to disrupt the shareholder meeting of the world's tenth largest employer with their own demands. The McDonalds corporate headquarters sits in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. On May 25, squadrons of buses arrived in Oakbrook from which thousands of people poured into the streets and marched through the heavy rain with shouts of "15 and a Union!" Low-wage workers set up tents outside the entrance to the global corporation's central building in a torrential downpour, where they then camped out to await the arrival of the company's major investors the following morning. (story continues after video)

A large mass of working people, marched again early the next day as the meeting commenced. Crowd estimates from a variety of media sources ranged from 2500 to over 10,000. Domestic laborers, activists, youth, and people employed in various sectors of the U.S. low-wage economy spoke to People's World of the impact that poverty wages have on their lives. They spoke of what brought them together to fight for living wages and the right to a union. Many highlighted with their responses and through their chants the connection between the violence of racial oppression and the exploitation of their labor.

The #Fightfor15 is a national movement of low-wage workers fighting for a universal $15/hour minimum wage and the right to join a union without retaliation for every person in the United States. It is a movement overwhelmingly driven by women, youth, and people of color and is uniting with the movements to end police terror, racial segregation, and for immigrant justice.

Video: "Young workers gather in a circle, expressing through communal dance and music the passion of their demand for a life of dignity: "Put respect on my check!"

Photo: from slideshow below

Washington, DC “Circulator” bus drivers win right to refuse to drive unsafe buses

Thu, 26 May 2016 15:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - In a big win for 189 drivers, the new 3-year contract between Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1764 and First Transit, the private contractor that operates the popular D.C. Circulator buses, gives the drivers eventual pay parity with their Metrobus colleagues and the right to refuse to drive unsafe vehicles.

The pact, ratified by the DC Circulator operators the weekend of May 20-22, will after eight years give them a top pay rate of $31 an hour, on a par with Metrobus drivers, whose top rate is $34. It also triples the company contribution to the Circulator operators' 401(k) plans, Local 1764 administrator Sesil Rubain said. The new contract is retroactive to April 1.

And it not only gives the Circulator drivers the right to refuse to drive unsafe buses, but orders Circulator to pull them off the road for repairs when drivers identify problems.

"Under the new agreement, First Transit will not force employees to drive buses that are not in safe operating condition and will remove vehicles from service until they can be properly inspected and fixed," said ATU spokesman Todd Brogan.

"This is good for drivers who had to choose between their livelihoods and their lives each time they boarded a bus they knew wasn't adequately maintained. It's also great for riders, who now have an ally on every bus who can advocate for vehicle safety without fear of retaliation."

The wage hike came after ATU publicized the high turnover among Circulator drivers, due to poverty-level wages in the high-cost D.C. area - and after the D.C. auditor reported that up to 95 percent of tested Circulator buses had safety problems. The drivers staged several rallies over the issues of low pay and unsafe buses.

"Poverty wages were leading to high employee turnover, and high turnover was transforming the Circulator from a premium bus service into a District-subsidized training ground for other local transit systems that better provide the economic security transit workers," Brogan explained. "Like all of us, they need to live in this expensive region."

There is one catch to the contract, though: The District government has to add $3 million to its Circulator payments, and the city's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year envisions only a $1 million increase to pay for raises for the drivers.

"We need to improve the employee retention," District Department of Transportation Director Leif Dormsjo told the city council earlier this year. "We want to have good, loyal operators who are happy and safe doing what they are doing because that just means our customers are going to get a higher quality of service."

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

Maryland enacts tough equal pay law

Thu, 26 May 2016 15:01:00 +0000

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (PAI) - With strong support from working women and their allies, the overwhelmingly Democratic Maryland legislature enacted, and GOP Gov. Larry Hogan signed a tough equal pay law.

The Maryland affiliate of the Working Families Party, which pushed for the law, praised the solons' action, saying it would particularly help working poor and working women, especially minority-group women.

The Maryland equal pay law outlaws pay discrimination on the basis of sex or - and this is new - gender identity. It also closes loopholes employers now use to justify pay inequity. Ever since the original federal equal pay law, in 1962, firms have used those loopholes nationwide to keep women's pay far below that of men in equal jobs.

Maryland's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act covers employees who work for the same employer at workplaces in the same county and who "perform work of comparable character or work in the same operation, in the same business, or of the same type." Even an anti-worker law firm concedes it "covers more than just pay disparities.

