Justin Foley wrote:Andrew. wrote:The thing I fear most as a labor organizer happened yesterday. The lead inside worker in an organizing drive got fired. The union I work for is going to back him up and take it to the Labour Relations Board, but it's two weeks before Christmas, he's a young father with two kids, and he just got canned for trying to form a union. US law actually protects "out" union supporters more than regular folk. You've got a better shot going in front of the NLRB to get someone reinstated for a retaliatory firing than if they were quiet about their union support. It's the same here. The burden of proof is on the employer to demonstrate that his role in the union drive played absolutely no role in his termination. We've got a decent shot at getting him reinstated and compensated for lost wages. He was canned two days after attending the first all-department organizing meeting and management was stupid enough to directly ask one of his coworkers if he was leading the union drive.

Andrew. wrote:The thing I fear most as a labor organizer happened yesterday. The lead inside worker in an organizing drive got fired. The union I work for is going to back him up and take it to the Labour Relations Board, but it's two weeks before Christmas, he's a young father with two kids, and he just got canned for trying to form a union. US law actually protects out union supporters more than regular folk. You've got a better shot going in front of the NLRB to get someone reinstated for a retaliatory firing than if they were quiet about their union support. A really crafty anti-union boss will just fire some random people who aren't leading the drive and telegraph it down that it was for union support. Makes everyone wonder - wait, why that guy, he wasn't even one of the leaders. And then, if people aren't strong, folks wonder if the leaders of the drive are getting some kind of special treatment. (Recommended remedy - strong Know Your Rights message and direct action.)Still, you make a choice when you organize on your job and there are risks. Here in the US the NLRB will probably become even more than worthless in the years ahead so the protections I mentioned above will likely not much matter. Your leader is going through a seminal moment in his life - he'll either come out on the other side of it believing in his fight or disillusioned. No guarantee of one or the other.= Justin

Just sayin. "On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled Perez, like all workers, has the right to call his boss a nasty motherfucker ” at least when such speech is part of legally protected statements involving union activity."https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/you- ... .saKGyvWjl(We're still waiting on the labour board ruling re: my last post btw. Worker has been unemployed for 4 months.)

Andrew. wrote:Justin Foley wrote:Andrew. wrote:The thing I fear most as a labor organizer happened yesterday. The lead inside worker in an organizing drive got fired. The union I work for is going to back him up and take it to the Labour Relations Board, but it's two weeks before Christmas, he's a young father with two kids, and he just got canned for trying to form a union. US law actually protects "out" union supporters more than regular folk. You've got a better shot going in front of the NLRB to get someone reinstated for a retaliatory firing than if they were quiet about their union support. It's the same here. The burden of proof is on the employer to demonstrate that his role in the union drive played absolutely no role in his termination. We've got a decent shot at getting him reinstated and compensated for lost wages. He was canned two days after attending the first all-department organizing meeting and management was stupid enough to directly ask one of his coworkers if he was leading the union drive.Update on this: the Labour Board ruled in our favour and the worker was reinstated with full back pay and an order to post the reasons for his reinstatement in every City workplace department. Whether our organizing drive will succeed remains to be seen since there is a serious chill on organizing in the workplace. The Labour Board ruling was a real victory though and I'm grateful to work for a union that threw its resources into this without any guarantee of future members or their dues. Worker got fired for trying to organize: we got his job back with full back pay, and he's not even a union member and may never be. That's not why I'm bumping the thread though. From what I hear, 40,000 AT&T workers will go on strike tomorrow. https://www.cwa-union.org/news/releases ... -or-strike

Andrew. wrote:Andrew. wrote:Justin Foley wrote:Andrew. wrote:The thing I fear most as a labor organizer happened yesterday. The lead inside worker in an organizing drive got fired. The union I work for is going to back him up and take it to the Labour Relations Board, but it's two weeks before Christmas, he's a young father with two kids, and he just got canned for trying to form a union. US law actually protects out union supporters more than regular folk. You've got a better shot going in front of the NLRB to get someone reinstated for a retaliatory firing than if they were quiet about their union support. It's the same here. The burden of proof is on the employer to demonstrate that his role in the union drive played absolutely no role in his termination. We've got a decent shot at getting him reinstated and compensated for lost wages. He was canned two days after attending the first all-department organizing meeting and management was stupid enough to directly ask one of his coworkers if he was leading the union drive.Update on this: the Labour Board ruled in our favour and the worker was reinstated with full back pay and an order to post the reasons for his reinstatement in every City workplace department. Whether our organizing drive will succeed remains to be seen since there is a serious chill on organizing in the workplace. The Labour Board ruling was a real victory though and I'm grateful to work for a union that threw its resources into this without any guarantee of future members or their dues. Worker got fired for trying to organize: we got his job back with full back pay, and he's not even a union member and may never be. That's not why I'm bumping the thread though. From what I hear, 40,000 AT&T workers will go on strike tomorrow. https://www.cwa-union.org/news/releases ... -or-strikeGood news on that guy. Don't know what's going to happen with AT&T. Seems like a pretty good political environment to push a massive strike if you can swing it. The IL chapter of SEIU (HCII) recently pushed to the largest strike threat in history for their nursing homes. At the 11th hour the owners group gave in and agreed to a contract that will make huge gains in the lives of those workers. There's work to be done protecting and expanding Medicaid so that the contract is funded in the future, but we're talking about people going from 9.50 an hour to 13 or so in two year. There are additional protections for undocumented folks, better workplace rules ... it was the fight they'd been slowly building to for over a decade. And they won it (for now). (Because the fight doesn't ever just end.)= Justin

