#Workers' Rights

[luulapants]

If I hear one more person say "Federal workers should strike!" I'm gonna lose it.

1. While many federal workers are unionized, it is specifically illegal for us to strike. Before joining the federal workforce, we have to sign agreements to not strike against the government.

2. Musk wants to dismantle these organizations and dissolve the positions. If feds strike, they won't care. They'd love that. They'd lock the doors behind us. It would give them permission to fire everyone immediately and dissolve their positions forever.

YOU need to strike. Non-feds. For us. Federal workers have been holding the line against fascism for you, and it's time for you to get off your ass and hold the line for US. You need to strike because we cannot.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canadian commercial actors say American actors are crossing the border and the picket line in the middle of a major US entertainment industry strike and filling the jobs of Canadian actors who have been locked out for over a year.

Thousands of unionized commercial actors in Canada have been locked out since April 2022 while The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has been negotiating with commercial agencies to try and get a fair deal.

Now, as a result of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors and WGA writers strikes that have shut down TV and film productions in the United States, some Hollywood actors have travelled north of the border in search of non-union commercial work in Canada.

“Over the last year there’s been a lot of American commercials shooting up in Canada doing everything non union because they can walk around it,” one ACTRA member who requested to be anonymous told PressProgress. [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[charlesoberonn]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blest at More Perfect Union:

Thousands of workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee have voted to join the United Auto Workers, defying an all-out union-busting effort from the state’s political leaders and marking a key victory for the United Auto Workers in their renewed effort to organize the South and non-union plants.

Unofficial results tallied Friday showed that after three days of voting, more than two-thirds of workers voted to join the UAW. The win in Chattanooga is the first successful attempt to organize a non-union automaker in decades and comes after multiple failed attempts to organize the plant, including in 2014 and 2019. More than 4,300 workers were eligible to vote this week.  “I can't explain it. It's not like the first times,” Renee Berry, who has worked at the Chattanooga plant for 14 years and through two prior facility-wide votes, told us in the lead-up to the election. “The first few times was hell…now it's like we can roll our shoulders back, because we got it.”  Volkswagen is the world’s largest auto company by revenue, and until today, every one of its plants around the globe has been unionized except for one.

"This is going to be in history books down the road. This is huge—forever huge,” Robert Soderstrom, a worker at the plant, told More Perfect Union. “People recognize for the first time in a long time, on a mass scale, that there's got to be some changes. And some of the power and stuff that's gone to the corporate world needs to come back to us little guys.” The victory in Tennessee continues a winning streak for the UAW, which negotiated record contracts at the Detroit Three of Ford, GM, and Stellantis last year following a lengthy “stand-up” strike. After passing the contracts, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a $40 million effort to organize non-union U.S. plants, largely based in right-to-work states like Tennessee and owned by auto companies based in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, as well as EV manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian. 

Since launching that new effort, more than 10,000 autoworkers around the country have signed union cards, according to the UAW. Earlier this month, workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama became the second group to file for an election, which will be held from May 13 to 17. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and the state Chamber of Commerce have forcefully opposed the unionization effort, claiming it would hurt Alabama autoworkers—who, even before the pandemic, were making less than they did in 2002 when adjusted for inflation. The same dynamic has played out in Tennessee. Gov. Bill Lee, who denounced the last unsuccessful union campaign in 2019, said it would be a “mistake” for workers at the Chattanooga plant to unionize and boasted about the state’s “right-to-work” law. 

🚨🚨 BREAKING:🚨🚨 Workers at the Volkswagen (VW) plant in Chattanooga have voted yes to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) after 2 failed attempts in 2014 and 2019. #UAW #VWChattanooga #1u

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Leftist legislator seeks to reduce Brazil's working week to 4 days

A Brazilian lawmaker is proposing a bill to reduce the number of days in the working week, attracting support from other leftist forces and generating debate in the country that could directly impact companies' operations.

