January 15, 2013

First published at The Neoprogressive. Also published at Counterpunch and Common Dreams.

In 1962, Arkansas businessman Sam Walton opened the first Walmart discount store, setting in motion the rapid ascendance of a corporate giant that would redefine markets around the world. With its focus on competitive prices and vast distribution networks that revolutionized the industry, Walmart grew over the course of the 20th century to become the world’s largest company.

Today, its retail empire covers 15 countries with over 8,900 stores employing 2.2 million people. Like all empires, its success is built on contradictions and exploitation.

It’s no secret that Walmart’s low-cost business model relies heavily on paying its employees what can reasonably be called poverty wages. The average worker makes about $8.80 an hour. Even a full-time employee makes roughly $15,500 per year, well below the official poverty line for a family of four. Walmart’s low pay and poor-to-nonexistent benefits forces many of its workers to turn to public assistance in order to survive.

These conditions extend beyond the boundaries of Walmart’s own business. As a dominating force in the global economy, Walmart is a standard bearer across multiple industries. Its model of cost-cutting and squeezing workers has been adopted by competitors, suppliers and contractors alike.

Substandard wages are just one facet of the Walmart economy – just as notably, its stores have resisted workers’ attempts to unionize for their entire history. A recent wave of strikes by workers at Walmart stores and warehouses in the U.S. has challenged the mega-retailer’s sophisticated anti-union machinery. That machinery runs on a combination of intimidation, harassment, illegal firings, court injunctions, and systematic anti-union inoculation.

Walmart has successfully beaten back every attempt at unionization among its U.S. employees since the 1970s.

But the latest surge of labor unrest may signal a turning point for Walmart and its workers – and the labor movement.

Walmart has sparred with many groups that have raised concerns about its business practices, including community organizations, environmental groups and class actions. But robust “union avoidance” has been at the center of its operations for decades. A 1997 manual titled “A Manager’s Guide to Remaining Union-Free” instructs managers to be on constant alert for any signs of organizing among store associates, and derides labor unions as “a big business.”

In 2000, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) successfully organized meat cutters at a Walmart store in Texas. The company responded by closing its 180 meat counters and replacing them with prepackaged cuts. Walmart staved off other organizing efforts by UFCW and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the 1990s and 2000s, and it quashed an earlier Teamster campaign to organize drivers the 1980s.

Then something different started happening in 2012.

In June, workers at CJ’s Seafood, a Walmart supplier in Louisiana, went on strike against wage theft and threats by management. The workers’ bold action forced Walmart to drop the supplier, while the Labor Department ordered CJ’s to pay over $200,000 in back wages. This spark ignited a much larger and unprecedented wave of strikes that spread through Walmart’s supply chain and hit hundreds of its stores nationwide.

Walmart warehouse workers in Southern California and Illinois launched a historic campaign in September. Under the banners of Warehouse Workers United and Warehouse Workers for Justice – two groups formed by the Change to Win labor federation and the United Electrical Workers (UE), respectively – workers and activists engaged in a series of walkouts and acts of civil disobedience highlighting dangerous working conditions, wage theft and intimidation.

Although it does not directly employ the striking warehouse workers, Walmart was the target of worker protests because it dictates industry standards for contractors in its network of distribution centers. This month, a California judge named Walmart as a defendant in a class action suit over wage theft at contractor warehouses, boosting warehouse workers’ claim that Walmart is responsible for conditions at supplier facilities. After 21 days on strike in September, Illinois warehouse workers won their principal demand for an end to company retaliation and received full back pay for the days they were out on strike.

Acting Like a Union

Inspired by this victory and the new vulnerability of Walmart that it exposed, store employees struck at 30 locations in 12 states in October. More job actions at other stores the following month helped to build momentum for the big day of action on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

The Black Friday Rebellion was a massive step forward for the movement to change Walmart. Hundreds of store employees and thousands of supporters in 46 states took part in walkouts and rallies, demanding living wages, better conditions and respect on the job. The actions were buoyed by the effective use of traditional and social media that helped spread the walkouts and win public sympathy for the strikers.

