Los Angeles Hospitality Workers Win Olympian Pay Raise by Mark Kreidler
May 20, 2025
Introduction:
(Capital and Main) In the months preceding the Los Angeles City Council’s vote to gradually improve tourism industry workers’ wages to $30 an hour, the hotel and developer lobbies threw everything they had into pushing one apocalyptic message: Paying higher wages would prompt the businesses to retrench, downsize operations and abandon projects in and around the city.
They brought the heat. The Hotel Association of Los Angeles warned the local Olympic organizing committee that it might not be able to honor contracts to furnish rooms for the 2028 L.A. Games. One property company said its investors would kill a planned expansion of a Hilton in Universal City if the higher wage kicked in. Another chief executive asserted that the city “has been crossed off the map by investors” in hotel projects.
The councilmembers approved the measure anyway. And one reason they did may be that L.A. hotel owners have already demonstrated they can handle a $30-an-hour wage — and much more.
The council’s action came less than a year after a prolonged series of rolling strikes by unionized Los Angeles hotel workers that resulted in new contract agreements with some 60 area hotels. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE Local 11, which led those strikes, is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
Those 2024 agreements are illuminating, and there’s no doubt the members of the City Council have been taking notes. Under the union contracts, most room attendants will see their hourly wage reach $35 by July of 2027. Nontipped workers received wage increases of 40% to 50% over the four-and-a-half-year life of those deals, and the hotels agreed to return to pre-pandemic staffing levels and mandatory daily room cleanings.
Hiding Exploitation Behind an App by Lena Simet
May 28, 2025
Introduction:
(Other Words) Alejandro thought that driving full-time for Uber offered freedom — flexible hours, quick cash, and time to care for his young son. But that promise faded fast.
“There are hours when I make $20,” he told me. “And there are hours when I make $2.” As his pay dropped, he pawned his computer and camera, began rationing his insulin, and started driving seven days a week just to break even.
Alejandro, whose real name is withheld for his privacy, is one of millions of workers powering a billion-dollar labor model built on legal loopholes.
Companies like Uber insist they are “tech platforms,” not employers, and that their workers are “independent contractors,” not employees. This sleight of hand allows them to sidestep minimum wage laws, paid sick leave, and other workplace protections while shifting risks onto workers.
It also lets them avoid employer taxes, draining funds from public coffers.
A new Human Rights Watch report looks at seven major platform companies — Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Favor, Instacart, Lyft, Shipt, and Uber — and finds that their labor model violates international human rights standards.
Kroger Workers Vote Down Contract in Indiana by 74 Percent by Caitlyn Clark
June 5, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700 members in Indiana voted down a tentative agreement May 31 covering 8,000 Kroger retail workers, with 74 percent voting no. Rank-and-file members bucked the recommendation for a ‘Yes’ vote by local union leadership and the bargaining committee.
The tentative agreement includes wage increases of 50 cents over four years for some job classifications, while the first pay step would receive a 75 cent bump. Both the first and second pay steps would see a 25 cent raise in the first year.
“With inflation, our wages are backsliding,” said Amy Reynolds, a 24-year Kroger worker in Fishers, near Indianapolis. “You wonder if you can make it on a job like this. When my mom worked at Kroger in 1970, her wages were comparable to the UAW Chrysler plant. Today, we’re nowhere close.”
The contract also includes changes to seniority language so that only full-time employees gain seniority rights. Approximately 70 percent of workers across Kroger’s retail division are part-time.
In Georgia, Trump Is Upending Successful Pro-Worker Reforms by Kalena Thomhave
June 3, 2025
Introduction:
(Capital & Main) As the administration of President Donald Trump dismantles reforms enacted under Joe Biden, workers and management at a Fort Valley, Georgia, school bus plant are thriving because of the same policies.
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order that would freeze future spending under two Biden-era laws: The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which authorized funding of more than $2 trillion. Under Biden, those grants often went to companies that supported worker unions, according to the Center for American Progress.
Several workers at Blue Bird Corp., a school bus manufacturer with 1,500 union employees at its plant in Fort Valley, said that support transformed their workplace. They pointed to better job conditions under a union contract and said that the company has thrived under a grant and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to federal support for electric buses.
Observers, including former acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, said that Trump’s actions could mean an abrupt end to successful government programs that have already improved the lives of workers across the country and added to companies’ bottom lines.
Mexican GM Workers to Vote Next Week on Union at Second Plant by Natascha Elena Uhlmann
June 18, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Workers at a second General Motors assembly plant in Mexico will vote June 25 to 27 on whether to join SINTTIA (the National Auto Workers Union), the independent union that won a landmark election to represent workers at the company’s Silao plant in 2022.
