NEWS ROUNDUP

WTO exhibit | 1 day strikes | South Korea

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

 

STRIKES

► From the RWDSU:

 

LOCAL

► From MyNorthwest — All Over The Map: WTO exhibit shows how infamous event played out on Seattle streets — A quarter-century after it happened, a new exhibit at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle is a reminder of what the WTO was about, and how it made its infamous mark on local and world history. The exhibit, “Teamsters, Turtles, and Beyond: The Legacy of the Seattle WTO Protests,” opened Friday, and will be on display in the museum at Lake Union Park through the end of April 2025.

► From the Seattle Times — Advocates devise a plan to pay child care providers a living wage — The proposal also calls for 20 paid sick days and 20 leave days annually — a first for many providers who have had no choice but to lose pay when they are ill or take time off. It seeks benefits, employer-sponsored retirement plans along with funding for training and professional development, lesson planning time and family conferences. “There’s going to be a huge difference if they approve this,” said Lorena Miranda, a Yakima County child care provider who helped design the model. “It’s the beginning of a future not only for us but for our kids.”

► From the Tri-City Herald — 3 lawsuits claim Inslee, regulators sidestepped state law to approve Eastern WA wind farm — Benton County, Tri-Cities CARES and the Yakama Nation followed up on their November promises to sue to curtail Scout Clean Energy from developing a massive wind, solar and battery farm along a 24-mile stretch of the Horse Heaven Hills. Scout asserts the project will be a boon for the Tri-Cities economy by supporting 1,000 jobs during construction. It says the project would contribute more than $250 million in local taxes over its 35-year lifespan. The project would be built with union labor following a 2022 agreement with Tri-Cities labor groups.

► From the union-busting Columbian — Incarcerated women work with Washington School for the Blind in Vancouver to transcribe Braille — For almost 30 years, incarcerated women in Washington have been part of a program that transcribes documents, pamphlets, business cards, textbooks, novels, music, signs and menus — even the Oregon Voter Guide — into Braille.

 

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the Beat of Hawaii — Flight Attendant Crisis Reaching Boiling Point At Three Airlines Serving Hawaii — United Airlines flight attendants, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), recently authorized a strike to push for improved pay and working conditions. Alaska Airlines flight attendants are in a similar situation, with their most recent contract offer overwhelmingly rejected earlier this year. Combined, these two airlines represent a significant portion of all flights to Hawaii, putting their labor disputes in the spotlight for Hawaii-bound travelers.

► From WWNO — One-day strikes are in: Why unions are keeping it short on the picket line — Another way strikes can be different? Keeping them brief. This strike was scheduled to only last 24 hours. While long-running strikes have dominated the headlines in the Gulf South region in the past few years, short strikes have become the norm. Since at least 2021, most strikes have lasted less than five days, according to the labor action tracker run by Cornell University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The majority of those short strikes last no more than a day.

 

ORGANIZING

► From Inside Higher Ed — Higher ed unionization has boomed. Will it change under Trump? — Roughly 38 percent of graduate student workers are now unionized, as are more than a quarter of faculty, according to an August report from an organization that studies higher education labor trends. That National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions study noted that the ranks of union-represented grad workers especially grew in the past few years, increasing by 64,000 between 2021 and 2023.

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 Hollywood Reporter — IATSE Joins Hollywood Commission’s Workplace Misconduct Reporting Platform — Starting Tuesday, the crew union IATSE is offering the tool to some 85,000 U.S. members who work across television, film and commercials. MyConnext, created to address calls in industry surveys for a tool to record bad behavior in the workplace, provides users with a means to log these experiences with a timestamp for their own personal use, with employers and/or their unions. Workers can ask questions and submit reports anonymously and also use a “hold for match” feature that only sends a report once someone else has reported the same individual.

► From Bloomberg — Thousands of Federal Employees Land Work-From-Home Deal Ahead of Trump — The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 42,000 Social Security Administration workers, reached an agreement with the agency last week that will protect telework until 2029 in an updated contract, according to a message to its members viewed by Bloomberg. The new deal, signed by President Joe Biden’s just-departed SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley, will let workers “maintain current levels of telework,” AFGE chapter president Rich Couture wrote.

► From AOL — Unraveling The Corporate Control Agenda Behind RTO — Their research shows that the push for RTO [Return to Office] is more closely associated with managerial desires for control and a tendency to attribute organizational underperformance to the workforce, rather than evidence-based strategies aimed at enhancing corporate value.

► From the Washington State Standard — U.S. Education Department pings states, schools to set policies on cellphone use — Murthy warns: “More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media; however, the current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

 

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the New Republic — Republicans Are Already Coming for Medicare and Social Security — During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump floated the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare, saying in March that there is “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also—the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” Cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security was also floated earlier this year by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who promised to cut the programs in favor of boosting the country’s military spending.

► From Colorado Politics — Colorado bill would eliminate second election for unionization, drawing criticism from businesses — The Labor Peace Act, signed into law in 1943, sets Colorado apart from other states in that it requires two elections to permit a “union security” agreement. The first election to unionize only needs a simple majority. A second election, which requires a 75% “yes” vote, to establish “union security.” If that second vote meets the three-quarters threshold, then the union can negotiate with the employer to require that everybody, including non-union members, pay union dues.

► From the Oregon Capital Chronicle — Trump’s unusual labor secretary pick — Oregon’s Chavez-DeRemer — could have an impact at home — Shortly before Trump delivered the nomination, the anti-regulatory Competitive Enterprise Institute blasted her as unqualified for the job and said, “What we do know is not encouraging. In any event, cabinet secretary shouldn’t be a place for on-the-job training. Trump should keep on looking.” The apparent likelihood is that Chavez-DeRemer, if she holds to her labor-allied path in Congress, would be swimming against the Trump administration’s overall tide. And that could prove a serious challenge for even the most skilled and experienced of Washington operators, let alone a relative rookie.

 

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Korea Herald — South Korea’s largest labor union launches indefinite strike, calls for president’s resignation — The announcement comes in response to Yoon’s declaration of martial law late last night, a move the union has fiercely criticized as unconstitutional and undemocratic. The strike was announced early Wednesday morning during a press conference by the KCTU’s leadership. The union framed its actions as a fight to protect democracy, accusing Yoon of abusing his authority to maintain power during what they described as a “political crisis of his own making.”

► From the AP — Losses in China lead to $5 billion charge for General Motors as it cuts the value of its assets — The Detroit automaker said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it will cut the value of its equity stake in the ventures by $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion when it reports its results early next year. In addition, GM will take $2.7 billion worth of restructuring charges, most of it during the fourth quarter.

► From Yahoo Finance — Union says nearly 100,000 workers joined Volkswagen strikes across Germany — With two-hour strikes by workers on morning shifts and early walkouts on evening shifts, a total of 98,650 employees at nine plants across Germany took part in the industrial action, said the union on Tuesday.

 

The Stand posts links to local, national and international labor news every weekday morning. Subscribe to get daily news in your inbox. 

Related Topics:
Exit mobile version