In These Times

By Micah Uetricht

(Image courtesy United Students Against Sweatshops)

With the memory of a previous victory over a multinational garment manufacturer still fresh in their minds, student labor activists and Honduran workers are celebrating what they say is another major win -- this one against industry giant Nike.

In 2009, Nike shut down two subcontractor plants in Honduras, leaving 1,800 workers without jobs. Under Honduran labor law, the workers were owed severance pay, to the tune of several million dollars. But Nike indicated it had no intention of paying.

Student activists with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) were no strangers to labor disputes over Honduran factory closures. Also last year, they picked a fight with Russell Athletic, another major global garment manufacturer, over alleged unionbusting in Honduras after the company shuttered its only unionized plant in the country. After students heaped pressure on a slew of U.S. universities, convincing them to cut their Russell contracts, the company agreed to reopen the plant, scoring a major victory for students and the Honduran unionists.

Building on this experience, students began a campaign to force Nike to pay the 1,800 workers their severance. On Monday, they emerged victorious.

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By Akito Yoshikane

A new report says labor is at the “tipping point” of losing women and young workers unless unions make changes to become more inclusive and responsive to their needs.

The details were released last Friday by the Berger-Marks Foundation, a nonprofit that helps women join unions. It warns that female constituents may leave the labor movement in favor of social justice organizations that are more welcoming.

The report says that “unions must begin to make changes now or today’s young activists — and their even younger sisters attending college and high school — will abandon the labor movement and pursue social justice in other organizations with more welcoming cultures and values.”

“Stepping Up, Stepping Back: Women Activists ‘Talk Union’ Across Generations,” outlines the frank discussions held in New Orleans in March of this year by 30 women from at least 20 labor organizations in an effort to improve labor’s alignment with women's issues.

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By David Moberg

UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm says he and other leaders of the hotel and restaurant workers union are “giddy” with delight at the settlement late Monday of a bitter fight with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that has dragged on for more than a year and a half.

“All of us at UNITE HERE are thrilled about the content of the settlement even though we remain both frustrated and outraged by the diversion of energy and resources away from workers that has occurred for the last two years because of SEIU’s attempt to highjack our union,” Wilhelm says.

The conflict, which made nearly every major union president angry at SEIU and its president, Andy Stern, started with an internal split in UNITE HERE over strategy and a desperate move by then-president Bruce Raynor to split away part of the union when he saw that Wilhelm was likely to win the presidency in 2009.

In 2004, Raynor, head of the main union in the shrinking garment and textile industry, UNITE, and HERE president Wilhelm arranged a merger that would use UNITE’s financial resources to fund organizing in HERE’s growing industries.

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By Danny Postel and Ted Smukler

An undocumented immigrant stands on a curbside awaiting day labor work on July 26, 2010 in Phoenix. Arizona's new immigration enforcement law, SB 1070, makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to 'apply for work, solicit work in a public place or perform work as an employee or independent contractor in this state.'   (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice, a worker center in Phoenix, has seen a “huge spike” in wage theft since SB 1070, Arizona’s draconian immigration law, passed in April. Trina Zelle, the group’s executive director, has seen a “noticeable shift” in the four months since the measure was signed into law.

"Employers are even more brazen in their mistreatment of workers," Zelle says. "Increasingly, “Go ahead, try and make me pay you” is the response workers hear when they confront their employers over unpaid wages.

Under S.B. 1070, scheduled to be implemented on Thursday, the police are required to question anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” is in the country illegally, and arrest and move to deport anyone who can’t prove their legal status. The law will lead to racial profiling, deter immigrants from reporting crimes, and further exacerbate racism and intolerance.

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By Roger Bybee

A security guard stands outside the newly-inaugurated Harley-Davidson dealership in New Delhi, India, on July 14, 2010. The iconic motorbike maker is revving up to go full throttle on India's famously potholed roads.   (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

Motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson is revving up its engines, nearly tripling last year's profits in the second quarter by hauling in $71 million.