A win for SINTTIA at the plant, located 90 miles north of Silao in San Luis Potosí, would mark a major breakthrough for Mexico’s labor movement. It would be the first time that an independent union represents two assembly plants at one of the Big Three automakers.
The 6,500 workers set to vote produce the GMC Terrain and the Chevrolet Trax and Equinox SUVs.
PROTECTION UNIONS
GM workers in San Luis Potosí voted out their previous union, a Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) affiliate, in 2023. The CTM has built a reputation for imposing pro-boss “protection contracts” that lock in low wages and prevent true union representation.
Uncertain Harvest: Agriculture’s Season of Gloom by Mark Kreidler
June 19, 2025
Introduction:
(Capital and Main) For a brief moment, Donald Trump had it right. For all his administration’s vacillating threats to round up “illegals” and conduct mass deportations, the president’s own message, posted June 12 on Truth Social, rang utterly true to the core of American business — and its history.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking good, longtime workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote. “This is not good. We must protect our Farmers. … Changes are coming!”
Changes weren’t coming, it turned out. But they will be, and in a massive way, if the Trump administration goes on to decimate the agriculture, hotel and restaurant industries by stripping away the core of their workforce. And the entire nation will feel it.
The numbers simply aren’t in doubt. There were more than 8 million undocumented workers in the U.S. as of 2022. That’s 5% of the entire workforce. California alone is home to more than 1.5 million unauthorized workers, according to Jamshid Damooei, an economist and director of the Center for Economics of Social Issues at California Lutheran University.
Considering Trump’s obsession with California, which has repeatedly spurned him as a candidate and collectively rejected many of his policies in office, the Golden State is a fair place to ponder the wreckage Trump could wreak by going after undocumented workers who not only help prop up the state’s economy but feed the country.
As the U.S. Heats Up, Farmworkers Risk Heat-related Death By Sky Chadde
June 24, 2025
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) This week, swaths of the U.S. are dealing with high temperatures and warnings of heat stroke, a potentially deadly condition. The heat wave comes just as federal regulators have convened public hearings on a Biden-era proposal aimed at preventing deaths related to heat illness among U.S. workers.
Farmworkers are among those most at-risk, according to a study by the National Institute of Health. They often wear pants and long sleeves to protect themselves from pesticides while laboring, and some employers push workers to their limits.
“I’ve had bosses who, if they see you resting for a few minutes under a tree to recover yourself, think you’re wasting your time and send you home without pay,” one worker told Investigate Midwest in 2023 about working in 100-plus degree heat.
A 2015 study found agricultural workers died of heat stress at a rate of about three deaths per 1 million workers — a rate much higher than the construction industry.
Since 2015, 28 farmworkers have died from heat stroke, according to Occupational Health and Safety Administration data. That’s roughly one-fifth of the heat-related deaths OSHA recorded during that time span.
Philadelphia city workers strike after contract talks fail
Source: AP
Updated 1:03 AM CDT, July 1, 2025
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nearly 10,000 city workers in Philadelphia who collect trash, answer 911 calls, maintain city pools and perform other jobs went on strike Tuesday after contract negotiations broke down.
District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees announced the strike on its Facebook page early Tuesday, saying “HOLD THE LINES.”
Mayor Cherelle Parker said the city would suspend residential trash collection, close some city pools and shorten recreation center hours, but vowed to keep the city running. Police and firefighters are not on strike.
Parker, a pro-labor Democrat, promised that Fourth of July celebrations in the nation’s birthplace would go on as usual.
Employers, Speak Up for Immigrant Workers By Julie M. Weise
June 26, 2025
Introduction:
(Zócalo) This month’s coast-to-coast protests against immigration raids seem to display a country more divided than ever over the place of immigrants in American life. Yet recent history shows one group that, speaking collectively, often bridged the divide between conservatives and pro-immigrant activists: employers.
Since Trump’s reelection last fall, I’ve been curious: what will they do now—and could they reframe the immigration debate away from criminality and toward a broader understanding of economy, community, and America?
The federal immigration raids that began a few months ago appeared at first to stick to a familiar, predictable script. First, raids on agriculture and other industries dependent on immigrants detained many workers and sent the rest into hiding. Then, employers and their professional associations such as the American Farm Bureau and the American Business Immigration Coalition raised hell with their representatives in Washington, D.C., pleading their cases—that their crops would rot in the fields and their businesses grind to a halt. Next, President Donald Trump did what other administrations of both political parties have always done: carved out a little exception so certain industries could return to their “normal” dependence on undocumented workers.
But the difference this time is that under pressure from the hardline anti-immigrant wing of his party, Trump reversed course. The raids will proceed, allowing him to rack up deportation numbers to meet his campaign promises.
