This thread is for stories concerning efforts of workers to organize for collective bargaining purposes, important strikes, and other news items affecting labor issues not more directly addressed by other threads.
Judge Rules California’s Gig Worker Law is Unconstitutional
by Jon Parton
August 20, 2021
(Courthouse News) — A California Superior Court judge ruled Friday evening that a 2020 ballot measure that considered gig workers as independent contractors with limited benefits is unconstitutional.
The movement behind Proposition 22 was supported by gig economy companies such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, who spent more than $200 million to promote the ballot initiative which passed last November.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch said in his ruling that “the entirety of Proposition 22 is unenforceable” because it “limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law.”
“A prohibition on legislation authorizing collective bargaining by app-based drivers does not promote the right to work as an independent contractor, nor does it protect work flexibility, nor does it provide minimum workplace safety and pay standards for those workers,” he wrote.
Roesch was critical of the law, which he said, “appears only to protect the economic interest of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce.”
(TechCrunch) Frank Roesch, a superior court judge in Alameda County, which encompasses Oakland, Berkeley and much of the East Bay, ruled that the law would limit “the power of a future legislature” to define the employment status of gig workers. The lawsuit was filed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in January, after a similar lawsuit was rebuffed by the California Supreme Court and referred to a lower court.
The court’s decision will almost certainly be appealed and further legal arguments are to be expected.
“Today’s ruling by Judge Roesch striking down Proposition 22 couldn’t be clearer: The gig industry-funded ballot initiative was unconstitutional and is therefore unenforceable,” said Bob Schoonover, President of SEIU California State Council in a statement. “For two years, drivers have been saying that democracy cannot be bought. And today’s decision shows they were right.”
…The superior court’s decision is just the latest in a long line of victories and defeats in the battle between companies that heavily rely on gig workers like Uber and DoorDash, and unions and advocates representing workers. Much of the debate centers on the legal distinction between a freelancer and an employee, and to what extent companies are responsible for the care and benefits of their workers.
…Such fights are not limited to merely Silicon Valley’s home state, however. Earlier this year in the United Kingdom, Uber lost a legal battle over its employment classification decisions and ultimately reclassified tens of thousands of its drivers as workers, a decision which offered them a range of benefits not previously guaranteed.
Geoff Vetter, a spokesperson for the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services Coalition (PADS), which includes Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart, said in a statement emailed to The Verge that they plan to appeal. The judge “made a serious error by ignoring a century’s worth of case law requiring the courts to guard the voters’ right of initiative,” Vetter wrote, noting that a majority of California voters had approved the measure. “All of the provisions of Prop 22 will remain in effect until the appeal process is complete.”
(Common Dreams) Employees at Nabisco's flagship plant in Chicago walked off the job Thursday, joining workers at three of the leading snack maker's other U.S. plants who are demanding better working conditions, an end to foreign outsourcing, and the withdrawal of a company plan that would scrap the company's current guaranteed overtime pay system.
The strike began August 10 when around 200 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers' (BCTGM) International Union Local 364 walked out of a Nabisco factory in Portland, Oregon that makes Oreo and Chips Ahoy! cookies, as well as Ritz, Premium saltines, and other crackers.
Workers at Nabisco plants in Aurora, Colorado and Richmond, Virginia followed suit, saying they planned to strike until Nabisco's parent company, multinational confectionery corporation Mondelez International, agrees to negotiate a new contract. The most recent agreement expired in May.
With U.S. snack consumption rising during the pandemic, Mondelez's 2020 revenue increased to $26.6 billion, according to Chicago Business Journal, with profits of $3.6 billion and a 6% annual increase in share price. Dirk Van de Put, Mondelez's new CEO, could earn more than $17 million in compensation, plus a $38 million one-time windfall, this year.
Meanwhile, Nabisco workers have been forced to work 12 to 16 hour shifts, six to seven days a week, during the pandemic, while the company seeks to eliminate overtime pay by altering employee schedules so that weekend shifts become part of the 40-hour work week. Workers are also rejecting a Mondelez proposal to create different employee health plans under which new hires would pay more, including deductibles—which do not exist under the current system.
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(Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting) From 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. most summer days, the man battled the “green monster.”
In the North Carolina heat and humidity, he and his fellow H-2A workers pulled large leaves off tobacco plants as tall as he was and deposited them in a truck bed. The workers risked absorbing the leaves’ nicotine into their skin, posing myriad health problems.
“I have seen my coworkers suffer from tobacco sickness. A lot of them get allergies, others get insomnia, vomiting, many get dehydrated,” said the Mexican worker, who asked to remain anonymous because he wants to continue being hired under the program, in Spanish. “There were times when the workers would need to go for IV drips at local clinics.
