Fighting Privatization, Capitalism & Imperialist War With French CGT Rail Worker Axel Persson
The Crisis In Heatlhcare & Nursing. NNU & The Shift Change Slate
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-4-17-24-the-crisis-in-heatlhcare-nursing-the-shift-change-slate
The ongoing and deepening crisis in healthcare and the effect on nurses is address by a National Nurses United …Shift Change slate.
They discuss the use of traveling nurses and massive monopolization of the hospital industry and the failure to have a democratic process and union education so members can participate, debate and confront the challenges facing nurses and healthcare in the US.
This interview was done on 4/17/24
Additional Media:
NNU-CNA Sutter Alta Bates Hospital Nurses Fed Up & Strike Against Concession Contracts
https://youtu.be/TrwWdQOPxkQ
More Information:
Shift Change
https://www.shiftchangennu.org
Production of WorkWeek
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio
Don’t forget, ballots go out to members April 5th, must be received in Oakland by May 17. Don’t forget, ballots go out to members April 5th, must…
www.shiftchangennu.orgThe Crisis In Heatlhcare & Nursing. NNU & The Shift Change Slate
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-4-17-24-the-crisis-in-heatlhcare-nursing-the-shift-change-slate
The ongoing and deepening crisis in healthcare and the effect on nurses is address by a National Nurses United …Shift Change slate.
They discuss the use of traveling nurses and massive monopolization of the hospital industry and the failure to have a democratic process and union education so members can participate, debate and confront the challenges facing nurses and healthcare in the US.
This interview was done on 4/17/24
Additional Media:
NNU-CNA Sutter Alta Bates Hospital Nurses Fed Up & Strike Against Concession Contracts
https://youtu.be/TrwWdQOPxkQ
More Information:
Shift Change
https://www.shiftchangennu.org
Production of WorkWeek
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio
The ongoing and deepening crisis in healthcare and the effect on nurses is address by a National Nurses United Shift Change slate. The discuss the …
soundcloud.comFor AIFLD The American Newspaper Guild And The AFL-CIO International Affairs Program/AIFLD
For AIFLD The American Newspaper Guild And The AFL-CIO International Affairs Program/AIFLD by mBayram_y2k@Yahoo.com | Mar 1, 2024 | AFL-CIO …
aflcio-int.educationhttps://apnews.com/article/usc-muslim-valedictorian-speech-canceled-palestinians-israel-7b481db2d4e0db040b091bf8457f0b3f
The University of Southern California has canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, a Muslim student who has expressed support for…
apnews.comA Thing Of The Future And A Thing Of The Past, Robotaxis And Land-lines?
…https://countercurrents.org/2024/04/a-thing-of-the-future-and-a-thing-of-the-past-robotaxis-and-land-lines/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3PzrtYnw2HjzZ7LLTwTxfuLwdZMye3Q6yiP3i2eQdoFTUtYDJvJOAeAd8_aem_AS3rBYQKy_UIMEeTaeIi1KCgFwpUs4-vNWdaCo2nRNYG3RKkDXjdwCLGLjVi0-5slLcADlDU1m5vdcwqz7e4m6v5
Ahead of the 118th annual San Francisco 1906 Earthquake Commemoration on April 18, a speak-out/press conference was held across from historic Portsmouth Square in the City’s Chinatown to express grievous concerns regarding the state of preparation for the next earthquake when considering the issues of robotaxis and the possible loss of landline telephones. Portsmouth Square is historically important, too, for the event as it is where in the aftermath of the1906 earthquake, having been unscathed, it was used as a refugee camp for displaced victims of the disaster.
Earthquake preparedness, along with robotaxis and a proposal by AT&T now before the CPUC (California Public Utility Commission) calling for the company’s release from providing landline phone service to four million customers across the state, were the interrelated topics of discussion in calling for “people before profits.” As per its application before the CPUC, AT&T describes the need for terminating landline service as a “plain old telephone service” and in its seeking “…tailored relief from its outdated COLR its (Carrier of Last Resort) obligation, which effectively mandates that AT&T California maintain a copper-based network throughout its service territory. In effect, this obligation requires AT&T California, but not its major competitors, to wastefully operate and maintain duplicative networks: one, an antiquated, narrowband network with an ever-dwindling base of subscribers, and the other, a forward-looking fiber and wireless broadband network.”
Overlooked is the fact that many people cannot afford cell phone service or are able to use a cell phone while many others who live in rural locations are beyond the limits of cell phone coverage and thus be unable to connect to summons help in an emergency. As any cell phone user can attest, even under the best of condition, coverage can be intermittent at times.
The presenters voiced their concerns for all these reasons and more in a modern era that sees cell phones as the way of the future. They noted, too, that discontinuing landlines in an earthquake-prone city whose streets are flooded with robotaxis which are dependent on cell phone tower coverage that is easily overwhelmed during normal times and especially so during a disaster is sheer madness.
Robotaxis have adequately proven over and again how they can interfere with and block emergency vehicles and traffic during normal operations, and when losing coverage and unable to connect, they stop functioning wherever they happen to be. As wireless demand increases during an emergency, cell phone systems become overloaded, can lose power and or simply shutdown. Without hard-wired copper landline phones, in the absence of cellular coverage, people are unable to communicate or call for help making an already dangerous situation even more so at the peril to the loss of life and property.
Steve Zeltzer of the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) and of the Safe Streets Coalition questioned what would happen in earthquake-prone San Francisco “when you have robotaxis on streets without drivers?” He related that they would “shutdown” when cell phone service was interrupted or for other reasons. “A week before Chinese New Year when fireworks were going off up the street, a robotaxi shutdown in the middle of the street. And as a result, some people broke the windows and set it on fire because they were angry that it was blocking the road.” He went on to say that robotaxis do not have the ability to back up, “and yet a requirement to get a driver’s license in California is that you have to demonstrate that you can back up. The people of San Francisco need to be protected from robotaxis along with workers whose jobs would be eliminated due to AI and this autonomous transport automation.”
Eduardo Escobar, founder of the Alliance for Independent Workers, spoke about robotaxis by illustrating a situation last year during the Outside Lands music festival when heavy cell phone usage caused ten robotaxis to shut down in a group next to each other in the North Beach area of the city that resulted in a massive traffic jam. The cars were unable to move due to high cell phone demand related to service connection issues that in turn froze the robotaxis in place blocking streets and intersections.
He said that as a result Google, Waymo and Amazon Zoox “Have suggested that they want us to pay for infrastructure to provide their own cell towers for the companies.” That’s big companies calling upon us to pay for their infrastructure so that they can drive us out of work, drive us out of a living. This is the privatization of the public trust. They put profits before people 24/7.”
AT&T’s COLR obligation for providing landline telephone service is part of a 1982 decree that allowed the company to purchase the Pacific Telephone Company in the breakup of the nationwide “Ma Bell” monopoly. Its purpose as explained in the CPUC document was to ensure “…that everyone in California has access to safe, reliable, and affordable telephone service. AT&T is the largest COLR in California in many parts of the state. Where AT&T is the default landline telephone service provider, it must provide traditional landline telephone service to any potential customer in that service territory. AT&T’s proposal calls for its withdrawal as the COLR in certain areas without a new carrier being designated as a COLR.”
“If the proposal is approved as set forth in its application, then no COLR would be required to provide Basic Service in the areas in which AT&T is the COLR. This does not necessarily mean that no carriers would provide service in the areas—only that they would not be required to do so. Other outcomes are possible, such as a carrier other than AT&T volunteering to become the COLR, or the CPUC denying AT&T’s proposal.”
It seems highly unlikely that another company would take over the COLR obligation for a “plain old telephone service” in a high-tech cellular era if AT&T is allowed to drop its obligation based on its desire to do so in what looks more like a profitable move for the company than one ensuring public safety. The net effect was pointed out by the activists saying that “A major earthquake would also disrupt cell phones meaning that landlines would be the only means of communication. We must protect workers and the public.”
Ironically, at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia where the Masters Tournament was played, cellphones were not allowed and AT&T, a sponsor, provided guests of the tournament access to landline phone banks to make free calls worldwide. Evidently, “plain old telephone service” is good enough to advertise the high-tech cell phone company through accommodating the guest’s telephonic needs regardless of cost. But in their way of thinking, landlines need to be removed in areas susceptible to natural disasters because of the cost of operating an expensive “plain old telephone service” is not profitable enough. This beckons the question of why public safety is viewed actuarily and not as an a lifeline to society. “Profit over People” is how the activists described the entire matter on both issues.
If the proposal to terminate landline service is granted, this backup line of defense during a cell phone shutdown in an emergency would not only imperil Californians, but as California goes, so eventually goes the nation.