It also goes after the employers' tactics of creating the "Mommy track," shunting women into less-favorable jobs with fewer opportunities because the women might take time out to raise and have children.

The Maryland law not only bans placing firms from placing employees into "less favorable career tracks" or positions, but also bans them from "failing to provide information about promotions or advancement," and "limiting or depriving" employees of employment opportunities because of sex or gender identity.

Additionally, employers may not forbid employees from "inquiring about, discussing, or disclosing" their wages or the wages of other employees. And workers will be able more easily to sue firms that fire or discriminate them for doing so. Those protections are key parts of updated federal equal pay legislation that congressional Republicans have stifled for a decade.

As an example, advocates say, the new Maryland law states if you work in a supermarket and the only real way to become a manager is to work the closing shift, but you never put women on the closing shift because you think it's too dangerous, you either must give women the chance to work that shift or change promotion criteria.

Maryland's wage gap is 14.5 cents per dollar, meaning the median income for a female Maryland worker ($50,211) is that percentage below the median for a man ($58,746). Medians for Hispanic ($37,466) and African-American ($47,081) women are lower. The national median - the point where half earn more and half earn less - for women is 79 cents per man's dollar.

"If you're making minimum wage, if you're making $30,000 a year, you don't have two years and lawyers' fees to go after your employer for treating you badly," said Charly Carter, executive director of the Maryland Working Families Party.

Photo: Tony Talbot/AP

These union members have no love for Trump

Thu, 26 May 2016 13:57:00 +0000

The following is reprinted with permission from the New Hampshire Labor News.

Donald Trump bragged about his "tremendous support within unions." "The workers love me," he claimed.

The presumptive presidential nominee likely would be looking for love in all the wrong places if he campaigned in some deep western Kentucky union halls.

"When Donald Trump says that American workers are overpaid, obviously then he's not in love with the union member," said Jimmy Evans, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 816 in Paducah. "Union members don't love him.

"He's pro-'right to work.' He's one of the biggest outsourcers of manufacturing his own apparel. My union members are not going to say they love Donald Trump."

Dusty Owens is one of Evans' members and he's not a Trump lover. "If he's for the union man, why are all his factory overseas?" asked Evans, Local 816 Political Action Committee chair.

Training director Jarrod Shadowen said if Trump dropped by Local 816's hall, "We would probably tell him no, we don't love him, and he can leave."

The comments by Evans, Owens and Shadowen were echoed by several other union members at a recent meeting of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council. The umbrella organization represents AFL-CIO-affiliated union locals in the Bluegrass State's 13 westernmost counties.

Western Kentucky is arguably the most conservative corner of the Red State Bluegrass State, whose GOP caucus he won. Trump vowed he's "going to get millions of people from the Democrats," presumably union members among them.

He had nobody at the Paducah union meeting.

"We've never lived like he has and he's never lived like we have," said Howard "Bubba" Dawes, directing business representative for International Association of Machinists District Lodge 154 in Calvert City. "There's no way we're going to support him."

Jim Key, vice president of Paducah United Steelworkers Local 550, doesn't "have the time of day for Donald Trump." Added Key: "You take a man that's filed for bankruptcy as many times as he has, and closed down every initiative that he has started up-he's not for the working men and women of this nation."

Jim Rodgers, a Local 550 trustee, mused that if Trump visited his hall, "I'd have to ask him to give me a name of one of those union members who he says loves him-just one."

Lou Nell Busby, a member of Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 277 who was visiting from Henderson, Tenn., issued a challenge to Trump. "If he can find any union women who would love him, I'd like to meet them."

Gary McManus, council financial secretary-treasurer and retiree from Calvert City USW Local 227, was incredulous over Trump's claim that unions love him. "He's crazy. There' s no way that all union people love him. There's no way."

Brandon Duncan of Paducah, Local 227 president, said Trump "is about division and divisiveness. "We as Americans can either head down his path, which will take us back years and years, or we can stick together and be progressive and make this country better."

