|
Post by jdredd on Apr 27, 2018 15:06:29 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/teachers-arizona-walkout.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region"On Thursday, a historic walkout by teachers and the support staff closed more than 1,000 public schools in Arizona. The state became the latest and the largest to be swept by a labor insurgency among underpaid educators that started in February in West Virginia, then spread to Oklahoma, Kentucky and, also on Thursday, Colorado. As Jason Riley, a conservative writer, noted with disapproval in The Wall Street Journal: “It isn’t just college campuses. The nation’s K-12 schools are also turning into hotbeds of political activism.” The wildfire spread of the teachers’ movement — in parts of the country that are singularly hostile to organized labor — is one of the more surprising and exciting developments of this otherwise bleak political moment. Conservatives are right to worry: We’re seeing a citizens’ revolt against their policies." So not all Millennials are apathetic losers. And the corporate war on unions is still not over.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jun 8, 2018 1:52:21 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/business/media/new-yorker-union-employees.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news"The New Yorker’s editorial staff members said Wednesday that they had formed a union, adding the ma gazine to a growing list of publications, old and new, whose employees have turned to collective bargaining during a tumultuous time for the industry. The staff members said in a statement that the publication “must work harder for its employees,” citing a lack of job security, almost no overtime compensation and pay inconsistency. Many employees worked as contractors without health insurance and other benefits despite doing the same work as staff members, the union said. Organizers said nearly 90 percent of the work force signed on to join the NewsGuild of New York, which represents thousands of employees at publications including The New York Times, The Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, The New Republic and The Daily Beast. About 115 employees are eligible, said Nastaran Mohit, the organizing director of the NewsGuild."
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jun 27, 2018 10:32:34 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-unions-organized-labor.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news"WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a major blow to organized labor. By a 5-to-4 vote, with the more conservative justices in the majority, the court ruled that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining. The ruling means that public-sector unions across the nation, already under political pressure, could lose tens of millions of dollars and see their effectiveness diminished. The court based its ruling on the First Amendment, saying that requiring payments to unions that negotiate with the government forces workers to endorse political messages that may be at odds with their beliefs. Unions say that reasoning is flawed. Nonmembers are already entitled to refunds of payments spent on political activities, like advertising to support a political candidate."
One more small step in the war against anything collective. Be careful what you wish for.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jul 1, 2018 22:58:28 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/business/economy/unions-funding-political.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news"The Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory union fees for government workers was not only a blow to unions. It will also hit hard at a vast network of groups dedicated to advancing liberal policies and candidates. Some of these groups work for immigrants and civil rights; others produce economic research; still others turn out voters or run ads in Democratic campaigns. Together, they have benefited from tens of millions of dollars a year from public-sector unions — funding now in jeopardy because of the prospective decline in union revenue. Liberal activists argue that closing that pipeline was a crucial goal of the conservative groups that helped bring the case, known as Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “If the progressive movement is a navy, they’re trying to take out our aircraft carriers,” said Ben Wikler, Washington director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org." I suppose that if organized labor is all about money (and it probably is), then this is a blow. But I believe it is also about right vs. wrong, and organized labor will survive this and anything else the corporate bosses and their Supreme Court toadies can throw at them.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Dec 4, 2018 14:47:32 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/reality-check-with-jeanne-allen/episode-47-unions-the-status-quo-standing-up-to-goliath/"Rebecca Friedrichs, lead plaintiff in the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case Friedrichs v. CTA, staunch advocate for teachers’ rights, and author of the newly released Standing Up to Goliath: Battling State and National Teachers’ Unions for the Heart and Soul of Our Kids and Country which details her plight and the stories of educators from across the country, joins Reality Check to discuss teachers unions and the entrenched educational establishment, the impediments and roadblocks to good change, progress that they can and do create, what teachers and parents alike can expect in the future for worker freedom, and what they can do to support teachers and better education in America today."
