S&P 500, Nasdaq end at records after Fed speech
S&P 500, Nasdaq end at records after Fed speech
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the...
Several protesters from the progressive group Fed Up stood outside the conference room where Powell delivered the speech.
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As Attacks on Unions Continue, Bringing Back the Strike May Be Our Only Hope
On December 14, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey announced the results of the union’s strike...
On December 14, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey announced the results of the union’s strike authorization vote. For the second time in three years, the union’s membership voted overwhelmingly to strike if necessary. "Our ability to withhold our labor is our power," declared CTU President Karen Lewis on the eve of voting.
That axiom, that strikes are where unions derive their power, is pretty out of favor these days. A wave of disastrous strikes and lockouts beginning in the Reagan era that helped deunionize much of American industry has left the surviving labor movement skittish about the prospect of full-scale walk-outs. But bright spots like Fight for 15, Bargaining for the Common Good and the Chicago teachers strike have shown that workers can win strikes (if one defines victory as workers walking away from the ordeal feeling more powerful). Labor activists and leaders, particularly as they anticipate a viciously anti-union Supreme Court decision in Friedrichs v. CTA, have to figure out more strategies to revive the strike weapon in our current era.
How strikes became a “bad idea”
Ironically, the seeds of labor’s 1980s defeats were planted during its best seasons for growth in the 1930s. During the wave of sit-down strikes that grew union membership by leaps and bounds, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. The purpose of the act was to establish an orderly process for certifying unions and compelling employers to bargain in good faith with them. The plain language of the law also made it illegal to fire an employee for union activity.
But in two of the early Supreme Court cases that established the constitutionality of this law, the court casually cut into workers’ rights to their jobs.
In a 1939 case called NLRB vs. Fansteel Metallurgical, the court ruled that the NLRB cannot compel the reinstatement of a fired worker who broke the law, even if his illegal activity was part of an otherwise protected union activity like striking. Sit-down strikes, the physical occupation of someone else’s property to prevent their business from operating without you, was simply not going to be a protected activity under this new labor law regime.
In an earlier case, 1938’s NLRB v. Mackay Radio, the Supreme Court stripped workers of their unalloyed right to return to their jobs after a strike. The Court held that not only was an employer allowed to replace striking workers to keep a business going during a strike, but that they could keep the scabs on the job after the strike was over. The strikers would not be fired, per se, as an employer would have to make provision to recall former strikers as vacancies occur.
The McKay germ lay dormant for over 40 years. There were thousands of strikes in the United States all the way through the 1970s. And while plenty of bosses hired plenty of scabs, those scabs were almost always let go after a strike. To take a worker’s job away for standing with her union was viewed as almost un-American.
Or at least it was, until no less of an American than the sitting President, Ronald Regan, fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981, sending a strong signal to industry: have at it..
McKay was weaponized by the Phelps-Dodge Corporation in 1983. The copper mining company bargained its Steelworkers local to impasse over drastic cuts in pay, benefits and working conditions—essentially daring the union to strike. Exploiting the bad economic times, the company had no problem importing a permanent replacement workforce, for whom even the reduced pay was far better than most jobs available. After 12 very ugly months, the scabs voted to legally decertify the union.
This Phelps-Dodge blueprint is how much of the deunionization of American industry occurred in the Reagan-Bush (and Clinton) era. Unions that survived frequently did so by capitulating to management’s giveback demands.
Tellingly, the AFL-CIO’s 1990s version of labor law reform was not for organizing rights, like card check, but a bill to undo the McKay doctrine and ban the permanent replacement of strikers. In 1994, the year that the Workplace Fairness Act effectively died, there were 14 major strikes involving over 108,000 workers. By 2012, there were only four, and they involved less than 15,000 workers.
And perhaps most telling of all: Unions’ most recent attempt at labor law reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, did not include any provision on strikes. We have abandoned the strike weapon.
Well-planned strikes serve as inspiration
Not every union has abandoned strikes. The last Chicago teacher strike served as the strongest example in years for everyday workers of the power of a well-planned work stoppage.
On paper, it made no sense that a teachers union could wage a successful strike in 2012. Teachers unions had suffered from years of well-funded political attacks that cast them in the media as villains who prioritize “adults’ interests” over “students’.” The city’s power brokers, Mayor Rahm Emanuel in particular, were crying broke and exploiting civil rights rhetoric in their give-back demands. And there were thousands of teachers in charter schools and unemployed and recently retired teachers in the Chicago area who could have been recruited as replacements if they viewed the Chicago Teachers Union as striking against the public interest.
