MUST WATCH
Amazon Bullied Workers Into Voting Against a Union: Trumka
Bloomberg TV
April 9, 2021
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka says Amazon bullied workers at an Alabama warehouse into voting against joining a union. The vote is a setback for labor organizers and a significant victory for the world’s largest online retailer. Trumka appears on "Balance of Power."
MUST READ
Biden Picks California’s Doug Parker to Lead Federal OSHA
Bloomberg Law
By Bruce Rolfsen
April 9, 2021
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka pointed to Parker’s work at the Mine Safety and Health Administration during the Obama administration, where he was deputy assistant secretary for policy, and also his time as an attorney for the United Mine Workers of America. “He has dedicated his life to advancing the cause of worker safety, because he understands this is a life-and-death struggle for working people in every industry and in every corner of the country,” Trumka said, adding that “critical work must begin with a long-overdue emergency temporary standard to protect America’s workers from a still-raging pandemic.”
As Amazon Workers Organize, They Stress: ‘We Are Not Robots’
Wired
By Caitlin Harrington
April 9, 2021
At the AFL-CIO’s Technology Institute, which just launched in January, labor leaders are dreaming up ways to include workers in the development of algorithms that govern their work. As a model, they cited work by the hospitality union Unite Here on behalf of a group of hotel cleaners, whose routes at work were controlled by algorithms. Engineers originally optimized the routes with the needs of VIP guests in mind. As a result, the algorithm sent cleaners ping ponging along inefficient paths, heavy carts in tow. Through collective bargaining, they helped rejigger an algorithm; engineers designed new routes to be more efficient and less taxing for the cleaners. “But without a union contract, most workers are crying out in the dark, trying to get the attention of management,” says AFL-CIO treasury secretary Liz Shuler.
Amazon union leaders pledge to keep fighting after decisive defeat: ‘The war is not over’
Fortune
By Danielle Abril
April 9, 2021
“It really shouldn’t be this hard to form a union,” said Richard Trumka, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), referring to the pressures Amazon workers faced from their employer. “The system is truly broken.”
POLITICS
Democrats Tie Infrastructure Package to Unionization Push
The Wall Street Journal
By Eliza Collins and Kate Davidson
April 11, 2021
Tim Schlittner, communications director for the AFL-CIO, said removing the act from the emerging legislation would be a mistake. “The labor movement turned out in force in 2020 to elect this president and flipped the Senate,” Mr. Schlittner said. “And if our number one priority is tossed aside I think it would be a disaster for the Democratic Party.”
AFL-CIO’s April 8 Day Of Action for ProAct floods Congress with calls and texts
People’s World
By Mark Gruenberg
April 9, 2021
In an April 8 evening zoom call with female unionists, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler urged all the attendees to “push this out…through social media.” “It’s up to us on the ground” to communicate the message that all workers, union and non-union alike, would benefit from the measure giving workers “the power to negotiate safer working conditions, better benefits and paid sick and family leave, which empowers co-equal caregiving,” among other gains, Shuler said. And the basic message, she added, is that “the best way to raise wages for working women is a union card.”
Biden to form commission to study Supreme Court changes
NBC
By Lauren Egan
April 9, 2021
President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Friday establishing a commission to study overhauling the Supreme Court, following through on a campaign promise, the White House announced. The topics that the commission will examine include the length of service and turnover of justices on the court, its membership and size, and its case selection, rules and practices, the White House said in a statement.
AMAZON
Amazon.com warehouse workers vote to reject forming union in Alabama
Financial Post
By Hilary Russ and Richa Naidu
April 9, 2021
Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, who spoke at the union’s press conference, said, “This is not the outcome any of us hoped for… but make no mistake, you won the moment that you decided to take on Amazon.”
Alabama’s workers deserve better. They deserve the PRO Act
Alabama Political Reporter
By Bren Riley
April 9, 2021
In all of my years in Alabama’s labor movement—and at this point in my career, it’s been several decades—I have never witnessed the energy nor the momentum that we are seeing right now. Everyone I’ve talked to in recent months, from close family members to old acquaintances, wants to know about the Amazon union campaign in Bessemer. They want to know more about the power workers have when they belong to a union, how they can initiate the organizing process to get a union card in their pocket. And they want to know more about the future of the labor movement here in Alabama.
Workers at Amazon warehouse in Alabama reject unionization, a major win for the e-commerce giant
The Washington Post
By Jay Greene and Gerrit De Vynck
April 9, 2021
“We’re not going anywhere,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said during a union news conference after the vote count. "Whether Jeff Bezos likes it or not, this organizing drive is going to open the floodgates to more collective action.”
Union Loss May Bring New Phase of Campaign Against Amazon
The New York Times
By Noam Scheiber
April 9, 2021
The lopsided vote against a union at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., was a major disappointment to organized labor, which regards the fight with Amazon as central to labor’s survival. Yet the defeat doesn’t mark the end of the campaign against Amazon so much as a shift in strategy. In interviews, labor leaders said they would step up their informal efforts to highlight and resist the company’s business and labor practices rather than seek elections at individual job sites, as in Bessemer. The approach includes everything from walkouts and protests to public relations campaigns that draw attention to Amazon’s leverage over its customers and competitors.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
Local labor union plans food distribution events for those in need
Grand Forks Herald
By Pamela D. Knudson
April 10, 2021
The Northern Valley Labor Council of the North Dakota AFL-CIO will distribute food for those in need at two events in the Grand Cities later this month. The free boxes of food and gallons of milk will be given away beginning at noon Friday, April 16, at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 1515 Fifth Ave. N.W., East Grand Forks.
IN THE STATES
Rally calls for better conditions at Smithfield plant
KOLN
By News Channel Nebraska
April 9, 2021
Union workers at a southeast Nebraska meat-packing plant are demanding better working conditions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Plant workers and labor advocates rallied in downtown Lincoln on Thursday as Union leaders continue negotiations with management at the Smithfield plant in Crete, NE. “We could do better contact tracing. We could do better ventilation in the locker rooms. We could do better cleaning around the plant. We could do hazard pay,” UFCW Local 293 President Eric Reeder explained.
PAYWATCH/CEO PAY
CEO Pay Surged in a Year of Upheaval and Leadership Challenges
The Wall Street Journal
By Theo Francis and Kristin Broughton
April 11, 2021
CEO pay surged in 2020, a year of historic business upheaval, a wrenching labor market for many workers and unprecedented challenges for many leaders.Median pay for the chief executives of more than 300 of the biggest U.S. public companies reached $13.7 million last year, up from $12.8 million for the same companies a year earlier and on track for a record, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND HEALTH
We can't afford to lose one more nurse — passing workplace violence prevention bill would help
The Hill
By Bonnie Castillo
April 9, 2021
That’s why National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the United States, is fighting to get a critical bill across the finish line. The Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (H.R. 1195) would mandate that federal OSHA hold health care and social service employers accountable for developing and implementing a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan, publicly reporting incidents of violence, and not retaliating against workers who report violence.