Even while company spokespersons diminished the strikes and called them mere “publicity stunts,” Walmart filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the rolling pickets were illegal because the workers had not begun working toward an NLRB election for union representation. But the new worker-powered formation that coordinated the Black Friday strikes has been clear that it is separate from UFCW. The Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, is not a union. Although it is supported by UFCW and its community coalition, Making Change at Walmart, OUR Walmart’s protests are aimed at pressuring Walmart to improve working conditions, not unionization.

This is perhaps the most important thing to understand about the recent strikes at Walmart stores and what sets them apart from previous campaigns. Workers and labor organizers know that Walmart has mastered the process of cutting down traditional union organizing drives; now they are attempting to apply a different model of workplace organizing that circumvents the typical roadblocks built in to U.S. labor laws, a regime tilted against employees and one which Walmart is an expert at manipulating.

The alternative organizing strategies being attempted by Walmart workers could have implications throughout the labor movement. In particular, their emphasis on industry-wide mobilizing, disruptive tactics, and self-organization could help inject a new militancy into labor struggle.

OUR Walmart’s approach also differs from previous coalition efforts to change Walmart, which were focused more on disrupting its glossy public image. Union-backed groups like Wake Up Walmart and Walmart Watch ran campaigns in the 2000s that were less focused on worker involvement and more dedicated to media messaging designed to expose Walmart’s bad practices.

In contrast, OUR Walmart is a membership-based organization whose strength is defined by the size and activity of its membership rather than foundation funding and non-profit expertise. It began a year and a half ago with fewer than 100 members. Today it has over 1,000 members in chapters across 43 states. While it’s still too small to have a decisive impact on Walmart’s operations, its rapid growth and appeal among Walmart workers joining its ranks is remarkable.

Using management retaliation charges as the basis for work stoppages, OUR Walmart is able to secure some legal protection for non-union workers who otherwise have little recourse in taking collective action against their employer. Ultimately, OUR Walmart members would like to unionize Walmart stores, but that isn’t the immediate goal. For now, organizers are focused on growing an organization which they describe as “open source” in that it functions as a network providing tools for workers to self-organize.

“Workers can engage in actions that both make them feel powerful and that impact the company, and they don’t need to just spend their life waiting for some [government-supervised] processes to demonstrate they want a union,” former SEIU organizer Stephen Lerner told The Nation. Lerner, the originator of the Justice for Janitors campaign, argues that what’s important about OUR Walmart is that it’s acting like a union.

Striking Back Against the War on Workers

Another important part of the new Walmart campaign is the climate in which it’s unfolding.

Over the past two years, the labor movement has been under the gun of anti-union right-wing ideologues and austerity-driven politicians in both parties. Unions have suffered massive setbacks in states like Wisconsin, where tea party conservatives won an effort to strip collective bargaining rights in the public sector.

In 2012, two new states joined the ranks of so-called “right to work” states, bringing crippling restrictions on the collection of union dues to a region that has historically been a stronghold for labor. If the passage of right-to-work-for-less legislation in Indiana earlier in the year was a painful strike against unions, its recent and sudden passage in Michigan, the birthplace of the modern labor movement, was a devastating body blow.

In the meantime, working-class living standards continue to decline, as they have for decades. While income inequality has soared to levels not seen since the 1920s, the shrinking union movement has been largely on the defensive. The war against workers has accelerated since 2011 as unions find themselves embroiled in state-level battles in which their very existence is at stake.

Against this backdrop, it is significant that Walmart workers have chosen to go on the offensive. Workers are being battered in the private and public sectors, and unions have been making huge concessions in industries that have typically been more union-friendly in the past. Walmart workers have linked arms with allies in the labor movement to mount a highly organized and aggressive campaign in an environment that is quintessentially anti-labor.

“Walmart has designed a particular business model that demands inhumane and unsustainable working situations and poverty wages,” says UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend. “At a certain point, workers rebel, they push back. Walmart and the employers who imitate Walmart rely on astronomical turnover as a safety valve. But when workers stay on the job – now because of sheer desperation – more and more will choose to fight back rather than quit.”

Walmart isn’t the only place where workforce turmoil has given way to tenacity. On November 28, some 200 fast food workers from dozens of New York City restaurants staged a flash strike. Protesting the notorious low wages of fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell, workers risked retaliation and walked off the job in a rare strike targeting a mostly non-union industry. With the support of New York Communities for Change, the workers formed the Fast Food Workers Committee and have been aided by other community-based groups and SEIU.

