Senator Marcus Riccelli (D-Spokane), the bill’s sponsor, stated:

“Workers deserve to be able to exercise their right to collectively bargain for fair wages and safe workplace conditions… This is a practical, low-cost step to ensure workers are not intimidated out of exercising that fundamental right because they are worried about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head.”

Then on March 20^th, the Oregon State Senate passed SB 916 which allow for unemployment benefits for workers still on strike after a two-week waiting period. On the Bill, Oregon AFL-CIO President Graham Trainor said:

 “The passage of Senate Bill 916 is a major win for working people because the economy and the system that we work with in it is so imbalanced.”

LUEL stands in support of the passage of unemployment benefits to striking workers. Bills like this level the playing field for workers against the repression of the bosses as workers inability to sustain themselves and their families is a leading cause of strikes failing. Unemployment benefits would also lessen the burden on strike funds making unions more financially stable.

The post In Major Power Shift, State Senates in Washington, Oregon Pass Bills Allowing for Striking Workers to Collect Unemployment Benefits appeared first on Labor Today.

Many of ONA’s primary demands do, however, affect the bottom line of hospital operations—the baseline need for adequate staffing. Understaffing is partially a function of a shortage of trained professionals—ironically, teaching nursing pays so much less than being a nurse, that there is a back-end educational crisis in which the system is failing to produce the workforce required to meet demand.

One would think this would make nurses more valuable in the labor market. However, healthcare in the US is not a ‘free market’ system—dominated by profiteering, healthcare in this country is controlled not by demand, and not by providers, by a vast intermediary “healthcare management” system comprised of insurance companies and other entities whose primary ‘value addition’ to the system lies in their ability to extract vast profit not least by denying services to theoretically ‘covered’ individuals, that is, people who have paid for medical insurance who are then denied coverage for life-saving claims.

Furthermore, Oregon is a vast and, in many places, sparsely-populated state. The bulk of Oregon’s population lives in the Portland metropolitan area, arguably stretching south along the I-5 corridor south, through the state capitol Salem to Eugene, the seat of the state’s university system. Then there’s the ‘rest’ of Oregon, southern and eastern, vast stretches where a ‘big city’ might have 50-100,000 residents and many towns and villages have residential numbers in the hundreds. Services can be hard to physically access, requiring drives of hundreds of miles, and there is little profit incentive for capitalist healthcare to provide more proximate infrastructure to the rural parts of the state.

Delivering more services with fewer staff is a Profitability 101 strategy, but unlike say package or entertainment delivery, healthcare still requires a high degree of one-on-one human interaction at all stages of its services. A profit-wringer’s alternative, then, is to vastly understaff the services being delivered, and call it good enough. Leaving aside ONA’s demands around pay equity and adequate cost-of-living adjustments, this is the real crisis underneath it. The situation is so bad that the Oregon labor movement did an end run around the bargaining process, and got the state legislature to pass hospital staff/patient ratio laws requiring that patients be provided adequate care through adequate hospital staffing. Providence, among others, has been deeply resistant to complying with these laws.

Additionally, the recent corporatization of Providence in particular has brought with it a new management that wants to more or less wipe the board (represented by collective bargaining gains over time) and ‘start fresh,’ something like when management fires everyone and makes them re-apply for their old jobs under new terms and conditions. Providence and the ONA have been bargaining for a next contract for years. Management has not bargained in good faith, meeting infrequently with ONA’s bargaining team, and offering little-to-no movement in proposals when they do. By all appearances, management seems to be in ‘last offer’ mode without actually saying so, because of course if they said so, labor law would move the process along, imposing an arbitration process that might be fairer than what management has in mind, even if arbitration threatens significant losses for the nurses, thus labor’s overall reluctance to turn the fate of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) over to the tender mercies of arbitration.

Last summer, Providence nurses led a three-day walkout of Providence hospitals across the state, which turned into a lockout when management refused to let nurses return to work, the week before they’d contracted with scab agencies. The current strike is open-ended, indefinite, and has seen nurses picketing for going on a month now, sometimes in severe winter weather, with no end in immediate sight.

Donations to the ONA Strike Fund can be made at:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-providence-strike-fund
Even very small donations are meaningful expressions of solidarity, and add up.

The post Oregon Nurses Association (ONA) Strike at Providence Hospitals – A Brief Analysis appeared first on Labor Today.

