August 20 Labor News Roundup
Workers voted to strike in Detroit public schools, reached a tentative agreement at Bath Iron Works, and told Uber to suck it.
This is the Written Up Labor News Roundup for August 20, 2020. You can skim for stories from the industries, locations, and topics that you care about, read the direct quotes from workers throughout, or go ahead and read the whole thing if you really want to. If there’s a story I should include, send it to writtenupnewsletter@gmail.com.
Transportation
Uber and Lyft threatened to shut down operations in California rather than obey a court ruling ordering them to treat their drivers as employees. A California judge previously ruled that Uber and Lyft drivers are employees, not independent contractors. Lawyers for the companies said drivers were not fundamental to their business, an argument the judge said “flies in the face of economic reality and common sense.” Late Thursday, the companies were given a reprieve.
An Uber driver expressed his thoughts in the New York Times.
Uber didn’t send me enough personal protective equipment, so I’m paying for masks out of my own pocket. I know that I deserve better, I know my rights, and I know that I could better provide for my family if Uber were to simply classify me as an employee.
We’re risking our lives to keep driving amid a global pandemic while simultaneously fighting Uber’s deceptive ballot initiative intended to rewrite decades of California law to put Uber’s corporate profits over drivers’ safety and well-being.
Uber’s strategy from its founding has been to ignore laws it doesn’t like and shift as many costs as possible onto drivers and taxpayers. Its entire business model is based on putting Uber first, no matter what.
All workers
A new study found that average worker pay increased by about 12% over the last 40 years while CEO pay has risen 980% over the same period. The typical CEO now makes the equivalent of 278 full-time workers’ salaries every year.
A state constitutional amendment to raise Florida’s minimum wage to $15/hr over 5 years will go before voters this November. Florida’s current minimum wage is $8.56/hr.
Postal Service
On Monday, Written Up compiled firsthand accounts from postal workers about the mail slowdown imposed on them by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for the benefit of President Donald Trump’s re-election prospects. This week, postal workers in New Haven held a rally to protect USPS. In Southern Maine, workers described being told to dismantle two of one office’s ten mail sorting machines.
“I did ask, ‘Why can’t we just keep them, put them under a tarp, and leave them powered off?’ And I couldn’t get an answer to that from upper management,” Doughty said.
Other Maine postal workers called on Louis DeJoy to resign. Postal workers in Kansas demanded DeJoy be fired and removed sorting machines returned to operation. A postal worker in Oklahoma said entire small towns have days where they receive no mail at all because of the slowdown, and a sorting machine in Tulsa has been removed.
Workers in Tucson, Arizona, and Detroit, Michigan also spoke out about the slowdown:
“We had people that tested positive in offices, we still showed up to work at those offices,” [Michael] Moriconi said. “We’ve had people that have passed away from COVID locally that work for the post office. We’ve shown the dedication and the merit to come to work every single day and we deserve the respect from our elected officials to make sure that continues to happen.”
Food processing
A Mississippi Center for Investigative Journalism piece examines how the state’s poultry workers have faced a combination of line speed-ups, coronavirus outbreaks, and the fallout of last year’s ICE raids where 600 poultry workers were arrested.
A separate investigation by the Mississippi Clarion Ledger found that workers have faced brutal consequences while managers and owners have not been charged or prosecuted. Another Clarion Ledger piece investigated the mental health effects of the raid on the young children of Mississippi meatpackers who were arrested. One-third of those children were between the ages of 4 and 8.
“I had to work in terrible conditions, my husband is in jail, I’ve got an ankle monitor. The people who ran these companies are sitting at home and they’re fine. They will never suffer what we have had to suffer and had to suffer for this company,” [said one undocumented worker].
A group called The Children of Smithfield—sons and daughters of meatpacking workers in Crete, Nebraska—have been protesting to bring attention to the danger that meatpacking companies and the politicians who protect them have put their parents in.
The family of a fourth Tyson worker who died of coronavirus has sued the company, claiming it covered up an outbreak at its Waterloo, Iowa plant in order to keep workers on the job.
A Columbus Dispatch investigation outlined how the coronavirus spread through the meatpacking industry and the Guatemalan and Bhutanese immigrant communities the industry draws many workers from in Ohio. Meatpacking companies, public health officials, and politicians have collaborated to hide the number of cases among workers in plants around the country, and, in some cases, covered up the existence of outbreaks entirely.
Healthcare
Healthcare workers in Las Vegas delivered nearly 500 complaints to state hospital regulators, alleging unsafe working conditions mostly due to a lack of personal protective equipment and understaffing.
According to public records obtained by Kaiser Health News, Georgia officials knew they did not have enough personal protective equipment to protect the state’s healthcare workers from the coronavirus, but continued reopening anyway. At least 80 healthcare workers in Georgia have died from the virus.