Unlike OUR Walmart, the fast food workers are explicitly demanding a fair process to unionize at their restaurants. But the workers, most of whom make little more than minimum wage, are also asking for a raise to $15 an hour. It’s a bold demand, but it’s one that Townsend argues is desperately needed if labor is going to survive as a movement.

“One of the tragedies of the current moment is that just at the time when wages have hit sub-poverty levels, the labor movement as a whole is afraid to ask for a raise, or even resist the wage-cutting offensive of the employers,” he says. “Asking for a raise has been replaced by elaborate begging for ‘shared sacrifice.’ That’s not going to inspire anyone to join a union. Militant struggles demanding a raise are long overdue, especially in low-wage industries like retail and fast food.”

A New Era for Organized Labor?

The organizing model being pursued by both OUR Walmart and the Fast Food Workers Committee – using strikes to raise workplace demands prior to unionization – could point to a new era for organized labor in the U.S. as it adapts to an increasingly adversarial corporate and political environment.

Under the NLRB structure, unions gain recognition to represent workers based on exclusive representation of an entire worksite after majority support is demonstrated. Companies like Walmart easily use this structure to their advantage in blocking union drives, and the penalties they suffer for breaking the law are negligible at best.

That’s why organized labor and Walmart workers have turned to a model that resembles what’s known as minority unionism, a strategy that involves collective action to press for change before majority support among the workforce has been reached. It also relies on the collaboration among different unions to mobilize workers on a regional basis.

As labor reporter Josh Eidelson writes, union leverage under this model doesn’t hinge on majority representation at a single worksite. Instead, Walmart workers and organizers “are hoping that aggressive strikes will make majority support possible, rather than the other way around.”

However, the minority union model at Walmart is still experimental and its paradigm-shifting possibilities are yet to be seen.

“Most of the work is shaped and led in NGO form, and not traditional union form,” says Townsend. “That’s not necessarily a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ issue, but as is the case with all  organizing, the ultimate goal is to construct union organizational structures which can continue as effective forces once the initial paid staff and NGO staff move on.”

Townsend argues that not many of the organizing efforts being undertaken – including UE’s – could stand for long without outside support, owing to Walmart’s fierce anti-union attacks.

Certainly, the wave of walkouts and protests in 2012 mark only the beginning of what will necessarily be a years-long campaign for justice at Walmart. But the workers have already made history by putting their jobs on the line and standing up against a juggernaut.

If there is a tipping point in the struggle between corporate America and workers, then we are surely on the verge of breaching it. Workers are being backed into a corner and increasingly have little to lose in fighting back. While companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have been abusing employer-friendly labor laws for decades to keep wages low and unions out of their businesses, corporate lobbyists and conservative billionaires have teamed up with politicians to chip away at the few protections and rights afforded to workers under existing labor law.

Walmart workers – who for so long have stood outside of the labor movement – may be clearing a new path toward a revived labor movement in the U.S. If they should fail, the race to the bottom for workers will continue uninterrupted.

But if they win, it will mean nothing less than the surrender of an empire and a path-breaking comeback for the working class.

Published at Common Dreams and CounterPunch.

November 6, 2012

As this year’s election finally reaches its conclusion, working-class people will soon know who will drive the agenda of austerity over the next four years. Whether it’s Obama or Romney, the underlying priorities remain the same, and at the center of those priorities is a commitment to cut the deficit on the backs of workers and the poor.

Up to this point, the campaigning on either side has sought to lead voters into a state of mind in which substance and style bleed together as one. Because beyond style, both Obama and Romney share more in common on policy than they disagree. Even if Democrats and Republicans differ on how to get there, the goal is the same: safeguard the dominance of corporate power and point to the deficit as reason enough to march forward with the assault on the working class. 

The article linked below offers a sharp and succinct analysis of this reality. As the article points out, “history shows that voting for the ‘lesser evil’ is no guarantee against the ‘greater evil.’ On the contrary, evil sometimes has a better shot if the ‘lesser’ paves the way and provides the façade.”

But while the politics of the lesser-evil prevails in the electoral realm, what counts the most for workers and the poor will be the politics of struggle on the shop floor and in the streets.