Council President Jeff Wiggins doesn't mince words about his lack of love for The Donald. "He's a union-busting, union-hating good-for-nothing," said Wiggins, who is also president of USW Local 9447 in Calvert City.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/NH Labor News

Beyoncé sweatshop controversy shines spotlight on harsh conditions of working women

Thu, 26 May 2016 11:31:00 +0000

Music icon Beyoncé made the news at the end of April with the release of her second surprise visual album Lemonade. Selling 485,000 units in its first week the album, which focuses on infidelity, stands as the current anthem of scorned women everywhere. It even sparked controversy as listeners debated over whether Beyoncé was using art to imitate life- fueling rumors that her husband, rapper and businessman Jay-Z, had an extramarital affair. Yet, in the last two weeks a new controversy has surfaced, this one more dire than marital infidelity. Beyoncé has now come under fire as her latest clothing line endeavor, Ivy Park, is being accused of using sweatshop labor in Sri Lanka to manufacture its clothing. This news is definitely not music to Beyoncé fans' ears.

Earlier this month the UK-based newspaper The Sun published an exclusive story that highlighted the working conditions of a factory in Sri Lanka, owned by MAS Holdings, that produces Ivy Park. The article reported that workers at the factory, mostly young women from poor rural villages, were working 60 hours a week for a little over $6 a day. A young woman worker in the factory told The Sun that all the workers are able to do there was "work, sleep, work, sleep" as they work over 9 hours a day, Monday to Friday, with a 30-minute lunch break. The women often have to put in overtime on Saturday and Sunday as well. It was also reported that the workers are not entitled to sick pay and get no paid holiday in their first year. Most of the women reside in a 100 room boarding house close to the factory that has a 10:30pm curfew. This boarding house only has a communal bathroom that was reportedly only installed recently.

In a mission statement for the clothing line, (that is a joint venture with the popular UK clothing store Topshop), Beyoncé explained that her goal with Ivy Park was to, "push the boundaries of athletic wear and to support and inspire women who understand that beauty is more than your physical appearance," and that the brand "inspires women through sport." While the company that owns the factory that produces Ivy Park products, MAS holdings, claims a similar sentiment on its website. The company, owned by 61 years old Sri Lankan business tycoon Mahesh Amalean, claims that, "MAS is proud to hold a global reputation for an ethical and sustainable working environment[sic]. The tireless effort put towards women's empowerment has put MAS on the map as a global standard to aspire to." MAS employs 74,000 workers, 70 percent of them women, in 48 factories in 15 countries across Asia.

Activists against the use of sweatshops argue that neither Ivy Park or MAS holdings are following through on their mission statements. Jakub Sobik, press officer of the charity Anti-Slavery International, said in The Sun: "This is a form of sweatshop slavery. There are a number of elements here that tick the boxes in terms of slavery, the low pay, restriction of women's movement at night and locking them in. Companies like Topshop have a duty to find out if these things are happening, and it has long been shown that ethical inspections by these companies are failing. They should be replaced by independent inspections."

Ivy Park and TopShop are hitting back against the allegations of sweatshop labor: both companies released statements denying the accusations. Arcadia, Topshop's parent company, asserted that it enforces a "code of conduct" on suppliers, and that, "When customers buy our goods they have to be sure they have been made under acceptable conditions. That means without exploiting the people who make them." While a representative for Ivy Park explained, "We are proud of our sustained efforts in terms of factory inspections and audits, and our teams worldwide work very closely with our suppliers and their factories to ensure compliance. We expect our suppliers to meet our code of conduct and we support them in achieving these requirements."

It was also reported that MAS was not breaking any laws given that the company pays 18,500 rupees ($126.11 U.S.) a month which is more than the legal minimum wage of 10,000 rupees ($68.18 U.S.). Although activists a part of anti-sweatshop campaigns claim the livable wage is close to 43,000 rupees ($293.12 U.S.) a month.

It is clear that the women who work in the factories to produce Ivy Park clothing might never be able to actually afford to buy from the so-called "empowering" brand itself but, the role that this factory, and others like it, play in the global market is indeed a complex one.

Apparel represents 45 percent of Sri Lanka's exports and provides jobs for roughly 300,000 people. According to a recent report from the World Bank (PDF), wages and working conditions in Sri Lanka are generally better than in other South Asian countries.

For developing countries, an increase in manufacturing can be seen as a step along the way to further economic growth and development. The creation of jobs pulls people out of rural conditions and into the cities in hopes of a better life, thus creating another sector of working people and possibly a middle class. Along with this, when workers fight for livable wages and a union the quality of life in these countries can increase dramatically.

