August, 2019 | Today's Workplace

Choose Language:
print
decrease text size increase text size
text

From Victories to Union Militancy, 5 Reasons for Workers to Celebrate This Labor Day

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Rebecca Burns

Share this post

Labor Day often gets short shrift as a worker’s holiday. Marked primarily by sales on patio furniture and mattresses, the day also has a more muddled history than May Day, which stands for internationalism and solidarity among the working class. Labor Day, by contrast, was declared a federal holiday in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland, fresh off his administration’s violent suppression of the Pullman railroad strike.

But Labor Day was first celebrated twelve years earlier, when a coalition of socialists and labor activists organized a mass march in New York City calling for shorter hours, safer working conditions, increased pay and a labor holiday. On September 5, 1882, 10,000 people took to the streets of New York instead.

That history, plus the simple fact that workers deserve more than one holiday, makes Labor Day worth celebrating. And this year, there are more reasons than usual for working people to rejoice.

The teacher strike wave rolls on

The wave of teacher strikes that began in red states last year has continued apace in some of the biggest U.S. cities. Earlier this year, Los Angeles teachers wrung a hard-won deal from their school district through a week-long strike.

A first-ever charter strike in Chicago last year kicked off a domino effect—more than 700 Chicago charter teachers at 22 different campuses have walked off the job in the past year, and they’re winning things previously unthinkable in the traditionally union-free charter industry.

An impending teacher strike in Las Vegas is drawing some creative solidarity from students, and the Chicago Teachers Union—whose 2012 walkout arguably laid the groundwork for renewed teacher militancy—could be on the verge of another massive strike.

Workers are winning strikes in the private sector, too

There’s an important caveat to statistics showing that the number of striking workers is at a two-decade high: Most of this strike activity is still limited to the public sector.

In the private sector, there is not yet an equivalent strike wave. There are, however, some encouraging signs. A rare, coordinated strike by workers at nearly 30 hotels in Chicago ended largely in victory (workers at one hotel are still holding out). This spring, locomotive plant workers in Erie, Pennsylvania staged a nine-day strike against the company that purchased their facility and attempted to impose significantly lower wages for new hires. Negotiations continued into the summer, and the deal the union eventually accepted included some concessions. But the strike against a two-tier wage system—long-ago conceded by most manufacturing unions—was an important sign of life in the once-militant sector.

Labor support for Green New Deal is on the rise

To hear the mainstream media tell it, blue-collar workers are united in their opposition to climate action. In June, Politico published an article citing local labor leaders who leveled a dire warning at Democrats: the Green New Deal is pushing members into the Republican camp.

In fact, a survey released this year from the think tank Data for Progress found that 62 percent of current union members back the GND. That figure suggests that while climate activists certainly can’t take labor’s backing as a given, there’s substantial support from workers—and the biggest factor in growing this support is organizing with labor to ensure that the Green New Deal benefits workers, and that they’re at the core of the fight to pass it.

This year, the Green New Deal picked up major endorsements from the Service Employees International Union and the Association of Flight Attendants led by president Sara Nelson. In May, Nelson spoke to In These Times about how Green New Deal advocates can engage labor:

Make labor central to the discussion, including labor rights, labor protections and labor expertise. We must recognize that labor unions were among the first to fight for the environment because it was our workspaces that had pollutants, our communities that industry polluted. Let’s not dismiss the labor movement. Let’s recognize and engage the infrastructure and experience of the labor movement to make this work.

Rank-and-file reformers are gaining traction

Speaking of Sara Nelson, her star has been rising since she called for a general strike to end the government shutdown in January, and she could potentially end up succeeding Richard Trumka as the next president of the AFL-CIO.

While they’re still few in number, it’s a breath of fresh air to see national labor leaders who come out of the rank-and-file use their positions to encourage, rather than stifle, independent action by workers, happily break bread with socialists and readily draw connections between labor issues and those of climate change and immigration.

Labor could actually make gains through the 2020 elections

Let’s be honest: Presidential elections have long been a dead-end for unions. Awarding early endorsements without member input and spending millions of dollars on behalf of candidates who won’t even talk about workers’ rights is not a winning strategy.

This year could be different.

With Democratic candidates scrambling to tack to the left, the primaries are also putting important labor policy ideas back on the table. As Jeremy Gantz reported in July, 2020 candidates are rushing to embrace worker-friendly policies in order to win labor’s support.

Bernie Sanders’ Workplace Democracy Plan, in particular, includes ideas that should get a full hearing—ending “at-will” employment, expanding workers’ rights to strike and permitting collective bargaining at the sectoral level.

Sanders is also using his campaign infrastructure to turn supporters out for strikes and labor actions, another welcome development for labor when it comes to presidential campaign season.

The U.S. labor movement may still be under siege, thanks to powerful anti-union forces, including the Trump administration. But with approval of unions at a 15-year high, and a wave of labor militancy on the rise, working people have plenty to celebrate this Labor Day.

This article was originally published at In These Times on August 29, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Rebecca Burns is an award-winning investigative reporter whose work has appeared in The Baffler, the Chicago Reader, The Intercept and other outlets. She is a contributing editor at In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @rejburns.

Share this post

For Incarcerated Workers, Summer Heat Can Be a Death Sentence

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Ella Fassler

Share this post

Temperatures reached 97 degrees on June 21 at the French Robinson Unit prison the day Seth Donnelly collapsed. The Texas Observer reported Seth passed out during his prison job of training attack dogs—running around in a 75-pound “fight suit” while the dogs tried to bite him. Seth’s internal body temperature was 106 when he reached the hospital, where doctors eventually took him off life support. He died on June 23, and his preliminary autopsy lists multiorgan failure following severe hyperthermia.

These conditions aren’t new. Danielle, who asked for In These Times to withhold her last name to protect her family-run business from social stigma, says she woke up in her cell in Texas at Gatesville Prison one typical early morning in July 2015, drenched in sweat. Without time (or permission) to shower or brush her teeth, she reports she was corralled to the fields in a heavy uniform.

“It didn’t feel safe,” says Danielle, who explains she picked tomatoes and jalapeño peppers without pay. Gatesville’s average high temperature that month was 98 degrees. “Texas in July, it’s like sitting on hell’s doorstep,” she says.