In recent years union organizing at Amazon has increased significantly, Beginning with the defeated RWDSU campaign in Bessemer, Alabama in 2021 unions have been organized at multiple facilities, the most successful of which was the JFK8 drive that culminated in the 2022 victory by the independent Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island. Though the union, which has since been affiliated with the IBT, successfully overcame a vicious, anti-union campaign and won an NLRB-sponsored election, the union has not successfully brought the company to the negotiating table. With unions organized in eight facilities in four states, the December strike was an attempt to put pressure on the company to begin negotiations.

While the strike involved less than one percent of Amazon’s US workforce it nonetheless brought significant attention to the working conditions of Amazon warehouse workers and Delivery Service Partners (DSP) in facilities across the country. Local unions affiliated with the IBT set up picket lines comprised of union activists, shop stewards, and union officers with negligible participation from inside Amazon employees, aside from the 8 facilities with formal union memberships. Even the notable JFK8 warehouse had only 201 workers participate in the strike.

The strike nevertheless mobilized a significant segment of IBT members at bargaining units such as UPS, who have a direct interest in organizing Amazon. The greatest success of this nationwide action will most certainly be the cultivation of new contacts in facilities previously unavailable to the union, with interactions between union members and inside Amazon employees the prospects of future organizing drives are greatly improved.

The post Rank-and-File Teamster Analyzes “Historic” Amazon Christmas Strike appeared first on Labor Today.

The current strike by 55,000 Canada Post workers is about more than postal workers. True, the members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) are fighting for decent wages and retirement incomes and safe working conditions, and they should be supported wholeheartedly in that. But this is a much more complicated and comprehensive struggle, pitting the interests of public services and institutions against those of privatization and profiteering.

As e-commerce drives demand for package delivery, private corporations like Amazon and DHL seeing their profits skyrocket, at the same time that public postal services face cuts. The federal government and Canada Post management could pursue a true public monopoly on package delivery, which would bolster public services and ensure fair wages, and set the stage for expanded public services like postal banking, something CUPW has campaigned for over the past several years.

But instead, Ottawa and the executives at Canada Post have colluded with major corporations in a steady campaign toward privatization.

The workers are united behind their union, with both urban and rural postal workers delivering a 95-percent strike vote. Clearly, CUPW members are prepared to take a stand against the erosion of wages, benefits and working conditions – fighting to stop the attrition that has plagued workers in both the private and public sectors for several years.

No doubt expecting the same kind of government intervention that curtailed workers’ right to strike in recent rail and port disputes, Canada Post failed to bargain in good faith. The corporation offered a paltry 11.5-percent wage increase over four years, completely insufficient to keep pace with inflation which reached 8 percent in 2022 alone. This is on top of years of stagnant wages and eroded benefits since the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

Mainstream media coverage of the strike – by both private and public broadcasters – has been little more than a propaganda campaign on behalf of Canada Post. CUPW and postal workers are being blamed for “cancelling Christmas,” while the fact that the strike has been forced by Canada Post’s ongoing attacks on workers and Ottawa’s encouragement of the corporation’s bad faith bargaining has been ignored entirely.

The media has parroted Canada Post’s claim of a $3 billion loss since 2018. But this is a deceptive narrative as the loss reflects investments in new sorting facilities, vehicles and technology. Rather than repeat this misleading line, journalists and media should ask why Canada Post refuses to provide a living wage and dignified retirement for its 55,000 workers.

Currently, the federal government says it will not intervene in the dispute, and that it needs to be settled at the bargaining table. But people have heard this before and seen the promise broken on behalf of employers. Workers at CN, CPKC Rail, and the ports in Montreal and Vancouver are recent victims of Ottawa’s intervention which ignored their workers’ rights and effectively criminalized the right to strike.

This is a strike in which all working people have an interest. We need to build active solidarity with the 55,000 CUPW members, insisting that Canada Post bargain in good faith and table a fair offer that meets workers’ needs, and that the federal government honour workers’ right to strike.

[Photo: Faisal Hassan X]

The post Canada Post Strikers are Fighting for More Than Postal Workers appeared first on Labor Today.

A month into their strike, there is no shortage of support from local and national politicians. Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer, Senator Gary Peters, and Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilch all appeared on the picket line October 6^th. Senator Bernie Sanders also appeared at the picket line saying “Marathon Petroleum’s CEO made $24 million last year. The company can afford to pay its workers a decent wage.”