Report and photo by Phil Pasquini
© 2024 nuzeink all rights reserved worldwide
Share:Share on WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on X (Twitter)Share on TelegramShare on RedditShare on EmailAhead of the 118th annual San Francisco …
countercurrents.orgA Thing Of The Future And A Thing Of The Past, Robotaxis And Land-lines?
…https://countercurrents.org/2024/04/a-thing-of-the-future-and-a-thing-of-the-past-robotaxis-and-land-lines/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3PzrtYnw2HjzZ7LLTwTxfuLwdZMye3Q6yiP3i2eQdoFTUtYDJvJOAeAd8_aem_AS3rBYQKy_UIMEeTaeIi1KCgFwpUs4-vNWdaCo2nRNYG3RKkDXjdwCLGLjVi0-5slLcADlDU1m5vdcwqz7e4m6v5
Ahead of the 118th annual San Francisco 1906 Earthquake Commemoration on April 18, a speak-out/press conference was held across from historic Portsmouth Square in the City’s Chinatown to express grievous concerns regarding the state of preparation for the next earthquake when considering the issues of robotaxis and the possible loss of landline telephones. Portsmouth Square is historically important, too, for the event as it is where in the aftermath of the1906 earthquake, having been unscathed, it was used as a refugee camp for displaced victims of the disaster.
Earthquake preparedness, along with robotaxis and a proposal by AT&T now before the CPUC (California Public Utility Commission) calling for the company’s release from providing landline phone service to four million customers across the state, were the interrelated topics of discussion in calling for “people before profits.” As per its application before the CPUC, AT&T describes the need for terminating landline service as a “plain old telephone service” and in its seeking “…tailored relief from its outdated COLR its (Carrier of Last Resort) obligation, which effectively mandates that AT&T California maintain a copper-based network throughout its service territory. In effect, this obligation requires AT&T California, but not its major competitors, to wastefully operate and maintain duplicative networks: one, an antiquated, narrowband network with an ever-dwindling base of subscribers, and the other, a forward-looking fiber and wireless broadband network.”
Overlooked is the fact that many people cannot afford cell phone service or are able to use a cell phone while many others who live in rural locations are beyond the limits of cell phone coverage and thus be unable to connect to summons help in an emergency. As any cell phone user can attest, even under the best of condition, coverage can be intermittent at times.
The presenters voiced their concerns for all these reasons and more in a modern era that sees cell phones as the way of the future. They noted, too, that discontinuing landlines in an earthquake-prone city whose streets are flooded with robotaxis which are dependent on cell phone tower coverage that is easily overwhelmed during normal times and especially so during a disaster is sheer madness.
Robotaxis have adequately proven over and again how they can interfere with and block emergency vehicles and traffic during normal operations, and when losing coverage and unable to connect, they stop functioning wherever they happen to be. As wireless demand increases during an emergency, cell phone systems become overloaded, can lose power and or simply shutdown. Without hard-wired copper landline phones, in the absence of cellular coverage, people are unable to communicate or call for help making an already dangerous situation even more so at the peril to the loss of life and property.
Steve Zeltzer of the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) and of the Safe Streets Coalition questioned what would happen in earthquake-prone San Francisco “when you have robotaxis on streets without drivers?” He related that they would “shutdown” when cell phone service was interrupted or for other reasons. “A week before Chinese New Year when fireworks were going off up the street, a robotaxi shutdown in the middle of the street. And as a result, some people broke the windows and set it on fire because they were angry that it was blocking the road.” He went on to say that robotaxis do not have the ability to back up, “and yet a requirement to get a driver’s license in California is that you have to demonstrate that you can back up. The people of San Francisco need to be protected from robotaxis along with workers whose jobs would be eliminated due to AI and this autonomous transport automation.”
Eduardo Escobar, founder of the Alliance for Independent Workers, spoke about robotaxis by illustrating a situation last year during the Outside Lands music festival when heavy cell phone usage caused ten robotaxis to shut down in a group next to each other in the North Beach area of the city that resulted in a massive traffic jam. The cars were unable to move due to high cell phone demand related to service connection issues that in turn froze the robotaxis in place blocking streets and intersections.
He said that as a result Google, Waymo and Amazon Zoox “Have suggested that they want us to pay for infrastructure to provide their own cell towers for the companies.” That’s big companies calling upon us to pay for their infrastructure so that they can drive us out of work, drive us out of a living. This is the privatization of the public trust. They put profits before people 24/7.”
AT&T’s COLR obligation for providing landline telephone service is part of a 1982 decree that allowed the company to purchase the Pacific Telephone Company in the breakup of the nationwide “Ma Bell” monopoly. Its purpose as explained in the CPUC document was to ensure “…that everyone in California has access to safe, reliable, and affordable telephone service. AT&T is the largest COLR in California in many parts of the state. Where AT&T is the default landline telephone service provider, it must provide traditional landline telephone service to any potential customer in that service territory. AT&T’s proposal calls for its withdrawal as the COLR in certain areas without a new carrier being designated as a COLR.”
“If the proposal is approved as set forth in its application, then no COLR would be required to provide Basic Service in the areas in which AT&T is the COLR. This does not necessarily mean that no carriers would provide service in the areas—only that they would not be required to do so. Other outcomes are possible, such as a carrier other than AT&T volunteering to become the COLR, or the CPUC denying AT&T’s proposal.”
It seems highly unlikely that another company would take over the COLR obligation for a “plain old telephone service” in a high-tech cellular era if AT&T is allowed to drop its obligation based on its desire to do so in what looks more like a profitable move for the company than one ensuring public safety. The net effect was pointed out by the activists saying that “A major earthquake would also disrupt cell phones meaning that landlines would be the only means of communication. We must protect workers and the public.”
Ironically, at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia where the Masters Tournament was played, cellphones were not allowed and AT&T, a sponsor, provided guests of the tournament access to landline phone banks to make free calls worldwide. Evidently, “plain old telephone service” is good enough to advertise the high-tech cell phone company through accommodating the guest’s telephonic needs regardless of cost. But in their way of thinking, landlines need to be removed in areas susceptible to natural disasters because of the cost of operating an expensive “plain old telephone service” is not profitable enough. This beckons the question of why public safety is viewed actuarily and not as an a lifeline to society. “Profit over People” is how the activists described the entire matter on both issues.
If the proposal to terminate landline service is granted, this backup line of defense during a cell phone shutdown in an emergency would not only imperil Californians, but as California goes, so eventually goes the nation.
Report and photo by Phil Pasquini
© 2024 nuzeink all rights reserved worldwide
Share:Share on WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on X (Twitter)Share on TelegramShare on RedditShare on EmailAhead of the 118th annual San Francisco …
countercurrents.orgA new bill could help save California journalism. Google wants it dead
AI is poised to finish off local news reporting as we know it unless lawmakers act
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/california-journalism-protection-act-google-19404054.php
By Matt …Pearce
April 16, 2024
Gift Article
On Friday, Google announced it was testing removing links to California news websites from some people’s search results. The search giant said it was preparing in case the Legislature passed a bill requiring it to pay media companies a fee for linking to their content.
On Friday, Google announced it was testing removing links to California news websites from some people’s search results. The search giant said it was preparing in case the Legislature passed a bill requiring it to pay media companies a fee for linking to their content.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press 2019
Last Friday, Google issued an ultimatum, announcing that it was taking steps to block news stories in California in response to a bill from state Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland. The California Journalism Preservation Act would require tech giants to pay journalists, like me, for profiting from our labor. Google’s move followed a similar threat by Meta last year over the bill.
Big Tech’s threats to ban journalism from its platforms in California are just the beginning. Tomorrow’s artificial intelligence-powered internet is poised to finish off local journalism as we know it — unless lawmakers act.
For much of the past two decades, Google and news publishers have operated on an implicit bargain; outlets like the Chronicle or the Los Angeles Times, where I was a longtime reporter, would allow Google to crawl and feature my stories on its services. In exchange, Google would send these publishers a river of users via hyperlinks.
How Trump could use an obscure law from 1873 to effectively end abortion in America
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., Tuesday, April 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Once upon a time, veteran newsmen hosted Sunday TV talk shows
Not just journalists anymore.
The understanding was that users who no longer subscribe to print newspapers would look at digital ads on news websites or buy digital subscriptions. In return, those users would presumably continue using Google (itself a profitable seller of digital advertising) as their preferred portal to find high-quality information from a variety of sources.
That arrangement has become increasingly unfair for newsrooms — and the California communities that count on them.
You don’t need an MBA to figure out that commandeering endless free labor from journalists and other content creators has been the deal of the century for Google. The internet giant has cornered 90% of all search engine traffic, collecting $48 billion in digital advertising revenue last quarter alone.
