Tag: labor rights

lananiscorner:

afloweroutofstone:

reddit-news:

Amazon ‘dumbfounded’ police in Spain by asking them to intervene in a mass warehouse strike and patrol worker productivity https://nordic.businessinsider.com/amazon-asked-police-in-spain-to-intervene-warehouse-strike-2018-11

Spanish newspaper El Confidencial reported that Amazon met with police officials after the strike was announced. It wanted local officers “to force employees to go to their respective jobs and ensure their performance was identical to that of a normal working day.”

Amazon’s request “dumbfounded” police, according to El Confidencial. “The request was categorically rejected by the police, who maintained that controlling labour productivity doesn’t fall within its powers,” a police source said.

Law enforcement officials reportedly emphasized to Amazon that Spanish law protects workers’ right to strike. They told the company that police would be present at the strike but would limit themselves to keeping the peace.

Oh it actually gets so muchh worse. I just read the Spanish article that reported this and apparently:

1) This is not the first time Amazon approached the Spanish police for this (previously in July and March). They were always denied.

2) In response, Amazon hired a private security company to smuggle a bunch of people into the protest to take images “for future reprisal”.

3) They lied to the media when questioned about this insane attempt to strong-arm the police.

Fuck Bezos, seriously. I mean, the idea of Amazon is great, but how the fuck did we get to this point?

cornadious:

chiribomb:

blitzkriegfritz:

low-budget-mulan:

logantheanimal:

One of my old partners got pulled in for an investigation today. The photo is not of him – it’s of a paramedic in California trying to eat something for the first time in nearly ten hours.

My old partner was told that a member of the public took photos of him and his current partner. My buddy was sleeping, and his partner was eating. This member of the public sent the photos with an email that both complained about how “unprofessional” it appeared – and a threat to send the photos to the media.

Thanks to Prop 11 in California, first responders no longer have a right to breaks. AMR lied to the public in a huge way. California was the only state where emergency crews had been granted a legal right to breaks to use the latrine and have a meal. Shifts run a minimum of 12 hours, often 24, and AMR runs their crews into the ground.

My buddy and his partner are in trouble because they were trying to get rest and food while posted on a street corner because we don’t get breaks. This is what AMR tells us to do. Please don’t see something like this and assume that we’re being lazy or not doing our jobs. Don’t take photos or send them to the press. That crew is probably exhausted and overworked.

Not to mention they hold us 911 coverage units over regularly “for just one last transfer call that will be really quick.” When there are plenty of transfer only units posted at hospitals doing nothing at the beginning of their shifts. It also tanks our levels and leaves a lot of the city uncovered for emergency calls.

The thing is everytime you complain about something like people taking breaks, it’s not that you gain something from It, you just make life worse for other people. How about minding your own damn business?

Seems like common sense that people doing a high-stress job that requires a lot of good judgement on matters of life and death should be able to eat and piss when they need to

Excuse me. I want the people responsible for saving my life to be tired hungry and thinking only that their bladder is going to explode. It makes me feel like they care.

gingerautie:

argumate:

class-struggle-anarchism:

been seeing a lot of variations on this take recently – it’s one of the most common pro-immigrant sentiments and also one of the worst – the line that says we should welcome migrant workers because working class Australian/British/US etc citizens are too spoilt or lazy or consider themselves too good to do those jobs.

Like it comes from a (sort of) well meaning place, they’re often trying to say that migrants aren’t criminals or lazy or whatever… but aside from valuing people according to their productive ‘worth’, valourising menial, difficult work as some kind of moral virtue and attacking working class people for not being exploited enough, the most important thing missing from that take is the reasons why working class citizens don’t do these jobs. 

It’s not because working class Australians/Americans/Brits etc are too good for it – it’s that employers deliberately don’t employ people that they might actually have to pay properly – wage theft is fundamental to the business model

But somehow it always gets framed in terms of working class people’s choices – what the migrant is “willing to do” and what the American won’t. Poor migrants can’t choose more attractive work, and the working class citizens can’t “choose” to work for less than minimum wage. It’s the bosses who make the choice, it’s about what they are “willing to do”. This is how they want it. 