Cross-posted from Socialist Worker:

The Next President of Austerity

The presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is incredibly close.

It’s close in the way you read about every day in the media: Opinion polls show the two candidates are neck and neck, with just days to go. But it’s also close in ways you never hear about–not from the press, nor the candidates, nor their supporters. On important political questions, Obama and Romney stand so close to each other that their similarities outweigh their differences.

This isn’t what most people are talking about with less than a week to go before the election. But it’s what activists and people on the left have to consider as the call to vote for Obama in order to stop Romney reaches full volume.

The dynamic of the presidential race changed fundamentally with the first debate at the start of October, when the combination of Obama’s dismal performance and Romney’s image of seeming competence after a summer of missteps gave a burst of momentum to Republicans. Ever since, it has been a dead-even contest–according to the aggregation of opinion polls tracked at Pollster.com, Romney is barely ahead in the popular vote, while Obama has a slight advantage in the Electoral College.

But the broader dynamic of Election 2012 is mostly unchanged. The defining issue of American politics in the last four years has been the drive to impose austerity measures that make working people pay for the crisis, and on this question, Obama and Romney are closer to each other than their rhetoric suggests.

There are other issues, like abortion rights, where the differences between the candidates and especially their parties are clearer–though the hard truth is they aren’t as stark as they are usually portrayed. Moreover, the prospect of emboldened right-wingers gaining confidence from a Romney victory–and gloating over the defeat of the first African American president, who they have been heaping abuse on since day one–is stomach-turning.

But anyone who wants to vote for Obama as the lesser evil has to confront questions that have gone unasked during the campaign.

When it comes to “reforming” popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, to maintaining historically low tax rates on business, to continuing the teacher-bashing and the charterization of public schools, to cutting government programs that help the poor and vulnerable–on all these questions, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are fundamentally on the same side, though they may differ on the details.

Continue Reading at Socialist Worker

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Stay tuned for my forthcoming article on labor’s big push for Obama in 2012 and what, if anything, it gets in return.  

October 1, 2012

Last month, the Chicago Teachers Union did something that no one thought possible a few years ago when the Great Recession took hold. Back then, the economic crisis and devastating budget cuts gave corporate-backed school “reformers” the conditions they needed to thrust the war on public education into high gear.

The Chicago teachers strike is a groundbreaking event in the fight to defend public schools and resurrect a fighting labor movement. Months of preperation went into the victorious strike that forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to back down from his most damaging attacks against teachers. The union knew it needed to build alliances beyond labor and win the support of parents and communities before moving to strike. Its success in doing so was central to winning the standoff. 

While teachers unions across the country have conceded to the corporate school “reform” agenda – agreeing to merit pay, attacks on seniority and a tidal wave of standardized testing – the CTU made a move unprecedented in this era. And the high stakes of the teachers’ daring fightback was lost on no one. By putting themselves on the picket line, they put the entire war against public education on trial. Its location, its actors, and its timing made it a trial with a national audience. The rank-and-file politics of the union injected militancy into a battle that was fought in the home city of President Obama during the height of the presidential election season – and against a cut-throat anti-union goon who helped craft Obama’s school “reform” agenda at the national level. 

The teachers stared down the mayor and an entire political establishment bent on privatization – and they won. In the process, they taught other teachers and workers everywhere some powerful lessons.      

              Cross-posted from Socialist Worker:

Learning from the Chicago teachers

Plutocrats in Europe are continuing their march against the poor and working class. Their efforts to bleed workers dry has once again pushed unions in Greece to declare a nationwide general strike. And in Spain, protests this week turned violent as more austerity measures threaten the lives of workers already hurting from high unemployment and suffocating budget cuts.

Greek workers have endured massive cuts over the last several years and have repeatedly been forced to use the one thing they still have: the power to withhold their labor.

According to the Washington Post,

The country’s prime minister, Antonio Samaras, has been pushing a package of pension cuts and public salary reductions worth $14.6 billion next year in order to satisfy the conditions of its February aid package from the rest of Europe. In a country with 24 percent unemployment, those measures are already inciting protests and labor unrest.

Up to 200,000 protested in Athens and major public services including transportation were ground to a halt. Smoke and teargas filled the streets in front of the parliament building where protesters clashed with police.