A guard who Danielle says she was “deathly terrified of” patrolled the “state property” (the term guards used for incarcerated people) on a horse. Danielle says she was not provided gloves, which often left her hands exposed to thorns and caustic jalapeño juices. One day, Danielle says, after several hours, another woman without gloves asked the guard if they could wash out their wounds. According to Danielle, the guard stopped, pulled her gun and yelled like a drill sergeant: “What are the rules of the field?” Danielle testifies that another group yelled back, “No breaks until work is done.”

Although there is little data or reporting on heat conditions for incarcerated workers, they may be especially vulnerable to being pushed to their limits because there are few labor protections and little to no oversight.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employers to protect workers from serious hazards (including heat-related risks). Though the Act does not cover incarcerated laborers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said federal prisons must still uphold its standards—which include, when the heat index hits 91?103 degrees, reminding workers to drink 4 cups of water an hour, scheduling frequent breaks in cool areas, and developing work/rest schedules for workers in heavy clothing.

But OSHA rules do not apply to state prisons. Twenty-two states have adopted OSHA “state plans,” which cover state prisons with standards intended to be at least as effective as federal standards. Eight of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates have declined to adopt these plans.

“The guards could literally do whatever they wanted to us,” says Danielle, who was incarcerated in Texas from August 2014 to September 2015..

Danielle’s stated working conditions appear antithetical to OSHA’s guidelines. “There was a vehicle that would come by and bring some water, but if the vehicle broke down you were out of luck for water that day,” she says. “That happened numerous times. Even when we get water it was gone within a few minutes and they won’t refill it for you. There are 50-plus women and the women in the back don’t get any.”

Danielle also says adequate work/rest schedules were not implemented. “We would go on for four hours or more before we sat in the shade,” she says. “I remember thinking—I know there were women there who were much older than me doing the exact same thing—‘What would my mother do?’ She would die. She would just fall over on the field and die. How is this possibly allowed?”

Danielle was not alone: Nearly half of people imprisoned in the U.S. work while incarcerated, a population disproportionately likely to be Black. Penal labor became a more significant part of the American economy following the Civil War; police would conduct sweeps and make arrests of Black men when plantations needed additional labor for planting, cutting and harvesting crops. Today, a majority of incarcerated workers perform “institutional maintenance,” which includes tasks like mowing the compound lawn and mopping floors. A relatively small number of others work in “correctional industries,” manufacturing things like license plates, sewing American flags and—as in Danielle’s case—harvesting vegetables that are later sold for a profit. All seven states that don’t pay for non-industry labor are in the South, which can reach dangerously hot summer temperatures.

Even indoor prison work can be dangerous, as 13 states—most of them in the South—do not equip prisons with air conditioning. As Time noted in 2016, more than 120,000 beds in Texas’ criminal justice system do not have air conditioning, while “less than 1% of free Texans live in a home without air conditioning.” OSHA recommends indoor temperatures between 68?76 degrees, and Texas county jails must be between 65?85 degrees—but not Texas state prisons.

While there have not been any assessments of the occupational health of incarcerated workers, it is well documented that heat-related illnesses are a general problem for people in prisons, even when they are not working.

Anecdotal evidence of heat-related problems inside prisons provides additional insight. In a first-person account for The Marshall Project, Timothy Bazrowx described being beaten with a pipe and how a field captain shot at his feet during his first day of work in the fields. In 2017, The Daily Haze published a video of incarcerated workers screaming for help inside of a St. Louis workhouse as temperatures broke 100 degrees. The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, a group of grassroots advocates, said it is “common for prisoners within [the Florida Department of Corrections] to be routinely denied adequate food and safe drinking water, especially those who go outside the gate on work crews. They are never given enough to eat and are forced to work in all conditions despite injury, sickness, brutal temperatures.”

Andrew, a 31-year-old who has been incarcerated in Florida since he was 17, says confined laborers are routinely dehydrated on the job. Andrew says his first mandatory prison job, in 2006 at age 18 in Hamilton Correctional Institution (HCI), consisted of mowing the swampy compound lawn using a dull-bladed non-electric push mower in cloth shoes with poor soles from 8 a.m. until the end of the day and/or job completion alongside a group of other men. The closest large city to HCI, Valdosta, Georgia, had an average high of about 92 degrees during Andrew’s first summer on the job. The confined laborers were generally given water in the mornings, according to Andrew, but the igloo cooler was empty within an hour and a half. During his time on the job, he frequently witnessed people collapsing from fatigue, he told In These Times. And sometimes, he says, the simple act of taking a break resulted in violent discipline: “The officers will come and they’ll put you in handcuffs … and a lot of times the handcuffs turn into you getting slammed on the floor,” Andrew says.

Limited strides to cool prisons in Texas have been made through civil litigation. After four years of litigation, in May 2018, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) agreed to install air conditioning in the housing sections of Wallace Pack Unit, which houses many elderly and vulnerable prisoners. As recently as August 9, however, Federal Judge Keith Ellison accused TDCJ of not fully complying with the settlement.

The suffering endured in the heat, which will worsen with climate change, is stoked by cruelty. “Despite the heat and terrible conditions we lived in—basically, sleeping in a sauna—it was so much more than that,” says Danielle. “It was like [the guards] got a thrill out of making us feel we were lesser than people.”

This blog was originally published at In These Times on August 29, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Ella Fassler is an independent writer, researcher and prison abolitionist.

Share this post

A Worker’s Place Is in the Museum

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Joel Bleifuss

Share this post

Not many museums have mounted a collection of photographs and ephemera that chronicle the history of worker organizing and the labor movement. That’s not surprising. Museums and their special exhibits are underwritten by foundations, corporations and the very rich—funders that, by and large, are not known for their concern for those who toil for a living and seek to better their lives through union representation.

The annual Met Gala, the high-society benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, has revolved around couturiers like Coco Chanel and Alexander McQueen or sartorial themes from camp to Catholicism. Television viewers have yet, however, to see celebrities like Lady Gaga done up in a McDonald’s uniform or other industrial-designed attire walk the red carpet across David H. Koch Plaza—the $65 million gift to the Met from David H. Koch.

All of which makes City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York a rare and radical gem of a show.

One enters this special exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York through a montage of photographs of demonstrators holding placards that read: “Abolish Slavery,” “We Want Respect for Workers,” “Put Black Men to Work or Stop Construction,” “Mt. Sinai Workers Can’t Live on $32 a Week—On Strike” and “Carwasheros al Poder” (Power to the Carwashers).

The exhibit begins with the enslaved people of New York (40% of New York households owned one or more workers in colonial days) and continues through today’s movement of minimum-wage slaves and the Fight for $15.

