MUST READ
Biden May Be the Most Pro-Labor President Ever; That May Not Save Unions
The New York Times
By Noam Scheiber
March 25, 2021
“Because of growing inequality, our economy is on a trajectory to implosion,” said Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in an interview. The PRO Act “will increase wages and slow that trajectory,” he added.
IN THE STATES
Georgia Republicans Advance Sweeping Voting Restrictions
Courthouse News Service
By Kayla Goggin
March 25, 2021
Charlie Fleming, president of the Georgia chapter of the AFL-CIO, called the bill “the most aggressively racist attack on Georgia voting rights since Jim Crow” and “an all-out assault on working Georgians’ right to vote.”
Virginia Public Sector Workers Are Organizing to Make Their New Bargaining Rights a Reality
Labor Notes
By Joe DeManuelle-Hall
March 25, 2021
When Virginia changed its law last year to allow local government workers to bargain collectively, it was a leap forward in a time when the trend is generally in the opposite direction. As always, the devil is in the details—and there’s a lot of devilry here. But the change presents a substantial opening for unions. Now teachers, firefighters, and sewer workers are getting organized and pushing local governments to bargain over such issues as pay and staffing. Bargaining is still banned for state employees. But the new law, which takes effect May 1, allows cities, counties, and towns to bargain with their employees, an activity that had been expressly forbidden since a 1977 state Supreme Court ruling, codified by a 1993 law. Counties and municipalities can now pass local ordinances to establish collective bargaining rights—if they choose. The law sets up a loose process, with huge parts left up to local interpretation. A majority of workers in a unit can petition the employer. The governing body, such as a school board or city council, must then vote on whether or not to allow collective bargaining.
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND HEALTH
110 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, its lessons are still unlearned
Salon
By Bob Hennelly
March 25, 2021
On this day 110 years ago, 146 garment workers, including 123 mostly young immigrant women, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in lower Manhattan. Many of these women were forced to jumped from several stories to the pavement below because the intensely anti-union sweat shop owners had insisted on keeping exits locked and only one of four elevators were operating. These women were paid $15 a week and worked at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The owners of the sweatshop were outliers, who refused to acquiesce to the workers' demands that were made during the city-wide strike by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union for better pay and a more humane work schedule.
AMAZON
The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor
The New Yorker
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
March 25, 2021
“This isn’t just about wages,” Stuart Appelbaum, the R.W.D.S.U.’s president, told me, on Monday. It is also about the strenuous pace of work, and the real-time surveillance methods that Amazon has used to monitor employees. Appelbaum said some of the workers that his union has represented have had employers that monitored their locations with G.P.S. chips in their delivery trucks, “but there’s nothing like this, where you’re expected to touch a package every eight seconds.” It had been hard to organize within the Bessemer facility, he said, in part because many of the workers did not know one another. “It’s hyper-Taylorism,” Damon Silvers, the director of policy and the special counsel of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said. “Amazon has determined an optimal set of motions that they want their employees to do, and they have the ability to monitor the employee at all times and measure the difference between what the employee does and what they want them to do, and there is nowhere to hide.” Appelbaum said, “People tell us they feel like robots who are being managed by robots.”
EQUAL PAY
It's Equal Pay Day: Women lose an average of $406,000 to the wage gap in their lifetime
CNN
By Jazmin Goodwin
March 24, 2021
The most recent estimates show women across the nation earned about 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to 2019 data from the US Census. That amount changes when broken down by race -- with many women of color faring much worse. White women earned 79 cents, while Asian American and Pacific Islander women earned 85 cents. Worse off are Black women, who earned 63 cents, while Latinas earned 55 cents and Native American women earned 60 cents. That's according to a report from the National Women's Law Center, which based its estimates on median earnings data for full-time, year-round workers from the Census Bureau.
JOINING TOGETHER
“9to5” Film Discussion Part of Union Days
ILR Cornell
March 25, 2021
A film that tells the story of secretaries across America, who organized to fight sexism for better pay, more advancement opportunities and an end to sexual harrasment before that was even a term, was part of ILR’s 2021 Union Days programming. The screening and discussion of “9to5: The Story of a Movement” was part of the annual Union Days events that bring together ILR students, faculty and community members in an effort to advance workers across the world. The theme for this year's Union Days, continuing through April with events such as a talk with Bay Area organizer Boots Riley, is “democracy at work.”