One might think European leaders would have gotten the hint the last couple of times Greeks struck against the priorities of the elite. But as much as workers have a huge stake in killing the project of austerity, the one percent is heavily vested in moving that project forward – even if it means throwing Europe into a maelstrom of social unrest.

In Spain, austerity is further fraying national unity – so much so that the country’s Catalonia region is threatening to secede.

David Dayen at Fire Dog Lake writes,

Police beat protesters near the Parliament in central Madrid [on Tuesday], firing rubber bullets and charging the crowds…The massive protests we’re seeing in Madrid today [are happening] in advance of what will likely be another austerity budget by the Spanish government. The people only suffer from continued austerity at a time of 25% unemployment. So they filled the Plaza de Espana and elsewhere to call for changes.

Through their action, European workers continue to provide one of the strongest cases against the politics of austerity. Their counterparts in the U.S., while more atomized and seemingly docile, have been standing up and striking back against corporate greed and budget cuts as well.

Beleaguered Walmart warehouse workers have taken the daring step of striking against their employers and focusing their pressure against the retail giant’s notoriously vicious anti-union policies. That kind of fightback is crucial in the U.S. where politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike – continue to push for the same anti-worker and anti-poor policies that are unraveling whole countries on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the last year, DHL  claims it has fired 24 workers in Turkey for “performance related” reasons. But the express parcel delivery company is fooling no one. TÜMTİS, the Turkey Motor Vehicle and Transport Workers’ Union, has been trying to organize the DHL workers for more than a year. DHL management in Turkey has fired workers for trying to organize and threatened to fire other workers for joining TÜMTİS. The company is also refusing to meet with the union over the firings.

Between last April and November, eight workers were fired for what the DHL called poor performance and endangering worker safety and health. But the workers said managers openly threatened one worker at a time with dismissal for organizing.

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has been working with TÜMTİS to get the workers reinstated. Even after the ITF started talks with management in June, DHL fired seven more workers for supporting the organizing effort. Nine of the workers currently have cases pending in courts. Eight have been paid but haven’t gotten their jobs back despite a court order.

According to the LabourStart Act Now petition posted by ITF,

Sacked workers are currently standing outside the warehouses in an act of resistance over their unfair dismissal. TÜMTİS has made every attempt to engage local management and seek a resolution to the ongoing dismissals, but to no avail. Local management continues to approach workers who have joined TÜMTİS, reportedly telling them that they must resign from TÜMTİS or they will lose their job. The workers demand the right to become members of TÜMTİS, and organize a union in their workplace, free from intimidation and threat of dismissal.

Last week, DHL International’s Human Resources department agreed with Turkish managers. They said the firings were performance-related and the company is obeying Turkish law. They also said management doesn’t need to meet with TÜMTİS because the company doesn’t recognize the union as legally representing the workers.

Currently, 335 DHL Turkey workers are members of TÜMTİS. In addition to ITF, UNI Global Union is helping TÜMTİS and the workers organize free from harassment and intimidation by management at DHL Turkey.

Last year, TÜMTİS was bolstered by international labor solidarity from its brothers and sisters in the U.S. when members of the Teamsters union helped Turkish UPS workers win the right to TÜMTİS representation after a drawn out battle with the company. DHL workers in Turkey derserve no less when it comes to global solidarity and support from working people in the U.S.

Sign the ITF petition to support DHL workers in Turkey.

July 18, 2012

The one percent is catching fire in the form of an expanding strike by the janitors who clean the buildings of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. Hundreds of janitors in Houston who walked off the job last week are being joined by hundreds more this week as picket lines extend to eight cities across the country.

A new writing job in the labor movement has kept me from writing my own material more frequently both here at Subterranean Dispatches and other publications. 

While I hope to produce a new piece in the near future, for now I’d like to feature some outside anaylsis on important developments in the month of June - including inspiring solidarity pickets that spread around the country among Teamster sanitation workers and some insights on Obama’s recent executive order protecting 800,000 undocumented youth from the threat of deportation.

But first my take on healthcare reform…

Stepping Away from Single-Payer

In one of the most high-profile Supreme Court cases in recent history and a fever-pitched media event, the country’s highest court closed out the month of June with a decision on the Obama administration’s healthcare reform law. The decision is understood as being hugely historic on both the right and the left. But there was a lot of confusion about the substance of the verdict that the Supreme Court finally handed down on the Affordable Care Act.