This follows first-quarter profits of $68.7 million. But Harley is still roaring toward a head-on collision with the workers in its hometown of Milwaukee, where the company has been a beloved symbol of the city's gritty blue-collar image and pride in craftsmanship. Harley is still demanding $54 million worth of wage and benefit cuts, along with changes in work rules, from the United Steelworkers within the next 60 days.

Unless Harley gets the concessions before the current contract expires in April 2012, it has announced that it will zoom off to a new location with at least 1,400 jobs. Harley, like many other U.S. firms, is managing to extract bigger profits despite slow, sometimes declining sales and shrinking workforces, as the New York Times reported:

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By Jeff Ballinger

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Garment workers at a factory in Phnom Penh, in October 2006.   (Photo by TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

A recent blog post by Auret van Heerden titled "Where is CSR Heading?" begs a really big question: What good has "corporate social responsibility" been for workers, up to now? Sweatshop abuses are Exhibit A and that is where van Heerden plies his trade as head of the "Fair Labor Association" in Washington.

Founded in 1996 as the Apparel Industry Partnership--a desperate attempt by Bill Clinton to gloss over the depredations of supply-chain cheats and bullies producing for big American brands -- the FLA has produced helpful (to the industry) reports by van Heerden such as "Solving the Problem of Declining Wages". Van Heerden's post starts, "The global economic crisis has shaken the manufacturing industry to its core..." which means what, exactly? No more Mr. Nice Guy?

The big brands' record during the pre-crisis (fat profits) decades is reprehensible. Since the earliest "code of conduct" requirements for supplier factories (i.e., Levi's, Reebok, Nike and Mattel), labor rights have declined nearly to the vanishing point in production-for-export areas around the world.

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By Stephen Franklin

Francisco Mixtega-Jara, left, a migrant worker from Mexico, stands in line to weigh the pails of blueberries he picked at Leduc's Blueberries in Paw Paw, Mich.   (Photo by Mark Bugnaski/Kalamazoo Gazette)

WHITE PIGEON, MICH.—In the spring she planted in the muck and then picked blueberries in the gathering sunshine and broiling heat and now she wanted a break, so she was detasseling corn.

But she knew it would only be a short break before she would be picking again. She also knew nothing would change. It hasn’t changed in 23 years since Florabeth de la Garza crossed the frontier from Mexico and took up her place in the migrant stream. The stream that travels from Florida to Michigan and on to Colorado and then back to Florida and wherever else there’s work in the fields.

She doesn’t have to rely on her memory to explain what these years have been like. She has her books, as she calls them, 27 editions so far. They are more like diaries with photographs included that tell the heartbreaking story of the life she has lived, a life not unlike that lived by many of the 1.8 million migrant workers in the United States.

Lives etched with moments like the entry from July 1, 2007. This one tells how the crew boss on a Michigan farm came to the cabins where the migrants were resting and told them to get out within an hour.

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By Kari Lydersen

Hussain al-Shahristani, who took temporary power over Iraq's Electricity Ministry in June, after the former electricity minister resigned following protests over power shortages.   (Photo courtesy Iraq-businessnews.com)

Last week electricity union offices across Iraq were raided under a July 20 decree from the Minister of Oil and Electricity, Hussain al-Shahristani, which banned trade unions in the energy sector and threatened serious legal action against union activity. The decree includes these provisions:

Prohibit all trade union activities at the ministry and its departments and sites; and...stop all forms of official [ministry and its departments and sites] interaction and communication with the trade unions that operate within the Ministry and its departments and sites.

The ministry of electricity and in coordination with the police is ordered to close all trade union offices and bases and to take control of unions' assets properties and documents, furniture and computers with proper listing of all the items seized.

It also calls for the use of draconian 2005 anti-terrorism laws against anyone who makes threats, uses force or causes damage to public property, presumably in the course of union activity. It also orders the revocation of any privileges afforded union officials, by specially designated government officials who will sit in central committees in each ministry department for this purpose. 

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By Roger Bybee

Milwaukee County Executive and gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker.   (Photo courtesy Slysoffice.blogspot.com.)