Wicks’ bill would require Google, under threat of arbitration, to return a share of these revenues earned from journalism back to news publishers, which would be required to reinvest 70% of those funds into journalism jobs. Australia and Canada have passed similar laws.
Absent these changes — and more ambitious ideas like them — the economics supporting local journalism in California will continue to collapse. The Los Angeles Times newsroom has roughly 40% fewer journalists than in 2019. Many of the savviest digital newsroom innovators I know have lost or left their journalism jobs.
Wicks’ bill has only become more urgent as Google experiments with generative AI, which also scrapes news sites but this time without any pretense that journalists might benefit. Some Google search responses already compile an AI-generated blurb that summarizes news stories.
Jim Albrecht, senior director of news ecosystem products at Google from 2017 to 2023, recently wrote in the Washington Post that AI-powered chatbots, not human-written articles like the one you’re reading right now, are the future of news.
“Publishers will have to think less about those articles and more about conversations with users,” Albrecht wrote. “The users will interact less and less with the actual articles and instead talk about the articles with what the tech industry used to call ‘intelligent agents.’ ”
Anybody hoping to shore up Google’s still-significant referral traffic to publishers — or anyone who’s propagandizing that the idea of paying journalists is tantamount to a “link tax” (the government never touches Google’s money) — is fighting yesterday’s war. The old internet where users actively hunt for information and prowl from site to site is dying.
Following hyperlinks in search of accurate information is annoying, inefficient and increasingly filled with scammy clutter. On the fenced-in internet of tomorrow, AI-powered portals controlled by a small handful of powerful international companies will treat us like stationary consumers who passively expect knowledge and content to come to us, not the other way around.
Think of the uncanny algorithms of TikTok’s For You Page, OpenAI’s general purpose GPT chat interfaces or Elon Musk’s (not exactly successful but persistent) quest to transform the once hyperlink-friendly Twitter into X, an “everything app” where users “can do payments, messages, video, calling, whatever you’d like.”
The dream of the open internet is fading and being replaced by a surveillance-driven dystopia powered by free and low-paid labor. The California Journalism Preservation Act is just the first of many bills that will be necessary to point out that this content-creation arrangement is unsustainable for workers — and also everyone else.
With each day that passes, data-devouring AI models like the kind Google is developing, which are prone to inaccurate “hallucinations,” are at greater risk of ingesting and plagiarizing their own low-quality vomit for want of enough original knowledge to consume. It’s in the long-term interest of artificial intelligence developers to help foot the bill for original, human-produced local journalism because AI models will need more material that’s “grounded” in the real world — to borrow an AI term for verification.
As a journalist, I’m largely indifferent to how the public consumes my reporting. Throughout American history, we have always adapted to changes in the medium; maybe you’d like to get news alerts and investigative reports from me via text message?Journalists will go wherever you want us to be.
But if California and Google still want to have independent journalists around — people who will report what’s going on in our communities, investigate corruption in local government and dig up hidden documents, even if just to feed an AI — somebody is going to have to pay us to do it. The California Journalism Preservation Act reasonably suggests that the people who profit from journalists’ work should help foot the bill.
Matt Pearce is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and the president of Media Guild of the West, a local union of the NewsGuild-CWA, which supports the California Journalism Preservation Act.
April 16, 2024
Matt Pearce
Big Tech’s threat to ban journalism from its platforms in California is just the beginning. AI is poised to finish off local journalism as we know…
www.sfchronicle.comS.F. reaches tentative deal with major unions, making a strike less likely
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-reaches-tentative-deal-with-unions-strike-19404726.php
By J.D. Morris
April 15, 2024
San Francisco library workers, union members and supporters hold a rally on …April 9 outside the San Francisco Main Library calling for increased security at every branch.
San Francisco library workers, union members and supporters hold a rally on April 9 outside the San Francisco Main Library calling for increased security at every branch.
Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to the Chronicle
San Francisco has reached tentative labor contracts with several of its largest unions, reducing the chances of a widespread public-sector strike as the city tries to close a huge budget deficit during a mayoral election year.
Full details of the agreements were not immediately available, but SEIU Local 1021, San Francisco’s largest public-sector union, said its contract would establish a $25 per hour minimum wage for city workers, among other provisions. The lowest hourly pay rate for SEIU members is currently $20.25, according to the union.
Django Rampley, center, holds a sign from the back of a vintage San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 engine as unions gather for a rally outside City Hall to kick off contract negotiations with the city on Jan. 17.
Django Rampley, center, holds a sign from the back of a vintage San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 engine as unions gather for a rally outside City Hall to kick off contract negotiations with the city on Jan. 17.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
It’s too soon to tell how much the deal will cost the city or exactly how it will impact the upcoming budget negotiations, though officials said they’ve factored the labor talks into their financial projections. Mayor London Breed previously ordered her departments to plan for 10% spending cuts in the coming fiscal year.
The city is still negotiating with some unions, including those representing nurses and transit operators. But the tentative agreements with SEIU and some other unions cover more than 20,000 of San Francisco’s 36,600 employees, according to Breed’s office. Union members still need to ratify the contracts, and they must also be approved by the Board of Supervisors.
San Francisco unions have been threatening to strike this year as they push for raises and better working conditions. City workers haven’t gone on strike in decades, but provisions in the City Charter that forbade them from doing so were recently gutted by a state employment board.
While the city appealed that ruling, the possibility of a strike created a political headache for Breed, who is trying to close a projected $789.3 million two-year deficit just months before she hopes to defeat several challengers to win another term.
“Mayor Breed has been clear that a key component of San Francisco’s ability to deliver high quality and necessary services to the public involves investing in our workforce,” Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan said in an email Monday.
Cretan said city officials are “working closely” with the unions that don’t have agreements yet, hoping to promptly “bring discussions to amicable resolution.” He said the tentative contracts already agreed to will “help ensure the stability and continuity of city services” throughout their three-year terms. He also noted that the contract negotiations were included as part of the city’s budget planning process and promised that Breed will deliver a balanced budget to supervisors this summer.
Kristin Hardy, San Francisco regional vice president for SEIU 1021, said in a statement that the $25 minimum wage her union secured in the deal would “immediately help bring over 1,000 of the City’s lowest-paid employees out of poverty.” Hardy said the union also secured “new protections against contracting out in this agreement that we believe can start to disrupt this disturbing pattern of throwing taxpayer dollars to outside companies with little to no oversight.”
“We believe the agreement will help us protect and improve the public services S.F. needs as it rebuilds post-pandemic,” Hardy said in her statement.
But she said SEIU’s work isn’t finished yet, noting that the nurses and transit workers who don’t have tentative agreements with the city yet “face huge challenges around staffing and contracting out, among other issues.”
“We hope to reach agreements with the City for them, too, but all options up to and including a strike are still on the table until we do,” Hardy said.
Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council, said his members also don’t have a deal with the city yet, nor do plumbers, engineers and electricians — and a strike remains possible for them, too.
“We aren’t playing some game for fun,” Gonzalez said in a text message. “We are fighting for the city we love. Let’s hope it comes together.”
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who’s running for mayor against Breed, said he thought “cooler heads prevailed” as leaders of the major unions and the mayor’s office negotiated.
“The leadership and the rank and file of San Francisco’s largest employee organizations care about the city’s financial position and are realistic about it, and I think that we dug as deep into our pockets as we reasonably could,” Peskin said. “It’s still gonna be a tough budget season, but I think we will make it work.”
Reach J.D. Morris: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com; X/Twitter: @thejdmorris
S.F. reaches tentative deal to give raises to workers, making a strike less likely as mayoral election looms
www.sfchronicle.comS.F. reaches tentative deal with major unions, making a strike less likely
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-reaches-tentative-deal-with-unions-strike-19404726.php
By J.D. Morris
April 15, 2024
San Francisco library workers, union members and supporters hold a rally on …April 9 outside the San Francisco Main Library calling for increased security at every branch.
San Francisco library workers, union members and supporters hold a rally on April 9 outside the San Francisco Main Library calling for increased security at every branch.
Jana Asenbrennerova/Special to the Chronicle
San Francisco has reached tentative labor contracts with several of its largest unions, reducing the chances of a widespread public-sector strike as the city tries to close a huge budget deficit during a mayoral election year.
Full details of the agreements were not immediately available, but SEIU Local 1021, San Francisco’s largest public-sector union, said its contract would establish a $25 per hour minimum wage for city workers, among other provisions. The lowest hourly pay rate for SEIU members is currently $20.25, according to the union.
Django Rampley, center, holds a sign from the back of a vintage San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 engine as unions gather for a rally outside City Hall to kick off contract negotiations with the city on Jan. 17.
