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Labor's Edge Blog Articles
2/3/12
Activists Take on Secret Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement, Demand “Fair Deal or No Deal!”
TP-FTA Rally Los Angeles from Imi Pono on Vimeo.
As another round of behind-closed-door talks aimed at creating a massive new trade pact for the Pacific Rim took place in a posh Beverly Hills hotel on Wednesday, labor, environmental and public health advocates picketed outside to demand a voice for working people. During a press event and rally, they called on negotiators to release the negotiating texts, allow for greater public input and to ultimately deliver a "fair deal or no deal" on the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement. Another rally is planned for today at the University of California – San Diego, the site of more negotiations.
2/3/12
San Jose State University Students Launch Campaign to Raise Minimum Wage
by Stacey Hendler Ross
What began as a class project has turned into a formal effort to get an initiative on the November ballot that would raise the minimum wage in San Jose by 25 percent, from $8 to $10 an hour. Students from a San Jose State University sociology class decided wages for working people in San Jose weren’t covering even the minimum needs, and they took the project into the real world.
Leila McCabe is a senior who was in Scott Myers-Lipton's Social Action class last semester and has worked several low-paying jobs. She told the San Jose Mercury News, "We're all struggling with paying rent and bills. To find out San Jose is behind in paying people better wages was a shock to us."
2/2/12
1% Not Delivering on Paying Their Fair Share of Taxes
by Refugio Mata
“Why is FedEx not paying its fair share?” That’s what more than 400 activists asked on January 25 as part of a larger national movement to hold big corporations accountable to get our economy back on track. People from struggling communities, labor groups, immigrant rights groups, Occupy LA, and others led by Good Jobs LA marched down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in a show of unity among the 99% movement. On its way to FedEx, protesters took the opportunity to stop by the branches of big corporations that are also either notorious tax dodgers or are infamous for their bad business practices in our communities.
2/2/12
Truck Drivers Shut Down Port of Seattle to Expose Dangers of the Job
by Valerie Lapin
Monday mornings are the busiest at any port, but this past one in Seattle the trucks were parked. Drivers spanning the major companies that do the most business in the Puget Sound simply turned off the engines, got out of their cabs, and stopped hauling. They had somewhere else they needed to be. Steely determination led roughly 150 port drivers to sacrifice income and risk retaliation to make the hour-and-a-half trek to swarm the State Capitol in Olympia.
This week the truck drivers – who toil under the guise of false self-employment – are making it their job to sound the alarm on occupational hazards, overweight containers, shoddy equipment, risks to motorists, and the culprits responsible for these rampant safety violations: their employers and their giant retail shipper clients like Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target.
2/1/12
UCLA Felony Charges: Lab Death a Crime, Not an Accident
by Joan Lichterman
Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old lab assistant at UCLA, was fatally injured on December 29th, 2008 by a flash fire in the lab of chemistry professor Patrick Harran while transferring a highly hazardous chemical that ignites when exposed to air. She died 18 excruciating days later as a result of burns to 43 percent of her body and inhalation exposure. On the day of the fire, less than two months after her 23rd birthday, the recent Pomona College graduate was 11 weeks into a job she had taken to earn money to go to law school.
UCLA's claim that Sangji's death was "a horrible accident, not a crime" and therefore no punishment is deserved, is not supported by the evidence provided by Cal/OSHA's Bureau of Investigations or by the state's labor laws. That's why the LA County District Attorney lodged three felony charges against the UC regents, UCLA, and Sangji's boss, chemistry professor Patrick Harran, on December 27, 2011.
2/1/12
Fresno County Workers Strike For Their Rights
by James Geluso
In one of the most conservative cities in California, thousands of workers went on strike last week to preserve their democratic rights as union members.
The Fresno County workers, members of SEIU Local 521, walked off the job for three days after the county Board of Supervisors imposed a contract while the members were still voting on the board’s last, best and final offer. The workers range from janitors to supervisors. The California Nurses Association, who also had been imposed on by the county, also joined the strike.
The strike started in the early morning darkness of the Juvenile Justice Campus, where workers didn’t report for their shifts starting at 6 a.m. Monday. Instead, they set up tents at two entrances and kept warm by chanting. As the day grew brighter, the two camps came together at the main entrance of the building.
1/31/12
The Rebirth of Economic Justice
by Ben Field
Is it time for a great coming together of the movement for racial justice and the movement for economic justice? During the Civil Rights era, the political agenda of the Left began to divide. Young, liberal activists and people of color gravitated toward a racial justice agenda while more traditional Democrats clung to a New Deal agenda focused on economic justice. As the racial justice agenda became dominant, the economic justice agenda lost support. We may now be at a historical turning point because of growing concern about economic inequality.