Erika Hilton, a lawmaker from the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), drafted the text to reduce the working week to four days from the current five or five and a half for those who work Saturdays, with a maximum of 44 hours.

The proposal has been gaining momentum in recent days as left-wing parties prepare an offensive to try to shift public sentiment toward their agenda, including more pro-worker labor laws.

Continue reading.

[iww-gnv]

HARRISBURG, Pa. - When those rare 3-day weekends pop up on the work schedule, it's an office-wide celebration! Well, what if that was every week? A new bill to create a four-day work week is about to be introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature. It would require businesses with more than 500 employees to reduce their work week from 40 to 32 hours a week. However, less work hours will not mean less pay! A Good Day Philadelphia poll showed most people support the 4-day work week, and Rep. G. Roni Green plans to introduce the legislation soon. The Philadelphia lawmaker says the 40-hour work week was put into place 85 years ago, and no longer fits the needs of today's society.

[the-uncanny-dag]

Every person working in creative fields deserves to be compensated fairly for their work. Yes, even the ones whose creations you think are bad. This is not up to discussion

[covid-safer-hotties]

[newyorkthegoldenage]

On December 27, 1928, Governor-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt named Frances Perkins the new Commissioner of Labor, the first woman to hold the job. An advocate for workers' rights, she helped put New York in the forefront of progressive reform by expanding factory investigations, capping the workweek for women at 48 hours, championing a minimum wage and unemployment insurance, and working to end child labor. In 1933, President Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor, a post she held for 12 years. She was the first woman ever to hold a Cabinet position.

Photo: Associated Press

[uwmspeccoll]

May Day 2024

Today is May 1st, on which we celebrate May Day or International Workers' Day. An international holiday, May Day in the U.S. is celebrated on May 1st to mark the beginning of the general strike in support of the 8 hour workday of 1886 that culminated in the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago on May 4th. Four protestors were murdered after an unknown party threw a bomb at police—an act which ultimately resulted in the hanging of four men who were never proven to have been involved with the bombing (some of whom were not even at Haymarket Square).

This pamphlet, May Day: 1947 was written by novelist and writer Howard Fast (1914-2003). Fast was a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s and in 1950 was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to rat out the others who had donated to fund a home for orphans of the Spanish Civil War and was sentenced to jail. While in jail, he began writing the novel Spartacus, which was published in 1951 and turned into the well-known Stanley Kubrick movie Spartacus.

The illustrations shown here are by American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and adventurer Rockwell Kent (1882-1971). Though not a communist himself, Kent had progressive political views and was a member of various unions throughout his life, to the extent that his passport was suspended in the 1950s during the Second Red Scare. His travel rights were only restored after a 1958 Supreme Court Case on the matter in which they found the suspension of his passport a violation of his civil rights.

May Day is an important time to recognize the fight it took to get us the labor rights we have today. It didn't happen overnight or by the benevolence of the bosses—it happened on the backs of workers and through the strength we possess when we band together.

Workers of the world, unite!

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada Post workers in the north took to the picket lines Friday, joining colleagues across the country in striking.

On Tuesday, workers gave Canada Post 72 hours notice ahead of the strike, which has now shut down the company's operations. Canada Post will not deliver mail or parcels, and some post offices will be closed for the duration of the strike.

The walkout happened after the union couldn't reach a negotiated agreement with the employer over wages, expansion of services and worker safety.

The strike affects 55,000 workers nationwide, according to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). Canada Post has confirmed with CBC that it was still negotiating with the union as of midday Friday. [...]