14-year president of SEIU Andy Stern -- long reviled by everyone in the labor movement as a cynical business union piece of garbage (while a major Obama backer) -- takes up gigs lobbying for charter schools in cahoots with the Walton Foundation against teachers' unions. And to think anyone is cynical about union leaders. When Stern left the SEIU in 2010, he was a true political power player ”his official bio, in fact, brags that œStern has visited the White House more frequently than any other single person during the Obama Administration. Under his leadership, his union dramatically grew its membership and helped Barack Obama get elected. But his successes came at a cost. Stern developed a reputation as a business-friendly union leader, known for striking deals with companies that were often seen as too weak by many in the labor movement. Under the guise of modernization and growth, Stern seemed to lose his connection to the grassroots, radical, people-powered aspects of the union world. In 2010, The Nation quoted one union leader as saying, œAndy Stern leaves pretty much without a friend in the labor movement. https://splinternews.com/high-profile-l ... 1836597318

In local news:The last several years has seen a significant labour conflict in the port of Gothenburg, between the employer leasing the port from the municipality, and the Union of Dockworkers, which is the only major union not tied to the Confederation of Trade Unions (traditionally affiliated with the Social Democratic Party). The UoD has a more decentralized and direct-democratic structure than the CoTU, and the conflict was essentially over the right of the UoD to keep their organizational independence, which meant signing a separate agreement but one equivalent to that signed by the CoTU - an arrangement which had been followed for years without any problems.As the conflict dragged on, eventually the then (Social Democratic) labour minister proposed a revision of the strike law, which would have effectively prohibited any strike for reasons other than reaching a collective agreement (iow., if there already were an agreement, the union would have to accept it as is, which as several people warned would in principle make it possible for an employer to form their own union, sign an agreement with them, and force others to adhere to it).Sensing where things were going, the CoTU leadership at the last minute signed an agreement with the Confederation of Enterprise (the major employers' association to which the port company belong), somewhat lessening the effect of the proposed law, but in essence containing the same problems. This against the strongly stated wishes of significant portions of the rank-and-file, and even entire branches, of the CoTU.With friends like these...

LOLOLOLOL. SEIU and people-powered aspects of the union world in the same paragraph. SEIU was, by far, the worst, most useless, least giving-a-shit union I ever paid dues to. As in, if you wanted representation in a meeting with a manager, they'd just tell you you are the union! You can represent yourself! Need to file a grievance? Don't expect help from the steward or anyone else in your local. But locals can be bad without the rest of the union being bad, right? So you've decided to do all that grievance work yourself, eh? Good luck getting anyone in St. Paul to process it, and enjoy spending months hounding them on the phone until they decide to get back to you. If they manage to accomplish anything, it's purely by accident. Fuck them. The world will be a better place when they finally crash and burn and are replaced by a real union.You can blame the right wing all you want, but the unions ain't got (almost) nobody to blame but themselves. Nobody in a union shop would buy the right wing talking points if the unions hadn't gotten so shitty. Is right to work a facetious load of shit designed to strangle unions, instead of the argument that it incentivizes them to provide actual value to their members? Absolutely. Are the talking points used to justify it true? By and large... yeah. They are. And the problems ain't just local. The boomers fell asleep at the wheel and now labourers everywhere are paying for it as they get caught between shitty companies and indifferent union representation. The good news is that the boomers will be retired soon, and millennials are union-friendly enough, and things have gotten shitty enough, that we just might be able to put this derailed train somewhere close to the tracks. Maybe even on the tracks themselves. That would be nice.So yeah... as a concept? Unions are absolutely NOT CRAP. As a reality, they used to be equally NOT CRAP. But your 21st century union is often a steaming pile of indifferent CRAP that will happily screw you to keep their friends in the company happy.

On the other hand, Sara Nelson is good as hell as more and more seems to becoming the face of the labor movement. She's charismatic, militant, and unapologetically left. She has a shot of being the next head of the AFL-CIO, which is the kind of shot in the arm it needs.Here's a speech she gave to the Chicago DSA: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara ... ts-strikes

Clyde wrote:On the other hand, Sara Nelson is good as hell as more and more seems to becoming the face of the labor movement. She's charismatic, militant, and apologetically left. She has a shot of being the next head of the AFL-CIO, which is the kind of shot in the arm it needs.Here's a speech she gave to the Chicago DSA: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/sara ... ts-strikesThat is encouraging.