unions

After a 16-year-old boy lost both legs last June in a preventable workplace accident in La Center, a follow-up investigation by Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) found that his employer Rotschy LLC has committed dozens of child labor law violations.

Rotschy is a non-union construction excavation company based in Southwest Washington. In December, L&I fined the company more than $156,000 — the maximum penalty — for allowing a minor to operate equipment without appropriate training or experience. The boy was dragged beneath the blade of a walk-behind trencher he was using to dig a channel for fence posts — while participating in a work-based learning program that allows students to earn class credit for jobs outside the classroom. His injuries were so severe that both legs had to be amputated.

Rotschy appealed the fine. The decision on whether to overturn the fine lies with the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, which has set a mediation conference for April 8. If the conference does not result in a settlement, the board will forward the case to a hearings judge for a trial.

read more: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/04/vancouver-firm-fined-in-grisly-accident-is-repeat-child-labor-offender/

LaborUnionNews.com has quickly become the “Drudge Report of Labor News”; the largest aggregator of news about unions on the web, boasting that it links to over 50 news articles a day and has posted links to more than 34,000 labor news articles since it started in 2023.

Among labor movement activists, LaborUnionNews.com quickly amassed a large following mainly due to its daily posting of NLRB union election petitions and prolific aggregation of labor news.

As a veteran labor reporter, I signed up for a subscription a few months ago to help prepare our labor newsletter. I thought it was a low-budget labor news aggregator; they even solicited crowdfunding from labor readers, as a site like my own Payday Report does.

Now, I have discovered that LaborUnionNews.com is run by a notorious union buster named Peter List, who runs a multi-million dollar union-busting empire.

A decade ago, I exposed that List had previously worked with Senator Bob Corker to help anti-union forces narrowly defeat the UAW in 2014.

Now, the website uses its mass following to spread fake news about anti-the UAW in the run-up to the historic UAW election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, which could confuse many local reporters and activists.

On the surface, LaborUnionNews.com could appear similar to other popular lower-budget labor news sites and aggregators like Labor Press, Labor Tribune, Northwest Labor Press, On Labor, How Things Work, and maybe even Payday Report.

However, mixed among links to mainstream labor news about real labor struggles and even links to left-wing websites about the UAW election in Chattanooga (including links to Payday Report), List has begun subtly mixing in anti-UAW articles that could confuse and trick many readers.

read more: https://paydayreport.com/anti-uaw-union-buster-secretly-behind-hit-labor-news-site/

Potbelly Sandwich Shop in downtown Portland paid almost $100,000 for about a month of union-busting. That’s according to mandatory disclosures the anti-union consulting firm filed March 23 with the U.S. Department of Labor.

According to the disclosures, Potbelly hired Optimal Employee Relations of Henderson, Nevada, on May 10, 2023, about a month before workers voted 9-6 on June 15 to join the independent union Restaurant Workers of Portland. Optimal’s contract with Potbelly ended in June 2023. Potbelly paid Optimal $97,722 on June 15 — the same day as the union election.

At Potbelly, workers still don’t have a first contract. Mark Medina, a Portland Jobs with Justice staff person who helped with the campaign, said shortly after the election the company fired three workers who led the union campaign. An unfair labor practice charge is still pending review by the National Labor Relations Board.

link: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/04/potbelly-sandwich-spent-100k-to-fight-union/

Major League Soccer (MLS) and union referees have finalized a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), ending a month-long labor lockout that saw union referees on the sidelines.

The new CBA, which the union voted to ratify on March 25, expires in early 2031 and includes adjustments to salaries and travel accommodations. After the union, the Professional Soccer Referees Association (PSRA), rejected a tentative agreement with the league’s Professional Referee Organization (PRO) in February, PRO locked out officials from league matches, impacting about 100 union referees during grueling months of negotiations.

PRO General Manager Mark Geiger said in a press release that PSRA referees would be back on the pitch right on time for that weekend’s slate of games after negotiators from both parties reached a tentative agreement the week of March 18.

“This seven-year term provides enhanced pay and benefits for all officials and the stability that will support the growth of the professional game in the U.S. and Canada,” he said.

Negotiations between both parties reached an impasse last month after PSRA referees overwhelmingly voted down a PRO proposal. Before that, negotiations necessitated the presence of a federal mediator, and both sides have since filed unfair labor practice claims with the National Labor Relations Board.

Now, both parties are moving forward.

“On behalf of PRO, I would like to thank the PSRA negotiating team and the federal mediator for their commitment to finding a mutually agreeable conclusion to these negotiations and their hard work in finalizing the terms,” Geiger added.

In a press statement, PSRA President and lead negotiator Peter Manikowski thanked the union’s negotiating team. He said the union hopes to build on the agreement in years to come as soccer continues to grow in North America.

“Standing strong with each other, we have been buoyed by the support of players, fans, supporters clubs, and other unionized workgroups during our employer-imposed lockout,” he said. “Together, we have won much-needed improvements demonstrating the value of having the best referees in MLS on the pitch.”

read more: https://prismreports.org/2024/04/03/major-league-soccer-referees-end-labor-lockout/

Workers at America’s largest chain of bookstores are gearing up for a nationwide union drive after six Barnes & Noble outlets voted to organize over the past year.

“Many more” stores will unionize, according to booksellers demanding better pay and conditions.

At locations that already have, employees accuse the chain’s management of dragging their heels during contract negotiations. James Daunt, the CEO, is said to have embarked upon a months-long campaign to dissuade employees from voting in favor.

read more: https://portside.org/2024-04-02/barnes-noble-workers-plan-union-drive-largest-us-bookstore-chain

https://www.sak.fi/en/whats-new/news/sak-and-affiliates-continue-strikes-further-week

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2165680

From the bottom of the article:

• Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “​‘Where are you, President Biden?’ Union organizers, residents demand health care for East Palestine“

• Maximillian Alvarez, Breaking Points, ​“East Palestine DEMANDS Biden Visit More Than ​‘PHOTO OP‘“

• To contact the Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers organizing committee, reach out to Steve Zeltzer: labormedia[at]gmail[dot]com or Penny Logsdon: onecent7921[at]gmail[dot]com.

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The reality of the way that the institutions of organized labor, meaning the AFL-CIO, and the big unions, generally speaking, have mostly, in modern times, pursued a relationship with electoral politics [is] along the lines of, “We are an adjunct to the Democratic Party.” In some ways, it’s a natural sort of trap for unions to fall into, because we have a two-party political system and the Republicans want to destroy unions altogether. So it’s very easy for the Democrats to take labor for granted because they have the attitude of “Where else are you gonna go?” And you’ve seen, just in my lifetime, I think of the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, both administrations that got huge economic and other support from organized labor and didn’t really give that much back.
“By organizing workers, you naturally grow your own political power in a way that writing checks to politicians never does.”

What it means is that you change your focus from electoral politics to building labor power through worker organizing. And by organizing workers, you naturally grow your own political power in a way that writing checks to politicians never does.

If we can get working people and also unions and the institutions in the labor movement to turn their primary focus to building labor power and organizing new workers, what we will find is that political power naturally comes along with that. We can make the politicians come to us by making the labor movement strong. We don’t have to beg and cater to politicians in order to do nice things for the labor movement, you know. It’s really a shift in perspective and a shift in emphasis that I think if people would just focus more on building labor power, they’re going to get better political results in the long run.