labor

Labor 101 for Undergraduate Workers Seeking To Unionize

Leave a Comment / unions / By max cyril

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” plays in a classroom at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) as students mill about with pink “Undergraduate Workers UNITE!” buttons pinned to their shirts. Nearly 40 students from 10 institutions across the Northeast gathered Nov. 15–17, 2019, at UMass Amherst, a highly unionized workplace, for the Northeast Undergraduate Worker Convention (NEUWC). …

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Michigan steel mill closure announced two days after Trump told Michigan crowd ‘steel is back’

Leave a Comment / labor / By max cyril

Donald Trump, Wednesday in Michigan: “Look what I’ve done for steel. I mean, the steel is back. We taxed all the dumb steel coming in from China and other places, and US steel mills are doing great — they’re expanding all over the country, and they were gonna be out of business within two years the way …

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DNC expresses hope that labor dispute will be defused ahead of this week’s debate

Leave a Comment / labor / By max cyril

The Democratic National Committee said Monday that it expects parties involved in a labor dispute threatening to upend this week’s Democratic primary debate to “promptly” return to the negotiating table. Xochitl Hinojosa, the committee’s communications director, cited Chairman Tom Perez’s experience as Labor secretary under former President Barack Obama, writing that he’d handled “several labor disputes” in …

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In Wisconsin, the Teamsters Faced a Revolt from Below

Leave a Comment / unions / By max cyril

Every day, Nikki Sampson drives from her home in Portage to Madison, where she works as a dispatcher for the city’s bus service. To get there, she drives along a 40-mile stretch of highway, which crosses the Wisconsin River twice and then slices south through farms and municipalities. That road lies at the heart of …

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Priorities USA launches Latino persuasion program in Florida

Leave a Comment / Vote / By max cyril

Priorities USA is focusing on Latinos early. The Democratic super PAC is launching a sustained digital effort to woo Latinos in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, according to details of the plan provided to POLITICO. Priorities USA is starting in Florida first and will expand the slate of digital ads to other …

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Cheerios Picket Line Averted: After Strike Threat, General Mills Workers Win Tentative Agreement

Leave a Comment / Strike / By max cyril

On Friday, over 500 workers narrowly avoided a strike at General Mills’ production facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On Wednesday, 99% of voting employees rejected a contract proposal that General Mills had called its “last, best, and final offer.” After announcing the results of the vote, a worker-led negotiations committee spent Thursday meeting with the …

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Labor’s next $15 minimum wage: Fair scheduling for shift workers

Leave a Comment / MinimumWage / By max cyril

Labor activists have their sights set on their next priority after successes in state capitols with paid sick leave and higher minimum wage: better working conditions for people who do shift work. Several states, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, are considering so-called fair workweek laws that would arm workers with a set of rights, such as …

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Are we thinking about work-life balance the wrong way?

Leave a Comment / worker's rights / By max cyril

It’s one of the great struggles of modern life: finding a precise, perfect balance between work and life. And, according to Amy Howe, our obsession with finding that elusive equilibrium is part of the problem.This interview was originally published by Politico on November 6, 2019. Reprinted with permission. “I don’t even love the term [‘work-life …

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Newsom has an organized labor problem

Leave a Comment / labor / By max cyril

Some of California’s most powerful unions are openly denouncing Gov. Gavin Newsom less than a year into his tenure, exposing early fractures in the Democratic governor’s base after he spurned proposals they considered a bellwether of his support for labor. Simmering tensions erupted last month when Newsom vetoed three bills backed by the State Building …

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A worker upsurge? This week in the war on workers

Leave a Comment / Strike / By max cyril

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 485,000 U.S. workers were involved in strikes and lockouts during 2018. That’s the highest number since 1986. The data for 2019 won’t be released until 2020, but there’s a good chance that number will be exceeded, a point driven home by the fact that, over the last week, at …

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