It is empowering to the economy and to the workers. We saw an example of this earlier this year when the Sri Lankan government announced that it would make no changes to labor laws without consulting the National Labor Advisory Council, which is the leading governing body of trade unions there.

The Industrial Revolution of Europe and the United States also provides examples of workers who stood up for their rights as manufacturing was on the rise. One of the reasons we have the eight hour work day is due to the continued struggles, and lives lost, of workers standing up in the 1870s through the 1880s within organizations such as the Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The latter organization was the precursor to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents millions of workers in the United States today.

Still, just as many of those conditions in the factories of the 18th and 19th centuries were often deplorable (10 hour or more workdays, heavy reliance on child labor, dangerous working conditions, etc.), there continues to be a need to put pressure on companies doing business in these countries to enforce work safety and ensure workers' rights. Not only that, but workers must have the right to form a union. This is something that is not allowed in the MAS Holdings factories, and others like them. Anti-sweatshop activists, and the workers themselves, are paying attention to this issue.

Karl Marx once said when speaking of the capitalist economic system, "What the Bourgeoisie [bosses and owners] therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers." As an exploited working class continues to form in developing countries under harsh conditions, it may begin to fight for better conditions and a better livelihood--thus challenging the very system that created it. We are seeing such a movement form in some of these countries to fight back against unjust working conditions. Strong leadership, especially by women, is emerging. One example of a strong female leader is Kalpona Akter, a labor leader in Bangladesh. Akter, along with U.S.-based allies such as United Students Against Sweatshops, is at the forefront of a movement of workers who are risking their lives and jobs traveling to different countries in order to put pressure on U.S. and European-based companies to improve apparel industry safety in Bangladesh.

One could conclude that the workers, a majority of them women, working in the MAS Holdings factories on the Ivy Park brand are on a path to joining in with this movement, as they begin speaking up to the press about the horrific conditions under which they suffer. Yet they have a long way to go, and will need solidarity and support. One source of help could well be Queen Bey herself. For if Ivy Park is to truly be an empowering brand for women, it can't exclude the very people who allow it to exist- the (mostly women) workers who produce it.

Photo: Right - Mina, a garment worker in Bangladesh. Left - Beyoncé | composite image; AP

AFL-CIO stands with Brazilian workers and democracy

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:54:00 +0000

Over the last few months, right-wing forces in Brazil have seized the opening created by a failing economy and corruption investigations involving all political parties to suspend a democratically elected president. The politicians leading the effort to remove the president are implicated in multimillion-dollar scandals. Ironically, there are no corruption or other criminal charges against the president, Dilma Rousseff.

In 1964, Brazilian conservatives and elites used the army to remove a president with tragic results: deaths, disappearances and torture. The dictatorship that followed lasted more than 20 years. Over 50 years later, the same elites have manufactured a media circus, a political farce, to remove another democratically elected government. If successful, this legislative coup will set back progress for Brazil's democracy and its workers for years.

On April 15, just before Brazil's lower house of Congress voted to advance a politically motivated impeachment process, the AFL-CIO released a statement that read, in part:

"The AFL-CIO vehemently rejects the effort to invalidate the progressive policies and achievements designed to build inclusive democracy in Brazil. We firmly support the democratic, pro-worker programs for social justice that have been pursued and administered with professionalism and success, lifting over 40 million people out of poverty.

"The most representative labor organizations in Brazil have long supported democracy and the rule of law, while calling for political reforms to eliminate practices that have made corruption endemic there. Many of those now leading the call for impeachment have long blocked such reform and profited from corruption.

While there are many valid criticisms and frustrations with Brazilian politics and the current state of the country's economy, these do not justify the impeachment of a democratically elected president."

On May 18, the same forces in the Senate voted to continue the impeachment. With this decision, the political crisis in Brazil has entered a stage likely to damage democracy in the country for years to come and have a negative impact on the entire region. The interim government has already acted to undo progress for those working people, women and Afro-Brazilians so long excluded from a share in prosperity and democracy. In response to this latest assault on a democratically elected government, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to President Barack Obama calling on the U.S. government to express concerns over the negative impact on democracy in Brazil and beyond.