More and more people have been exposed to the “green monster” in recent years. The total number of guest worker positions the federal government certified in the past five years almost doubled, from about 140,000 in 2015 to 275,000 in 2020. Many headed to North Carolina’s tobacco fields, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.
“I got to see a lot of (bad) things happening at that job,” the worker said about his three years in North Carolina tobacco fields. On top of the nicotine, pesticides sprayed on the plants pose health risks, too. “It is really not so much the work that exhausts you or tires you out, it is the chemical they put in the tobacco that makes you sick.”
(In These Times) For workers organizing a union at Colectivo Coffee Roasters, the last five months have been a grueling exercise in waiting.
“I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs, I’m so nervous,” Lauretta Archibald, a former Colectivo baker and union activist, texted me in early April. That day, she and other union supporters had expected to learn the results of a union election a year in the making. They would wait much longer. Although a majority of ballots were counted on April 6, the result was a tie (99-to-99) with seven contested ballots remaining unopened.
On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) counted the remaining ballots and, by a margin of seven votes, the workers won union representation with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 494. The result will make Colectivo the largest unionized coffee chain in the country
(Civil Eats) Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made history when it announced it was banning the use of chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic chemical, and one of the most commonly-used pesticides in the U.S. But this victory didn’t arrive out of the blue; it was the result of decades of organizing, legal action, and advocacy.
Though far from perfect, this decision is a huge milestone that will protect the health of millions of children, farmworkers, and families in California and around the country.
Scientific research has been documenting the harms of chlorpyrifos for decades. Yet it was the lived experience, community expertise, and community organizing of farmworkers and their families that galvanized momentum at the local, regional, and state levels that led to the federal chlorpyrifos ban.
In California’s San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast regions—places where chlorpyrifos has been sprayed regularly on crops such as grapes, citrus, and walnuts—farmworkers, scientists and activists met up to share experiences and strategize. And in Sacramento, the organizations we work with—Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR) and Pesticide Action Network (PAN)— along with other groups and hundreds of community members from frontline communities turned out to put pressure on elected leaders. The grassroots work in California was inspired by PAN’s unwavering efforts to ban chlorpyrifos at the federal level since 2000, when household use was prohibited because exposure was already known at that point to harm children’s developing brains.
At the heart of the effort is an approach that centers community-based, participatory science, and grassroots organizing—one we’ll continue to take until all remaining, non-food uses of this dangerous chemical have been phased out and EPA stands up to corporate influence.
caltrek's full disclosure: Years ago, I volunteered with a local organization that was affiliated with the Pesticide Action Network.
(Mother Jones) Renee Taylor was busy when I spoke with her. She was making 500 meals, following the day’s menu, “tamales, tacos, rice, pico,” accompanied by the background clamor of clattering metal serving trays.
Following her release in 2013 after 25 years in various Chicago-area prisons, the 52-year-old Taylor has been prepping and delivering meals for the food service company ChiFresh Kitchen. This isn’t any old restaurant gig: Taylor owns a piece of her workplace. ChiFresh belongs to its five worker-owners, all of whom have also done time.
At worker cooperatives, workers both own and run the business. Sometimes they must buy in to become owners, and they may also have representation on a board of directors. Worker-owners tend to benefit far more directly from their co-op’s economic success, as the proceeds and the control stay with them. While co-ops make up a small portion of US small businesses, the pandemic and its aftermath have helped popularize the model. According to Mo Manklang, policy director of the nonprofit US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, there are now 465 verified worker-owned coops in the country, up 36 percent since 2013. And 900 more are in their start-up phase.
Given today’s epic income inequality and tremendous corporate consolidation and union-busting—with the work that is actually available increasingly unstable and episodic—it’s no wonder that the people are drawn to a model that gives them back some power. The interest in co-ops marks a return to what Emily Kawano, the co-director of the co-op development organization Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, calls making a “livelihood” rather than just earning a paycheck.
Taylor, who had previously bounced between various retail jobs, was nervous at first about becoming a worker-owner, but she quickly warmed up to an unusual opportunity that included free classes in business fundamentals like bookkeeping that ChiFresh sponsors. “I really want to learn everything about the business,” she says. “I want to make it grow.”
The remaining article (see link above quote box) includes brief profiles of co-ops across the U.S.
(Common Dreams) To defend its democracy, the right of workers to organize must be strengthened and passage of the PRO Act* is an urgent priority.