Employers have been trying to script their desired, usual ending in meetings with lawmakers and public statements. California farmer Ronnie Leimgruber expressed unfounded confidence that his industry’s support of Trump will spare it in the end. “The only change that we have to make,” said racehorse caretaking industry association director Eric J. Hamelback after a devastating immigration raid on a racetrack last week, “is to get even more aggressive with both the administration and Congress.”
Workers at Mexican GM Car Plant Vote on Union June 30, 2025
Introduction:
(The Star) Mexico City: Workers at a General Motors Co (GM) car plant in Mexico have voted in favour of joining the Carlos Leone union as its collective bargaining agent, reversing a trend in which workers were breaking ties with company-friendly labour groups for new independent ones that secured wage gains.
Carlos Leone was elected to represent GM’s 6,500 workers in San Luis Potosí with 1,888 votes, beating independent group Sinttia’s 1,115 votes, according to a statement issued by Mexico’s Labour Ministry. Participation reached 50.5%.
“Sinttia is committed to defending labour rights and will continue to work,” union head Alejandra Morales told Bloomberg.
Representatives for Carlos Leone didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment after business hours.
GM’s workers in San Luis Potosí have been without representation since 2023, after the former union failed to meet certification requirements under the USMCA North American trade deal.
Philadelphia city workers strike after contract talks fail
More on that:
Philadelphia Municipal Workers Strike Before July 4 Celebrations By Paul Prescod
July 2, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Nine thousand blue-collar workers who make Philadelphia run went on strike July 1. After sacrificing through the pandemic and years of bruising inflation, they say they’re on strike so they can afford to live in the city they serve.
Already, uncollected garbage is piling up as the workers, members of AFSCME District Council 33, defend their strike lines.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the term “essential worker” into widespread use, but many experienced a gap between how they were talked about and how they were treated. They were called essential, but regarded as disposable.
In June 2020, at the height of the pandemic, hundreds of Philadelphia sanitation workers and other DC 33 members rallied to demand hazard pay and personal protective equipment. It was a sign that these workers from one of Philadelphia’s largest unions, who are underpaid and do exceptionally dangerous work, understood their real worth to society.
Five years later, AFSCME DC 33 is on strike for a contract that reflects the sacrifices they’ve made for the public. The strike could cause a major disruption to the city’s Fourth of July festivities planned for this weekend.
Environmental Protection Agency Workers Investigated for Defending Its Mission By Jenny Brown
July 10, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) After signing a critical letter to their boss, 139 EPA workers were put under investigation and on a 2-week paid administrative leave July 3.
The workers wrote to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin that the mission of their agency is being undermined by the Trump administration’s actions and asked Zeldin to back away from “harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise” and re-commit “to his oath to protect the health of the American people and our environment.”
Under Zeldin, the EPA is reconsidering bans on asbestos, weakening rules on mercury, and extending deadlines to remove cancer-causing chemicals from drinking water. Zeldin is also dismantling the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the letter said, which will kneecap the scientific capacity of the agency and “threaten the health of all Americans.” The agency’s 2026 budget would cut the EPA’s funding by 54 percent.
EPA workers across the country signed the “Declaration of Dissent,” specifying that they were expressing their opinions in their personal capacity, and on their own time. Federal workers have the right express their views as long as they don’t use agency resources to do so, or claim to represent their agencies. (Federal workers speaking to Labor Notes also stressed they were not speaking for their agencies.)
“When I try to comprehend what law or policy they are relying on… I can't because it's incomprehensible,” said Suzy Englot, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3911, at a rally protesting the EPA’s action in New York City on July 9. Thirteen members of her local, covering EPA Region 2, were put on leave.
8,000 Indiana Kroger Workers Vote Down Contract a Second Time By Caitlyn Clark
July 22, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700 members across Indiana voted on July 10 and 11 to reject a tentative agreement covering 8,000 Kroger retail workers. This is the second contract Kroger workers have rejected, after 74 percent voted down the first offer in May. Local 700 has not announced the vote percentage on the second tentative agreement.
Kroger’s offer included a wage increase of just $0.90 over 3 years for starting pay, along with a $200 Kroger gift card that members called “insulting.”
“That $200 gift card felt like a huge joke,” said Andrea Reynolds, a 27-year Kroger worker in Kokomo. “I couldn’t tell you how many contracts I’ve been through, and that is the lowest ratification ‘bonus’ we’ve ever had.”
David Fredrick, a 20-year drug department manager at Kroger in Indianapolis, posted a skit on social media poking fun at the offer, pretending to pay his electric bill with a Kroger gift card.
‘DONE WORKING FOR CRUMBS’
The second tentative agreement did include some improvements from the first—the result of one month of intense organizing led entirely by rank-and-file members. The improvements included shortening the contract from four years to three; new, although limited, staffing language; higher wages over a shorter period; and earlier spousal health care coverage.