Imagine the public outcry if, after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed the nation's largest environmental catastrophe, BP was chosen to inspect other oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet that's exactly what's happening in a parallel situation in Milwaukee. On June 24, a 13-ton slab of concrete fell off of a county-owned O'Donnell Park parking structure, killing a 15-year-old on his way to a summer festival. Graef USA, the engineering firm in charge of maintaining the structure since 1991, has since been appointed by County Executive Scott Walker—a leading Republican candidate for governor—to carry out inspections of other county facilities.

Observers of the pervasive payoffs-and-paybacks relationship between private contractors and government will not be totally shocked to learn that Graef USA executives have contributed $15,000 to Walker's campaigns. But they might be just a bit stunned to find out that Walker also chose Graef for a $300,000 no-bid contract for an emergency inspection of other county facilities.

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By Micah Uetricht

UNITE-HERE protesters block traffic in downtown Chicago on July 22, 2010.   (Photo by Timna Axel)

Many labor movement observers have lamented the movement's dismal state throughout the past several decades—and rightly so, much of the time. But a series of coordinated civil disobediences on Thursday reminds us that some segments of the movement aren't dead yet. They're alive and kicking—hard.

Arrests from coast to coast

The hospitality workers union UNITE HERE coordinated civil disobediences around the U.S. and Canada yesterday against Hyatt Hotels, claiming nearly 1,000 people might be arrested. The union says Hyatt and its billionaire owners are using the economic downturn to squeeze workers into a "permanent recession," despite a rebound in the industry. In 15 cities—many of which rarely see mass protests or civil disobedience—workers and their supporters hit the streets to express displeasure with the company.

In Chicago, about two dozen were arrested in front of the downtown Hyatt Regency. (David Moberg offers a detailed account of that action here.) In San Francisco, 152 were arrested. Vancouver saw a rally of over 600. Sixty-three were cuffed in West Hollywood. Long Beach, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and several other cities also saw actions. All made frequent mention of Hyatt's owning family, the Pritzkers.

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By Kari Lydersen

Chicago teachers who spent time training their own replacements are among hundreds who received layoff notices this week. In all, up to 1,500 Chicago teachers may be laid off by the time the new school year begins. The newly elected Chicago Teachers Union leadership and about 30 rank and file members are meeting with school officials Friday afternoon.

The 600 lay-off notices sent out this week went to 400 teachers and 200 staff at elementary schools which start in early August. On June 30, 239 teachers who were not assigned to a specific school were laid off. The union has demanded they be hired back before any new teachers are hired.

The cuts are part of the school district’s efforts to address a $370 million budget shortfall. High-school classes are being increased from 28 to 33 students, and programs including world languages, bilingual education, gifted programs and after school programs are being cut.

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By David Moberg

Protesters on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, on July 22, 2010.   (Photo by Jesse Kadjo)

CHICAGO—Susan Tynan, a smiling, personable woman who works as a waiter at the upscale Nomi restaurant in Chicago’s Park Hyatt hotel, was wearing a sticker on her shirt Thursday evening with a frowning face labeled “Hyatt.” Along with nearly 200 other hotel workers and their community supporters, she had gathered in front of the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Chicago with the intention of sitting down on and blocking Wacker Drive in front of the hotel until police arrested her. 

“I believe workers deserve respect,” she said, “and I believe this is one way to show the company we mean it.”

In 15 cities around the country, including several where Hyatt workers are trying to organize a union, UNITE HERE staged protest allies and civil disobedience in protest over Hyatt’s demands in bargaining for contracts to replace expired contracts in seven cities. In Chicago, for example, Hyatt’s contract lapsed last August, but there have been only sporadic talks since then.

UNITE HERE Local 1 spokesperson Annemarie Strassel said Hyatt, whose public stock offering brought the rich Pritzker family $900 million last year, had attempted to use the depressed economy to propose a long contract term with minuscule wage gains and cuts in, or increased costs for, health insurance. 

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