Political theorists often argue that a prerequisite for a democratic society is the existence of a demos: a constituency with a sense of shared identity and interests in common. The construction of such a consciousness, they argue, typically occurs through participation in civic organizations such as churches, community groups, and unions. It is through these forms of civic engagement that a genuine "will of the people" is constructed. In fact, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his famed "Democracy in America," the perseverance of democracy in the United States was due in part to the unprecedented degree of civic engagement by ordinary citizens. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations," he stated in an often-quoted passage. Unfortunately, Robert D. Putnam documented in the bestselling "Bowling Alone," participation in civic organizations has been declining steadily in the U.S. for decades.
Like so many other organizations, unions have also been experiencing a decline in membership, to the point where just 11% of workers belong to unions compared to 35% in the 1950s. The decline in union membership has been cited as one of the key contributors to rising income inequality since the 1980s. Less often considered is the impact it has had on democracy. Unions, the late sociologist Erik Olin Wright argued, play a particularly important role in democratic societies by providing a site for the creation of "organic solidarities" that are embedded in one vitally important sphere of most people's lives—the workplace. Unions not only help build shared interests and capacities for participation in electoral politics, but they also bring varying degrees of democracy into the otherwise authoritarian sphere of employment. In fact, two early proponents of industrial democracy, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, argued that workers should have a legitimate voice in decision-making in the world of work, typically through trade unions—a notion that has since become widely accepted in most advanced capitalist democracies.
Unlike many other civic organizations, the decline of unions cannot be attributed to a lack of interest by would-be participants.
*The PRO ACT:
(Congress.gov) This bill expands various labor protections related to employees' rights to organize and collectively bargain in the workplace.
Among other things, it (1) revises the definitions of employee, supervisor, and employer to broaden the scope of individuals covered by the fair labor standards; (2) permits labor organizations to encourage participation of union members in strikes initiated by employees represented by a different labor organization (i.e., secondary strikes); and (3) prohibits employers from bringing claims against unions that conduct such secondary strikes.
The bill also allows collective bargaining agreements to require all employees represented by the bargaining unit to contribute fees to the labor organization for the cost of such representation, notwithstanding a state law to the contrary; and expands unfair labor practices to include prohibitions against replacement of, or discrimination against, workers who participate in strikes.
The bill makes it an unfair labor practice to require or coerce employees to attend employer meetings designed to discourage union membership and prohibits employers from entering into agreements with employees under which employees waive the right to pursue or a join collective or class-action litigation.
The bill further prohibits employers from taking adverse actions against an employee, including employees with management responsibilities, in response to that employee participating in protected activities related to the enforcement of the prohibitions against unfair labor practices (i.e., whistleblower protections). Such protected activities include
providing information about a potential violation to an enforcement agency,
participating in an enforcement proceeding,
initiating a proceeding concerning an alleged violation or assisting in such a proceeding, or
refusing to participate in an activity the employee reasonably believes is a violation of labor laws.
Finally, the bill addresses the procedures for union representation elections, provides employees with the ability to vote in such elections remotely by telephone or the internet, modifies the protections against unfair labor practices that result in serious economic harm, and establishes penalties and permits injunctive relief against entities that fail to comply with National Labor Relations Board orders.
(My Modern Met) In an increasingly work-focused culture, it can be pretty hard to disconnect and leave that stress at the office. Especially in a society that is always on and connected to our devices, the delineation between work and personal life can become pretty murky. Add a pandemic into the mix that has completely shifted how, when, and where we work, and the separation of the two becomes nearly impossible. But finding an appropriate work-life balance is essential to our overall physical and mental health and well-being.
Recognizing that fact, in 2016 the French government passed a law protecting employees’ “right to disconnect.” Part of a larger French labor law that went into effect in 2017, it stipulates that employers cannot require their employees to be available for workplace communication, like calls or emails, outside of regular work hours or during their time off. Even then, it was obvious that this constant connectivity was becoming a detriment to employee health, and many studies have supported that theory.
“All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant,” says Socialist MP Benoit Hamon. ”Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash—like a dog. The texts, the messages, the emails—they colonize the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down.”
Though the larger labor law that this clause belongs to was extremely controversial when it passed, the “right to disconnect” was the one thing that most people agreed on. Still, there are no hard and fast rules as to how it is to be implemented. Instead, in companies of 50 people or more, it is left up to employees and employers to determine the policies and arrangements that best suit their individual needs based on the industries they work in. And even with the onset of widespread remote work, it is still required that “the distinction between work time and leisure time must be clear and guarantee the employees’ right to disconnect.”
The ruling from a three-judge panel in Amsterdam comes only months after a British court also concluded that Uber drivers are not independent contractors.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Courthouse News) — Drivers for the ride-sharing app Uber are employed by the company and are not contractors, a court in Amsterdam found on Monday.