Django Rampley, center, holds a sign from the back of a vintage San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 engine as unions gather for a rally outside City Hall to kick off contract negotiations with the city on Jan. 17.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
It’s too soon to tell how much the deal will cost the city or exactly how it will impact the upcoming budget negotiations, though officials said they’ve factored the labor talks into their financial projections. Mayor London Breed previously ordered her departments to plan for 10% spending cuts in the coming fiscal year.
The city is still negotiating with some unions, including those representing nurses and transit operators. But the tentative agreements with SEIU and some other unions cover more than 20,000 of San Francisco’s 36,600 employees, according to Breed’s office. Union members still need to ratify the contracts, and they must also be approved by the Board of Supervisors.
San Francisco unions have been threatening to strike this year as they push for raises and better working conditions. City workers haven’t gone on strike in decades, but provisions in the City Charter that forbade them from doing so were recently gutted by a state employment board.
While the city appealed that ruling, the possibility of a strike created a political headache for Breed, who is trying to close a projected $789.3 million two-year deficit just months before she hopes to defeat several challengers to win another term.
“Mayor Breed has been clear that a key component of San Francisco’s ability to deliver high quality and necessary services to the public involves investing in our workforce,” Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan said in an email Monday.
Cretan said city officials are “working closely” with the unions that don’t have agreements yet, hoping to promptly “bring discussions to amicable resolution.” He said the tentative contracts already agreed to will “help ensure the stability and continuity of city services” throughout their three-year terms. He also noted that the contract negotiations were included as part of the city’s budget planning process and promised that Breed will deliver a balanced budget to supervisors this summer.
Kristin Hardy, San Francisco regional vice president for SEIU 1021, said in a statement that the $25 minimum wage her union secured in the deal would “immediately help bring over 1,000 of the City’s lowest-paid employees out of poverty.” Hardy said the union also secured “new protections against contracting out in this agreement that we believe can start to disrupt this disturbing pattern of throwing taxpayer dollars to outside companies with little to no oversight.”
“We believe the agreement will help us protect and improve the public services S.F. needs as it rebuilds post-pandemic,” Hardy said in her statement.
But she said SEIU’s work isn’t finished yet, noting that the nurses and transit workers who don’t have tentative agreements with the city yet “face huge challenges around staffing and contracting out, among other issues.”
“We hope to reach agreements with the City for them, too, but all options up to and including a strike are still on the table until we do,” Hardy said.
Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer for the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council, said his members also don’t have a deal with the city yet, nor do plumbers, engineers and electricians — and a strike remains possible for them, too.
“We aren’t playing some game for fun,” Gonzalez said in a text message. “We are fighting for the city we love. Let’s hope it comes together.”
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who’s running for mayor against Breed, said he thought “cooler heads prevailed” as leaders of the major unions and the mayor’s office negotiated.
“The leadership and the rank and file of San Francisco’s largest employee organizations care about the city’s financial position and are realistic about it, and I think that we dug as deep into our pockets as we reasonably could,” Peskin said. “It’s still gonna be a tough budget season, but I think we will make it work.”
Reach J.D. Morris: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com; X/Twitter: @thejdmorris
S.F. reaches tentative deal with major unions, making a strike less likely as mayoral election looms
www.sfchronicle.comThe South has few unionized auto plants. Workers say this one could be next.
If a vote to join the UAW succeeds, a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee would be the South’s first auto plant to unionize via election since the 1940s
…https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/15/vw-uaw-tennessee-union-vote/
By Jeanne Whalen
April 15, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
UAW signs and water bottles in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers building in Chattanooga, Tenn., last week. (Kevin Wurm)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Growing up in eastern Tennessee, Jeremy Collins didn’t know many people with unionized jobs. But he remembers reading good things about unions fighting for the eight-hour work day and against child labor.
That’s why Collins plans to vote yes when employees at his Volkswagen factory decide this week whether to join the United Auto Workers. And he thinks many of his co-workers will do the same — possibly making their factory one of the few auto plants in the South to unionize.
Of 26 Volkswagen workers who stopped to talk to a Washington Post reporter outside the factory gates this month, more than two-thirds said they planned to vote yes in the historic ballot that will test the UAW’s strategy of organizing a dozen automakers’ southern factories. Six workers said they were undecided and two were opposed.
“I’m pretty vocal about the union at work, and I usually ask a lot of people how they feel,” Collins said, en route to his shift building Atlas SUVs and electric ID.4 vehicles. “And from all the people I talk to, I’ve only come across three people who are against it.”
Jeremy Collins outside the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga before his shift last Wednesday. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
A bulletin board in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers building in Chattanooga last week. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
Those who spoke with The Post are a small fraction of the more than 4,000 workers eligible to vote in the ballot. And the UAW has failed in two previous efforts to organize the factory, in 2014 and 2019. But the union is expressing optimism this time around, saying that a supermajority of workers signed union authorization cards supporting UAW membership.
Volkswagen Chattanooga would be the first auto plant in the South to unionize through an election since the 1940s, although there are other unionized auto factories in the South.
UAW announces drive to organize Toyota, Tesla and a dozen other automakers
The union drive in Chattanooga is happening as both President Biden and former president Trump vie to make the case that they can deliver for blue-collar factory workers. A yes vote, even in red Tennessee, could help shore up Biden’s support among union voters across the United States, including those still dubious about the improved economy. Biden’s staunch support of union workers has earned him the UAW’s endorsement and assistance on the campaign trail from its fiery president, Shawn Fain.
An aerial view of the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
Tennessee Republicans have seized on that relationship in their efforts to thwart the unionization drive. In an impromptu news conference next to the factory this month, local Republicans warned that workers in this right-leaning county would be aligning themselves with the Democrats by voting yes.
“I hope that the Tennessee workers will recognize that the UAW represents the party of President Joe Biden, and their values and political contributions, which are completely inconsistent with the people of southeast Tennessee,” state Sen. Bo Watson told attendees.
The conservative editorial page of the Chattanooga Times Free Press has carried similar messages, as has a mysterious website that workers say appeared recently, stillnouaw.com, which features photos of Biden and Fain and a social media post from former president Donald Trump attacking the UAW president. During a visit to Chattanooga last week, Republican Gov. Bill Lee cautioned that joining the union would be “a big mistake.”
Some conservative VW workers say they wish politicians would butt out.
“I really don’t appreciate what our local leaders have said about the UAW. I think they should have stayed out of it,” Ethan Triplett, a VW worker who votes Republican, said as he arrived for his shift. “I’ve seen what the UAW can do for all the plants up north and everything. … And I feel like they can do some good down here.”
In the IBEW building in Chattanooga, where the UAW hosts meetings for Volkswagen factory workers. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
Triplett and others said their main complaints include the factory’s inflexible sick-day policies and its tendency to haul in workers for compulsory overtime shifts on Saturdays. They also want better retirement and health-care benefits.
The election stakes are high for the UAW and its new president. The union scored big contract wins after striking against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis last year, but union membership has fallen precipitously in recent decades and continued to drop by 3.3 percent last year, to 370,000 workers. A team of UAW staffers has decamped to Chattanooga to help run the election drive, working on laptops at the union hall of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), where the UAW is renting space.
Although this would be the UAW’s first foray in the South at a foreign auto plant, both GM and Ford have UAW factories in Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas. Those had an easier path to unionization through procedures included in the automakers’ national agreements with the union.
VW says it is remaining neutral on the unionization effort. The union has disputed that, accusing the company of destroying union materials in a factory break room and other union-busting behavior. The company refutes the allegations, saying it is standard VW procedure to clear break rooms of all stray materials every day.
The factory is VW’s only plant worldwide that isn’t represented by a union or a similar body that advocates for workers. “We respect our employees’ right to decide who represents them in the workplace and have throughout this process,” Volkswagen said in a statement about the Chattanooga vote, adding that it is proud of the working conditions and pay it offers.
The average production worker in Chattanooga will earn more than $60,000 this year before overtime and bonuses, with hourly wages ranging from $23.40 to $32.40, the company said. Skilled team leaders earn up to $42.25 an hour. Since 2009, VW has invested more than $4.3 billion in the factory, making it one of the biggest employers in this picturesque city on the Tennessee River, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
An aerial view of the Tennessee River and Chattanooga. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
Charles Wood, head of the local chamber of commerce, said he worries that unionization could cause VW to shift more investment to its factory in Puebla, Mexico. That plant is unionized, but its workers earn less, making it a cheaper place to produce.
“The risk for Chattanooga is we become less competitive long-term,” he said, adding that VW has played a huge role in helping the region recover from factory closures and tough economic times that started in the 1960s.