“Marathon only wants to give a 3% raise, which is nowhere close to inflation in this day and age, as you know, and also, they want to take away our work. So subcontracting is a major issue with us. We need the language that protects our work and our workers to keep their jobs.”

Steve Hicks, Teamsters Local 283 President

Workers have said they are fighting for a 6% pay increase as well as language that promotes work-life balance and morale at the plant. As of October 27^th, 2024, the workers at Marathon Petroleum are still on strike.

The post Teamsters Strike at Marathon Petroleum Workers in Detroit Still Ongoing a Month Later appeared first on Labor Today.

The strike constitutes the necessary result and the dignified response of the working class against the rise in the cost of living, the inadequate measures, and the indifference of the Italian government.

We express our full solidarity with the strike on October 31st, and we call upon all public workers to massively participate and strengthen the struggle, sending a clear message to the Minister of the Public Service.

The WFTU calls for the militant class-oriented trade unions to express their solidarity with the USB and the working class in Italy and their struggles.

The post WFTU Solidarity Statement with the General Strike in Italy on 31st of October 2024 appeared first on Labor Today.

Maritime workers, Teachers, Dockers, Metalworkers, Workers in Hotels, Tourism, Catering, delivery were on strike demanding Collective Contracts with better wages as well as Health and Safety regulations at work.

Teachers National Strike

The School Teachers National Strike took place against the Ministry of Education attempt to ban the strike through court order the declared the strike ILLEGAL.

Against these tactics the Teachers, with the solidarity of all unions, went on strike escalating it also the level of High schools.

In practice, against the Ministry’s intimidations and bans all first and second level education went on Strike with the teachers rally in Athens being one of the most massive of the last years.

Piraeus Port

Maritime workers, dockers and Metalworkers of the Shipyards held a massive strike which held a protest at the Maritime Ministry. After the Ministry refused to accept the workers’ demands the unions moved to OCCUPY the Ministry and extend their strike on October 24. Maritime workers decided to extend their strike to 48 hours on October 24-25.

Hotel-Tourism Workers

Major Hotels of Athens shut down during the National Strike of Hotel Tourism Workers who demand Collective Contract with better wages. The workers held massive picket lines in front of the hotels and marched to the Ministry of Labor and the Hotel Owners Association. Big Hotels had to announce inability to serve due to the strike.

PAME noted

A big strike river started in the morning, from the port of Piraeus and flooded Athens and other cities of the country. Maritime workers in the shipping industry, dockers in the port of Piraeus, metalworkers in the Shipbuilding Zone, thousands of hotel workers, teachers, kindergarten teachers and High school teachers all over Greece took the baton from the delivery riders and health workers. They are passing the baton to the next sectors that follow, such as the Construction workers, but again to the Riders, and together they are strengthening the front of the workers in the strike escalation to paralyze the country on November 20, in the NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE, with the slogan ‘Out of the war slaughterhouses, give money for wages, health and education‘ “.

“The government is worried and we will see to it that its worry becomes real fear from the rise of demands. Within a few days it has tried to criminalise and cancel decisions on three strike actions. Of train drivers demanding safety measures on rail transport, of mental health workers demanding that the bill to dismantle Health and Rehabilitation facilities be cancelled, and yesterday of teachers and kindergarten teachers demanding pay rises and modern infrastructure for themselves and their students. The government was left with the court decisions in hand! Everyone in the unions – everyone in the struggle. All in the GENERAL STRIKE on 20 November

The post GREECE: Great Strike Wave in Preparation for National General Strike appeared first on Labor Today.

On August 1st, NECA sent a letter to IBEW Local 292 members encouraging them to resign from the union to continue working so that the union will have “no legal right to fine or discipline you.”

“You should be aware that a union has the right to fine or discipline its members who cross picket lines. However, you have the legal right to resign from the union, if you choose. In that case, the union has no legal right to fine or discipline you. We are not suggesting that you either resign from the union, or that you do not resign from the union. That choice is entirely up to you. This information is being given to you so that you will know all the facts in making your decision as to whether you wish to continue to work.”

This letter would later go on to make veiled threats against workers who should choose to strike under Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, 463 U.S. 491 (1983) which says, “Under federal labor law, where employees engage in an economic strike, the employer may hire permanent replacements whom he need not discharge even if the strikers offer to return to work unconditionally.” The NECA representative also mentioned under Minnesota state law, striking workers cannot file for unemployment benefits and that if workers strike they “will be ready and we will take care of our business”.