A crowd of supporters and opponents of the reform were equally stunned when it was confirmed that the justices had upheld the law in its entirely. Liberal supporters of Obama and the ACA were fully prepared for a ruling that would have struck down the individual mandate, thereby killing the rest of the law and dealing a major blow to Obama and the Democratic Party.

In fact, on the eve of the landmark decision some Democrats were expressing hope that the law would be upheld while promising to use a loss as an opportunity to again raise the flag for a single-payer healthcare system. For some on the left, the goal of taking the profit motive out of healthcare may have made losing sound better than winning at the Supreme Court today.

So it was surprising that the decision left even the most constitutionally controversial part of the law – the individial mandate – intact. The scene outside the courthouse was festive. Progressives who hoped that the law would be upheld were jubiliant, even as many admitted Obama’s healthcare reform is not enough. They say it is a big step toward universal healthcare (or single-payer, or Medicare for All – whatever one chooses to call it).

One of the leading groups that has been at the forefront of the movement for single-payer has also been at the forefront of healthcare delivery. And they had a somewhat different reaction.

“This should not be seen as the end of the efforts by health care activists for a permanent fix of our broken health-care system,” National Nurses United (NNU) wrote in response to the ruling. NNU, the largest nurses union in the country with 175,000 members, is among the most progressive and militant groups leading the charge for single-payer healthcare and other economic justice issues.

According to NNU:  

The Affordable Care Act still leaves some 27 million people without health coverage, does little to constrain rising out of pocket health care costs, or to stop the all too routine denials of needed medical care by insurance companies because they don’t want to  pay for it.

The U.S. outspends all other nations per capita on care, yet trails dozens of other nations, which have a national system, such as our Medicare program, in a wide array of vital barometers, including life expectancy. While some of those countries are also mired in economic troubles due to the global banking crash, the presence of a national health system has softened the blow on peoples’ health.

But the limitations of ”Obamacare” may be more than that: they may in fact restrain efforts to reach a single-payer system that covers everyone.

As Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy group, explained back in 2010, “Instead of eliminating the root of the problem – the profit-driven, private health insurance industry – [the ACA] will enrich and further entrench these firms.

Today, NNU Co-President Karen Higgins explained further:

Even after this decision, we will continue to see patients who postpone filling prescription medications, or delay doctor-recommended diagnostic procedures or even life saving medical treatment because of the high out of pocket costs, or families faced with the terrible choice of paying for medical care or food or clothing, or who delay payment on medical bills at the risk of bankruptcy or a destroyed credit rating.

We will continue to see hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies engage in price gouging and insurance companies refusing to authorize treatment recommended by a doctor under the pretext it was “experimental” or “not medically necessary,” euphemisms for care that doesn’t meet the real test of a profit driven bottom line. 

And we will continue to see the U.S. falling farther behind other countries in a wide range of health barometers, including life expectancy, deaths of women of child bearing age, and long waits for care, even though we spend twice as much per capita or more than those other nations.

Medicare is far more effective than the broken private system in controlling costs and the waste that goes to insurance paperwork and profits, and it is universally popular, even among those who bitterly opposed the Obama law.

There is no doubt that there are positive elements of “Obamacare” and today’s Supreme Court decision to uphold it. Certainly millions will continue to benefit from the elimination of lifetime limits and young adults will remain covered by their parents’ healthcare plans. And the ban on denying coverage for preexisting conditions remains in place. All that is good.

But millions more will still be forced into buying private health insurance – an idea that actually originated from the playbook of free-enterprise arch-conservatives at the Heritage Foundation back in 1989.  

“The ACA perpetuates a dominant role for the private insurance industry,” PNHP said today in response to the ruling. ”Each year, that industry siphons off hundreds of billions of health care dollars for overhead, profit and the paperwork it demands from doctors and hospitals; it denies care in order to  increase insurers’ bottom line; and it obstructs any serious effort to control costs.” 

The health insurance lobbies won big today. They won a captive market of uninsured individuals dropped into their laps by the federal government. So it was a good day for Obama and the health insurance industry. And it should also have be a great day for conservatives who once saw the individual mandate as a right-wing position on healthcare reform - until Obama adopted it as his own.