The way forward is not less democracy, but more. Not excluding those long excluded-by race or class or gender-who recently began to share in what Brazil produces, and who are leading the country. The way forward is more inclusion of those working people and citizens.

AFL-CIO NOW Blog

Photo: Carmen Foro, Vice-President of the Brazilian labor federation CUT, speaks out against the coup. CUT Brazil Facebook

Steelworkers’ VP connects dots between 1937 massacre and today’s challenges

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:44:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Steelworkers and allies convened on Chicago's Southeast side Saturday at a "Labor Fightback Festival" to look back at the historic 1937 "Little Steel" strike, remember the massacre that occurred when Chicago police violently repressed demonstrators, and to apply the lessons learned thereafter to the current conditions facing the labor movement.

In 1937, the Congress of Industrial Organizations was a voice for industrial workers in the workplace. After years of bitter struggle, U.S. Steel (known as "Big Steel") signed a contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee on March 2, 1937, but its competitors, including Republic, Bethlehem and Inland Steel, ("Little Steel") resisted and on May 26, the Little Steel strike began.

On May 30, hundreds of strikers, their families and supporters gathered for a Memorial Day picnic in a field outside the plant before heading over to join the picket line. Chicago police shot into the crowd, massacring ten activists and wounding scores of others. It would take four more years to get the companies that made up Little Steel to agree to a contract.

"It all started right here and today we stand on the shoulders of those ten demonstrators who stood for justice and fairness. Today, we honor their spirits," said USW International Vice President Fred Redmond.

Redmond continued, "To be very direct, in order for our movement to survive and continue to be a force for building and sustaining a strong and vibrant middle class, the labor movement must once again become a part of a much larger movement for social and economic justice."

Redmond isn't just talking the talk; he's leading through example. Redmond is a co-chair of the AFL-CIO's Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice whose main goals are to facilitate discussion amongst labor leaders around disparities facing workers of color. The Commission also aims to make the labor movement more accurately reflect the diversity of the nation as a whole.

"There is a deepening authoritarian trend in the U.S. political environment," Redmond told the large crowd, "Authoritarianism can be found in the use of violence on the streets by law enforcement agencies... we cannot ignore the fact that African American males in their early 20s are twenty-one times more likely to be killed by the police when compared with whites of the same age... The implications appear to many to be nearly genocidal, particularly when combined with cuts in social services and jobs."

Redmond also spoke on the need to increase access to the polls for everyone, and to "stop the targeting of African Americans, Latinos, youth, seniors, and, in some cases, military personnel, for exclusion from voting rolls."

His remarks also touched on the environment, a topic of some contention between unions. "It is not that black workers need a new labor movement, or Latinos need a new movement or that women need a new movement. Unless we are prepared to let global capital run wild, destroying both the environment and the lives of those of us on planet earth, workers as a whole must heed the call of resistance that necessitates a transformed and reinvigorated labor movement."

The annual Memorial Day Massacre commemoration is sponsored by the Steelworkers Union and its retiree organization SOAR. Other speakers at this year's commemoration included local Alderwoman Susan Sadlowski Garza and Chicago Federation of Labor Secretary Treasurer Bob Reiter.

In his rousing speech, Redmond did not hesitate to connect the struggles of U.S. workers to working people around the world. "Workers need the United States to have a foreign policy that advances peace and justice rather than one perceived by the majority of the planet as being bullying and promoting global capitalism," Redmond railed. "We find ourselves in what appears to be a situation of perpetual war. Every conflict seems to move in the direction of sanctions or military action rather than efforts at negotiated settlements... Who suffers? Our young men and women, largely from working class families, place their lives on the line for causes, issues over which they have no input."

His speech concluded with a call for global responsibility and a radical working class movement for the 21^st century: "Only if we renew and invigorate our movement will we be able to meet these challenges. What those workers knew in 1937, that we know all too well today, is that America does best when we say UNION YES."

Photo: Fred Redmond. | USW

Labor and allies launch new push to rein in Wall Street

Wed, 25 May 2016 10:11:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Saying that it's time once again to make Wall Street work for Main Street, and not the other way around, top unions and their allies launched a "Take on Wall Street" campaign to rein in, if not actually end, the abuses the financial sector foists upon us.