Instead, the Chicago public overwhelmingly viewed the CTU as striking for the common good. Partly, this was thanks to two years of deep and meaningful community organizing and partnerships that the union diligently pursued knowing there would likely be a strike. And partly, this was thanks to the union bargaining for school resources demands that resonated beyond just their membership.
For the last really big strike that got even non-union workers thinking about their power, you have to go all the way back to 1997. The Teamsters—who, like the CTU at the local level, had elected progressive reformers to their national leadership—also spent years preparing for a planned strike against UPS. These sort of well-planned strikes are crucial for getting workers, those in unions and those without, to think about power and the exercise of it.
In his book Only One Thing Can Save Us, labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan expresses a preference for one-day strikes, which he has seen used effectively by the hotel employees union. In such a strike, a union signals its intent to return to work after 24 hours, allowing strikers to impact the employer’s business but protecting them from permanent replacement.
Joe Burns, also a labor lawyer, has written extensively on labor’s need to bring back the strike weapon. In his Reviving the Strike, he scorns one-day “publicity strikes” as no substitute for “an effective traditional strike,” which he defines as one that aims to halt production.
Burns’ contribution gets us thinking not just about the need to get more strikes going in this country, but to really think through how to define a “successful” strike. But his mantra-like focus on “halting production” is strangely limiting. As a result of union busting and globalization in manufacturing, most of the new organizing and strategic contract campaign action is in healthcare, education and the service industry. A Chicago teacher would likely rankle at the thought of their strike “halting production.” (What, after all, does their employer aim to produce? One hopes it is citizens and scholars, but fears it is docile workers and future prisoners.)
My own union work so far has been in hotels, home healthcare and education. I have worked on only a small number of work stoppages, most of a limited duration. In my experience, employers are working from such an ossified playbook that unions can get a lot of mileage out doing the last thing that the boss and his lawyers expect.
For example, hotel employees can cost the company more money by not striking on the day the company expects, thus costing them the expense of paying and lodging scabs as well as the continued payroll costs of the union members who stayed on the job an extra day.
I don’t prescribe a perfect form of strike. American workers will not learn to strike again from articles like this or books like Burns’ and Geoghegan’s, which are really more for labor nerds and bookish organizers—they will only learn to strike by watching contemporary examples of workers striking. Since it’s hard to raise chickens without eggs, even one-day “publicity strikes” have an educational value.
But many thousands times more working people will be educated by the next Chicago Teachers strike. The teachers will halt production, but, perversely, that will save their employer money. Chicago will continue to collect taxes and be freed of the burden of compensating its teachers for a few weeks. (In fairness, Joe Burns expounds upon this unique aspect of public sector strikes in his follow-up book, Strike Back.)
To be effective, the CTU must take the students and parents who will be disrupted and bring that disruption to the doorsteps of Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and Chicago’s unelected school board. To win for the working class, they must continue to loudly proclaim, as CTU President Karen Lewis did, “Your power is your ability to withhold your labor.”
Possible paths forward
Our challenge is to inspire even non-union workers to think about their power and how to exercise it using the tools we have on hand: a union movement with miniscule density in only a handful of service and public sector industries largely led by staff who have precious little personal experience with leading job actions. We should be clear about how deep this deficit is.
One of the most promising labor projects of the moment is Bargaining for the Common Good. This is an effort by public sector unions in Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio to align their bargaining demands with each other and with community demands around progressive taxation, affordable housing, youth incarceration and government transparency.
These community demands fall well outside a union’s scope of bargaining and are therefore technically illegal. But as long as the unions also have demands that are within their legal scope (not hard to do when employers refuse to pay people what they deserve), then the unions can press the community’s case. This is a brilliant way of getting community to see unions’ fights as their own and of building worker and community power—and the next Chicago teachers strike will likely be the highest profile test of the theory this side of the Mississppi.
What follows could be bigger. A number of public and private sector unions in Minnesota have contract expirations in 2016. Their bargaining demands for the common good are focused not just on their individual employers but also on the largest employers in the state: Target and Wells Fargo. This is the potential for the closest thing we’ve seen in a while to a general strike (something Minnesota has a history of doing).