Constitutional or not, the individual mandate is a boon for private health insurance companies and a real loss for single-payer.

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Teamsters Punish Lockout With Rolling Sympathy Strikes

by Josh Eidelson, In These Times (June 18)

Over the past month, Teamsters in five cities refused work in solidarity with locked-out sanitation workers in Evansville, Indiana. The Evansville labor dispute is the second in three months to feature sympathy strikes against Republic Services. This rare tactic represents a major escalation in the Teamsters’ struggle with the company, and it’s poised to intensify this week.

Before the National Labor Relations Act established legal collective bargaining rights within discrete bargaining units, and the Taft-Hartley Amendments banned many solidarity actions, strikes would commonly spread from one group of workers to other worksites in the industry, or to other workers in the supply chain. Today, such solidarity strikes are rare.

The Teamsters’ ability to pull them off rests in part on a “conscience clause” in some of their contracts.

Continue Reading

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Has the DREAM come true?

Socialist Worker editorial (June 20)

Barack Obama’s decision to end the deportation threat hanging over the heads of 800,000 undocumented youth is something immigrant rights activists have organized for years to achieve. But the measure comes with unjust restrictions–and no one should forget that it stands in contrast to the administration’s policies of the past three and a half years, especially the dramatic increase in deportations since 2009.

Obama’s June 15 announcement that the federal government would extend temporary legal status to some undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children was greeted with tears of joy among many families who have lived in the constant fear of being torn apart.

“This move has concrete and immediate impacts,” said Felipe Matos, an immigrant rights activist. “Now I won’t have to be scared whenever I encounter the police. I’ll be able to freely open a bank account…I’ll even be able to drive without fear of deportation.”

Among immigrant rights activists, however, the enthusiasm for Obama’s measure is dampened by the many restrictions and qualifications placed on undocumented youth who wish to apply to stay in the U.S. under the policy. Plus, the administration has made promises about curbing deportations before–and the expulsion of the undocumented has continued.

Continue Reading

April 21, 2012

Published at CounterPunch.

In an era of defeat and decline for the labor movement, pathbreaking organizing victories are rare. Union activity in these times is more likely to revolve around defensive battles than conquering new territory or reclaiming ground that was lost decades ago.

Earlier this month, a rare election victory by port truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles signaled a big step forward in the fight to organize a deregulated industry that is rife with worker abuse.

The 46-to-15 vote by Toll Group drivers in favor of joining the Teamsters was the first of its kind in nearly 30 years. And Toll, an $8.8 billion Australia-based logistics company, fought the workers every step of the way. 

But the workers’ historic victory has given new hope to other drivers throughout the industry.

“If we can win, I know other port truck drivers across the U.S. can unite just like we did,” Orlando Ayala, a 10-year driver, said after the victory was announced. “A voice on the job means management can no longer humiliate us or force us to suffer in poverty while they profit.”

As the workers prepare for contract negotiations, the Teamsters are holding up the election win as what will hopefully be the first of many more victories to come.

“These first-rate truck drivers decided to form their union after being treated like second-class citizens under third-world working conditions for too long,” said Fred Potter, Teamster Vice President and director of the union’s Port Division.

“Now these courageous employees have inspired other port drivers to fight for good, middle-class jobs at America’s ports nationwide.”

For years, the Teamsters union has sought to organize port truck drivers who toil in an industry where many work up to 14 hours a day for third-world wages. These conditions are a result of deregulation that allows employers to classify workers as “independent contractors” and “owner operators.”

Misclassification prevents most of the country’s 110,000 port truck drivers from unionizing and fighting for better wages and higher standards on the job.

Toll workers are among the few who are classified as employees, which allowed them to petition the National Labor Relations Board for representation. But while the Department of Labor is stepping up its efforts to combat misclassification in a number of industries, the issue remains a key obstacle to unionizing port trucking, which has been called the “poster child” for this practice.

Loosened regulations began in the late 1970s and were followed by the Motor Carrier Act, signed by President Carter in 1980.

Trucking deregulation worked to favor small businesses and “owner operators” over the larger companies. Over the next 30 years, unionization in the “for-hire sector” of the industry dropped from 60 percent to 20 percent. At the same time that the Teamsters lost up to 500,000 members as a result of deregulation, wages fell by 30 percent in the 15 years after the Motor Carrier Act took effect.