Judges at the District Court of Amsterdam sided with the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions, ruling that drivers meet all of the criteria to be considered employees and should be covered by the Dutch taxi sector’s collective-bargaining agreement.
The relationship between Uber and its drivers “contains all the features of an employment contract,” the three-judge panel wrote. Uber has some 5,000 drivers in the Netherlands.
It’s the latest win for labor organizers against the San Francisco-based company. In May, the United Kingdom's highest court also found that Uber drivers are employees of the tech giant.
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(Courthouse News) — The fight between business groups and California officials over mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts deepened Wednesday after a divided Ninth Circuit panel lifted a ban on a new pro-worker law.
A federal judge enjoined the state from enforcing Assembly Bill 51 last year, agreeing with the Chamber of Commerce and other employers that it was pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act. The decision was hailed by the coalition of business groups who accused California lawmakers of trying to weaken the common tool used to keep employment disputes out of the courts.
The contentious bill signed in 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom bars employers from requiring applicants to waive their right to sue under state labor laws as a condition of employment. Going a step further, the bill sponsored by the California Labor Federation and Consumer Attorneys of California opened employers up to civil and criminal penalties for extreme violations.
But in a 2-1 decision Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled the state can require all employment arbitration agreements be consensual and reversed the preliminary injunction. It found AB 51 doesn’t discriminate against arbitration agreements or nix their enforcement.
(Other Words) Not long ago, I was a saleswoman and manager at Art Van Furniture, a furniture retailer that was an institution in metro Detroit for over half a century.
…in 2017… the private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners bought the company out. Soon, the company I knew and loved began to vanish right in front of my eyes. Where we saw a strong company we were proud to work for, they saw something they could strip for parts.
…In Michigan, there’s a bill to mandate severance payments when companies are driven to bankruptcy, so that workers have some financial stability after losing their jobs. We also need Congress to pass the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a bill that would make private equity executives personally liable for the decisions they make and limit their use of debt to acquire companies.
My colleagues and I went through hell. Greedy executives should never have the power to drive thriving companies into bankruptcy just so they can make a profit. I can’t fix what happened to Art Van, but I can use my voice to make sure these abusive business practices do not victimize others.
Elected leaders must take action to prevent future private equity abuses.
(In These Times) CHICAGO — His shift on the strike line over, James Walsh lingers on the sidewalk to wave his picket sign amid a deafening racket of passing truckers and drivers hammering their horns in support.
“I think we got a chance,” Walsh said last week. “We are emptying out their shelves,” he added optimistically.
Nearly four decades ago, Walsh went to work at what was once the world’s largest bakery, Nabisco (now a subsidiary of Mondelēz International). He was just a teenager when he got the job, which also got him a lifetime of something that has nearly disappeared across the nation — a union job with good pay and good benefits. Indeed, his union — the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) — has proven up to the challenge to keep those benefits.
A five-week strike by 1,000 of the union’s members at Mondelēz came to an end with workers approving a new, four-year contract on Saturday, September 18.
The victory is “huge” according to Donald Woods, president of BCTGM Local 1 in Chicago and one of the union’s negotiators. “The union wanted to maintain what we had — we didn’t lose nothing,” he says. He adds that, of the 893 workers who voted nationally, only 201 were against the deal.
(Sacramento Bee) Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have allowed farm workers to vote by mail in union elections, a change the United Farm Workers pressed for after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year dealt a setback to its organizing practices.
Assembly Bill 616 would have allowed agricultural workers to select their collective bargaining representative through a ballot card election by voting at a physical location or mail or dropping off a ballot to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board office.
The UFW, which supported Newsom over the past several months has fought the campaign to recall him from office, had been planning a 260-mile march this week from Tulare County to Sacramento to advocate for the bill. The march commemorates the 1968 march labor icon Cesar Chavez carried to highlight the plight of farm workers at that time.
Instead, UFW issued a statement over Twitter saying it would redirect the march to the French Laundry restaurant in Napa County, a reference to the pricey meal Newsom had with lobbyists as he asked other Californians to avoid mixed groups and indoor settings during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Workers are now marching towards the French Laundry, hoping to finally meet with the Governor,” the message read.
This week, one of the main unions in the entertainment industry announced they'd be calling on their members to authorize a strike after contract negotiations with some of Hollywood's biggest production companies stalled. This comes as film and TV production has ramped up following last year's COVID lockdowns, along with what workers call unstable conditions. Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of our Planet Money podcast reports.