Sarah Roberts, who works in the factory’s logistics department, said she plans to vote no, because she developed negative views of unions while growing up in Michigan. Her father, an automotive engineer, worked stints in various auto factories, trying to improve their manufacturing processes, she said. “Out of all the plants he’s been in, every one that has been under the UAW for more than 10 years is now shut down,” she said.
Among some conservative workers, the UAW’s endorsement of Biden is not helping the union’s case.
Members of a worker committee helping organize the drive say some workers have bashed the Biden endorsement. Kelcey Smith, one of dozens on the committee, said he heard a colleague tell a union meeting a few months ago that some people on the factory floor were upset about it.
Volkswagen worker Kelcey Smith is part of a committee helping organize the unionization drive. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
Kelcey Smith displays UAW buttons. (Kevin Wurm for The Washington Post)
“He believed that it was having an effect on some of the minds of some of the workers as far as voting for the union was concerned,” Smith said in an interview. UAW staffers at the meeting advised workers to reassure colleagues that they can vote for whomever they like.
Most workers who spoke with The Post said they are focusing more on workplace issues than politics.
The union “can support whoever they want,” said Krantzsy Boursiquot, a worker who described himself as apolitical and a nonvoter. Like others, he is most concerned about mandatory overtime on Saturdays, which the company sometimes calls with only two days’ notice, and managers’ refusal at times to approve sick days.
“I feel like, as they’re pushing for excellence every year, coming up with a new model every year, trying to increase profits for their shareholders, they should have that same energy when it comes down to their employees. And they don’t,” Boursiquot said.
Volkswagen spokesman Michael Lowder said the company has several channels for employee feedback and takes worker input seriously.
Gathering on a recent evening at the IBEW union hall, workers on the unionization organizing committee said they are pushing for stronger benefits.
Yolanda Peoples, who used to belong to the UAW when she worked at a now closed General Motors factory in Doraville, Ga., says she wants better health-care coverage that will reduce her out-of-pocket costs for medication. She would also like a defined-benefit pension instead of the 401(k) that VW provides.
“The 401(k) is based on the stock market … and whether it’s up or down,” she said. “I want more stability.”
VW contributes 4 percent of an employee’s pay to the 401(k) if the worker contributes 5 percent, VW spokesman Lowder said. The company also contributes 5 percent of each employee’s paycheck to a separate defined contribution plan, with no employee contribution required, he said.
Robert Soderstrom, who builds car doors, hopes a union can help protect workers from having to do the jobs of two people when someone calls in sick. “Oftentimes we won’t have a full crew,” he said. “If we’re a man short, they’ll be like, well, Robert, today you’re working two [jobs] … they’re not slowing the line down.”
Outside the factory gates, Justin DeLong stopped briefly to voice his support for the UAW, saying that many of his relatives in Upstate New York are union workers.
“I don’t understand why the South is afraid of unionization,” he said before rushing through the turnstile to his shift.
Volkswagen workers in Tennessee could choose to make their plant one of the first big auto factories in the South to unionize after an April 17 vote.
www.washingtonpost.comPittsburgh Teamsters Local 211/205 settles extended strike with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, while journalists, other unions remain out
https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsburgh-post-gazette-strike-teamsters-union-settle/60501760
4:24 PM EDT Apr 15, 2024
PITTSBURGH —
The union that …represents a Pittsburgh newspaper’s truck drivers, one of five unions that have been on strike for 18 months, has approved a new contract with the paper’s owners. Four other unions, including one representing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s journalists and other newsroom employees, have not settled.
Video above: Striking Post-Gazette employees and supporters rally to mark 1 year on strike (October 2023)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said the remaining members of Teamsters Local 211/205 voted unanimously to accept a labor dispute settlement agreement and dissolve their union at the newspaper. Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but the newspaper reported that it substantially resolves all strike-related issues and health care, including any outstanding National Labor Relations Board actions.
The newspaper declined further comment on the matter.
Four other unions at the Post-Gazette — including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents reporters, photographers and other newsroom employees — are not part of the settlement and remain on strike. The Communications Workers of America represents the other Post-Gazette workers still on strike, including the mailers, advertising staff, and the journalists at the Pittsburgh Newspaper Guild.
CWA officials said they were disheartened by the Teamsters’ settlement.
“It’s beyond disappointing that the Teamsters would abandon their fellow strikers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,” said NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss said in a statement posted on the union’s website. “We stood with the Teamsters: in the cold, in the rain, in the snow, and in the face of violent scab truck drivers and aggressive police. We will continue to strike and hold the employer to account.”
CWA District 2-13 Vice President Mike Davis added, “Their decision to prioritize greed over solidarity with their fellow union members is not only disappointing but also a betrayal of the values that we hold dear in the labor movement."
The Teamster local and the three other non-newsroom unions went on strike in October 2022, and they were joined by the Newspaper Guild members two weeks later. The Post-Gazette hired replacement employees, while the striking newspaper guild members have been producing their own newspaper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress, during the strike.
Joe Barbano, a trustee and business agent for the Teamsters local, told WESA that the union was backed into a corner, noting its membership had fallen from around 150 to just 30 when the strike began.
“A majority of (the remaining members) said we would take some type of a settlement, we’ll move on with our lives,” Barbano said. “And that’s what we did.”
Barbano said his local had presented the idea for this settlement about six months ago to the other unions but they other didn’t move on it, so the Teamsters decided to move forward on their own. He acknowledged the Teamsters negotiated in secret from the other unions on strike, saying it was because the Post-Gazette made that a requirement.
Four other unions, including one representing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s journalists and other newsroom employees, have not settled.
www.wtae.comDefeat Privatization; Take Back Your Unions From ‘Sell Out’ Leaders!!
…https://www.work-bites.com/view-all/dv4lq6x4dwk6u6r4n1h0bv5xvpgvp2?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=661ca2b810c49102768d55d0&ss_email_id=661d01b7dda19219a95dc42d&ss_campaign_name=Take+Back+Your+Unions+From+‘Sell+Out’+Leaders%2F+’Plantation’+Pay+Debate&ss_campaign_sent_date=2024-04-15T10%3A30%3A52Z
APR 14
NYC municipal retiree Julie Schwartzberg and fellow members of the National Alliance of Retiree Health Care confront security outside the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ offices on Broadway.
By Joe Maniscalco
In the span of two days, New York City retirees battling to save Medicare from extinction have called out corrupt union misleaders willing to sell out the entire labor movement for Medicare Advantage; challenged President Joe Biden to finally get real about what needs to be done to rescue Medicare; and provided a game plan on how to win back rank and file control from the misleadership class.
It began on Friday afternoon outside Federal Plaza on Broadway where building security refused to allow retirees in coalition with the National Alliance of Retiree Healthcare to deliver a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, calling on Biden and the agency to “make Medicare whole.”
“Take that money that the insurance companies are robbing — and there’s an estimate that it’s up to $140 billion a year — and put into Medicare,” New York City municipal retiree and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee member [CROC] Julie Schwartzberg said. “Why does Medicare make us pay 20 percent? Why don’t they have dental? Why don’t they have optical? We can take the money from the fraud — and put it in and make Medicare whole.”
Stu Eber, head of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], recalled how working class people used to have a pretty good bead on who was gunning for them — but not anymore.
“Through the years, we always thought the enemy was the Republicans who were against Social Security like Barry Goldwater…and Ronald Reagan against Medicare,” Eber said. “Then we wake up in the 21st century and we have Democrats and Republicans who are forcing Medicare Advantage on us.”
Eber also noted how more than half the Medicare-eligible people in the United States today are now enrolled in a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
They have lost their Medicare,” Eber said. “They’re on Medicare Advantage. And why? Because of [the 20 percent] Medigap. Because they have to pay for their Medicap insurance — unlike city employees. It was cheaper for them to say, ‘I’ll give my Part B to an insurance company, and they’ll take care of me for everything else.’ Unfortunately, they have found out the hard way that it doesn’t work that well. That they aren’t getting better healthcare — they’re getting worse health care.”
The following day, 90-year-old municipal retiree Evie Jones-Rich lambasted the heads of New York City’s shadowy Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] — the same labor leaders bent on driving 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan — and who Jones-Rich says is using the MLC as “cover” for refusing to “carry out their mandate.”
“The first thing I want you to remember is that most of the union movement today is corrupt,” Jones-Rich said at a special town hall about the MLC held inside the People’s Forum on W. 37th Street. “It is corrupt. The leaders have no vision. They have lost their way. They are not doing their job. And one of the things you're going to walk away with [today] is the feeling that is going to change.”
