Dear friends,
Today’s post is dedicated to the workers and organizers who continue the struggle for fair compensation, dignity, and humanity in the workplace.
New Yorkers are leading the resurgence of organized labor in the US!
New York City private-sector workers are joining unions at nearly twice the rate as in the next most active city, Seattle, and at five times the rate as in San Francisco or Los Angeles, the study finds.
The successful Amazon organizing drive, bringing union status to 8,325 employees of the JFK8 Fulfillment Center, was hard won.
So, it may not surprise you that the first Labor Day celebration was organized in New York City, exactly 140 years ago today. Twenty-three of the 44 states had adopted the holiday by 1894, when President Grover Cleveland signed the law designating Labor Day as a national holiday.
The Amazon Labor Union just won a decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which rejected the company’s claims that the union members and the NLRB itself had meddled improperly in the election. The election results will finally be certified, unless new objections are filed in the next ten days.
Unionized workers are still a small fraction of all workers — under 19% in NYC and just over 10% in the nation as a whole.
But union feeling is stronger than it’s been in over 50 years according to a Gallup poll.
Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions — up from last year's 68%. Union support is also up from 64%, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and is the highest the polling firm has recorded since 1965.
UPS workers are gearing up for a contract battle. Although their contract does not expire for 10 months, contract negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS will begin in the spring and “labor experts are predicting that the drivers and package handlers will go on strike.”
As you may recall, UPS workers’ tremendously successful three-week strike in 1987 was due to the public’s deep connection to workers who showed up to their doors, with packages and humanity.
Last week, the NLRB affirmed that Starbucks had “illegally withheld raises and other benefits from its unionized workers.” In addition, the company has dismissed workers and closed stores to retaliate.
Hamilton Nolan visited Boston, where Starbucks ‘partners’ have been on strike for a month:
Through scorching days and lonely nights, these young workers, who could have spent the time doing anything more fun, have maintained a 24/7 picket line. That is not something people do if they do not care – about their co-workers, about their rights, and about the company itself.
I believe that they will win. Meanwhile, they need our support!
Contribute — even just the price of your favorite coffee — to the Solidarity Fund for Starbucks Workers. 100% of your money will go directly to workers to help with rent and health insurance. This is organized by Coworker Fund.
It seems fitting to remember Barbara Ehrenreich, who got millions of people to see economic inequity more clearly. She died four days ago at 81.
I remember reading book reviews of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America that mocked Ehrenreich for going undercover to work as a hotel maid, among other low-wage jobs.
But I admired her willingness to answer the questions for herself, rather than simply asking workers about their choices.
Why buy prepared food when raw ingredients are so much cheaper? Ehrenreich lived in a trailer and fixed her meals at the end of a long day of physical labor. Question answered.
For her exploration, Ehrenreich purged her resume of her educational and white collar credentials. She learned first-hand about the racial and ethnic biases that keep people in poverty: her white skin and first language tracked her into slightly better jobs that were unavailable to workers with brown skin and limited English, even though they were more qualified and had more relevant experience.
Ehrenreich founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which was designed to make the stories of people struggling with poverty visible to those of us who are not. The idea was to get people to tell their own stories.
One recent story from Ehrenreich’s project is called “The Underground Economy Of Unpaid Care.” The author, Julie Poole, wrote about her 62-year-old mother, who neglected her own health as she cared for her ailing father-in-law:
She is among the roughly one in five Americans who provides care to an adult or child with special needs. Of the estimated 48 million people caring for adults, about 41.8 million provide unpaid care, just like my mother. While the work of unpaid caregivers is deeply undervalued, paid home care workers struggle too. Roughly 2 million people make up the home care workforce, which is 86% women, 60% people of color, and 14% immigrants. According to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, nearly 20% of these workers live in poverty, with an average hourly wage of $12.12 and annual earnings of $17,200.
Read Julie Poole’s story about her mother’s experience as a caregiver.
The photographs below are part of a project — yet to be named — to document the essential work of caregivers and their relationships with the people who rely on them. The photographs are by John Trotter.
Claudia Mallea is a photo archivist, librarian, and digital curator who will be organizing and assembling the project with me.
Claudia’s mom, Tamara, assists her with physical therapy exercises.
The fight for Fair Pay for Home Care continues, but the shortage of care workers is unabated. This means that people like Claudia cannot live independently.
[T]he DOH had two choices of how to move that money through. One would have been a direct pass-through to plans, where funds could have been directed to providers and would have had to ultimately end up in the hands of workers. They chose not to do this.
[Instead,] they added the money to the premium, or the monthly payment, that the plan receives from the state. There is no audit to make sure that the new funds actually went to providers so that it could get to workers.
Tell the Governor to make sure Medicaid managed care plans pay for the home care wage increase. This action is from Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of NYS.
Members of JFREJ and the New York Caring Majority are hosting a picnic this Sunday where you can eat, meet new people, and learn about our campaign to increase wages for home care workers.
RSVP to attend the NY Caring Majority picnic in Prospect Park on Sunday, September 11.
in solidarity and with love,
L