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid

[bitchesgetriches]

Antiwork Is the New American Dream

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

The Heritage Foundation — lead organizer of Project 2025, a sprawling effort to provide policy and staffing for a second Trump administration — recently promoted an apprenticeship program that opens up workers to increased exploitation. Heritage also criticized President Joe Biden for ensuring that most federal infrastructure contracting projects are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

In an article headlined, “Harris, Walz Policy Records Undermine Pro-Worker Rhetoric,” Heritage argues for a return to Trump-era apprenticeship policies that left new workers vulnerable by creating a two-tier workforce, and it disparages unions as detrimental to the working class. The result is standard-fare for the conservative think tank, which regularly attacks unions and promotes anti-worker policies like so-called right-to-work laws, which starve unions of funds by denying them the ability to collect fees from all the workers they represent.  As head of Project 2025, Heritage has waged an all-out campaign against unions and the entire working class. The effort’s policybook — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — calls for the dismantling of New Deal-era wins for organized labor by carving out state-level exceptions to the National Labor Relations Act. It would also eviscerate overtime regulations and open the door to increased child labor exploitation.

The new article furthers Heritage’s broadside against organized labor, even while masquerading as being pro-worker. Heritage criticizes what it characterizes as “the Biden-Harris Administration’s multi-front assault against apprenticeship programs,” specifically the administration’s cancellation of “new Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs,” or IRAPS, “that were training people in high-demand areas like nursing and technology, which now face significant workforce shortages.” In fact, IRAPs were a Trump-era policy that created a new class of apprenticeship programs that were controlled and overseen by employers — rather than the Department of Labor — and loosened standards meant to protect workers. As the progressive think tank The Roosevelt Institute wrote in response to the Trump-era rule, IRAPs are “likely to lead to a proliferation of programs that are lower-quality,” and could allow employers to exploit “loopholes in minimum wage laws.”

[...] This new salvo from Heritage is just the latest example of right-wing media pretending to endorse a pro-worker agenda, only to advance policies that benefit employers at the expense of labor.

The Heritage Foundation= enemies of workers’ rights.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Change from six-day workweek in Brazil is inevitable sooner or later

Discussion on the workweek catches both left and right by surprise, sidestepping the current political polarization in Brazil

The reduction of the workweek has been a long-debated topic and has been implemented in various countries for decades. It has resurfaced in Brazil with the introduction of a constitutional amendment proposal by Congresswoman Erika Hilton, suggesting the shift from a six-day work, one-day rest schedule (6x1) to a four-day work, three-day rest schedule (4x3).

This discussion recalls the legacy of Italian sociologist Domenico De Masi (1938-2013), who published the book “O Ócio Criativo” (“The Creative Idleness”) in Europe in 1995, which was translated into Portuguese a few years later. Mr. De Masi challenged the notion that leisure equates to laziness and unproductivity, instead viewing it as essential for fostering creativity and well-being. He argued that, as in the past, leisure could drive advancements in science, art, technology, and the overall economy.

Mr. De Masi’s book became a global bestseller, considered revolutionary at the end of the 20th century. In Brazil, it also achieved success, leading Mr. De Masi to “adopt” the country, even releasing a subsequent book first in Portuguese.

In early 2013, Brazil was experiencing economic euphoria while Europe and other developed nations faced tough times. During a visit to Brazil, Mr. De Masi expressed his belief that the country would play a significant role in the new lifestyle he advocated, as it was growing, reducing social disparities, and was not embroiled in wars. However, this prediction never materialized.

Continue reading.

[sketchysubstance]

Got my shitty job back, but tbh im still mad at the realisation that i have no workers' rights or laws protecting me from getting fired on the spot just because they feel like it bc im a casual worker. Fun.

[iww-gnv]

The recent wave of worker strikes have ushered in a new era: the “summer of strikes,” also known as hot strike summer. Employees at UPS, Amazon, Starbucks and entertainment companies across Hollywood have walked off the job or threatened to do so over the last few months in an effort to pressure their bosses to improve conditions and pay them more. More than 200 strikes have occurred across the U.S. so far in 2023, involving more than 320,000 workers, compared with 116 strikes and 27,000 workers over the same period in 2021, according to data by the Cornell ILR School Labor Action Tracker. “Workers have more bargaining power given the strength of the economy,” said Harry Katz, a professor at Cornell University.