1,600 workers at 16 nursing homes in Detroit planned a strike for August 17, but delayed the strike after Michigan’s governor intervened. Written Up previously shared a finding that more than 750 nursing home workers have died during the pandemic, making it the most dangerous job in America with a death rate twice that of the most dangerous industries prior to the pandemic.
“It’s no coincidence that nearly 2,000 nursing home workers and residents have died from COVID-19 in Michigan alone. Nursing home owners failed to prepare for this virus before it arrived, and failed to protect us once it was here,” Trece Andrews, a laundry worker at Regency at St. Clair Shores, said.
Government
New York City is laying off 400 emergency medical service workers, part of cuts to the city government that may affect 22,000 workers.
Kansas City is making dramatic cuts to its city workforce, imposing furloughs and a hiring freeze on its workers as well as across-the-board 4.5% cuts in every department.
110 Virginia Beach, Virginia waste management workers slowed down trash pickup in protest of the city failing to use federal funds for hazard pay.
“Trash is what we do, it is not what we are. We are essential workers. We are on the front lines every day. We have been there since the virus started and even before that,” sanitation worker Alfred McClenny said.
Education
Detroit teachers authorized a strike over reopening plans. Of those who voted, 91% of teachers supported going on strike.
University of Texas workers circulated a petition demanding all classes with more than 10 students to be remote, an end to furloughs and layoffs, and hazard pay of $500/month during the pandemic.
At the University of Maryland, workers are demanding that the university system negotiate with them over protocols to keep workers safe from the coronavirus as the campus reopens. Their union filed a complaint on July 10 over the university’s refusal to bargain.
Move-in day is hanging over some workers like a cloud, particularly those working in dorms like Ayala.
“They don’t come by themselves, they come in with the whole family,” Ayala said.
Ayala’s also worried about her 5-year-old son, who will have to take classes online. His older sibling has been caring for him, Ayala said, but now that sibling has classes of her own. So Ayala said she’s also hoping the university will provide more leave for campus workers in light of the pandemic.
“Sometimes, I cannot sleep,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it.”
Campus workers in the University of North Carolina system who are members of three different unions sued the university system for providing an unsafe working environment that put them at heightened risk for exposure to the coronavirus.
Some Georgia and Tennessee school districts may require teachers who have been exposed to coronavirus but don’t show symptoms to continue teaching in-person.
Food service
HMSHost may make up to 1,700 layoffs of airport restaurant employees in Florida permanent on October 15.
Nike’s campus in Beaverton, OR, laid off 355 food service workers subcontracted by Aramark.
Farmworkers
Farmworkers who work at indoor mushroom farms have experienced coronavirus outbreaks at facilities in Washington, Tennessee, Colorado, and Pennsylvania.
The Oregon Worker Relief Fund has raised millions of dollars to help undocumented immigrants who have been laid off and are not eligible for unemployment assistance.
Media
Workers at Delaware Online/The News Journal formed a union with the support of more than ⅔ of the journalists there.
Workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette voted 88-31 to go on strike. 40 workers in other unions at the paper voted unanimously to support the strike. The workers’ union contract has been expired for three years and workers accuse the company of refusing to negotiate in good faith, which is required by law. The newspaper also prevented two black journalists from covering the George Floyd protests earlier this year.
Workers at the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Newspaper filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board saying that their company unilaterally lowered their hours and pay without negotiating the changes with unionized workers, as they are legally required to do.
Casinos
Casinos in Pennsylvania are laying off hundreds of workers even though multiple casinos’ revenue has gone up this year from the expansion of online gambling.
Workers in Las Vegas are demanding a “right to return” ordinance in the county that would require businesses to re-hire furloughed workers as their businesses recover before hiring new workers. They are backed by a coalition of unions that represents 87,000 workers in the state.
The Hollywood Casino in Charleston, West Virginia announced 540 permanent layoffs.
Mining & Machinists & Metal
4,300 workers at Bath Iron Works, a Navy shipyard in Maine owned by General Dynamics, will vote on a new three-year contract they won after going on strike. The union won on its main issue, BIW’s desire to bring in new non-union subcontractors to speed up work. The subcontracting language will no longer change in the new agreement. BIW workers have been on strike since June 22.
After Newmont Mining started a joint venture in Nevada with a competitor, it tried to stop negotiating with its workers’ union. The joint venture, Nevada Gold Mines, finally agreed to recognize the union after a complaint from the National Labor Relations Board. Among other conduct, the complaint said that a union worker was threatened with retaliation if they reported safety issues to federal regulators.
Two workers at a scrap metal recycling company in Illinois filed a lawsuit alleging United Scrap Metal violated state law by requiring them to punch into work by scanning their fingerprints without the workers’ written consent.