If the overarching theme of City of Workersis collective action—how New Yorkers formed unions and gained better working conditions and better pay—the subtext is that cooperation among black, brown and white workers made those advances possible. In the age of Trump, that message bears repeating.

In the book that accompanies the exhibit, labor historian Joshua B. Freeman writes, “The city of New York would not exist in anything like its current form without the struggles of working people over the past three centuries.” Similar stories could be told of any number of cities across the country—cities where labor history exhibits could be mounted, if not for want of museum space, cities where the struggle of workers continues to this day.

City of Workers, sponsored by the union-friendly Puffin Foundation of Teaneck, N.J., is on exhibit through Jan. 5, 2020, at the Museum of the City of New York, just one mile north of the Met and across from Central Park. While you are there, check out Activist New York, a permanent exhibit on the city’s history of political agitation in the Puffin Foundation Gallery.

All images courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

(A few of the New York shirtwaist workers, most of whom were Jewish women, went on strike in 1909 for better pay, working conditions and shorter hours. The strike, known as the Uprising of the 20,000, targeted more than 600 garment shops and factories.)

(Frank J. Ferrell, a black delegate of the New York City chapter of the Knights of Labor addresses the group at their 1886 convention in Richmond, Va. When Ferrell was denied a room at a local hotel where he and his New York colleagues had a reservation, they decamped en masse for less racist accommodations.)

(This poster advertises a 1912 Milwaukee talk by Rose Schneidermann, a socialist feminist who had worked in the garment industry. Rose is best known for her speechthat same year to middle-class suffragettes in Cleveland: “What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist … The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.”)

(In 1882, members of the Knights of Labor and the Central Labor Union gathered in New York’s Union Square for the first-ever Labor Day parade.)

(In 1965, in front of Macy’s, members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union picket Judy Bond, a “runaway plant” that had moved to the South. The union’s multi-year campaign included shopping bags that read, “Judy Bond Inc., On Strike, Don’t Buy Judy Bond Blouses.” According to the union, strikers handed out more than 3 million bags in 1963.)

(“Filthy Tenement House Cigar Factories” postcard, circa 1885.)

Amalgamated Dwellings is the oldest limited-equity housing cooperative in the U.S. Founded in 1927 in the Bronx by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the co-op was established to provide affordable housing for workers. Today, Amalgamated is home to more than 1,400 families.

(In 1936, in the Poconos, members of New York’s Communist-led Dressmakers’ Union (Local 22) relax at Unity House. Local 22 and Local 25 purchased the 750-acre retreat, which had formerly been a tony resort for German Jews, in 1919.)

This blog was originally published at In These Times on August 28, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the editor & publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.Bleifuss has worked at In These Times for 24 years, including as managing editor and senior editor. He tackles the state of national and international events with a blend of critical insight and humor, and over the years has developed a niche for investigative reporting.

His reporting on environmental health issues, national security scandals and the Iran Contra affair has landed in newspapers and magazines around the country, including the New York Times, the Utne Reader, the Capital Eye and many others.

He is the co-author of the book “Was The 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?,” with Steven F. Freeman.

Before joining In These Times, Bleifuss was director of the Peace Studies Program for the University of Missouri, a features writer for the Fulton Sun in Fulton, Missouri, and a freelance journalist in Spain.

Bleifuss currently serves on the advisory board of The Public Square, a program of the Illinois Humanities Council.

Share this post

Stand Up and Be Recognized: Worker Wins

Posted on August 28, 2019August 28, 2019 by Kenneth Quinnell

Share this post

Our latest roundup of worker wins begins with actors and actresses winning new contracts and includes numerous examples of working people organizing, bargaining and mobilizing for a better life.

SAG-AFTRA Signs New Agreement with Ad Agency BBH After 10-Month Strike: After a strike that lasted 10 months, SAG-AFTRA has negotiated a new contract with advertising agency BBH. The deal means BBH will provide union wages, pension and health contributions to all actors. David White, national executive director for SAG-AFTRA, said: “We are pleased to welcome BBH back to the SAG-AFTRA family. The tremendous solidarity of our entire membership is to thank for in helping bring BBH back to the table. Our members look forward to once again collaborating with BBH and providing their professional talent to create innovative, memorable and award-winning commercials.”

Netflix and SAG-AFTRA Reach Deal with Significant Improvements for Actors: Netflix and SAG-AFTRA have reached a new three-year contract that includes several major improvements for actors that appear in the streaming service’s movies and shows. The new agreement treats voice-over and motion capture the same as other actors. The contract also includes better residuals from theatrical releases, creates new protections against harassment, sets new overtime rules for stunt performers and other gains.

Workers at Spot Coffee in Buffalo Become Among the First Baristas to Unionize: Baristas at Spott Coffee in Buffalo have voted to form a union, making them among the first baristas in the country to seek to organize a union. Jaz Brisack, the lead organizer for Workers United, which helped organize the campaign, said: “It’s really a relatively new thing to organize baristas, so this is a very groundbreaking campaign and it’s really significant. ‘I think that it will empower people to realize what’s possible. Other places will say, ‘If the Spot workers can do it, why can’t we?'”

San Diego Unified School District Employees Join AFSA: Principals, vice principals, school police supervisors, operations managers, education, food and transportation supervisors voted to join the American Federation of School Administrators (AFSA). AFSA President Ernest Logan said: “This is a new day for the San Diego Unified School District. The [Administration Association of San Diego City Schools] affiliation is a milestone for the union that will give a stronger voice—locally, statewide and nationally—to school leaders in San Diego Unified. This new power will enhance their ability to deliver a better education to the children of this community.”

NLRB Finds Firings of Five IAM Members at Boeing in South Carolina Unjust: A group of flight line inspectors and technicians voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the Machinists (IAM) in 2018, but the company has fought back against the organizing campaign. A National Labor Relations Board regional director found that the firings of five employees at the 787 Dreamliner facility in North Charleston were unlawful acts of retaliation against union supporters. IAM International President Robert Martinez Jr. said: “This ruling is a landmark first step to victory for workers at Boeing South Carolina. Boeing has continuously and systematically ignored the law and trampled on the rights of its own employees in South Carolina. We call on Boeing to immediately reinstate our members, sit down now to negotiate a contract with its Flight Line employees, end its scorched-earth anti-union campaign and get back to the business of working with the IAM and our members to build aircraft. Now is not the time for Boeing to be abusing its safety rules to harass and fire experienced and skilled workers who are critical to the safety of Boeing airplanes.”