“wage theft” is a phrase that really needs to get used more often.

vulnerable people are often willing to work in unacceptably harsh or dangerous conditions. This isn’t a good thing, and it shouldn’t be celebrated. 

Like, if you’re a worker who spent a decade campaigning and striking with your union to get fair pay and safer conditions, watching your former employers switch to employing vulnerable people who are undercutting union rates is obviously infuriating.

Directing that fury at the vulnerable immigrants is wrong, but being angry about that is entirely reasonable.

Also people who don’t speak english well enough to read contracts, who might struggle to communicate with each other, are much easier to exploit because they’re likely to struggle with putting together a strike.

workingclasshistory:

On this day, 30 October 1919, residents of the Pennsylvania Working Home for Blind Men demanded higher wages for their work, threatening to strike the following week if they weren’t granted. The visually impaired men made brooms, whisks, carpets and other goods, and their home had increased the rent with no increase in their wages. They formed a union and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The boss claimed that the men “like the rest of the world, have got strike fever”.
Pictured is the home around that time https://ift.tt/2PskDGY

Trump’s NLRB Just Quietly Ruled to Make Union Pickets Illegal

dagwolf:

An all-Republican panel of President Trump’s National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) recently ruled that janitors in San Francisco violated the law when they picketed in front of their workplace to win higher wages, better working conditions and freedom from sexual harassment in their workplace. The ruling could result in far-reaching restrictions on picketing that limit the ability of labor unions to put public pressure on management.

The NLRB reached its conclusion by using the complex and convoluted employment structure created by the janitors’ employers. The janitors were technically employed by one company, Ortiz Janitorial Services, which was subcontracted by another company, Preferred Building Services, to work in the building of a third company.

This type of confusing employment relationship is increasingly common, resulting in workers being put in a position where it’s difficult to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions, or protect their basic employment rights.

The NLRB based its decision on a particularly onerous provision in federal labor law that prohibits employees from engaging in boycotts, pickets or other activities that are aimed at a secondary employer. The provision was added as part of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, taking away one of labor’s most powerful weapons.

In this case, the NLRB overturned an administrative law judge’s ruling that because the second company had significant control over the employment relationship, it constituted a joint employer. The judge based her conclusion on evidence that Preferred Building Services was involved in the hiring, firing, disciplining, supervision, direction of work, and other terms and conditions of the janitors’ employment with Ortiz Janitorial Services. Therefore, both Ortiz and Preferred acted as joint employers to the janitors.  

This matters because if the various companies were joint employers, there were no prohibited secondary activities. But the NLRB held that the janitors worked for the subcontractor, and any actions aimed at any other company was illegal under the law.

What is remarkable about this case is how it makes things much worse for workers by only subtly reinterpreting the law. It takes a narrow read on the joint employment doctrine and thereby limits workers’ right to picket. And, as a result, many workers in what former U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Administrator David Weil has termed “the fissured workplace” will find it difficult to vindicate their rights. Ultimately, this case shows how many basic fundamental rights associated with the First Amendment workers are prohibited from engaging in.

Trump’s NLRB Just Quietly Ruled to Make Union Pickets Illegal

sideboobicorn:

toriisahunter:

darknetexclusivetouhouterrorcore:

pumpkinprogram:

YO

U.S. Amazon employee here!!!

Do not buy into that bullshit about us getting a “raise”. It’s not a raise. Not when workers who have been there 2+ years who made $13 when they started and now make $14 are only getting that $15 like every other new employee is. We should be getting payed $16 but we aren’t.

They already took away our ability to earn payed days off. Yup that’s right. Thru points earned thru productivity we could earn a payed day off if we had a certain amount of points.