Originally created back in 1966 as a way of leveraging the power of New York City’s public sector unions against the political bosses — the MLC, through a heavily weighted voting structure that rests all of the controlling power in the hands of the three largest unions in the organization — has devolved into a different kind of undemocratic beast altogether.
“They need a two-thirds vote to pass a motion, and it doesn’t matter if most of the other unions behind them want the opposite,” Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees and the FDNY EMS Retirees Association, said. “Whatever those large unions want — that’s what ends up happening.”
District Council 37 Progressive Caucus member Robert Cuffy jeered his own union VP Anthony Wells for supporting AFSCME’s takeover of the DC37 Retirees Association, as well as the organization’s overall lack of transparency.
“This is the position we're at — at least at the Administration for Children's Services — people who work as child protective specialists and supervisors are beaten down on such a daily basis just doing the work — we barely have time to raise our head above the water to participate in the union,” Cuffy said. “And those of us who do participate in the union face a very opaque bureaucracy.”
Pizzitola criticized the MLC leadership with not "recognizing their own value” and “trauma-bonding” with the mayoral bosses following more than a decade of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s anti-union tyranny.
“Everything around us goes up in value,” Pizzitola said. “So, if that’s the case — then how come labor, our value diminishes, and we have to give up something in order to get something back? The rest of the world, your big unions — [United Auto Workers] — they’re noticing that. They’re making strides removing tiering and improving their healthcare. We shouldn’t be giving ours back.”
Last week, Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson also called out those labor leaders embracing profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans and selling out the rank & file.
“I’ll say it right here and right now, unions have lost their way,” Nelson said at a Medicare for All forum on April 10. “I don't agree with it. I completely disagree with it. I'm opposed to that position. I think it hurts our solidarity. It hurts care for ourselves in our communities — and it sells out the people that we are here for, and charged to protect.”
Just a couple of weeks prior, the NYC Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America received flak after they invited TWU Local 100 officer JP Patafio to another town hall on public sector organizing also held inside the People’s Forum — because Patafio is part of a leadership team at TWU Local 100 that’s also attempting to push its retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
CROC member Gloria Brandman, meanwhile, is running on the Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket in the UFT’s upcoming chapter elections in May. The Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket is a direct challenge to UFT President and Medicare Advantage proponent Michael Mulgrew’s entrenched hold on the teachers union.
“We are running a full slate against the UFT Unity leaders of our union,” Brandman said. “Our union has sold us out.”
Pizzitola urged more rank & file members everywhere to “take back” their unions.
“This is where that trauma-bonding comes back…you are conditioned to thinking you have no value, [and] you have to accept the measly pittance that they have to give you,” she said. “Your value is not in a box — and the only way to get that [power] back is you have to take back your leadership. Don’t let them stay in power. Get your friends, make a coalition, take back your local — they’re trying to take back their retiree chapter — you have to make noise.”
Fellow CROC member Sarah Shapiro urged retirees to continue coalition-building with others throughout the country.
“The more I get into this fight, the more I believe that coalition building is the way to go,” Shapiro said. “It’s not only municipal retirees that are being screwed over — it’s the home care attendants who are being forced to work 24 hours, and being paid for 13 hours, and the City Council saying they’re the most progressive in this city’s history, [but also] ‘We can’t do anything for you.’ We are working hard with other groups — [like the] Poor People’s Campaign — it’s not only us…we need to keep growing, expanding because when we get right down to it — we need to fight the system.”
Defeat Privatization; Take Back Your Unions From ‘Sell Out’ Leaders!!
…https://www.work-bites.com/view-all/dv4lq6x4dwk6u6r4n1h0bv5xvpgvp2?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=661ca2b810c49102768d55d0&ss_email_id=661d01b7dda19219a95dc42d&ss_campaign_name=Take+Back+Your+Unions+From+‘Sell+Out’+Leaders%2F+’Plantation’+Pay+Debate&ss_campaign_sent_date=2024-04-15T10%3A30%3A52Z
APR 14
NYC municipal retiree Julie Schwartzberg and fellow members of the National Alliance of Retiree Health Care confront security outside the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ offices on Broadway.
By Joe Maniscalco
In the span of two days, New York City retirees battling to save Medicare from extinction have called out corrupt union misleaders willing to sell out the entire labor movement for Medicare Advantage; challenged President Joe Biden to finally get real about what needs to be done to rescue Medicare; and provided a game plan on how to win back rank and file control from the misleadership class.
It began on Friday afternoon outside Federal Plaza on Broadway where building security refused to allow retirees in coalition with the National Alliance of Retiree Healthcare to deliver a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, calling on Biden and the agency to “make Medicare whole.”
“Take that money that the insurance companies are robbing — and there’s an estimate that it’s up to $140 billion a year — and put into Medicare,” New York City municipal retiree and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee member [CROC] Julie Schwartzberg said. “Why does Medicare make us pay 20 percent? Why don’t they have dental? Why don’t they have optical? We can take the money from the fraud — and put it in and make Medicare whole.”
Stu Eber, head of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], recalled how working class people used to have a pretty good bead on who was gunning for them — but not anymore.
“Through the years, we always thought the enemy was the Republicans who were against Social Security like Barry Goldwater…and Ronald Reagan against Medicare,” Eber said. “Then we wake up in the 21st century and we have Democrats and Republicans who are forcing Medicare Advantage on us.”
Eber also noted how more than half the Medicare-eligible people in the United States today are now enrolled in a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
They have lost their Medicare,” Eber said. “They’re on Medicare Advantage. And why? Because of [the 20 percent] Medigap. Because they have to pay for their Medicap insurance — unlike city employees. It was cheaper for them to say, ‘I’ll give my Part B to an insurance company, and they’ll take care of me for everything else.’ Unfortunately, they have found out the hard way that it doesn’t work that well. That they aren’t getting better healthcare — they’re getting worse health care.”
The following day, 90-year-old municipal retiree Evie Jones-Rich lambasted the heads of New York City’s shadowy Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] — the same labor leaders bent on driving 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan — and who Jones-Rich says is using the MLC as “cover” for refusing to “carry out their mandate.”
“The first thing I want you to remember is that most of the union movement today is corrupt,” Jones-Rich said at a special town hall about the MLC held inside the People’s Forum on W. 37th Street. “It is corrupt. The leaders have no vision. They have lost their way. They are not doing their job. And one of the things you're going to walk away with [today] is the feeling that is going to change.”
Originally created back in 1966 as a way of leveraging the power of New York City’s public sector unions against the political bosses — the MLC, through a heavily weighted voting structure that rests all of the controlling power in the hands of the three largest unions in the organization — has devolved into a different kind of undemocratic beast altogether.
“They need a two-thirds vote to pass a motion, and it doesn’t matter if most of the other unions behind them want the opposite,” Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees and the FDNY EMS Retirees Association, said. “Whatever those large unions want — that’s what ends up happening.”
District Council 37 Progressive Caucus member Robert Cuffy jeered his own union VP Anthony Wells for supporting AFSCME’s takeover of the DC37 Retirees Association, as well as the organization’s overall lack of transparency.
“This is the position we're at — at least at the Administration for Children's Services — people who work as child protective specialists and supervisors are beaten down on such a daily basis just doing the work — we barely have time to raise our head above the water to participate in the union,” Cuffy said. “And those of us who do participate in the union face a very opaque bureaucracy.”
Pizzitola criticized the MLC leadership with not "recognizing their own value” and “trauma-bonding” with the mayoral bosses following more than a decade of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s anti-union tyranny.
“Everything around us goes up in value,” Pizzitola said. “So, if that’s the case — then how come labor, our value diminishes, and we have to give up something in order to get something back? The rest of the world, your big unions — [United Auto Workers] — they’re noticing that. They’re making strides removing tiering and improving their healthcare. We shouldn’t be giving ours back.”
Last week, Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson also called out those labor leaders embracing profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans and selling out the rank & file.
“I’ll say it right here and right now, unions have lost their way,” Nelson said at a Medicare for All forum on April 10. “I don't agree with it. I completely disagree with it. I'm opposed to that position. I think it hurts our solidarity. It hurts care for ourselves in our communities — and it sells out the people that we are here for, and charged to protect.”
Just a couple of weeks prior, the NYC Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America received flak after they invited TWU Local 100 officer JP Patafio to another town hall on public sector organizing also held inside the People’s Forum — because Patafio is part of a leadership team at TWU Local 100 that’s also attempting to push its retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
CROC member Gloria Brandman, meanwhile, is running on the Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket in the UFT’s upcoming chapter elections in May. The Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket is a direct challenge to UFT President and Medicare Advantage proponent Michael Mulgrew’s entrenched hold on the teachers union.