Machinists Reach Deal with General Electric to Avoid Strike: More than 1,250 IAM members in Ohio and Wisconsin will not be going on strike after a new contract with General Electric was agreed to. President Martinez said: “Our negotiating committee worked tirelessly to secure a tentative agreement that reflects the importance of our members’ role in making GE the company it is today. The voices of our membership have been heard in every step of this process.”

Martha’s Vineyard Bus Drivers Win First Contract After Strike: Bus drivers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) won their first-ever contract after a monthlong strike during tourist season. The drivers are contracted with Transit Connection to work for the Vineyard Transit Authority. The new contract provides pay increases and seniority protections. Driver Richard Townes said: “This is a historical day for VTA drivers and a great day for the island. We can now better provide for our families, our jobs are more secure, and we can get back to safely transporting our riders, friends and allies, whose support on the picket lines and year-round was critical in achieving this fair contract.”

ACLU of Maryland Staff Join OPEIU: Staffers at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland voted for representation by Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 2. Justin Nalley, an education policy analyst, said: “We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to negotiate a workplace that is fair and equitable for all staff. The staff of the ACLU of Maryland take exercising our rights as employees as seriously as the work we produce on behalf of our clients, Maryland residents and the broader ACLU of Maryland family. We hope the ACLU of Maryland will hold itself to the same values we use to fight for our civil liberties every day and apply those values to our internal workplace reform. While it is unfortunate the unionization process was met with increased distrust on the management side and has taken nearly half a year after asking for voluntary recognition, we expect the contract negotiation to be more efficient and collaborative as we all share the same goals.”

BuzzFeed Voluntarily Recognizes Employee Union After Walkout: After months of negotiations and a walkout, BuzzFeed has finally agreed to voluntarily recognize the union employees have fought for. The employees walked off the job in order to gain union recognition and improvements to management, pay inequality and job security. In a release, the union said: “We’re excited to share that we have reached a voluntary recognition agreement with BuzzFeed. On Tuesday, a third party will conduct a card-check. Once that’s completed, our union will be certified. And we can’t wait to celebrate our victory once it’s official!”

Committee to Protect Journalists Staff Join Writers Guild of America, East: After more than 90% of the staff signed union authorization cards, the staff at the Committee to Protect Journalists have joined the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). Natalie Southwick, who works as the program coordinator for Central and South America for CPJ, said: “We’ve grown a lot as an organization over the last four to five years, and that means that practices that were in place when our organization was half this big are no longer necessarily the ones that make sense for our current size and goals. CPJ’s growth has also made it more difficult to maintain consistency across the organization in terms of opportunities, policies and accountability. We wanted to make sure we were taking proactive steps to ensure this is a positive workplace for everyone as we continue to grow.”

California Grocery Store Workers Secure Contract: United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 8-Golden State has negotiated a new contract with Safeway and Vons. About the deal, UFCW 8-Golden State President Jacques Loveall said: “At the bargaining table we were able to build on the key achievements of decades of union solidarity. This contract is one of our best ever, a big ‘win’ for union members.”

This blog was originally published by the AFL-CIO on August 28, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kenneth Quinnell is a long-time blogger, campaign staffer and political activist. Before joining the AFL-CIO in 2012, he worked as labor reporter for the blog Crooks and Liars.

Share this post

More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Laura Clawson

Share this post

The southern United States is not known as a bastion of union strength or worker power, but 20,000 AT&T workers across nine states are on strike this week. The workers’ union, the Communications Workers of America, has been trying to negotiate a new contract with AT&T and, with negotiations having broken down, has said the company is not bargaining in good faith.

“AT&T does not understand that CWA is prepared to bargain and is prepared to make a deal that benefits our members and AT&T,” CWA District 3 wrote in a statement on Friday. “It turns out that for over three months, we have been bargaining with people who do not have the real authority to make proposals or to reach an agreement with us.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders joined workers on a picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, telling them, “I want you to know that millions of American workers are standing with you today. Because what you are going through is exactly what they are going through. I’m proud to be here with you and what you’re doing is what needs to take place all over this country. Working people need to stand up and tell corporate America; enough is enough.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden also tweeted support for the workers.

AT&T got a massive tax break from the Republican tax law, and claimed it would invest in U.S. jobs, only to turn around and cut 23,000 jobs.

This blog was originally published at Daily Kos on August 27, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos.

Share this post

8 Unions Have a Plan for Climate Action—But It Doesn’t Mention Fighting the Fossil Fuel Industry

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Rachel Cohen

Share this post

On June 24, the BlueGreen Alliance—a national coalition which includes eight large labor unions and six influential environmental groups—released an eight-page document laying out its vision to curb climate change and reduce inequality. The report, dubbed Solidarity for Climate Action, marks a significant development in the world of environmental politics. It argues the needs of working people must be front-and-center as the U.S. responds to climate change, and rejects the “false choice” between economic security and a healthy planet.

While the report’s focus on public investment, good jobs and justice shares much in common with the federal Green New Deal resolution introduced in February, it also stands in tension with environmentalists who demand the U.S. work to transition more quickly away from oil, coal and natural gas. “We’d really like them to be stronger and more concise about what it means to move away from fossil fuels and transition to renewables,” said José Bravo, executive director of the Just Transition Alliance and speaking on behalf of the Climate Justice Alliance. Members of the BlueGreen Alliance say the ultimate goal should be to decarbonize the economy—to reduce CO2 emissions, but not necessarily end the fossil fuel industry itself, with its tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. Other climate groups say that won’t be enough, and humanity cannot afford to preserve industries that have caused so much environmental harm. This difference in vision will stand as one of the most fundamental political questions facing progressives in the next decade.

The report spells out a series of principles, including limiting warming to 1.5°C, expanding union jobs, modernizing infrastructure, bolstering environmental protections and rebuilding the nation’s manufacturing sector with green technologies. It also elevates the issue of equity, calling to “inject justice into our nation’s economy by ensuring that economic and environmental benefits of climate change solutions support the hardest hit workers and communities.” The BlueGreen Alliance emphasizes the disproportionate impact low-income workers and communities of color will face, and says those affected by the energy transition must receive “a just and viable transition” to new, high-quality union jobs.