Tactics such as these by employers and contractors encouraging scabbing, resigning from unions, and threatening to hire replacements is a classic example of the bosses attempting to pit workers against each other and intimidate them to take bad contracts out of fear of repercussions. It was announced on August 2nd that over 300 union members had voted in favor of the strike following a 10-day cool-down period. However, a tentative agreement was reached and a vote was scheduled for Friday, August 16^th. Currently there is no update on the results of the vote.

The post IBEW Local 292 Workers Authorize Strike, Vote on Tentative Agreement appeared first on Labor Today.

Teamsters Canada, the union that represents railroad workers in the country, has mentioned the “main sticking points at the bargaining table are company demands, not union proposals.” Both Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) Railroads want concessions on safety issues revolving around crew scheduling, rail safety, and fatigue management.

Like in the U.S., the Canadian railroaders work long hours while having on-call schedules making it difficult to work rested and ready for duty consistently. Both companies claim to be struggling with labor shortages and want to roll back fatigue protections to increase crew availability, regardless of the risks.

CPKC, which was formed from a merger last year from two railroads Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern are proposing to remove collective agreement of safety-critical fatigue provisions that help workers better anticipate when they might be called to work. Removing these provisions would force train crews to stay awake even longer, increasing the risk of derailments and other accidents. CPKC also failed to address the understaffing of rail traffic controllers.

CN is targeting fewer contract provisions around fatigue but still enough to raise safety concerns. Their demand to extend workdays in all provinces west of Ontario is of particular concern. CN aims to implement a forced relocation scheme, which would see workers ordered to move across the country for months to fill labor shortages, tearing families apart.

While the Teamsters Union has expressed their intention to strike, the two companies have declared a lockout for many Canadian rail networks. With close to two weeks of negotiations still ahead, this move represents an unnecessary escalation that goes against the principles of good faith bargaining that CN and CPKC claim to uphold.

In the U.S., railroad workers have also experienced labor disputes with the railroad corporations. Reduction in safety and reduced headcount for crews was a similar problem in 2022 when there was an effort to have a nationwide railroad strike in the U.S. Unlike Canada, the U.S. government prevented a railroad strike from happening. What happened two months later on February 3^rd, 2023 was the East Palestine, Ohio derailment which lease to the release of hazardous materials within the city limits.

Teamster Canada mentioned on their website that “compromising on safety or threatening to tear families apart for months at a time, are not pathways to an agreement or solutions to staffing problems. CN and CPKC should instead be looking to improve working conditions and adopt a more humane approach to railroading.”

The Canadian Class 1 railroads are following the American lead in slashing safety to improve production. It is clear they view the lives of their workers as expendable in order to keep the increased profits flowing. LUEL stands in solidarity with the railroaders in Canada in their fight. Read the full statement by Teamsters Canada here.

The post Canadian Railroads in Bad Faith Declare a Lockout for Railroad Employees appeared first on Labor Today.

“NECA wants us to continue working day in and day out with NO paid time off, and FORCED unpaid furlough on holidays. Union workers fought hard to set the original standard for paid holidays and PTO across the workforce. Management at the NECA contractors we work for enjoy the benefits of that hard-fought paid time off, but we don’t. It’s time for that to change.”

Kaylin Ullman, Local 46 strike captain

Local 46 has “not been on strike since after WWII,” said Megan Kirby. “We DID NOT want to call for a STRIKE but NECA has left us no choice.” Members of Local 46 were staging a rally on Monday April 15th in support of the LE members in Bellevue, WA. Strike training will continue the following week.

One NECA contractor, Net Com, has already separated from the organization and as such has been removed from the strike list. LE workers that are not employed by Net Com, Project Labor Agreement (PLA) or a Community Workforce Agreement (CWA) are, as of this writing, on strike.

“These well-trained and specialized electricians deserve a contract that reflects the value of their expertise and the importance of their work. Their wages, working conditions and quality of life should reflect their dedication to the craft and to keeping the public safe. But so far, employers are treating them like they are disposable and easily replaced. It’s frustrating because we’ve been in negotiations since January — and now time is running out.”

Sean Bagsby, Business Manager for IBEW 46

The post Limited Energy Unit of IBEW Local 46 on Strike appeared first on Labor Today.