ALEXI HOROWITZ-GHAZI, BYLINE: When 27-year-old Ben Gottlieb got back to work as a lighting technician on TV and film sets last fall, he was relieved. Production had been shut for around six months due to COVID.
BEN GOTTLIEB: Which was a very stressful time. I was on unemployment. I was living with my parents.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: But by this summer, Gottlieb says the grueling schedule that had defined his pre-pandemic working life had come back even worse.
GOTTLIEB: My longest day on that job was 19.5 hours.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Gottlieb is one of the tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes unionized crew members - including costumers, prop-makers and others - who make up the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE. A few months ago, the union was in the early stages of negotiating a new contract with the industry group that represents many Hollywood studios and streaming juggernauts, like Netflix and Amazon. That's when Gottlieb decided to post about his frustrations on Instagram. And to his surprise, within a few weeks, the post had opened up a floodgate of similar stories.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
(Investigate Midwest) At times, the H-2A visa program that brings non-citizen farmworkers to the U.S. has been used to facilitate human trafficking, experts and activisits said. But the number of people trafficked through the program appears to have increased.
Between 2012 and 2020, migrant workers from Mexico were recruited by companies in Illinois to construct hog and poultry enclosures under the H-2A temporary agricultural program. They came to the U.S. under the promise of well-paid jobs, but were instead forced to work across the country for hundreds of hours without pay.
If they complained, they were threatened with deportation.
That’s according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Aug. 10 by Legal Aid Chicago, Jordan & Zito LLC and Gair Eberhard Nelson Dedinas Ltd. on behalf of 24 agricultural construction workers.
The H-2A program provides scaffolding for the agricultural system, allowing farms to bring in enough labor to pick fruits and vegetables Americans rely on. But many workers have been trafficked by employers using the program, said experts and activists who fear the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed the situation to grow.
(Investigate Midwest) We spent months interviewing former and current employees of Seaboard Foods, one of the largest and most productive meat processing plants in the country. We also reviewed documents from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, lawsuits and dozens of Workers’ Compensation filings.
Here are the major takeaways from the investigation.
Employees with serious injuries said that they were only provided first aid and that doctors’ notes suggesting time off or reduced workload were ignored. Francisco Reyes, who worked at the plant until summer 2020, said while tossing pork shoulders up an inclining conveyor belt he heard a pop in his elbow. Scans showed his elbow had a contusion and a vertebrae was fractured. A doctor recommended restricting his movements at work, but the plant wouldn’t accommodate him, Reyes said. He worked through the pain.
Injuries increased at the plant after the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019 eliminated limits on how fast hog plants could run their production lines. Seaboard Foods increased its production speeds, forcing employees to work faster.
Workers could be subjected to a drug test prior to receiving treatment for serious injuries. A current employee who requested anonymity to protect his job said this dissuaded him from going to the nurse: He can’t close his hands because they’re inflamed from using metal hooks and knives, and he smokes marijuana so the pain doesn’t keep him awake.
(In These Times) Members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. According to an announcement from the union Monday morning, 90 percent of members voted, and 98 percent of voters said yes to strike authorization. The vote could result in roughly 60,000 workers walking off the job and bring the entertainment industry to a halt. As consumers, we tend to associate the entertainment industry with acting stars, elite directors and producers, and big studio executives, but hundreds and and even thousands of workers make every production possible, and many of them are grossly underpaid, overworked, and denied basic necessities like breaks and time to sleep between shifts. Combined with the explosion of streaming services and ever-increasing demands for studio-quality productions, workers in the entertainment industry are being run into the ground, and they have reached a breaking point.
IATSE represents over 150,000 technicians, artisans, and craftspersons in the entertainment industry, including live theatre, motion picture and television production, broadcast, and trade shows in the United States and Canada. The union is composed of many different locals, not all of which are currently voting to authorize a strike.
(Kyodo News) Tokyo- Tomoko Yoshino became the first-ever female chief of Japan's largest labor organization Rengo on Wednesday after her promotion from vice president was approved at a regular convention.
Yoshino, 55, from a labor union mainly representing small and medium-sized manufacturers in Japan, will serve a two-year term, succeeding Rikio Kozu, who led the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, as Rengo is formally known, for six years.
It is the first time since the establishment of Rengo in 1989 that a woman has taken the helm of the organization that has around 7 million members.
After graduating from high school, Yoshino got a job at sewing machine maker Juki Corp. in 1984. She has served as deputy head of the Japanese Association of Metal, Machinery, and Manufacturing Workers since 2015 and as vice president of Rengo since 2015.
"I will proceed with our activities by heeding the voices of our members seriously so we can create an environment in which people can continue work without worrying even amid the spread of the coronavirus," Yoshino said.