To make its platform a reality, the BlueGreen Alliance endorses a host of specific policies and timetables, like reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, while being “solidly on a path” to that goal by 2030. Among other things, the report calls for measures like restoring forests and wildlands, cracking down on employee misclassification, making it easier to unionize one’s workplace, winning universal access to high-speed Internet, and “massive” economic investing in deindustrialized areas, “including remediating any immediate loss of tax base or public services for communities.”

Labor groups in the coalition include the United Steelworkers, the Utility Workers Union of America, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, the Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers. The environmental organizations include the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters.

Following the 2016 election, the coalition organized listening sessions with workers in communities that voted for Donald Trump, like in Macomb County, Michigan, and the Iron Range in Wisconsin. After those discussions, leaders started investing in broader polling, message-testing and focus groups. While opponents of regulating greenhouse gas emissions relish exploiting tensions between environmentalists and labor unions, Mike Williams, the deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, said it became clear from the research “that working people do quite care about climate change, but they also believe they should not be forced to make a choice between that and having a good job.”

“We went through a lot of iterations and a lot of conversations,” said Sara Chieffo, the vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters. “There was real unanimity that we were solving the twin crises of inequality and climate change.”

Jeremy Brecher, the co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability, which supports organized labor in tackling climate change, tells In These Times that he sees the Solidarity for Climate Action report as “quite a significant stepping out” for the BlueGreen Alliance. “The BGA was basically [created in 2006] to advocate for the growth and quality of jobs in the clean economy,” he said. “It did not take positions on targets and timetables for carbon reduction, clean coal and the KXL pipeline. It was a green jobs organization, which is important in terms of understanding where the BGA was coming from.” Brecher says the BlueGreen Alliance’s new statement “about the pace of greenhouse gas emission reductions and the absolute centrality and necessity of it is an extremely positive development.”

Evan Weber, the political director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, agrees. “I think the platform represents a really historic step forward for a number of the nation’s largest and most influential labor unions,” he said. “It leaves some questions about what needs to be done, and we’d like to see more ambition, but it is really meaningful that these groups and unions have come to the table and shown that they’re willing to move forward and not stay in the ways of the past.”

The Green New Deal resolution was introduced in Congress as the BlueGreen Alliance hashed out its own proposal. The leaders of some labor unions in the BlueGreen Alliance that represent workers in the fossil fuel industry—including the Steelworkers and the Utility Workers—have publicly voiced criticism of the Green New Deal, blasting it for a lack of specifics. The federal resolution “certainly took over a big portion of the national climate conversation, and a few of our partners were supportive, but there is also skepticism from the labor side,” said Williams. “As we were working we said we need to focus on our own process to see where we can forge alignment.”

Some hope the BlueGreen platform can serve as a policy blueprint for moving forward on the Green New Deal. SEIU, which represents 2 million workers, is both a BlueGreen coalition member and the first international union to back the federal Green New Deal resolution. “SEIU members know that we must take bold, immediate action on climate change, including holding corporations accountable for rampant pollution and ensuring good union jobs as we transition to a clean energy economy,” president Mary Kay Henry told In These Times. “That’s why we are proud to support both the Green New Deal, our North Star for what needs to be accomplished on climate change, and the BlueGreen Alliance’s platform, a roadmap for how we can get there.”

The League of Conservation Voters also endorsed the Green New Deal resolution back in February, and Chieffo told In These Timesthat her group sees the Solidarity for Climate Action report as “a really essential addition” to the conversation. “We are proud to endorse the Green New Deal and I think it’s incredibly valuable to have these eight powerful unions at the table laying out a proactive vision for how we tackle climate change.”

In These Times reached out to the original co-sponsors of the Green New Deal, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey of (D-Mass.), for comment on the BlueGreen Alliance’s report.

Anika Legrand-Wittich, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, said while she was unable to reach the Congresswoman for specific comment, she “confirmed with our staff that we have indeed worked with BlueGreen Alliance and share many of their goals.”

Giselle Barry, a spokesperson for Sen. Markey, pointed to a supportive tweet the senator posted following the report’s release. It signal boosted the BlueGreen Alliance platform, and reads, “Transforming our economy and combatting climate change will create millions of jobs, but it won’t be possible without our workers and their families. Great to see our allies in organized labor continuing to make climate action a top priority.”

New Consensus, a think tank working to develop policies for the Green New Deal, said in an email “We don’t have any comment on the BGA report at this time.”

Fossil fuels

Despite its generally positive reception, the Solidarity for Climate Action has not gone without critique — and some environmental groups and labor leaders have raised issues and questions about the platform.

“I don’t think it goes far enough in terms of moving us definitively off fossil fuels at the speed that is required,” said Weber of the Sunrise Movement.

Brecher, of the Labor Network for Sustainability, said while overall the report marks a “very big step forward” for unions, he thinks its language “can use a little tightening up” to prevent groups from having too much “wiggle room.” He specifically pointed to language that America should be “on a pathway” to reducing its emissions, and suggests that be more specific. “It is overall quite close to the Green New Deal resolution, which also has a little wiggle room,” he said. (For example, most action items in the Green New Deal come with the caveat of “as much as is technologically feasible.”)

Julian Brave NoiseCat, the director of Green New Deal strategy at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, said his organization’s vision for climate action shares a lot of overlap with the BlueGreen Alliance platform. But he noted BlueGreen Alliance’s does not include a 100% clean energy commitment, nor explicit provisions to phase-out fossil fuels, and it does not include a 10-year mobilization, in line with the Green New Deal. He also said he wonders whether the BlueGreen Alliance would support a federal jobs guarantee, or some other federal work provision.

Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, a climate group, said while it’s significant to see the labor movement taking proactive steps on the environment, as well as seeing the report’s emphasis on justice and equity, he protested its lack of mention of fossil fuels, natural gas, oil or coal. “How do you have solidarity for climate action when you’re not proactively calling out the very fuel sources that we have to eliminate from the U.S. economy?” he asked. “It says a lot of great things about how we want the economy structured, but in many ways it papers over where some of the greatest disagreement is between parts of the labor movement and the environmental community.”

Pica also acknowledged that the Green New Deal resolution did not make any mention of fossil fuels. “We were critical of that, too,” he said.

