NET-workers

Today's Washington Post tells the story of Nikkia Parish, an accomplished ballet dancer who was fired from the Washington Ballet for her union activities. The NLRB is holding a hearing on September 12th investigate the matter.

So Parish, who says that speaking up for better working conditions is what got her in trouble, is unusual. But she's used to that. Standing out is nothing new for her, a black ballet dancer in one of the world's least-integrated fields. Of the Washington Ballet's 22 dancers, she was the only African American woman.

The dancers who formed a union have real concerns, about pay and working conditions. This is another good example of "professional" workers turning to a union to improve their workplace conditions.

The dancers are getting older and don't want to live paycheck to paycheck," says dancer Erin Mahoney. "We've grown. People are starting to think of their own future. In the U.S., people automatically think 'artist' translates to suffering, starving, broke. Why should it be that way?"

Parish's union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, has represented the Washington Ballet's dancers since last winter.

As organized labor has become more and more disorganized -- witness the recent split in the AFL-CIO, reflecting unions' loss of influence and falling membership nationwide -- it may come as a surprise that a dancers' guild is trying to throw its weight around. Other unions may be losing might, but men (and women) in tights are organizing.

NOW Toronto reports that bike couriers in Toronto are making moves toward forming a union with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

How rough is the road out there for couriers? While some can make up to $150 a day, the majority earn $70 to $100. Most messengers routinely work more than nine hours a day, and aren't paid overtime or for vacations, statutory holidays or sick days.

In doing so, they are joining a movement made famous by the San Francisco bike messengers, who unionized in 1998, and by the New York bike messengers.

They’ve been called urban cowboys, daredevils, and street samurai, but in fact San Francisco’s bike messengers and their car-driving co-workers toil in sweatshops on wheels.

As a urban bike rider myself, I can sympathize with the Toronto biker's health concerns.

Now the Sierra Legal Defence Fund is considering bringing suit against the province and feds for failing to curtail the smog that several studies show is having adverse long-term effects on couriers' health.

Albert Koehl, a lawyer with the group, says an argument for damages could be made. He points out that under section 14 of Ontario's Environmental Protection Act (EPA), it's an offence "to discharge a contaminant into the natural environment that causes an adverse effect." The EPA defines this as, among other things, "an adverse effect on the health of any person" or "interference with normal conduct of business."

Seems like another step in the trend of seemingly isolated workers (for example, home health care workers) finding some common ground and advantages to joining together to fight for their rights.

From Thursday, September 15th, through Wednesday, September 21st, the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute, and the American Film Institute are teaming up to present 11 labor films at AFI's Silver Spring theatre.

Jane Fonda will be there to attend the 25th anniversary screening of her film, "Nine to Five" and Barbara Kopple will be there to present her documentary, "Harlan County, USA."

This looks like a fun event, for those of us in DC!

According to today's Washington Post, the Herndon Town Council approved the creation of a "formal, taxpayer-funded gathering spot for day laborers" after much controversy last night.

Many of the city council members expressed concern over spending taxpayer money on undocumented immigrants:

The dissenters said a vote to spend public money on a laborer site would amount to an endorsement of illegal immigration.

Opponents from Herndon and as far away as Colorado called for stepped-up police enforcement, legislative changes and an end to the hiring of undocumented workers. Some homeowners said the day laborers are sinking property values. And they said that by using public money to help the workers, Herndon would be committing a crime by supporting illegal immigration.

Wow, who knew that day laborers - people who are just trying to make a living and support their families - are responsible for all of that!?

Again, like for the female day laborers in NYC, providing an organized place for day laborers is a basic issue of safety. One of the Virginia day laborers explains:

"We want a secure site, because our lives are in danger when the contractors leave us on the road," Eric Arauz said through an interpreter. "We are honest workers, not criminals, like they say."

Lots on good information in this article by Kari Lyderson. She takes a close look at the causes and consequences of women's exclusion from positions of power in the labor movement. I'd definitely recommend reading the whole article. It's quite a mental exercise to imagine if women ran the world, what the labor movement would look like??