Another promising project is the Fight for 15. Some have dismissed the series of rolling one-day strikes for increases in the minimum wage and organizing rights as mere P.R. stunts. But there is something deeply radical and significant at play here. Workers who don’t even technically have a union are proving their value—and their power—to their bosses by withholding their labor. And the response from the general public is, at worst, a sort of patronizing “Well, good for them” but more often something a bit closer to “Go get ‘em!”
Just two short years ago, it would have been inconceivable to most union strategists that the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers would be willing to risk it all as these fast food workers have done. But, then, one is reminded of the old Dylan lyric: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
The great potential of Fight for 15 is that unorganized workers see reflections of themselves in the strikers and begin to fantasize about what a job action could look like at their workplace. This is the perfect complement to well-planned and executed strikes by established labor unions.
The labor wars of the 1980s and 1990s were won by bosses who caught their unions by surprise. The unions that are still here are survivors who have an obligation, both to their continued survival and to the hope of inspiring a greater wave of organizing, to meaningfully plan for job actions that can win in every round of bargaining.
Those who toil in alternative forms of worker representation—the workers centers, advocacy groups and non-majority unions—should strategize and experiment in job actions that help their members and anyone watching and drawing inspiration feel a sense of their own power and agency.
And the rest of labor, starting with the AFL-CIO, should send a strong signal that strike plans are back by incorporating a ban on permanent replacements in the successor to the Employee Free Choice Act and as part of a broader “right to your job” movement. For those public sector unions who are most threatened by the pending Friedrichs decision, a wave of “free speech” strikes to both celebrate and protest the dubious new rights that the Supreme Court threatens to give them.
Source: In These Times
Why a group of Commerce City teachers spent a day asking parents how they could do their jobs better
Why a group of Commerce City teachers spent a day asking parents how they could do their jobs better
COMMERCE CITY — On a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen teachers from the Adams 14 School District walked through a...
COMMERCE CITY — On a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen teachers from the Adams 14 School District walked through a trailer park asking parents how they could do their jobs better.
Christina Zavala, a parent of three students, had a list. At the top: stop the rampant bullying and pay more attention to her son, who has a learning disability.
“In my experience,” she said, “it doesn’t really feel like the teachers care.”
The cadre of teachers hope what they heard — good or bad — can help reshape their schools to better meet the needs of the mostly poor and Latino families that call Commerce City home. The teachers are advocating for a “community school model,” which in part calls for more partnerships with nonprofit groups to help curb the effects of poverty on the classroom.
“The only way we can make a difference with the families in our district is if we get involved,” said Barb McDowell, the Adams 14 teachers union president. “There are a lot of disenfranchised people. We’re not talking to the community.”
Relations between the Commerce City community and the 7,000-student school district have long been strained. Voters consistently have rejected pleas to increase local taxes to repair or replace aging schools and support educational programs. And in 2014, the U.S. Department of Education found the district had discriminated against Hispanic students and teachers.
The district’s response included more culturally responsive training for teachers and the creation of a committee of students to regularly talk about race issues.
Facing state sanctions for chronic poor performance on state English and math tests, the Adams 14 school district, just north of Denver, is overhauling many of its schools. The teachers union believes this provides an opening to put into practice some of the elements of the community school model. Schools are still finalizing their innovation plans, which are expected to be made public later this fall.
Teachers across Colorado are engaged in similar work. It’s all part of a statewide campaign organized by the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, called “The Schools Our Kids Deserve.”
The community school model can be traced back to the 1880s. Modern-day community schools have popped up in Chicago, Baltimore and Lincoln, Neb. Perhaps the most famous community school model is the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City.
In Colorado, the Edgewater Collective in Jefferson County and Blocks of Hope in neighboring Westminster Public Schools are two efforts to create something like a community school.
While supporters of the community schools model have long said that no two community schools should look the same because the needs of communities vary, there is a growing effort to identify common themes that apply everywhere, said Reuben Jacobson, deputy director for the Coalition of Community Schools.
The Colorado teachers union, working with the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools and the Center For Popular Democracy, has created its own list which includes strong and proven curriculum, community support services, and positive discipline practices.
Community engagement, like the work the teachers in Adams 14 are doing, is also a must.
Trish Ramsey, a teacher at Adams City Middle School, put it simply: “This is the first step to rebuild trust.”
By Nicholas Garcia
Source
Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Retail workers celebrate scheduling law. Requirements will bring change to national chains.