The chasm between rich and poor has surpassed race and immigration as the most important source of societal tension. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, two thirds of Americans believe there are “strong conflicts” between the rich and poor. That number has increased 50 percent since the 2009 survey.
1/30/12
SFLC Helps Costa Deliziosa Cruiseline Workers and Management Reach Agreement
by Tim Paulson
Last Friday night at about 10:00 pm I began receiving phone calls with alarming messages that there was about to be a strike on the San Francisco waterfront. I finally realized that workers had walked off an Italian cruise ship at Pier 35. I put on a warm coat and drove to the Embarcadero to see what was going on.
News cameras were interviewing a large group of men and women in red jackets and black bow ties who were on the Embarcadero outside the pier. I found out that they had left the cruiseliner after the dinner shift because they were getting paid wages less than what they had signed up for. Their compensation was being calculated in dollars instead of euros. A substantial difference. They felt that the company was ignoring them at port after port and finally took action in what they had heard was a “union town.”
1/27/12
Death and the Waste Industry: A Call for Action
On October 12, 2011, in Lamont, California, Armando and Eladio Ramirez went into a composting drainage pipe, wearing only painters’ masks for protection – and breathed in fatal amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Armando, 16 years old, went in first to clean out the pipe, and died almost immediately; Eladio, 22, went in after his brother to help him, and was rendered brain dead, dying the next day. These deaths happened at a green waste processing facility run by Crown Disposal Services – a prominent player in L.A.’s commercial waste and recycling market – and are being investigated by Cal-OSHA, the CA Department of Labor and the United States Department of Labor.
1/26/12
U.S. Postal Service Under Attack
by John Beaumont
On January 17, 1962, President John F Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. This granted Federal Employees, for the first time, the right to collective bargaining.
This action led to inspire many states and localities to follow suit, allowing their own workers to organize. This triggered a huge wave of unionization in the public sector that saw firefighters, teachers, janitors, social workers and many others form unions in the 1960s and '70s.
Now all this is under attack. The nation's postal unions, whose employees combine to be the largest Federal union in the nation, are being attacked through proposed legislation in the United States Senate.
1/25/12
Proposed Foreclosure Settlement Would Benefit Wall Street, Not Main Street
by Art Pulaski
This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD) and the Big Banks teamed up to propose a multi-state settlement to address the foreclosure crisis. But based on the terms described in numerous media reports, the deal appears to be a settlement for the banks, not a settlement for the middle class. The people of California need real relief, not a quick settlement that lets the banks off the hook.
California is home to nine of the ten cities that were hardest hit by the foreclosure freefall. The two million working families we represent have been at the epicenter of this crisis. Millions have been devastated by the loss of their homes. Many more have watched their home values plummet and now nearly one in three California borrowers are underwater, owing more to the banks than their homes are worth. California has the second highest foreclosure rate in the country, surpassed only by Nevada.
1/24/12
Aussie Billionaires Think They Can Keep American Workers Down & Under
by Eric Tate
Some 12,000 transportation workers employed by Toll Group in Australia are unionized, and are fairly rewarded and valued for helping make the logistics giant so profitable. But not here in the U.S. The company suspiciously sacked one-third of its Southern California truck drivers before the busy holiday shopping season, just two days after Toll’s pro-union workers donned Teamster T-shirts and partook in a peaceful community rally.
The truck drivers didn’t buy for one minute the claim that work had simply slowed down at America’s largest port, so instead of being silenced—they mobilized! To date the workers have successfully pressured the company to rehire 15, but management instituted an arbitrary 90-day deadline that could put the remaining pink-slipped drivers out of work for good if they are not recalled in the next week.
1/23/12
How, Exactly, Does Trade Bring Prosperity?
by Stan Sorscher
I work for a labor union in the aerospace industry. We are 100 percent in favor of trade. We make products the rest of the world wants to buy.
With increased trade we expect more prosperity. Instead, we see the American economy de-industrializing and job security at historic lows. So, what’s going wrong?
1/19/12
Spending Money to Make Money
by Pedro Morillas
With the second anniversary approaching of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case – which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on elections – it’s worth a look at whether playing in politics actually pays off for corporate interests. As it so happens, it does.
Between 2008 and 2010 at least thirty US corporations spent more to lobby congress than they paid in federal taxes over the same time period. Clearly, when it comes to politics, corporations really do spend money to make money. In addition to the “Dirty Thirty”, 280 consistently profitable Fortune 500 companies paid about half the statutory corporate tax rate while spending $2 billion to lobby Congress on tax policy and other issues.