I was amused by this, calling Unions "goliaths" despite decades of decline, so she can sound like a David. Whatever. But I also am amused by her using the buzzword "worker freedom" for anti-Unionism. I love propaganda.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jan 23, 2019 2:29:51 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/la-teacher-strike-deal.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=US"LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles public school teachers reached a deal with officials on Tuesday to end a weeklong strike that had affected more than half a million students, winning an array of supplementary services after an era in education marked by attacks on traditional public schools and their teachers. The deal showed the clout the teachers’ union has with Democrats in power in this city and this state. But union leaders said that what was perhaps more important to them was that the strike had provided an alternate narrative to the school choice movement that grew up around the idea that traditional public schools were factories of failure that needed to be broken up and rethought.The deal includes caps on class sizes, and hiring full-time nurses for every school, as well as a librarian for every middle and high school in the district by the fall of 2020. The union also won a significant concession from the district on standardized tests: Next year a committee will develop a plan to reduce the number of assessments by half. The pro-charter school board agreed to vote on a resolution calling on the state to cap the number of charter schools. Teachers also won a 6 percent pay raise, but that was the same increase proposed by the district before the strike." As much as the billionaires and their "school choice" lackeys have tried to drive a stake through the heart of teacher's unions, they have failed once again. Teachers, unlike workers in private industry, stick together.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jun 15, 2019 1:55:25 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/business/economy/volkswagen-chattanooga-uaw-union.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage"In the latest defeat for organized labor in the South, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee rejected an effort to form a union this week. Of the roughly 1,600 workers who voted, 833 opposed the unionization effort, according to results released late Friday. The United Automobile Workers has been trying to organize the factory, in Chattanooga, for years, recording a narrow defeat in 2014. “Our employees have spoken,” the plant’s chief executive, Frank Fischer, said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with elected officials and business leaders in Tennessee.”
Not too surprising Unions can make no progress in a backwards Guns-n-Jesus state like Tennessee.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Sept 17, 2019 17:54:54 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/opinion/uaw-gm-strike.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"All this might help explain why a recent Gallup poll found that public approval for unions has climbed to 64 percent, up from 48 percent a decade ago and near its highest level in 50 years. An M.I.T. study last year found that nearly 50 percent of nonunion workers say they would vote to join a union if they could, up from 32 percent in 1995. From the moment the G.M. walkout started, union leaders said the strike was bigger than just G.M. “Today, we stand strong and say with one voice, we are standing up for our members and for the fundamental rights of working-class people in this nation,” Terry Dittes, a United Automobile Workers vice president, said. The autoworkers are taking a page from the teachers, who made it clear that they were striking not just because they were tired of pay freezes but also to help their students, by increasing education budgets, reducing class sizes and replacing obsolete textbooks." Apparently the right-wing propaganda campaign against unions has peaked as so many of it's radio audience has aged out (I suspect they have Rush piped in in Hell).
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Sept 9, 2020 20:00:56 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/general-strike.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage"But I’m newly hopeful for change. For much of 2020, the labor movement has been building momentum. In May, essential workers at Amazon, Instacart and other e-commerce and delivery companies staged a one-day national strike demanding better protections and higher pay. In July, thousands of workers from a range of industries walked off the job in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. At the other end of the pay scale, professional basketball players got their league to adopt a number of social-justice initiatives after they went on strike last month to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Last week, several large unions announced they are considering authorizing work stoppages to push for concrete measures to address racial injustice. Strikes won’t solve our problems overnight. But in the long history of American labor, including in the civil rights movement, walkouts have been an indispensable political tool, because when they get going, they’re hard to stop. Strikes bring about economic and social change the way water channels through canyon rock — forcefully, relentlessly and with time." Wouldn't it be awesome if Trump singlehandedly revived the Unions?
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Mar 9, 2021 14:25:06 GMT -5
What amuses me, is when the anti-labor types wants to fight workers organizing, they demonize the "Union bosses" because even they know "bosses" is a dirty word.
|
|
|
Post by jdredd on Jan 7, 2024 23:02:29 GMT -5
From the NYT: “ Changes in union attitudes toward Israel are coming at a moment of wider revival for the American labor movement. After strikes in Hollywood and at auto plants, public approval of unions stood at 67 percent last year, up from 54 percent a decade ago, according to Gallup.”
The anti-Union propaganda campaign since Reagan seems to be weakening in effectivity.
|
|