“We are running a full slate against the UFT Unity leaders of our union,” Brandman said. “Our union has sold us out.”
Pizzitola urged more rank & file members everywhere to “take back” their unions.
“This is where that trauma-bonding comes back…you are conditioned to thinking you have no value, [and] you have to accept the measly pittance that they have to give you,” she said. “Your value is not in a box — and the only way to get that [power] back is you have to take back your leadership. Don’t let them stay in power. Get your friends, make a coalition, take back your local — they’re trying to take back their retiree chapter — you have to make noise.”
Fellow CROC member Sarah Shapiro urged retirees to continue coalition-building with others throughout the country.
“The more I get into this fight, the more I believe that coalition building is the way to go,” Shapiro said. “It’s not only municipal retirees that are being screwed over — it’s the home care attendants who are being forced to work 24 hours, and being paid for 13 hours, and the City Council saying they’re the most progressive in this city’s history, [but also] ‘We can’t do anything for you.’ We are working hard with other groups — [like the] Poor People’s Campaign — it’s not only us…we need to keep growing, expanding because when we get right down to it — we need to fight the system.”
Japanese American artists reflect on Ruth Asawa at SF State
https://www.sfexaminer.com/culture/museums-and-galleries/japanese-american-artists-reflect-on-ruth-asawa-at-sf-state/article_ffdcaf84-f1ee-11ee-bce8-13016d380cc1.html
By Max Blue | Special to The Examiner Apr 3, 2024 Updated Apr 4,… 2024
“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” installation view, San Francisco State University.
Photo credit: Claire S Burke
Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the United States’ Japanese population to be sent to internment camps for the duration of the country’s involvement in the Second World War.
Over 125,000 people — many U.S. citizens — were incarcerated at “War Relocation Centers” from 1942 to 1945. This resulted in over $400 million in property loss for internees and an intergenerational memory of unjust treatment that rarely gets addressed in popular discourse.
In 2001, legendary San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), who was herself an internee, created “The Garden of Remembrance” at San Francisco State University, a memorial garden honoring internees.
The university’s Fine Arts Gallery’s latest exhibition, “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance,” features five contemporary Japanese American artists who honor Asawa’s work and continue the artistic examination of the intergenerational legacy of Japanese internment.
They aren’t the first artists to make work on the matter. Bay Area documentary photographer Dorothea Lange was hired by the War Relocation Authority, alongside Ansel Adams, to photograph the Japanese internment process.
In “Garden of Remembrance,” photographer Paul Kitagaki, whose grandparents were photographed by Lange, has paired several portraits with his own, more recent portraits of the same individuals. The diptychs are accompanied by text narrating the subjects’ memories of internment and reflecting on its long-term effects.
Kitagaki also includes landscape photographs shot at Topaz Incarceration Center in Delta, Utah — now a national park — and a wooden chair his grandfather crafted from scrap lumber used in building the camp. The empty landscapes and sculptures evoke the absence and overbearing presence of incarceration in national history.
Garden of Remembrance2.jpg
“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” installation view, San Francisco State University.
Photo credit: Claire S Burke.
Mark Baugh-Sasaki, whose family members were farmers in the Sierra foothills prior to being interred at Tule Lake, presents a sculptural video installation that further explores the relationship between Japanese internment and the American landscape.
The wooden structure supports various ephemeral objects from his family archive, with video footage shot on his family farmland projected from above. Koi fish swim on top of an open ledger, family photographs blend with grass, and stacks of books are adorned with persimmons and oranges. The layering effect evokes memory and forgetfulness.
Five artists expand on Asawa’s intention of returning humanity to a community from which it was stripped.
www.sfexaminer.comTeamsters union, which led strike against Post-Gazette, accepts settlement and agrees to dissolve
https://www.wesa.fm/economy-business/2024-04-11/post-gazette-strike-teamsters-union-settlemnt-dissolve
90.5 WESA | By Oliver Morrison
Published April 11, 2024 at 12:50 PM EDT
…Building that reads Pittsburgh Post-Gazette along the top
Katie Blackley
90.5 WESA
The settlement by Teamsters Local 211/205, which represents Post-Gazette truck drivers, has set off a firestorm among the four other unions who remain on strike, including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
The local Teamsters union that has led a more than year-and-a-half-long strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has voted to accept payment and dissolve itself as part of a settlement with the parent company, Block Communications.
The settlement by Teamsters Local 211/205, which represents Post-Gazette truck drivers, has set off a firestorm among the four other unions who remain on strike, including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. The Guild represents the editorial staff, including reporters and photographers, and was pressured to join the strike in support of the Teamsters and the two other newspaper production unions at risk of losing its own union charter.
"After 18 months on strike, standing on the picket lines all day and late into the nights with Teamster drivers represented by Local 211/205, it's extremely disappointing to see this unit fall for the company's divide and conquer strategy," said Zack Tanner, Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh president, in a press release.
Tanner estimated that the new settlement agreement would decrease the total number of workers on strike at the Post-Gazette from between 80 and 90 to just over 60 members, including 31 active members from the Newspaper Guild.
Joe Barbano, a trustee and business agent for the local Teamsters 211/205, said his union was backed into a corner. The union’s membership had fallen from around 150 when the Post-Gazette was still publishing seven days a week (the Post-Gazette cut publication to five days in August 2018 and three days in fall 2019), to just 30 in 2022 when the union first went on strike. Barbano said only 23 members were left as of this week and a majority of them voted to accept a severance payment and dissolve itself.
“A majority of them said we would take some type of a settlement, we'll move on with our lives,” Barbano said. “And that's what we did.”
Barbano denied the accusation that the Teamsters had let down the Newspaper Guild, which voted to go on strike and support the Teamsters two weeks after Teamsters announced their strike in 2022. Barbano said it was the Guild’s membership that had undermined the strike.
“To be honest with you, the Guild, [around] 50% of their membership crossed the picket line,” Barbano said. “And they wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and they were able to get a paper out because of that.”
Tanner said the members who did go on strike have been fully supportive. “I can say that personally on Teamster picket lines, I was bear-sprayed. Cops have physically dragged me around on the picket line,” he said. “There was a fight that a News Guild member broke up famously where a member had his jaw broken last year.”
Barbano said that there were rumors the Post-Gazette will cut its delivery schedule to one day a week. “We have no future if they cut another day of print, which they were hinting that they are,” he said. “We are out of business.”
The four unions still on strike chafed at how the local Teamsters negotiated a settlement on their own. “By selling out in secret, the Teamsters have not only damaged their own credibility but have also jeopardized the possibility of a fair settlement for all the unions involved,” said Mike Davis, the vice president of CWA District 2-13, one of the unions still on strike.
Barbano said that the local Teamsters union had presented the idea for this settlement about six months ago to the other unions but the other unions didn’t move on it, so the Teamsters decided to move forward on their own. The reason the Teamsters negotiated in secret from the other unions on strike was because that was a requirement made by the Post-Gazette, he said.
“The Post-Gazette wanted to keep it that way,” he said. “And in order for us to get a deal done, we needed to do that.”
Barbano said it was a local decision to settle but that his boss agreed. He didn’t share details of the amount each member would be paid but said it would be based on their years of service and would differ from member to member. The settlement agreement is not yet official, he said.
The Post-Gazette and Block Communications didn’t issue a press release. However, a business reporter for the Post-Gazette who chose not to go on strike with the majority of the Guild in 2022, wrote an article about the settlement, saying he received a statement from Post-Gazette management.
“The Post-Gazette and Teamsters Local Union 211/205 have amicably settled their strike, which began October 6, 2022,” the reporter wrote, saying it came from a Post-Gazette statement. “The parties ended the strike by executing a Labor Dispute Settlement Agreement. The Labor Dispute Settlement Agreement resolves, to the satisfaction of the Local Union and the Post-Gazette, substantially all strike-related issues and health care, including any outstanding National Labor Relations Board actions.”
Allison Latcheran, the director of marketing for the Post-Gazette, said the paper did not have any comment beyond what was published in the Post-Gazette story.
The Post-Gazette has hired replacement employees during the more than 18-month strike. Some local politicians, including Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, have chosen not to give interviews to the Post-Gazette until its labor dispute is resolved.
Tanner said the union membership was extremely disappointed by the Teamster’s decision but that they were positive they would reach a successful outcome to the strike.
“This is a fight for the workers and this is a fight for the community,” he said. “And we are in this, and I think we're going to see a win, a big win soon.”