Mike Williams, of the BlueGreen Alliance, said while he understands that critique, he also thinks “it’s a bit much” to expect this platform to call for banning fossil fuels. “Our goal is to get climate pollution out of our economy by a certain time to avoid as much warming as possible, so we established our platform with the methods we think will help get us to those goals,” he said. “The banning of fossil fuels — that’s pretty controversial to expect of the people who represent the human beings who work in that sector. This is tens of thousands of people who work in these industries, and for a union to step out and say we’re going to end your job and the promise of a new job is a wink and a nod and a handshake. Well America has never before followed through on any proper transition, save for maybe the New Deal for white dudes.”

From Williams’ perspective, demanding unions call for ending their own jobs, before any sort of real alternative agreement is in place, is simply unrealistic. “It’s so mind boggling to think that people who represent folks who work in those industries would jump so far out ahead of where their membership is, and without any real forthright and immediately implementable solution,” he said.

Pica, of Friends of the Earth, also critiqued the BlueGreen Alliance for making no gesture toward campaigns to keep fossil fuels in the ground. “It’s been the divestment fights, trying to get universities and cities to divest their money from fossil fuel companies, that has been the fuel of the climate movement over the last decade,” he said.

Williams said the absence of certain “buzzwords” doesn’t diminish from what the document accomplishes. “We’re on the same side, and I truly respect [the environmental critics] and I hear them, but this is about building a broader movement that can get bigger solutions across the line,” he said.

Carbon-capture technology

Perhaps the most polarizing policy endorsed by the Solidarity for Climate Action report is that of carbon-capture technology, a method backed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and supported by most of the labor movement. But among environmentalists it’s more divisive, as some argue it will prolong dependence on fossil fuels, be too costly, and make it harder to reduce emissions overall.

“The fact that it’s included in the BGA report I think is very unfortunate and something that realistically has no chance of making a significant contribution to climate protection,” Brecher said. “Some of the other environmental groups are more squishy.”

Pica called carbon-capture “an expensive detour to nowhere” that’s a “nonstarter and at worse feeds kind of feeds false hope.” In January more than 600 environmental groups sent a letter to Congress saying they will—among other things—“vigorously oppose” federal climate legislation that promotes “corporate schemes” like carbon-capture and storage. Brecher and Pica’s groups were among the signatories. While the Green New Deal resolution is ambiguous on carbon-capture, last week Sen. Bernie Sanders released his presidential climate plan, which includes opposition to the technology.

Phil Smith, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, a labor union not represented in the BlueGreen Alliance, tells In These Times that there are aspects of the report his union agrees with, “especially with respect to carbon-capture technology.” But he critiqued it as not specific enough when it comes to defining what a “just transition” means. The platform calls for “guaranteed pensions and a bridge of wage support, healthcare and retirement security” until an impacted worker finds a new job or retires.

“Coal miners want to know what the hell you mean when you say you want a ‘just transition,’” Smith says. “Training to drive a truck is not a just transition. Training a miner to earn half of what they’re making now is not a just transition. … Our concern is once laws get passed to phase out carbon dioxide in 10 years, if we’re going to have a ‘just transition’ then we needed to be working on that 15 years ago. It’s just meaningless words on paper right now, and we keep seeing it over and over.”

Moving forward, members of the BlueGreen Alliance plan to promote the policies outlined in their new platform through legislative advocacy and local community organizing. In late July, the coalition sent a letter to the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), and its ranking member, John Shimkus (R-Ill.), encouraging them to consider the Solidarity for Climate Action platform as they proceed in Congress.

“I think the next phase of work is educating elected officials on what’s in the platform,” said Chieffo. “And then really rolling up our sleeves to craft the legislation and hopefully future executive branch options needed to deliver it.”

This article was originally published by In These Times on August 26, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Rachel M. Cohen is a journalist based in Washington D.C. Follow her on Twitter @rmc031

Share this post

Teachers union urges Senate to avert the next school shooting by passing gun laws now

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Laura Clawson

Share this post

The American Federation of Teachers is calling on the Senate to pass gun legislation to help make schools and other public places safer. Randi Weingarten, the union’s president, addressed a letter to Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, urging them to hold a vote on an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and red flag legislation.

”Tragically, too many of our nation’s schools and communities are being terrorized by the effects of gun violence,” Weingarten writes, according to a report in The Hill. “We must work to pursue and implement commonsense solutions to reduce these acts of violence.”

Weingarten describes the laws proposed as having “been informed by members’ firsthand experiences in schools and communities touched by gun massacres.”

It’s significant that the teachers union is focusing this message on the Senate, since it’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is standing in the way of gun safety legislation—along with so much else.

This blog was originally published at Daily Kos on August 26, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos.

Share this post

Trump thinks tariffs will add U.S. manufacturing jobs. Economic reality says they won’t.

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Adam Behsudi

Share this post

When then-Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina went to a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Kent International in 2014, the bicycle company had grand plans for expansion at its assembly plant to make its products in the United States.

“Manufacturing, it’s never as easy as it looks and people kind of laughed at us, but won’t be laughing very much longer,” Kent International Chairman and CEO Arnold Kamler said. “We are not reinventing the wheel; we just have a really talented bunch of workers and managers.“

President Donald Trump had promised that his steep tariffs on Chinese goods would help bring jobs back to the U.S. But five years later, paradoxically, it is the very tariffs that Trump has imposed that have kept that plant in Manning, S.C., from expanding, Kamler said in an interview.

Firms are indeed moving out of China but are not flocking to the United States, undermining the central promise of Trump’s trade war. Cheaper labor markets in Southeast Asia are the ones benefiting the most amid the trade war that has ratcheted up duties on Chinese goods.

In fact, the administration’s actions have prompted Kent International to still rely on its joint venture partner, Shanghai General Sports, to supply more of its bicycles. For its part, Shanghai General is planning to build a factory on a plot of land in Cambodia. By the end of year, 40,000 square feet of production capacity will be complete.

Kamler estimates that 30 percent of the company’s annual production of 3 million bicycles will come from Cambodia, at the expense of China.

The tariffs are also taking a toll on Kent International’s ambitions to bring jobs to the U.S. The company needs steel tubes as components in the welding assembly line, which currently can only be bought at a reasonable price from foreign suppliers.

The administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — as well as the threat of new tariffs on the majority of the components used in bicycle production — has meant that additional phases of bringing jobs to the U.S. have yet to happen.

The latest U.S. economic trends aren’t helping efforts. U.S. economic growth has slowed this year and the 3 percent growth Trump promised last year was revised down to almost 2.5 percent.

Manufacturing job trends are also cooling. The latest U.S. jobs report showed manufacturing employment rose by an average of 8,000 per month so far in 2019, compared with an increase of 22,000 jobs per month in the sector in 2018.