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s...
Lisa Morrison loves her job in the floral department at Safeway on U.S. Highway 20 in Bend, but she said the company’s practice of giving three days’ notice of work schedules has created a lot of stress in her life.
So, she made two trips to Salem this year with representatives of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 to lobby legislators on the workplace scheduling bill that passed June 29 with bipartisan support.
Read the full article here.
Democrats Criticize Fed for Lack of Diversity in Leadership
Democrats Criticize Fed for Lack of Diversity in Leadership
The U.S. Federal Reserve came under criticism Thursday from some lawmakers over the lack of diversity in the central...
The U.S. Federal Reserve came under criticism Thursday from some lawmakers over the lack of diversity in the central bank’s leadership.
A majority of Democratic members of Congress -- 11 from the Senate and 116 from the House of Representatives -- signed a letter addressed to Janet Yellen, calling on the Fed chair to include more African Americans, Latinos and women when it considers candidates for top posts. The letter was written by staff for Representative John Conyers of Michigan, according to Ady Barkan of the Fed Up campaign, an activist group that lobbied members of Congress to add their names. No Republicans signed.
“We remain deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve has not yet fulfilled its statutory and moral obligation to ensure that its leadership reflects the composition of our diverse nation in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, economic background and occupation,” according to the letter, whose signatories included presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The letter said more than 80 percent of directors at the Fed’s 12 regional banks are white and about three-fourths are men. Of 12 regional Fed presidents, who participate in monetary policy meetings, 11 are white and 10 are men, it added.
Improvements Made
Fed spokesman David Skidmore said the central bank and its branches have focused in recent years on increasing ethnic and gender diversity. Minority representation on Reserve Bank and branch boards has risen to 24 percent this year from 16 percent in 2010, he said, and the proportion of female directors has increased to 30 percent from 23 percent over the same period. “We are striving to continue that progress,” Skidmore said.
Fed Up is organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, non-profit groups and unions who are lobbying for the Fed to reject raising interest rates.
Regional Fed presidents are chosen by non-banking members of their respective boards of directors. The appointments are subject to the approval of the Board of Governors in Washington.
Regional boards have nine members, as stipulated in the Federal Reserve Act. Three are chosen by and represent banks in the district; three are chosen by the same banks to represent the public; three are designated by the Board of Governors to represent the public.
Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, issued a statement on Fed diversity after the letter was released saying the leading Democratic presidential candidate “believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America.” She also thinks “commonsense reforms” such as removing bankers from regional Fed boards, “are long overdue,” Ferguson said.
Lockhart Retiring
Barring a surprise resignation, the Atlanta Fed presidency will be the next seat on the Federal Open Market Committee to open. Dennis Lockhart, the current president, will be required to step down in March 2017 after serving for 10 years.
“Diversity for the Federal Reserve is critical. This is the very nature of this institution, to broadly represent the communities we serve,” Kansas City Fed President Esther George said in response to a question Thursday after a speech in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “That means industry diversity. It means diversity of thought. And it means racial and gender diversity in the institution.”
There are two governorships already open. President Barack Obama has nominated Allan Landon, the former chief executive officer of Bank of Hawaii Corp., and Kathryn Dominguez, an economics professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, to fill the posts. Republican Senator Richard Shelby has refused to hold confirmation hearings for the pair in a dispute with the White House over its failure to fill a separate Fed post.
By Christopher Condon & Steve Matthews
Source
Toys ‘R’ Us Promotes Nostalgic Selfies While Employee Unrest Boils
Toys ‘R’ Us Promotes Nostalgic Selfies While Employee Unrest Boils
“There are thousands and thousands of retail employees now working at companies owned by Wall Street and private equity...
“There are thousands and thousands of retail employees now working at companies owned by Wall Street and private equity firms, and this kind of financial instability in the sector makes it hard for workers to have sustainable careers,’’ said Carrie Gleason, a director at the Center for Popular Democracy, which is working on the campaign along with Organization United for Respect. “We’re organizing to ensure there’s some accountability for owners who aren’t necessarily running the businesses in good faith."
Read the full article here.
The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics
The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics
WASHINGTON — It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump, but now the so-called...
WASHINGTON — It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump, but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.
Read the full article here.
