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Peru Repeals Pro-Corporate Farm Law After Days of Labor Protests

 

https://www.democrac.../12/7/headlines

 

Entire Article:

(Democracy Now!) In Peru, lawmakers have repealed a highly contested agricultural law, following five days of demonstrations and roadblocks led by farmworkers across the country and after at least one person was killed Thursday when police opened fire on protesters. On Friday, Peru’s newly appointed interim president, Francisco Sagasti, sent a bill to Congress revoking the law, which sought to increase agricultural exports and give exporters tax breaks. Farmworkers said it benefited corporations while slashing their wages and worsening working conditions.

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Google Employees Announce Creation of Union

 

https://www.msn.com/...ocid=uxbndlbing

 

Introduction:

(The Hill via MSN) More than 200 Google employees on Monday announced the creation of a union, a historic first at a major technology company.

 

The Alphabet Workers Union, referring to Google's parent company, is launching with support from the Communications Workers of America.

While smaller subsets of Google workers - cafeteria workers in the Bay Area and contractors in Pittsburgh - have unionized before, this marks the first effort to establish a companywide union.

 

"This is historic-the first union at a major tech company by and for all tech workers," Dylan Baker, a Google software engineer, said in a statement.

 

"We will elect representatives, we will make decisions democratically, we will pay dues, and we will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values."

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Worker Advocates Rally Around Biden’s Labor Department Pick

 

https://www.motherjo...epartment-pick/

 

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) President Donald Trump treated the labor seat in his cabinet like a sop to the executive class. By picking Boston mayor and former union leader Marty Walsh to lead the Department of Labor, President-elect Joe Biden has signaled an intention to give worker interests a place at his policy-making table. 

 

Trump infamously tapped fast-food magnate Andy Puzder for the job, whose nomination ultimately collapsed under the weight of his anti-worker advocacy and sexist marketing campaigns. In 2019, Trump turned to “management-side” labor lawyer and corporate lobbyist Eugene Scalia for the role. When the coronavirus pandemic exploded in 2020, Scalia steadfastly rejected pleas from labor unions, occupational-safety experts, and US senators, to force employers in frontline industries to put in place emergency protective measures like strict social distancing and provision of masks—even as the virus ripped through meatpacking plants, farms, medical facilities, and supermarkets, killing hundreds of workers and exposing surrounding communities to the pathogen. Meanwhile, Scalia pushed to limit access to to federal unemployment benefits and publicly advocated against extending $600 weekly in federal unemployment payments after the CARES Act expired at the end of July. 

 

Marty Walsh, the son of Irish immigrants who rose through the ranks of Boston’s Building and Construction Trades union before entering politics, presents quite a sharp contrast to Scalia, the son of the late right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Labor and worker-safety advocates applauded the pick.

  

The Walsh appointment “sends a clear message that this administration is ready to fight for America’s frontline workers,” Marc Perrone, president of the the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said in a statement. The UFCW represents hundreds of thousands of workers in two of the industries hardest-hit by the coronavirus: meatpacking and grocery. 

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, left, with Joe Biden in 2019. President-elect Biden has tapped Walsh to run the Department of Labor. 

Steven Senn/AP Photo