Now they take away our monthly bonuses too that we earned thru attendance and productivity.

AND they took away our stocks because of this so-called “raise”.

All they did was move the money elsewhere. Actually, I haven’t done the calculations yet but I bet we LOST money from our pay.

That “raise” is bullshit. Fuck Jeff Bezos and fuck Amazon.

they took the money out of the workers left pocket and put it in their right

As someone who used to work for amazon and still has friends who do, this is facts. Spread this like wildfire cause it’s actual bullshit!!!!

We have done the math. With bonuses that double during November and December taken away, and stocks having to be purchased (that they haven’t even figured out the system for as far as I know), veteran workers lose about 3k a year.

Spread the Spoons Strike

peoplescommissariat:

This is the main article from the new Wetherspoons strike bulletin ‘The Spoons Striker’, avaliable in PDF form for real world distribution.

It can be hard to live on the money we make. We spend most of our wages on renting damp flats, we have to walk to work when we can’t afford the bus, and we have to choose between dinner and a haircut. We’re forced to work as fast as we can for long shifts with barely any breaks, even when we’re sick or injured. We’ve seen the people we work with struggling to make ends meet, sofa surfing and scraping by. Meanwhile, Tim Martin is worth £322 million. Our work has made him, the bosses, and the shareholders rich beyond our wildest dreams, but we’re left a few weeks’ pay away from poverty.

We won’t take it anymore. That’s why we’re fighting back. They won’t listen to us when we complain, so we’re taking the next step. In two Brighton pubs we’ve taken the decision to all stop work and go on strike on October 4th. We’re fighting for £10 an hour and union recognition for every Wetherspoons worker in the country.

On your own, you can’t change anything. Hiding in the freezer, stretching out your break time, getting another job – none of it solves the problem. The bosses have all the power and they don’t give a shit about us. We know that we will only win when we fight together.

How do we know that we win when we fight together? Because we’re already winning. The recent pay rises didn’t come out of thin air.

In the past, millionaire shitlord Tim has argued against the idea that all workers deserve a living wage. He thinks it’s ‘unrealistic’ that we get paid enough to get by. But suddenly, just after two pubs announced they were going to vote on strike action, he changed his mind. Now we’ve shown we can stick up for ourselves, generous Tim is willing to give us a couple of quid extra out of the profits we make.

The abolition of 18-20 youth rates means than some workers will be going £6.60 an hour to £8.26. That’s two pounds an hour better – all because workers at just two pubs stood up to Tim and the bosses. Night shifts will get paid a pound extra per hour, and the tiny annual pay rise has been brought forward a few months. But it’s not enough. At minimum, we deserve £10 an hour – because everyone deserves a wage you can live on in comfort.

But as well as the national pay rise, we’ve managed to get stuff changed in both of our pubs. At the Post and Telegraph we gave our pub manager a letter signed by half the staff complaining about the way our rotas were done, and things were changed immediately. At the Brighthelm, we handed in a letter complaining about the introduction of night shifts and they were stopped straight away.

If just two pubs in one city can force the bosses to give us a national pay rise, then what could ten pubs do? What about twenty?

We need the get organised all over the country if we want to win more. Tim can afford to give up a bit of his £322 million to the people who work hour after hour making food, cleaning toilets, closing up and taking stock. But he won’t do it unless we force him too. The only way to force him too is to organise and fight back.

In Brighton, we’re members of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU). Unions are groups made up of lots of workers. Together, as part of a union, we can organise to immediately change our own lives. When you’re in a union, you don’t have to put up with a bad job, terrible wages, bullying managers or the rest of it.

We’re asking you, workers at other pubs across the country, to join the union and organise where you are. There are over 900 spoons across the UK. Workers in as many of those as possible need to get organised and take part in the movement. There are tens of thousands of us and only a few of them – together, we can run our pubs for the many not the few.

Weatherspoons workers will be taking coordinated strike action with McDonalds and TGI Friday’s workers on Thursday 4th October. 