Ciudades no sólo benefician a los inmigrantes con el ID municipal
Ciudades no sólo benefician a los inmigrantes con el ID municipal
Ocho años atrás, a raíz de ataques contra la comunidad local de inmigrantes y el fracaso de la legislatura estatal en...
Ocho años atrás, a raíz de ataques contra la comunidad local de inmigrantes y el fracaso de la legislatura estatal en expandir el acceso a licencias de conducir, la ciudad de New Haven creó el primer programa municipal del país que otorga un documento de identificación.
Poco a poco, otras ciudades siguieron el ejemplo de New Haven y reconocieron los grandes beneficios que otorga una identificación municipal, no solo para los residentes que no pueden obtener acceso a otros tipos de identificación emitida por el gobierno, sino por el bien de la vida política y económica en general.
Al principio, la adopción de programas de identificación municipal fue un proceso lento, pero se ha acelerado significativamente en el año 2015, impulsada en gran parte por el lanzamiento de la identificación municipal de la ciudad de Nueva York. El IDNYC , aprobado por el Concejo Municipal el año pasado y estrenado a inicios de este año por el alcalde Bill de Blasio, es ahora el más extenso programa de identificación municipal en el país, con más de 350,000 inscritos.
Sin la correcta identificación, una persona tal vez no pueda abrir una cuenta bancaria o cobrar un cheque, recibir atención médica en un hospital, inscribir a su hijo en la escuela, solicitar beneficios públicos, presentar una queja ante el departamento de policía, sacar libros de la biblioteca, votar en las elecciones o siquiera recoger un paquete de la oficina de correos. Con una simple medida, la identificación municipal elimina todas esas barreras.
Si bien las comunidades inmigrantes han sido una fuerza influyente al solicitar que las ciudades adopten programas de identificación municipal, los beneficiarios no se limitarán a las comunidades de inmigrantes.
La identificación municipal es una medida política de gran impacto, precisamente por su potencial de adaptarse a un amplio espectro de situaciones de la vida real. Una docena de ciudades tienen programas nuevos, y hay campañas a su favor en otras tantas. Estos programas tienen el propósito de reducir la falta de acceso a servicios municipales para jóvenes, personas sin hogar, ancianos, ex convictos y personas trasgénero.
Las ciudades también se están dando cuenta de que, para que sus programas de identificación local tengan éxito, deben ser atractivos para todos, incluso residentes que ya tienen otras formas de identificación. El uso de estos documentos de identificación otorga beneficios en negocios e instituciones culturales locales. De esta manera, las ciudades atraen una amplia gama de participantes, lo que le da mayor legitimidad a dicho documento en la comunidad.
Mientras continúe la lucha por la reforma a nivel federal, la identificación municipal es algo que los gobiernos locales pueden hacer para incluir y empoderar a los inmigrantes en su comunidad.
Programas como estos envían un mensaje de inclusión y bienvenida no solo dentro de los linderos de la ciudad donde existen, sino también externamente, hacia el resto del país y Washington DC, donde millones de vidas están en la cuerda floja, pendientes de un debate paralizado.
Source: El Diario
Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
Dozen protesters arrested in Manhattan during May Day rallies
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May...
Exuberant rallies, inspirational speeches and more than two dozen arrests for the cause of immigrant workers marked May Day celebrations around the city on Monday.
A dozen protesters were arrested outside JPMorgan Chase’s Park Ave. headquarters, and demonstrators also gathered in front of a Wells Fargo bank nearby, highlighting the two institutions’ financing of private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
Read full article here.
Exigirán en Washington Ayuda a Puerto Rico a Seis Meses Después del Huracán
Exigirán en Washington Ayuda a Puerto Rico a Seis Meses Después del Huracán
“Los manifestantes partirán desde diversos estados y Puerto Rico y harán una primera parada en la sede central de la...
“Los manifestantes partirán desde diversos estados y Puerto Rico y harán una primera parada en la sede central de la Agencia para el Manejo de Emergencias (FEMA), para finalizar su protesta en el Congreso. Será un día con una cargada agenda que además de la protesta incluirá reuniones con congresistas y en la que no descartan los actos de desobediencia civil para llamar la atención sobre la crisis humanitaria en la isla, dijo a Efe Sammy Nemir, portavoz de The Center for Popular Democracy. De acuerdo con la coalición, que incluye también sindicatos, la "desastrosa respuesta del Gobierno federal ha sido más devastadora y dañina que el huracán".
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
6 days ago
6 days ago