Out of 56 unions in the AFL-CIO, only two—the Screen Actors Guild and American Nurses Association—are headed by women. Women are equally unrepresented in other top union jobs, making up less than a fifth of top leadership.

Lyderson raises a serious issue that I have with the U.S. based union movement (at least). Almost everyone acknowledges that women and people of color are the future of the labor movement, yet unions are cutting their women's departments left and right and women still haven't made it into the top leadership positions.

However, the article states that:

[W]hile men have maintained a firm grip on official leadership positions in organized labor, women are gaining power and attention in different ways. A handful of vocal, female-dominated unions have become more daring, non-traditional and holistic in their approach to fighting for workers’ rights and in uniting union members with the general community.

Lyderson's example of this is the California Nurses Association. Personally, I am interested in what kind of militancy and activism women workers may be engaged in outside of the traditional labor movement. If the unions can't meet their needs, do the women workers go elsewhere?

Make sure to check out this NYTimes article on immigrant Latina and Polish women who work in housekeeping and other day labor in New York City.

At a time when male day laborers have become the most public and contentious face of economic immigration to the United States, these two rare female shape-ups have doubled in size almost unobserved in recent years. Their growth reflects a larger overlooked reality: Women make up 44 percent of the nation's low-wage immigrant work force, and worldwide, studies show, more and more women are migrating for work.

...Ms. [Rhacel Salazar] Parreñas [a sociologist] and other researchers find that women who migrate for work are likely to be single mothers supporting children in their native countries. Compared with their male counterparts, they earn less, despite higher levels of education, according to a 2002 study of the United States' low-wage immigrant work force by the Urban Institute, a research group in Washington, which estimated that two million foreign-born women made less than the minimum wage. Yet women are also more likely to remain in America, and they send home a higher proportion of their earnings.

I think the issue of violence against these women, raised near the end of the article, is especially important. Nina Berstein states that these are "places where women are willing to put their personal safety in jeapordy for a days work." To me, it doesn't seem fair to portray this as a simple choice for the women, because they are forced to risk their own safety, and are likely at greater risk of violence, because of their economic desperation.

British Airways staff returned to work today drawing national attention and closing down Heathrow Airport when baggage handlers, loaders, and cargo staff joined catering workers in a 24-hour walkout. The workers are all represented by the same union (the Transport and General Workers' Union). The union reported on August 10:

The airline caterer Gate Gourmet, which this morning sacked over three hundred catering workers at Heathrow, was this afternoon accused by the T&G of designing and manufacturing the situation. The union made it clear that the flashpoint issue - the hiring of 130 seasonal workers - was a provocative move because never before had such extra staff been taken on while permanent staff were under threat of redundancy.

In a letter to customers, the employees state:

On Wednesday, August 10th, 2005, Gate Gourmet sacked 800 workers employed at Heathrow. Fellow workers reporting for duty on Thursday 11th August 2005 were faced with the ultimatum of signing a new contract which would slash pay and conditions or face the sack.

As catering assistants we are paid just £12,000 a year. As drivers we are paid less than £16,000 per year.

These are very low wages by any standards, but especially in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Yet Gate Gourmet is seeking to push them even lower, and us even closer to poverty.

The AP reports how management is reacting to the unexpected show of solidarity:

"This is not our dispute," [British Airways Chief Executive Rod] Eddington said. "Our customers must come first and everyone involved in creating this chaotic situation must come to their senses."

Interestingly, most of the articles I've seen talking about the strike (BBC, AP) don't even touch on what the real issues are underlying the strike. If they mention the catering workers at all, it is buried beneath paragraphs of text lamenting the frustrations of the passengers. To me, the news story is that Gate Gourmet is not being fair to it's workers, not that customers faced a day of inconvenience. The stories even give the impression that that the workers are at fault for the "disturbance."

