300 learn how to cheat a worker at Teamsters’ forum for Savannah port drivers

by Teamster Power

Attendees share their grievances during [the June 1] Saturday’s forum.Savannah port drivers told nearly 300 people on Saturday how their employers cheat them of wages and benefits by calling them “independent contractors.”

Teamsters Local 728 hosted a community forum for the drivers in Savannah as part of the union’s continuing battle against the misclassification of drivers.

The drivers told news reporters, elected officials and government authorities about their adverse working conditions as contract workers for trucking companies. They explained they are full-time employees in everything but name. They said they have to jump through hoops to take a day off, even though they’re supposed to be independent.

World Day Against Child Labour

ITUC OnLine

(June 12) The ITUC is calling on governments to step up commitment to the global fight against child labour, with new evidence from the ILO that progress is slowing.  215 million children are still at work instead of in school.

“The two ILO Conventions on child labour have been ratified by the vast majority of governments, but tens of millions of children are experiencing the exploitation and misery of child labour when they should be getting a decent education.  The economic crisis, and the obsession with austerity, are severely hampering efforts to get the children out of work and into school,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

What You Need to Fix Your Job

by Seth Michaels
Working America

We spend a big part of our life at work—but for too many of us, that time is spent bumping up against challenges that make it hard to deal with. Fortunately, you don’t have to deal with it alone.

We’ve just launched FixMyJob.com, an innovative new website to help you identify the biggest problems you see at your job and solve them.  We’re really excited to introduce FixMyJob.com and give people the tools to make their own lives better.

We’ve listened closely to what you’ve had to say about the challenges you face at work. For some, it’s harassment or verbal abuse from a boss; for others, it’s a schedule that they can’t control, or a lack of opportunity for raises and advancement. Across the country, one of the biggest issues is an ever-increasing imbalance of power between employees and the companies they work for. These aren’t things you just have to put up with.

With FixMyJob.com, you can make a difference—for you and the people you work with. Check it out today.

Why California Taxpayers Should Support the Wal-Mart Strikers

by John Logan

(June6) Last week, non-union Wal-Mart employees began the first “prolonged” strike in the 50-year history of the nation’s largest employer. Last October and November, Wal-Mart employees across the country participated in a series of one-day strikes and walkouts against the company in support of a minimum $13 per hour wage, more predictable scheduling and an end to management retaliation against employees who speak up at work. Wal-Mart has grown accustomed to isolated protests in the past, but has always believed that they would quickly die out, given workers’ understandable fear of management retaliation. But this time it may be different. Wal-Mart workers in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Washington and elsewhere are striking this week for more full-time jobs, a minimum wage of $25,000 per year, improved working conditions, better health and pension benefits and basic respect on the job. Other protesting Wal-Mart workers from across the country will participate in a week-long “Ride for Respect,” joining the strikers as they head for a national day of action at the company’s AGM in Bentonville, Arkansas on June 7.

Top Democrats React to Low-Wage Federal Workers’ Strike

by Mike Elk

D.C. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton says the low wages paid to federal contract workers are ‘inhumane.’ (Good Jobs Nation)

(May 22)“I work at Quick Pita in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building. I work nearly 12 hours every day serving lunch to the thousands of people who work in the building. But I am not here to tell you how hard I work. I am here to tell you that my employer does not follow the law,” testified Antonio Vanegas before a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus yesterday.

Vanegas is one of 100,000 low-wage workers in the Washington, DC area, according to Good Jobs Nation, many of whom are employed by federal contractors or in federally owned buildings like Union Station, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the Ronald Reagan Building. He and about 100 of his colleagues went on a one-day strike yesterday in order to draw attention to their low pay. Despite provisions in the federal Service Contract Act stating that federal contract workers like Antonio Vanegas should make at least the local prevailing wage, up until a few weeks ago Vanegas was making $6.50 an hour–less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and well below the D.C. minimum wage of $8.25. Additionally, Vanegas works 60 hours a week, but claims he receives no overtime pay for hours he works past 40, in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act.

Global Solidarity with Egyptian, Tunisian and Pakistani Workers Abused by American-based Corporation

by Paul Garver

Mondelez International, the global corporation that is the object of the protest by American workers in this image, is not a household name. But its portfolio includes several billion-dollar brands such as Cadbury and Milka chocolate, Jacobs coffee, LU, Nabisco and Oreo biscuits, Tang powdered beverages and Trident gum. Mondelez International, until recently called Kraft Foods, Inc., has annual revenues of approximately $36 billion and operations in more than 80 countries.

This recent protest at its annual shareholders’ meeting in Chicago, comprised largely of members of Local 1 of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), was led by Ron Oswald, the general secretary of the IUF (International Union of Food Workers). The BCTGM was joining with food workers’ unions around the world in supporting Mondelez workers in Egypt, Tunisia, and Pakistan, whose unions were facing repression from Mondelez corporate management. Mondelez employs some 100,000 workers throughout the world. Almost all of its unionized workers are members of unions affiliated internationally to the IUF.

New Report on Worker Retaliation at Walmart

American Rights at Work/Jobs with Justice has released a white paper detailing Walmart’s extensive and systematic efforts to silence associates who speak out for better jobs. The paper features the stories of workers like Cindy Lee, a model employee and active OUR Walmart member who reports being fired for calling in sick after she was publicly involved with OUR Walmart last fall. The study also finds that Walmart has escalated efforts to silence associates and community supporters since the historic Black Friday strikes, in part with aggressive and meritless litigation intended to intimidate workers and their supporters from raising their concerns inside or near Walmart stores.

Read the white paper here.

“It’s no secret that many companies come down hard on workers who try to join together for fair pay or improved working conditions,” said Sarita Gupta, Executive Director of American Rights at Work/Jobs with Justice. “But Walmart goes above and beyond what we’ve seen from other employers. Not only does the company attempt to block workers’ collective activity by retaliating against those who speak out, now the company is challenging the First Amendment rights of workers and their supporters with ‘trespass’ lawsuits—pitting workers making poverty-level wages against a company with limitless resources.”

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.”

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.

Sharecropping on Wheels

By Sarah Jaffe

The port of Savannah, Georgia generates some $14.9 million in income each year and brings in goods that are dispensed throughout the South—including to a massive Wal-Mart distribution center in the nearby city of Statesboro. Savannah is now the country’s fourth largest container port, and the fastest growing. Traffic at the port went up 11 percent between 2008 and 2012 even as the rest of the country suffered through recession.

The wealth generated at the port, though, hasn’t trickled down. While Wal-Mart and other retailers are doing just fine, the products they sell are transported by port truck drivers who still make low wages—a nationwide average of about $12 an hour. Since the industry was deregulated in the late 1970s, port truck drivers have been classified by their employers as “independent contractors,” meaning that they’re paid by the load, not by the hour, and the bosses don’t shell out for taxes or benefits.

“We need benefits, we need retirement just like everybody in the office does,” says port truck driver John Jackson, part of the Savannah Port Drivers Organizing Committee. “We’re doing all the work and they’re getting the gravy, in a sense. They’re getting a salary, they don’t have to pay out of their salary to try to keep equipment up.”