Here’s What You Said: Building a Stronger Labor Movement for People of Color

by Mike Hall

In our [AFL-CIO's] second online discussion on how to build a stronger movement for working people, Dr. Steven Pitts, labor policy specialist at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, asked you: “Union density is higher among black workers than it is for any other racial or ethnic group of workers. How can the labor movement use this to build a stronger movement for social change?”

The question generated a thoughtful and lively discussion that will help us prepare for the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention that will focus on how the labor movement should change and what we can do together to improve the future of all working people.

Below are excerpts from some of your answers. Go to our discussion page to see the entire dialogue.

Retailers are the key to workplace safety

A coalition of faith organizations, investors and labor groups—including the AFL-CIO—is urging major U.S. retailers, including Walmart, Gap, Sears and others, to sign on to a binding workplace and fire safety plan to prevent tragedies such as the recent building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 garment workers and two 2012 fires that claimed the lives of more than 400 Bangladeshi clothing workers.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) wrote that those disasters are:

A grave indictment of the human rights record of Bangladesh and an illustration of the failure of the global companies that manufacture and source their products there to ensure humane working conditions.

Some unions protest Obamacare’s impact on Multiemployer Health Plans

by Kay Tillow

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, also known as Obamacare, presents challenges to the multiemployer plans through which some unions bargain collectively to provide health care insurance for their members.  These plans, often called Taft Hartley Plans, currently cover about 26 million workers, families, and retirees.  Unless there is a major regulatory change made by Health and Human Services, these union negotiated plans will be struck a harsh blow once the exchanges go into effect in 2014.

A quiet effort by many unions to persuade the Obama administration to make this change is now becoming very public.

New York City fast food restaurants find a lot of ways to steal from their workers

by Laura Clawson

A staggering 84 percent of New York City fast food workers reports having been a victim of wage theft, a new survey finds. Things are even worse for fast food delivery workers—100 percent of them report wage theft. The New York State attorney general is reportedly investigating pay practices in New York City fast food, and the new survey and report from Fast Food Forward offer a detailed picture of what that investigation might find.Employers cheat workers out of wages in a number of ways, forcing them to work off the clock before or after their shifts or during break times, not paying overtime when workers work more than 40 hours a week, making delivery workers pay for equipment they’re required to have to do their jobs, or just plain not paying the minimum wage. For instance, Shaquenna Davis, who works at a Wendy’s in Brooklyn, is quoted in the report saying:

“My manager clocks me out early at 1:15 am every day. I have to keep cleaning after I’m clocked out to close the store. Five of us work for about a half hour every night that we aren’t paid for, which adds up to about $80 a month for me since I make $7.25 per hour. It would mean a whole lot to me to have that $80 that Wendy’s doesn’t pay me. I could use that money to pay for school, food, or my metrocard.”

Professors, Authors, Civil Rights, Human Rights, and Faith Leaders Urge Senate to Confirm NLRB Nominees

Letters signed by nearly 400 professors and 125 leaders nationwide argues for swift action on NLRB to ensure workplace rights 

 

Washington, D.C. – In two official letters last week, a diverse, prominent chorus of voices called for senators to swiftly confirm the full package of nominees submitted by President Obama for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a step necessary to free the agency from its current limbo status and allow it to function in its role protecting workers’ rights in the United States.

The first letter, signed by nearly 400 notable professors from colleges and universities across the country, states:

Labor Department Hits the Road To Push Minimum Wage Hike

By Bruce Vail

Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris listens May 14 as fast food worker Laura Bailey describes the financial stresses of raising a daughter while earning $7.80 an hour. Between them is Jonathan Martin, another Baltimore worker who would benefit from a minimum wage increase. (U.S. Department of Labor)

BALTIMORE—With one minimum wage hike proposal after another languishing in Congress, some advocates may have given up hope of an increase anytime soon. But Acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris is not discouraged.Harris, who has been the interim head of the Department of Labor since Hilda Solis’s resignation in January, has taken the agency on

road in favor of a wage raise. He traveled to Baltimore this week to meet with low-wage workers and promote President Barack Obama’s State of the Union proposal to lift the federal minimum from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. The president’s plan would also automatically link future increases to inflation, as a way of preventing the gradual erosion of purchasing power that has plagued low-wage workers since the 1980s, Harris says.

Stewart Acuff to Speak at Saturday Rally to Commemorate 1937 Republic Steel Memorial Day Massacre

by Stewart Acuff

Tomorrow I will speak at a rally in Chicago to commemorate the Republic Steel Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 when 10 striking members of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) were shot down by the Chicago Police Department, because they were on strike for the 8 hour day and the right to organize a union. They were murdered for striking for an 8 hour day and the right to organize a union.

Workers were organizing and striking all over industrial America. The National Labor Relations Act had been passed, but it had yet to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The CIO and the autoworkers had begun sit-down strikes in plant after plant. Unprovoked beatings and killings were common. Workers and unions were still suffering the bloodiest labor history in the western world. Police forces and the National Guard had been routinely used to bust heads, break organizing efforts, and break strikes. The United Steelworkers were not yet a fully formed union. SWOC had begun the Little Steel strike to win contracts at the second tier of steel companies. The modern American labor movement was being birthed and it was a very tough delivery.