The BBC also reports that the dispute is costing British Airways £10m per day. What I'd like to know, is how this price tag compares with the cost of treating their workers better and negotiating fairly?

I just read an interesting article in The Seattle Times about the struggles of home-based day-care workers in Washington to form a union. Because the workers are self-employed, they are not allowed to unionize under Washington's current laws. This issue of what counts as work relates my earlier post about those who criticize the SEIU for "boosting the rolls with workers who aren't really workers."

Today's article states:

Four years ago, Washington voters passed Initiative 775, allowing home-based health-care workers (then considered independent contractors) the right to unionize and receive health coverage and pay raises from the state.

"It's challenging, but we've done it in health care and we'll do it in child care," said Kim Cook, president of SEIU Local 925.

One of the home-based day-care workers sums it up well:

"Just because we work from our homes doesn't mean we aren't professionals."

More bad news about Wal-Mart's workforce policies.

Apparently, Wal-Mart has developed new computer software to match employee schedules to customer traffic. So, workers are losing pay and benefits as their hours are cut and they fall below the full-time level. The conflict between efficiency and profit and workers' rights continues....

I've been thinking a lot, with the recent split in the AFL-CIO, about the politics of raiding. Just to make sure we're all on the same page, raiding occurs when Union A tries to get an already-unionized group of workers to disaffiliate from the Union B and sign on with the Union A. While this process can be good because it puts pressure on Union B to really work hard and keep their members happy, it also wastes resources, creates animosity between unions, and allows unions to look like they are increasing their membership rolls, when really they are just stealing members from other unions and not increasing the total number of unionized workers.

Members of the AFL-CIO pledge not to raid one another, and so up until a few weeks ago, raiding was not a serious problem between unions who were all part of the AFL-CIO. The problem was with non-AFL-CIO unions (or "renegade unions," as the AFL-CIO calls them), such as the California Nurses Association and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). And of course, the raiding goes both ways, as AFL-CIO unions also raid non-AFL-CIO unions. Now that three major unions have left the AFL-CIO (the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commerical Workers, and the Teamsters), many in the AFL-CIO are increasingly worried about raiding. At the 2005 Convention, the AFL-CIO approved a resolution calling on all affiliates to work together to stop raiding and urging the executive council to "accord priority consideration to providing the resources needed to defeat these raids."

The Change to Win Coalition also has pledged labor solidarity, in the case of janitors in Houston and Indianapolis. In my opinion, we definitely need more teamwork between unions, not less. Andy Stern, president of SEIU, has often criticized the AFL-CIO because unions weren't working together - on July 13th, for example, Stern wrote:

"The concept of lead unions that unite workers in core industries or occupations is crucial to building new strength for working people -- but it offends unions that want to be free to divide workers by organizing in any industry and making deals with employers that undercut pay and benefit standards."

Of course, I am not sure how much of a consideration raiding was for him when he decided to leave the AFL-CIO. Some of the AFL-CIO union members who I have spoken to have expressed concern that the raiding will mostly be the SEIU raiding their smaller unions. In any case, raiding will continue to be an issue, and it gets at the heart of what it means to have a strong labor movement.

On Saturday, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) joined SEIU and the Teamsters in their disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO. Check out their Press Release.

Nathan Newman offers a great critique of a Slate article where Robert Fitch criticizes Andy Stern for "boosting his rolls with workers who aren't really workers at all." Who is Fitch talking about? Home-health care workers -- parents and children who receive government money for taking care of family members.

Newman states:

"It's one of the most sexist, retrograde pieces of writing I've seen in a purportedly progressive magazine in a long time."

"The recent campaign by unions to assure that those who do the traditionally 'womens' work' of caring for the sick and family members get paid a decent wage is one of the most progressive fights that labor has been involved in."

Check out the comments too -- It's quite a heated discussion. Newman's response to another critic is right on:

"So, the author's meaning is quite clear. It's not that these people are not paid a wage; the author just doesn't think they deserve one."