Tag Archives: Unions

‘Why We Need Medicare for All’: Boeing Revokes Health Benefits for Striking Workers

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“Like other wealthy countries we must guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child as a human right, not a job benefit. Whether you’re on strike or not, everyone is entitled to healthcare,” said Bernie Sanders.

By Edward Carver. Published 10-1-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: @grrrrbs/X

Boeing revoked the company-sponsored healthcare benefits of about 33,000 striking workers starting Tuesday, drawing condemnation from progressives, who said it showed the need for a universal healthcare system in the United States.

The workers, who are mostly in Washington state and are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), went on strike on September 13, and the corporation announced on its website that their healthcare benefits would expire at the end of the day on September 30.

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Meet the 7 Corporations Doing the Most to Undermine Democracy Worldwide

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“Unless we’re organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it’s corporate power that’s going to set the agenda,” one organizer said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 9-23-2024 by Common Dreams

The Amazon Spheres are three spherical conservatories that form part of the campus of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Photo Buiobuione/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Big Tech, Big Oil, and private equity firms are among the leading companies that profit from controlling media and technology, accelerating the climate crisis, privatizing public goods and services, and violating human and workers’ rights, the International Trade Union Confederation revealed on Monday.

The ITUC has labeled seven major companies as “corporate underminers of democracy” that lobby against government attempts to hold them accountable and are headed by super-rich individuals who fund right-wing political movements and leaders.

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‘Hellscape’: Microsoft Deal Would Reopen Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Power AI

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“This is another chapter in a nightmare that won’t end,” a campaigner said.

By Edward Carver. Published 9-20-2024 by Common Dreams

Three Mile Island nuclear plant site in 1979. Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission/flickr/CC

The corporation that owns the shuttered nuclear plant on Three Mile Island on Friday announced a deal with Microsoft to reopen the facility to provide power to the tech company for data centers using artificial intelligence.

Three Mile Island is well-known as the site of the largest nuclear disaster in U.S. history—a reactor there, Unit 2, partially melted down in 1979. However, the site’s other reactor, Unit 1, continued to operate safely until 2019, when it was closed for economic reasons.

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Ocasio-Cortez, Smith Push Bill to Create Social Housing Authority

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“Because we believe that housing is a human right, like food or healthcare, we believe that more Americans deserve the option of social housing.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-18-2024 by Common Dreams

Screenshot: YouTube

“It’s becoming nearly impossible for working-class people to buy and keep a roof over their heads. Congress must respond with a plan that matches the scale of this crisis.”

That’s according to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who on Wednesday introduced the Homes Act in a New York Times opinion piece and an event with supporters of the proposal on Capitol Hill.

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Thousands of Autoworkers Protest in Brussels Amid Likely Audi Layoffs

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“Their anger is very legitimate, very understandable, especially since Audi is not very clear on its plans,” a local employment minister said.

By Edward Carver. Published 9-16-2024 by Common Dreams

Thousands of workers demonstrated in the streets of Brussels on September 16, 2024. Photo: FGTB/X

Thousands of autoworkers protested in Brussels on Monday following recent news that Audi, a subsidiary of the German automaker Volkswagen, would phase out production at its plant there, which is expected to mean layoffs for its roughly 3,000 employees by the end of 2025.

The phase-out announcement led to a labor dispute that’s shuttered the plant for the last two weeks, with some employees forming an encampment protest outside. The plant is expected to resume operations on Tuesday even though the core issues underlying the labor dispute, which some unions have characterized as a lockout by management, haven’t been resolved.

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After Weekend Walkouts, Hotel Worker Strikes Grow on Labor Day

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“We refuse to accept wages that can’t support our families. It’s insulting. And it ends now.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-2-2024 by Common Dreams

Workers from over two dozen hotels across the United States are on strike as of September 2, 2024, which is Labor Day. Photo: UNITE HERE! Local 30/X

After approximately 10,000 hotel workers across the United States walked off the job over the weekend ahead of Labor Day, the strikes not only continued but grew on Monday, with employees of the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor taking to the streets.

In Maryland’s biggest city, workers with UNITE HERE Local 7 carried signs that said, “Respect our work,” “One job should be enough,” and “Make them pay.”

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‘Tragic Outcome’ for Gig Workers as California Supreme Court Hands Win to Uber, DoorDash

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“Today’s ruling only strengthens our demand for the right to join together in a union so that we can begin improving the gig economy for workers and our customers,” the case plaintiff said.

By Brett Wilkins Published 7-25-2024 by Common Dreams

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other members and allies of the California Gig Workers Union rally outside the California Supreme Court in San Francisco on May 24, 2024. (Photo: SEIU 1021/X)

Labor advocates on Thursday decried a ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s affirmation of a state ballot measure allowing app-based ride and delivery companies to classify their drivers as independent contractors, limiting their worker rights.

The court’s seven justices ruled unanimously in Castellanos v. State of California that Proposition 22, which was approved by 58% of California voters in 2020, complies with the state constitution. Prop 22—which was overturned in 2021 by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in 2021—was upheld in March 2023 by the state’s 1st District Court of Appeals.

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Teamsters President Urged to Cancel Republican Convention Speech

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One Teamsters official warned the union leader’s scheduled appearance “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-12-2024 by Common Dreams

Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien testified at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) in 2023. Photo: Teamsters

Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien is facing mounting internal pressure to cancel his planned speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, with the union’s vice president at large accusing the labor leader of kowtowing to a viciously anti-worker party and a GOP presidential hopeful whose first four years in the White House were marked by open attacks on the labor movement.

John Palmer, the Teamsters’ vice president at large, wrote in an op-ed in New Politics earlier this week that O’Brien’s scheduled appearance at Donald Trump’s invitation “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

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Project 2025: How Trump Win Would Imperil Worker Organizing Gains Under Biden’s NLRB

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The right-wing agenda “offers a playbook for how an administration could jeopardize the NLRB’s ability to protect organizing workers.”

By Julia Conley. Published 6-20-2024 by Common Dreams

Just before oral arguments in an American Federation of Government Employees’ lawsuit against the Trump administration, AFGE and other unions rally to protest the Trump administration’s anti-union executive orders. in 2018. Photo: AFGE/flickr/CC

With longtime labor lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo at the helm of the National Labor Relations Board, serving as general counsel, the Biden administration has worked to reverse the decadeslong trend in the U.S. of weakened labor laws—achieving a high rate of workers voting to join unions, requiring thousands of workers to be reinstated at their jobs after being illegally fired for organizing, and increasing the number of workers who are eligible to unionize.

But as the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned in an analysis published on Thursday, all that progress and more could be erased if former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the November election, were to win a second term in the White House—enabling him to put the right-wing plot Project 2025 into action.

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US Jury Holds Chiquita Liable for Colombian Death Squad’s Murder of Banana Workers

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“The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed,” said one attorney, “but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-11-2024 by Common Dreams

Then-AUC commander Carlos Castaño is seen here with some of his paramilitary fighters. Photo: Carlos Castaño Gil/Facebook

In what case litigants are calling the first time an American jury has held a U.S. corporation legally liable for atrocities abroad, federal jurors in Florida on Monday found that Chiquita Brands International financed a Colombian paramilitary death squad that murdered, tortured, and terrorized workers in a bid to crush labor unrest in the 1990s and 2000s.

The federal jury in West Palm Beach, Florida found the banana giant responsible for funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and awarded eight families whose members were murdered by the right-wing paramilitary group $38.3 million in damages.

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