The “owner operator” classification is a scheme allowing companies to mistreat and exploit the mostly-immigrant drivers and avoid taxes.

In reality, the drivers have little control over their work and are owner operators in name only. It’s a title that brings few benefits and many additional burdens for drivers, who are usually responsible for buying or leasing their own truck. Drivers can only work for one company and they have to pay for maintenance, fines, gas, and insurance in order to haul cargo for the companies. These expenses come either directly out of the pockets of workers or are deducted from their paychecks.

Meanwhile, the drivers are subject to inspections, drug tests, and review of safety records. Companies set the terms of pay and work conditions and pay by load, not hours, which means drivers can spend several unpaid hours everyday sitting in long lines at the ports. Shipping companies often overload containers to move more cargo cheaply. But even though the containers are owned by the companies, it’s the drivers who are slapped with fines for overweight loads.

These conditions add up to what has come to be called “sweatshops on wheels.” Working an average of 59 hours a week, drivers make an hourly wage of only $9.04. After expenses, many drivers take home as little as $20,000 a year in net income.

“When we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies,” a group of drivers wrote in an open letter last year to the Occupy movement. “We have all heard the words ‘modern-day slaves’ at the lunch stops. There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs.”

Xiomara Perez, one of the workers who wrote the letter, is a driver at Toll who joined with her coworkers in January to file for an election.

She was fired two months later. The reason? She stopped at a McDonald’s to use the restroom while she was out making a delivery. That was the official reason provided by Toll, but few doubt that she was in fact being punished for her union activity.

Before the election triumph, Toll waged a ruthless anti-union campaign that included mandatory anti-union meetings and other forms of intimidation against workers. Last October the company fired 26 drivers who went to work wearing Teamster t-shirts while a delegation of drivers delivered a petition with 1,000 signatures in support of the organizing drive.

The NLRB issued a complaint against Toll for unfair labor practices in January, charging the company with engaging in illegal anti-union activity including interrogation, harassment, retaliation and discrimination against the workers.

In the meantime, international labor solidarity played a significant role in the workers’ success at Toll. Perhaps a testament to the state of organized labor in the U.S. as compared to other industrialized countries, Toll’s behavior at the Port of Los Angeles differs from the way it handles its workforce in Australia.

The Australian Transport Workers Union (TWU) represents 12,000 Toll workers who strongly supported their U.S. counterparts throughout the campaign. Several delegations of TWU members visited with Toll workers in Los Angeles over the last few months and TWU led outreach efforts in Australia, making the company’s anti-union behavior in the U.S. a national story down under.

As one visiting TWU official told a group of Toll drivers in March, “If they want to treat you with this sort of disrespect, then there will be consequences for them.”

“When we saw the truck drive out with the flat tire, that would never happen [at Toll] in Australia” observed another TWU member as he spoke with workers in the yard. “That truck would not move. It wouldn’t leave the yard. But we understand that you’ve got no choice.”

The Toll drivers’ victory comes on the heels of another important development in the union struggle at the ports. In February, more than 400 nonunion drivers at the Port of Seattle went on strike for two weeks, demanding respect on the job and an end to misclassification. The drivers ended the strike as several trucking companies agreed to pay more per load and a taskforce was set up to strengthen driver representation in negotiations with port officials and companies.

Because deregulation has also meant low or nonexistent safety and environmental standards, the long fight to organize drivers has brought together a coalition of labor, environmental and community groups. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports has been at the forefront of the struggle, uniting many labor groups with organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club. Misclassification has been directly linked to the widespread use of unsafe, diesel trucks at the ports, resulting in emissions that are up to 80 percent higher than emissions produced by well-maintained, clean trucks.

The Toll drivers’ victory is a boost for both labor and public safety. And in an industry where most drivers are Latino and North African, it’s also a win for immigrant workers who have borne the brunt of deregulation and sweatshop conditions.

Solidarity was instrumental in winning the battle at Toll. Support from the community, union allies abroad, and drivers at other companies bolstered the confidence of Toll drivers and made their groundbreaking victory possible.

As the organizing struggle throughout the industry pushes forward, broad solidarity will remain central to winning justice and power for workers.