Across-the-board tariffs on all Chinese imports could create more than 1 million U.S. jobs in five years, contends the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a major backer of Trump’s tariffs. The reality, however, is other nations with lower wages are the ones benefiting from the president’s strategy.

“The majority of jobs are going to other countries,” said Jeff Ferry, chief economist for the coalition, which has advocated a complete decoupling from the Chinese economy to benefit the U.S.

The group‘s study found only a small gain in production returning to the U.S. the first year of a blanket tariff, representing only about 0.2 percent of the more than $500 billion worth of imports from China. By year 5 though, that number would increase to 13 percent compared to the value of last year’s imports from China, he said.

For his part, Trump pledged that his strategy to escalate the trade war against China would create jobs in the U.S. in the long term.

“Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producer and, most importantly, a powerful way to get companies to come to the USA and to get companies that have left us for other lands to COME BACK HOME,” Trump tweetedlast month.

Acecdotal evidence, not hard numbers.

There have been some prominent announcements from companies trumpeting that they have “reshored,” or brought jobs back to the United States.

Stanley Black & Decker said this year it would move production of its Craftsman line of tools, which it acquired from Sears, from China to Texas where it would add 500 jobs. High-end furniture seller Restoration Hardware said in a recent earnings report that tariffs were spurring it to bring some manufacturing to the U.S.

The U.S. Commerce Department published this year a “case study” on reinvesting in the U.S., highlighting the experiences of six companies moving production to America. The report makes the case “that anecdotal evidence of hundreds of reshoring cases is very real,” but it also admits that tariffs are a “challenge” for companies wanting to move production to the U.S.

Half of the companies profiled by the Commerce Department highlight the harm of tariffs on investment decisions.

Quality Electrodynamics, an Ohio-based company that designs and produces parts for medical devices, “recommended that the U.S. government could promote reshoring and expansion in the United States by revising U.S. tariffs on Chinese components in a way that does not disadvantage U.S. companies.”

Those working to find ways to increase reshoring say the tariffs are making it harder for companies to make decisions on where, or even whether, to add capacity.

Harry Moser, president of the nonprofit Reshoring Initiative, said he agrees 100 percent with the goals of Trump’s tariffs, but said they have had a “modest net negative” effect on jobs coming back to the U.S. as companies look elsewhere to relocate production.

Based on the Reshoring Initiative’s own study, 2018 was a banner year for the return of jobs to the U.S., but that progress dropped off in 2019. Already, $250 billion worth of imports are subject to a 25 percent tariff, and Trump has threatened to slap duties on almost all that the U.S. brings in from China.

Trump has announced that he would hit an estimated $112 billion in imports from China with a 10 percent as of Sept. 1, while another $160 billion subject to the duty as of Dec. 15.

“Clearly Trump caused work to come here more by the things he did on taxes than by pounding on the table with tariffs,” Moser said. “The uncertainty caused by the tariffs are hurting reshoring and foreign direct investment.”

Trump’s trade chief, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, acknowledged recently that tariffs were diverting some production to the U.S. but also to other countries.

“The imposition of tariffs can have many effects, including modifications to supply chains,” he wrote in a response to a written questions from Congress on whether tariffs are benefiting producers in other countries.

“I have closely followed reports of manufacturing coming back to the United States from China or going to third countries in some instances,” he said.

Sebastien Breteau, the CEO of Hong Kong-based supply chain inspection company Qima, said the data his firm collects supports the theory that neither China nor the U.S. is winning the trade war.

The company, which has 6,000 clients worldwide, has seen a 13 percent drop for China-based inspections from U.S. companies.

Meanwhile, inspections for U.S. clients increased 21 percent in Vietnam, 25 percent in Indonesia and 15 percent in Cambodia. Mexico inspections for U.S. clients jumped by a staggering 119 percent in the first six months of 2019.

“There is a clear sign that in the trade war between the U.S. and China, the winner is not going to be the U.S. and it’s not going to be China,” he said. The winners are “going to be Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and very likely Mexico and Bangladesh.”

The Qima data is supported by a recent report from consulting firm AT Kearney, which found that imports from low-cost Asian countries in 2019 outpaced U.S. manufacturing output.

A report by the investment firm China International Capital Corporation released last month estimated that across eight manufacturing sub-sectors in China, the first two batches of tariffs from the United States would likely result in 1.5 million job losses in China. The authors said that looking across the whole manufacturing sector, “this estimate may be low.”

However, there is little evidence to suggest that many of these jobs are flocking to the United States.

George Whittier, CEO of Morey, a Chicago-based custom electronics manufacturer, said his company still relies on imported parts to make GPS tracking devices and controllers for vehicles. Most of those components imported from China are subject to tariffs, but the finished products are not. The result is more time spent haggling over costs with existing customers rather than expanding production and jobs.

Whittier also questioned whether the U.S. labor pool could absorb a major increase in manufacturing. He said he has 15 positions open that he has been unable to fill even after raising the offered salaries twice.

“If there was this big boom of manufacturing coming back from China into the U.S., I gotta be honest, I have no idea where the workers are going to come from,” he said.

Kamler, of Kent International, said previous discussions with the Trump administration had been frustrating because of a perspective that only goods made from “start-to-finish in the U.S.” count as “real” domestic manufacturing. But he added that recent talks with the Commerce Department had been more fruitful.

Kamler has formed a coalition of 12 American companies in an attempt to bring an entire supply chain cluster back to the United States. If the alliance can prove that it’s assembling entire bicycles in the United States, it would “be able to import all the component parts for five years, duty free,” Kamler said.

Still, he said he was told the alliance would only get the tariffs eliminated if it could prove that it could increase U.S. bicycle assembly from 600,000 annually to 4 or 5 million. Kamler said the industry would ultimately have to seek permanent relief from tariffs through legislation, which he said is in the early stages of being developed.

“These things don’t happen so fast, but this is a long-term play and this is actually my hope and part of my legacy that I’m hoping to leave, that I can help bring back the American bike industry,” he said.

Counterfeiting, not tariffs, prompt some moves

For other companies, the threat of intellectual property, or I.P., theft and not tariffs has driven decisions to relocate production to the U.S.

Isaac Larian is the chief executive officer of MGA Entertainment, the world’s largest privately owned toy company. Last year, one of his company’s brands, Little Tikes, reshored production of fashion accessories for its line of L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls to an existing plant in Hudson, Ohio, in a bid to avoid fake versions of its products from being sold to consumers.