At a crowded May 24 press conference, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka praised the Dodd-Frank law, which labor helped push through five years ago after the 2008 Great Recession - caused by the financiers' fraud and finagling - but said it does not go far enough.

Other speakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the banks' biggest foe, agreed.

"Dodd-Frank has reined in Wall Street's most reckless practices, but it was designed to deal only with the most acute, urgent problems," Trumka said. "It's time to go on the offensive."

That means a comprehensive program to rein in the financiers. It features:

1) Restoring the barrier between commercial banking - mom and pop's savings' accounts-and Wall Street investment banking and trading, which the GOP-run Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton demolished in 1999. That Great Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act worked and prevented U.S. bank failures for 50 years, Warren said. She's introduced legislation to restore Glass-Steagall.

2) Imposing a small transactions tax, which the U.S. had until the mid-1960s on financial transactions, but limiting it to speculative mass and computer-generated trading. That trading accounts for 70 percent of all swaps in the financial markets - and for the billion-dollar payouts to hedge fund managers who don't produce anything, speakers said. The financial transactions tax would not only raise billions of dollars yearly - estimates ranged from $100 billion to $300 billion - but would also curb the speculators, speakers added.

3) Creating a mechanism to break up the big banks. Warren cited a statement from their regulator, the Federal Reserve, two weeks ago, saying that "too big to fail" still is a threat. The Fed, she said, calculated that if any one of the nation's seven largest financial institutions failed, it would take the entire economy down with it. That's what happened in 2008.

"There should be two basic rules," the senator added. "One, financial institutions shouldn't be allowed to cheat people and two, financial institutions shouldn't be allowed to force taxpayers to bail them out," as happened in 2008-2009.

4) Closing two loopholes financiers use to evade taxes, which in turn loads taxes on everyone else. The "carried interest' loophole lets hedge fund managers pay taxes on their income at the lower federal capital gains rate, rather than at ordinary tax rates. As a result, the top 25 hedge fund managers in the U.S. "earned more than all kindergarten teachers combined," said Lisa Donner, the new executive director of the labor-backed Americans for Financial Reform. The other loophole lets companies deduct excessive executive compensation.

5) Expanding banking services to the unbanked quarter of the U.S. population who have neither savings nor checking accounts. They now must turn to payday lenders who charge interest rates of 300 percent or more annually, or to similar enterprises. The elderly, minorities, retired workers and others are particular victims of such sharks, speakers said.

Specifically, the coalition would put the U.S. Postal Service back in the banking business, able to offer checking and savings accounts at all of its branches nationwide. Warren touted the idea at the May 24 event, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., has included it in his comprehensive postal reform legislation, which major postal unions support.

Warren added another goal: Lobbying federal agencies, particularly the Justice Department, to criminally prosecute financiers and their institutions for fraud as well as their other finagling. Right now, all they do is settle out of court for multi-million-dollar fines. Nobody goes to jail, she said. They should, she declared.

Major unions lined up to support "Take On Wall Street," with its list of sponsors including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Teachers, the Postal Workers, the Government Employees, the Communications Workers, the Economic Policy Institute, the Auto Workers, the National Education Association, the Service Employees, Unite Here and Working America.

Trumka said the financiers' finagling, and the wreck they made of the economy and of peoples' lives "was by design." He added "we need a bigger, bolder approach" to stop them.

That approach will include demonstrations, lobbying lawmakers, raising the issue during the election campaign, teletown halls to plan street actions and recruiting activists nationwide, Donner said. Warren, among others, warned it could take years. The financial industry would marshal millions of dollars and "lawyers and lobbyists" to stop it, she predicted.

"They're trying to run the political system to influence us to let them write the rules to let them make more money," added another congressional backer, Rep. Keith Ellison, DFL-Minn.

"They're destabilizing us," added Teachers President Randi Weingarten in a video.

Communications Workers Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens said the financial finagling reaches all industries. A former News Guild member and organizer at the San Jose Mercury-News, Steffens noted one hedge fund is now the second-largest owner of U.S. newspaper.

And a hedge fund manager that owned her paper raked in immense profits while opposing the unionization drive there and cutting reporters' pay, she said. The honcho also had a lower tax rate than reporters did.

"We have seen the devastating effects when corporations care just about the bottom line, not about human beings," Steffens said. "All I have to say is 'Let's get started,'" Trumka concluded.

Photo: stock photo