Hotel strike wave | SPS closures | Kroger doubles earnings

Thursday, September 12, 2024

STRIKES

► From Boston.com — Hundreds of Boston hotel workers go on strike again — The strikes go beyond Boston. Union workers authorized strikes in 12 cities across the U.S., including in nearby Providence. UNITE HERE says many hotel workers say their wages aren’t enough to cover the cost of living and they have to take on additional employment to make ends meet.

Editor’s note: a hotel strike wave is rolling nationally. Don’t cross a picket line — find a list of active labor disputes at FairHotel.org. 

► From WCSC — AT&T workers strike enters third week: ‘Life doesn’t stop when we are on strike’ — Monday marks three weeks since dozens of AT&T workers went on strike in the Lowcountry and across nine southeastern states as ongoing contract negotiations continue. Bill Johnson, the president of the CWA local 3704, said all AT&T has to do is come to the bargaining table in good faith and negotiations wouldn’t take longer than a day.

Editor’s note: support the workers by signing their petition to AT&T CEO John Stankey. 

LOCAL

► From the Seattle Times — Which Seattle schools could close? District unveils two proposals — Meesh Vecchio, president of the Seattle Education Association, said union members want to review details on the closure plans, including efforts to mitigate disruption for students, staff and communities, an equity analysis and the data used to make the proposals. “It’s really important that any plan moving forward toward fiscal stabilization is going to be equitable and center student learning and student goals,” Vecchio said.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Evergreen district staff were not made aware of Monday shooting threat until after school ended — A Wednesday morning email from a teacher, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said several Mountain View staff members are angry about the district’s response to the incident, and they don’t understand the decision not to place the school under lockdown. According to the teacher, staff were not even aware that police had been dispatched to the school that afternoon

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington climate auction prices remain low as repeal vote looms — Washington’s largest air polluters snapped up all available carbon emission allowances in this month’s state-run auction – and they did so at a relatively low price for a third consecutive time. Opponents of the climate law say uncertainty tied to the looming initiative is the reason for the drop in auction prices over the last year. But supporters say the decline follows trends seen in other cap-and-trade markets where allowance costs stabilize after a year or so.

► From the Seattle Times — WA health insurance rates will increase an average of 10.7% in 2025 — The state Office of the Insurance Commissioner approved 11 insurers to sell in 2025’s Washington Health Benefit Exchange marketplace, which has again become more expensive to shop in. Many residents who buy their own health insurance through the exchange can get subsidized coverage, but advocates for more affordable health care say the announcement is a reminder that premiums and out-of-pocket costs are becoming increasingly difficult for people to manage.

► From The Stranger — How to End the Class War on Washington’s Classrooms | Opinion — In Olympia, we must devise a short-term solution to prevent school closures, then pivot to constructing a sustainable long-term funding plan that can draw families who have withdrawn their kids from public schools. Trade and vocational education in state community colleges must continue to evolve, while tuition-free access to quality education at the University of Washington must be expanded.

ORGANIZING

► From Workday Magazine — “I Know My Worth”: What it Takes to Unionize the Service Industry — Labor historian Peter Rachleff told Racket that it is not surprising that hospitality workers are again playing an integral role behind the new energy in the labor movement. On September 5, workers picketed at Marquette Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and over 10,000 hotel workers with UNITE HERE locals in cities across the U.S. went on strike over Labor Day weekend to demand higher wages and fair workloads.

READY FOR A VOICE AT WORK? Get more information about how you can join together with co-workers and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Or go ahead and contact a union organizer today!

NATIONAL

► From the Dayton Daily News — Stellantis to invest $406 million at 3 factories, a step toward meeting commitments in UAW contract — Jeep and Ram maker Stellantis will spend $406 million retooling three Michigan factories so they can build electric vehicles or battery parts to support a strategy of making vehicles powered by both gasoline and batteries. An assembly plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, north of Detroit, will get the bulk of the investment, $235.5 million, so it can make the battery-powered Ram 1500 pickup truck that will go into production later this year.In the union contract, which runs through April of 2028, the company agreed to invest $1.4 billion at the Sterling Heights plant.

► From the AP — Annual US consumer inflation fell to 2.5% in August, a 3-year low — Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices rose 2.5% in August from a year earlier, down from 2.9% in July. It was the fifth straight annual drop and the smallest since February 2021. From July to August, prices rose just 0.2%.

► From Common Dreams — Kroger’s Year-to-Date Earnings Double While Pushing for Merger That Will Raise Food Prices –Today, Kroger reported $466 million in Q2 2024 earnings, with year-to-date earnings of $1.4 billion nearly doubling from 2023—sky-high totals that coincide with criticism that some grocery retailers continue to use inflation as an excuse to pad profits. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently fighting to block Kroger’s proposed merger with grocery giant Albertsons, a deal that could cost $334 million in wages for nearly a million grocery workers, open the door for more price increases, and reduce grocery access across the country.

► From the Washington Post — Rent, utilities rose faster than home values for first time in a decade — From 2011 to 2019, real rent costs rose less than 3 percent every year, the data show. In 2022, after peaking during the coronavirus pandemic, rent grew 1 percent. But last year, rent rose 3.8 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent rise in inflation-adjusted median home values. The findings are yet another example of how a supercharged rental market is squeezing people who also can’t afford to buy.

► From the AP — USPS’ long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers — Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.

► From the AP — US filings for unemployment benefits inch up slightly but remain historically low — By historic standards, though they are up from earlier this year. During the first four months of 2024, claims averaged a just 213,000 a week, but they started rising in May. They hit 250,000 in late July, adding to evidence that high interest rates were finally cooling a red-hot U.S. job market.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington Post — How resounding was Kamala Harris’s debate win? Let’s look at the polls. — The CNN poll showed Harris winning the debate 63 percent to 37 percent among debate-watchers, while the YouGov poll showed her winning 54-31 among registered voters who watched at least some of the debate, with 14 percent unsure.

► From NPR — At the debate, Harris made climate change a pocketbook issue — Climate change is “very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up; you ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go.”

► From Common Dreams — Wyden Says Trillions in Taxes Dodged by Ultra-Rich Could Fund Social Security Until 2100 — “The ultra-wealthy are avoiding nearly $2 trillion in taxes every 10 years,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said during a Senate Budget Committee hearing. “That is enough to keep Social Security whole till the end of this century.”

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Valley Labor Report — WATCH: Workers at Firestone in Liberia UNIONIZE

TODAY’S MUST READ

► From the Washington Post — 9/11 responders are getting dementia. They want the government to help. –It took 19 years for the symptoms to emerge. Tom Beyrer, who served for six months as a police officer at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, was 65 when his memory and cognitive abilities began to crumble. Cancer, respiratory ailments, mental health conditions and musculoskeletal disorders have long been linked to work at the site of the World Trade Center attack, and medical costs for them have been covered by the World Trade Center Health Program since it was established by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2011.

“The big take-home from this paper is that people who used personal protective equipment were protected from the worst effects,” [Caroline Tanner, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco] said. “That should apply to people in any industry where they run the risk of exposure to fine particulate matter. It applies certainly to firefighters. And for those of us who live downwind from a forest fire, maybe we should be asking about public health measures that can protect people when we know the air quality is poor.”

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