Trump Labor Department Launches 'Barrage of Attacks' on Workers By Stephen Prager
July 22, 2025
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) In what has been described as a "barrage of attacks on workers," the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.
The administration announced this month that it planned to change over 60 regulations it deems "unecessary" burdens to businesses and economic growth.
According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes "reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day's pay and come home healthy and safe."
In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.
These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.
Court allows Trump to end union bargaining for federal workers
Source: Aol/Reuters
Fri, August 1, 2025 at 7:40 PM EDT
(Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a judge's order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump's administration from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of the ability to engage in union bargaining with U.S. agencies. A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold an injunction issued by a lower court judge that had been obtained by six unions including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco in June had issued the injunction blocking 21 agencies from implementing Trump's March executive order exempting many federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions. Donato concluded Trump's order retaliated against unions deemed critical of the president and that had sued over his efforts to overhaul the government, including the mass firings of agency employees, violating their right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
But the 9th Circuit panel said Trump's order on its face "does not express any retaliatory animus," and it agreed with the Trump administration that the president "would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct." The 9th Circuit panel included U.S. Circuit Judge John Owens, an Obama appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judges Bridget Bade and Daniel Bress, two Trump appointees. Another federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., had in May paused a similar order that had also blocked Trump's order.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement called the Friday ruling "a setback for First Amendment rights in America." The 9th Circuit put the injunction on hold pending a further appeal, and Kelley said the union is "confident in our ability to ultimately prevail."
‘Toxic’ Laundry, Melting Aprons: Mauser Strike Hits Two Months By Natascha Elena Uhlmann
August 7, 2025
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Many employees at Chicago’s Mauser Packaging Solutions dread laundry day, and not for the usual reasons. The workers, who recondition steel drums used in the transport of materials like acetone, ammonia, and paint, say they have inconsistent access to uniforms and protective equipment.
“The fear of a lot of the workers is that they don’t have a uniform and have to wash their clothes, and that they have to mix it with their children’s or wife’s clothes, and they don’t know what the impact will be,” said Arturo Landa, a shop steward at Mauser and member of the bargaining committee.
Their contract expired April 30. Since June 9, 160 Mauser employees, members of Teamsters Local 705, have been on an unfair labor practice strike after Mauser illegally surveilled union members who were speaking with their business agent during a break, the union said.
“There’s been at least three other ULPs with multiple allegations since the start of the strike as well,” said Nicolas Coronado, the union's chief negotiator. These include an incident where the company allegedly sent mass text messages to members which referenced the closure of another Mauser facility, “which we see as directly trying to coerce and harass,” Coronado said.
Workers are calling for consistent access to uniforms and safety equipment, a raise, and immigration provisions in the contract. Fellow Teamsters are honoring the picket at Mauser locations in California and Minneapolis: while workers there are not on strike, they are not reporting to work, Packaging Dive reported.
Mar-Jac Poultry, Chick-fil-A’s Chicken Provider, Fined for Use of Child Labor Violations By John McCracken
August 6, 2025
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) One of Chick-fil-A’s major poultry providers was recently fined for repeated child labor law violations, with children as young as 13 working at an Alabama-based facility.
Chick-fil-A, the nation’s largest chicken sandwich quick service restaurant with 3,000 locations worldwide, buys chicken from Mar-Jac Poultry, according to legal filings.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor fined Mar-Jac Poultry $385,000 after a child labor investigation found that the poultry processing company routinely hired children as young as 13 years old at its facility in Jasper, Alabama.
The investigation also found that 14 and 15-year-olds performed hazardous tasks such as eviscerating poultry, operating forklifts and working on the plant’s kill floor, according to the DOL. These children were also working overnight shifts between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., outside legally allowed hours.
“Mar-Jac Poultry has repeatedly been found to put young workers at risk, resulting in the tragic death of a child at their Mississippi facility in 2023,” Wage and Hour Division Regional Administrator Juan Coria said in a DOL statement.
Faster Lines, Less Federal Oversight and Rising Risks at U.S. Pork and Poultry Plants By Melissa Dai
August 13, 2025
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest) Apig’s head arrives in front of Christopher Lopez.
He knows the drill: cut into the area behind the ears, find two small lymph nodes and incise them three or four times each. Check the nose and mouth for signs of disease — six to nine seconds to finish the inspection. Wash the gloves and sanitize the knives. One to two seconds to breathe.
Another head is already coming.
For a year and seven months, Lopez performed procedures like this for 10 hours a day, five to six days a week. It’s what he was trained for as a consumer safety inspector at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
Additional Extract:
Many swine and poultry plants across the U.S. are now increasing rates of processing and inspecting animals — or line speeds. The change is part of what government officials call a “modernized” inspection system, which also shifts carcass sorting duties from federal inspectors to company employees.