Spread the Spoons Strike

Spread the Spoons Strike

hotellesbian:

peoplescommissariat:

This is the main article from the new Wetherspoons strike bulletin ‘The Spoons Striker’, avaliable in PDF form for real world distribution.

It can be hard to live on the money we make. We spend most of our wages on renting damp flats, we have to walk to work when we can’t afford the bus, and we have to choose between dinner and a haircut. We’re forced to work as fast as we can for long shifts with barely any breaks, even when we’re sick or injured. We’ve seen the people we work with struggling to make ends meet, sofa surfing and scraping by. Meanwhile, Tim Martin is worth £322 million. Our work has made him, the bosses, and the shareholders rich beyond our wildest dreams, but we’re left a few weeks’ pay away from poverty.

We won’t take it anymore. That’s why we’re fighting back. They won’t listen to us when we complain, so we’re taking the next step. In two Brighton pubs we’ve taken the decision to all stop work and go on strike on October 4th. We’re fighting for £10 an hour and union recognition for every Wetherspoons worker in the country.

On your own, you can’t change anything. Hiding in the freezer, stretching out your break time, getting another job – none of it solves the problem. The bosses have all the power and they don’t give a shit about us. We know that we will only win when we fight together.

How do we know that we win when we fight together? Because we’re already winning. The recent pay rises didn’t come out of thin air.

In the past, millionaire shitlord Tim has argued against the idea that all workers deserve a living wage. He thinks it’s ‘unrealistic’ that we get paid enough to get by. But suddenly, just after two pubs announced they were going to vote on strike action, he changed his mind. Now we’ve shown we can stick up for ourselves, generous Tim is willing to give us a couple of quid extra out of the profits we make.

The abolition of 18-20 youth rates means than some workers will be going £6.60 an hour to £8.26. That’s two pounds an hour better – all because workers at just two pubs stood up to Tim and the bosses. Night shifts will get paid a pound extra per hour, and the tiny annual pay rise has been brought forward a few months. But it’s not enough. At minimum, we deserve £10 an hour – because everyone deserves a wage you can live on in comfort.

But as well as the national pay rise, we’ve managed to get stuff changed in both of our pubs. At the Post and Telegraph we gave our pub manager a letter signed by half the staff complaining about the way our rotas were done, and things were changed immediately. At the Brighthelm, we handed in a letter complaining about the introduction of night shifts and they were stopped straight away.

If just two pubs in one city can force the bosses to give us a national pay rise, then what could ten pubs do? What about twenty?

We need the get organised all over the country if we want to win more. Tim can afford to give up a bit of his £322 million to the people who work hour after hour making food, cleaning toilets, closing up and taking stock. But he won’t do it unless we force him too. The only way to force him too is to organise and fight back.

In Brighton, we’re members of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU). Unions are groups made up of lots of workers. Together, as part of a union, we can organise to immediately change our own lives. When you’re in a union, you don’t have to put up with a bad job, terrible wages, bullying managers or the rest of it.

We’re asking you, workers at other pubs across the country, to join the union and organise where you are. There are over 900 spoons across the UK. Workers in as many of those as possible need to get organised and take part in the movement. There are tens of thousands of us and only a few of them – together, we can run our pubs for the many not the few.

Weatherspoons workers will be taking coordinated strike action with McDonalds and TGI Friday’s workers on Thursday 4th October. 

yes! good for you wetherspoon workers, support this strike!

Spread the Spoons Strike

social–justice–wario:

tankies:

A lot of people saying “just join a union” in response to labor practices in the US should probably know the US has attacked unions and companies do too. Some companies literally have propaganda videos telling employees they’re wrong to join a union because unions hurt the business.

Don’t forget Blair Mountain. Don’t forget Ludowe. Don’t forget every time the state’s killed workers for having the audacity to ask to be payed in something that wasn’t Monopoly money