JOINING TOGETHER
Union Momentum is Strong Heading
Seattle Medium
By Lee Saunders
Dec. 20, 2023
When working people stand together, raise their voice and show their power, they win. That’s the lesson of 2023, a year in which workers boldly asserted their rights and refused to accept less than their fair share of the value they create. Through October, nearly 500,000 workers had taken the courageous step of going on strike this year, three times the number that did during the first 10 months of 2022. And almost 900,000 union workers have won pay hikes of at least 10% over the last year. AFSCME affiliates across the country have been a part of this wave of strike activity. From workers in Yamhill County, Oregon, to employees in the Morgan County, Ohio, school district, AFSCME members withheld their labor until their employer afforded them the respect they deserve.
How Corporations Crush New Unions
The New Republic
By Steven Greenhouse
Dec. 18, 2023
The spacious second-floor conference room at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was an unlikely place for labor and management to face off, but there they were: eight Trader Joe’s workers at one row of tables, a Trader Joe’s official and two lawyers for the company at another. On the walls hung student paintings of brilliant, swirling flowers. They did little to cheer the atmosphere.
Park City Mountain’s ski lift maintenance union signs two-year agreement with Vail
KPCW
By Grace Doerfler and Parker Malatesta
Dec. 20, 2023
After months of negotiations with Vail, the Park City Lift Maintenance Professional Union reached an agreement Monday, Dec. 18, on salary policies for new hires and safety protections for workers. Matt Wright, a lift mechanic who served on the union’s bargaining committee, spoke with KPCW about what’s in the contract for workers across Park City Mountain. Wright said a major motivating factor for the negotiations was to increase transparency on salaries for newly hired mechanics and electricians.
CIVIL, HUMAN, AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS
People’s World
By Mark Gruenberg
Dec. 20, 2023
Is slavery back in Alabama? Adam Obernauer, organizing director for the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union—one of five organizations, including the AFL-CIO, now suing to stop it—says “yes.” And, of course, the profit motive is behind all of it: Alabama reaps $450 million annually in fees from private firms. It lets them use forced convict labor at rock-bottom, or even no, pay. So, the RWDSU, the AFL-CIO, the Union of Southern Service Workers—which the Service Employees backs—plus civic and civil rights organizations, and ten present or formerly incarcerated people, went to federal court to stop the exploitation via a federal class action lawsuit filed on Dec. 12. “When workers cannot control and sell their labor or wage, then it is slavery––period. Let me be crystal clear: Forced and unpaid labor is never acceptable,” Obernauer told the Amsterdam News during a virtual press conference on the case.