“The biggest problem we face in China is the theft of I.P. There are over 200 factories in China that make L.O.L. Surprise! counterfeit products and very little can be done about it,” Larian said. “These counterfeit products are unsafe for children.”

He said MGA tested moving one item’s production to the U.S. and found it was successful. Now, it plans to move more accessories, especially because toys made in China are among the items subject to a 10 percent tariff as of Dec. 15.

“It will definitely affect business due to lower sales, and we are looking at options” to move more manufacturing out of China, he said, adding that “it is too late for this year.”

Another toy seller, Unit Bricks, examined moving production to the U.S. by pricing out the plastic elements of its production as well as packaging. But the company decided it was unaffordable at this stage because profit margins on toy sales are too thin to justify the costs of relocating production to the U.S.

“Everything is about margins,” said Timothy Stuart, the owner of the educational toy maker. “The issue with the U.S. is that labor intensive items become too expensive.”

“All production is in China for us: plastic, wood, packaging. Industry follows labor, and America can’t afford cheap labor,” said Stuart.

With the threat of a new tariffs looming, Stuart said that his business could absorb a 10 percent levy, but should it rise to 25 percent, “we would have zero choice at that point” but to leave China.

“Frankly, I still have hope that the 10 percent won’t hit, but we are prepared for it and have already spoken to customers. They’ve increased the quantities of their orders, so that helps,” said Stuart.

But should things escalate, the U.S. and Poland are both active options but due to the higher cost, “the U.S. is the last resort.”

This article was originally published at Politico on August 24, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Adam Behsudi is a trade reporter for POLITICO Pro. Prior to joining POLITICO, he covered international trade policy for Inside U.S. Trade, where he tracked down the latest news on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from exotic locales such as Auckland, New Zealand; Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; and Leesburg, Va.Before writing about anti-dumping, export controls and other trade subjects, Behsudi covered city hall for the Frederick News-Post. He got his start in journalism chasing crooked sheriffs and other crime-related news in the mountains of western North Carolina for the Asheville Citizen-Times

Behsudi earned his bachelor’s degree in 2005 from the University of Missouri. With the hope that journalism could return as a growth industry within his lifetime, he earned a master’s degree in interactive journalism from American University in 2010.

Share this post

Trump administration set for a Labor Day overtime fake-out, this week in the war on workers

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Laura Clawson

Share this post

The Trump administration is about to pretend it’s doing something great for workers, but surprise—it’s not so great. Heidi Shierholz explains the truth behind reports that the administration will roll out its new overtime eligibility rule in time for Labor Day, looking for positive headlines about all the workers who’ll suddenly be eligible for time-and-a-half if they work more than 40 hours a week.

The Obama administration tried to raise the threshold to which salaried workers are eligible for overtime from the current level of $23,660 up to $47,476, meaning that a lot of workers would suddenly get either more time or more pay. That got blocked by a conservative judge, and now the Trump administration plans to propose an increase to $35,308—which sounds good, if you don’t realize that $47,476 had been on the table, so everyone earning between those two numbers will now be left out. It’s an advance over the status quo, sure, but a big step back from what the status quo would have been if right-wing groups hadn’t sued to block the Obama policy and a right-wing judge hadn’t taken their side.

“The Trump administration’s weaker rule will leave behind an estimated 8.2 million workers who would have gotten new or strengthened overtime protections under the 2016 rule,” Shierholz writes. “This includes 4.2 million women, 3.0 million people of color, 4.7 million workers without a college degree, and 2.7 million parents of children under the age of 18.” Overall, $1.2 billion a year less will go to workers under the expected Trump rule than under the thwarted Obama rule.

This blog was originally published at Daily Kos on August 24, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos.

Share this post

Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is a powerful reminder of how equal pay isn’t

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Laura Clawson

Share this post

Equal Pay Day, the day when women had made as much since January 1, 2018, as white men made in 2018, was back on April 2. It is just now—August 22, 2019—Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. That’s because while women overall make 80 to 81 cents for every dollar a white man makes, there are major racial disparities among women.

Asian women have the smallest disparity, making a whopping 85 cents on the dollar, so their equal pay day comes in early March. White women come next, at 77 cents—their equal pay day is just a few days after the overall one, on April 19. For black women, it’s 61 cents, which is why we’re here in late August talking about equal pay, by which we mean how equal the pay isn’t. That gap adds up fast, Jocelyn Frye writes at the Center for American Progress, “amounting to $23,653 less in earnings over an entire year. In the span of a 40-year career, this translates into an average lifetime earnings gap of $946,120 between Black women and white men.” Black women face a massive gap no matter how much education they get—and they’re left with higher student loan debt than any other racial group.

When we talk about Equal Pay Day, we’re always talking about apples to apples—people who work full time and year round. And with black women, we’re talking about the group of women that has always worked outside the home at the highest rates, with a complicated and often viciously discriminatory history in which, Frye writes, “Black women frequently encounter a workplace narrative that deemphasizes the importance of their personal caregiving responsibilities or suggests that their caregiving roles should be secondary to their paid work.” Black women have long cared for white children for low wages while their caregiving role for their own children was shoved to the side, and black women remain disproportionately in occupations in which scheduling abuses and unpredictable weekly hours of work make life even more difficult than low wages alone would do.

Since Native American women earn 58 cents for every dollar a white man makes and Latina women earn 53 cents, their equal pay days won’t come until September 23 and November 20.

This blog was originally published at Daily Kos on August 22, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos.

Share this post

Workplace Fairness

Month: August 2019

From Victories to Union Militancy, 5 Reasons for Workers to Celebrate This Labor Day

For Incarcerated Workers, Summer Heat Can Be a Death Sentence

A Worker’s Place Is in the Museum

Stand Up and Be Recognized: Worker Wins

More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith

8 Unions Have a Plan for Climate Action—But It Doesn’t Mention Fighting the Fossil Fuel Industry

Teachers union urges Senate to avert the next school shooting by passing gun laws now

Trump thinks tariffs will add U.S. manufacturing jobs. Economic reality says they won’t.

Trump administration set for a Labor Day overtime fake-out, this week in the war on workers

Black Women’s Equal Pay Day is a powerful reminder of how equal pay isn’t

Subscribe For Updates

Recent Posts

Archives

Find an Employment Lawyer

Know Your Rights

Find an Employment Attorney