The local Teamsters union has voted to accept payment and dissolve itself as part of a settlement with Post-Gazette parent company, Block…
www.wesa.fmTeamsters union, which led strike against Post-Gazette, accepts settlement and agrees to dissolve
https://www.wesa.fm/economy-business/2024-04-11/post-gazette-strike-teamsters-union-settlemnt-dissolve
90.5 WESA | By Oliver Morrison
Published April 11, 2024 at 12:50 PM EDT
…Building that reads Pittsburgh Post-Gazette along the top
Katie Blackley
/
90.5 WESA
The settlement by Teamsters Local 211/205, which represents Post-Gazette truck drivers, has set off a firestorm among the four other unions who remain on strike, including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
The local Teamsters union that has led a more than year-and-a-half-long strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has voted to accept payment and dissolve itself as part of a settlement with the parent company, Block Communications.
The settlement by Teamsters Local 211/205, which represents Post-Gazette truck drivers, has set off a firestorm among the four other unions who remain on strike, including the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. The Guild represents the editorial staff, including reporters and photographers, and was pressured to join the strike in support of the Teamsters and the two other newspaper production unions at risk of losing its own union charter.
"After 18 months on strike, standing on the picket lines all day and late into the nights with Teamster drivers represented by Local 211/205, it's extremely disappointing to see this unit fall for the company's divide and conquer strategy," said Zack Tanner, Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh president, in a press release.
Tanner estimated that the new settlement agreement would decrease the total number of workers on strike at the Post-Gazette from between 80 and 90 to just over 60 members, including 31 active members from the Newspaper Guild.
Joe Barbano, a trustee and business agent for the local Teamsters 211/205, said his union was backed into a corner. The union’s membership had fallen from around 150 when the Post-Gazette was still publishing seven days a week (the Post-Gazette cut publication to five days in August 2018 and three days in fall 2019), to just 30 in 2022 when the union first went on strike. Barbano said only 23 members were left as of this week and a majority of them voted to accept a severance payment and dissolve itself.
“A majority of them said we would take some type of a settlement, we'll move on with our lives,” Barbano said. “And that's what we did.”
WESA Inbox Edition Newsletter
Start your morning with today's news on Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania.
Barbano denied the accusation that the Teamsters had let down the Newspaper Guild, which voted to go on strike and support the Teamsters two weeks after Teamsters announced their strike in 2022. Barbano said it was the Guild’s membership that had undermined the strike.
“To be honest with you, the Guild, [around] 50% of their membership crossed the picket line,” Barbano said. “And they wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and they were able to get a paper out because of that.”
Tanner said the members who did go on strike have been fully supportive. “I can say that personally on Teamster picket lines, I was bear-sprayed. Cops have physically dragged me around on the picket line,” he said. “There was a fight that a News Guild member broke up famously where a member had his jaw broken last year.”
Barbano said that there were rumors the Post-Gazette will cut its delivery schedule to one day a week. “We have no future if they cut another day of print, which they were hinting that they are,” he said. “We are out of business.”
The four unions still on strike chafed at how the local Teamsters negotiated a settlement on their own. “By selling out in secret, the Teamsters have not only damaged their own credibility but have also jeopardized the possibility of a fair settlement for all the unions involved,” said Mike Davis, the vice president of CWA District 2-13, one of the unions still on strike.
Barbano said that the local Teamsters union had presented the idea for this settlement about six months ago to the other unions but the other unions didn’t move on it, so the Teamsters decided to move forward on their own. The reason the Teamsters negotiated in secret from the other unions on strike was because that was a requirement made by the Post-Gazette, he said.
“The Post-Gazette wanted to keep it that way,” he said. “And in order for us to get a deal done, we needed to do that.”
Barbano said it was a local decision to settle but that his boss agreed. He didn’t share details of the amount each member would be paid but said it would be based on their years of service and would differ from member to member. The settlement agreement is not yet official, he said.
News From WESA
US Steel shareholders approve takeover by Japan's Nippon Steel opposed by Biden administration
Pittsburgh is off to its wettest April ever, on pace for wettest year in history
Pittsburgh teen summit aims to build community around collective action on climate change
The Post-Gazette and Block Communications didn’t issue a press release. However, a business reporter for the Post-Gazette who chose not to go on strike with the majority of the Guild in 2022, wrote an article about the settlement, saying he received a statement from Post-Gazette management.
“The Post-Gazette and Teamsters Local Union 211/205 have amicably settled their strike, which began October 6, 2022,” the reporter wrote, saying it came from a Post-Gazette statement. “The parties ended the strike by executing a Labor Dispute Settlement Agreement. The Labor Dispute Settlement Agreement resolves, to the satisfaction of the Local Union and the Post-Gazette, substantially all strike-related issues and health care, including any outstanding National Labor Relations Board actions.”
Allison Latcheran, the director of marketing for the Post-Gazette, said the paper did not have any comment beyond what was published in the Post-Gazette story.
The Post-Gazette has hired replacement employees during the more than 18-month strike. Some local politicians, including Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, have chosen not to give interviews to the Post-Gazette until its labor dispute is resolved.
Tanner said the union membership was extremely disappointed by the Teamster’s decision but that they were positive they would reach a successful outcome to the strike.
“This is a fight for the workers and this is a fight for the community,” he said. “And we are in this, and I think we're going to see a win, a big win soon.”
The local Teamsters union has voted to accept payment and dissolve itself as part of a settlement with Post-Gazette parent company, Block…
www.wesa.fm“Peace is union business”: Unionists and activists stand in solidarity with Palestine supporting direct action against ZIM
Unionists and activists gathered on the morning of March 6 at Port Botany to stand in solidarity with Palestine and declare their commitment to direct action …against the state of Israel.
https://honisoit.com/2024/03/peace-is-union-business-unionists-and-activists-stand-in-solidarity-with-palestine-supporting-direct-action-against-zim/
Unionists and activists gathered on the morning of March 6 at Port Botany to stand in solidarity with Palestine and declare their commitment to direct action against the state of Israel.
Ahmed Abadla from the Palestinian Justice Movement called on “Western society, the entire world, for humankind, to act” in order to “make it [Israel] the pariah state it should be”. Abadla implored Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself to take responsibility and action “as a politician, as a leader of this country, and as a human being.”
Paul Keating, Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) Sydney branch, spoke on the right of Palestinians to self-determination and resistance against Israel, which he termed an “apartheid state”. He also spoke to the right of communities across the world to protest their governments’ inaction and complicity.
Keating issued a warning to shipping companies stating “you don’t want protests in the ports, declare that you will not move any Israeli owned or made goods”. He also singled out the Israeli shipping firm ZIM “we don’t want your vessels in our ports!”
The MUA and the Block the Boat movement have targeted ZIM specifically due to their role as the largest Israeli shipping company. It has been revealed that Australia has exported $13 million in arms and ammunition to Israel over the past 5 years.
Deputy Leader of the Greens and NSW Senator Mehreen Faruqi spoke to Australia’s role in the atrocities in Gaza by “aiding, abetting, and arming the state of Israel” while freezing “6 million dollars of life-saving aid funding to UNRWA without having seen any evidence of Israel’s claims.”
Likewise, NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge condemned Australia’s bilateral arms trade with Israel emphasising that “we [Australia] should not permit this port to be used to import weapons from Israel and to export Australian weapons to the genocide thats occuring at the moment in Gaza.” Most recently, the Australian Army awarded the Israeli firm Elbit Systems a $917 million contract.
Speakers also spoke to the history of the unions in supporting the plight of the oppressed. National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) Christy Cain mentioned the role of the unions in dismantling South African apartheid and supporting East Timorese independence. Shoebridge spoke of the role of the MUA, often standing in opposition to the Australian government, in withdrawing labour in the face of war. He pointed to the MUA refusing to load ships bound for Imperial Japan before the Second World War and for the Vietnam war.
Speakers condemned the escalation of police violence against protestors, referring to 23 protestors arrested at the Port Botany action last November charged with anti-protest laws and the brutality the police used against the crowd. Keating called on the “Minns government to abolish the anti-protest laws.” Shoebridge highlighted the already large police presence at the press conference and asked “imagine what the kind of police presence will be when there will be protests here.”
Cain ended with a rousing call to action, speaking “to any politician, to any trade unionists out there, this is genocide, make no mistake about it” and that “peace is union business.”
Unionists and activists gathered on the morning of March 6 at Port Botany to stand in solidarity with Palestine and declare their commitment to direct action against the state of Israel.
Ahmed Abadla from the Palestinian Justice Movement called on “Western society, the entire world, for humankind, to act” in order to “make [Israel] the pariah state it should be”. Abadla implored Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself to take responsibility and action “as a politician, as a leader of this country, and as a human being.”
Paul Keating, Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) Sydney branch, spoke on the right of Palestinians to self-determination and resistance against Israel, which he termed an “apartheid state”. He also spoke to the right of communities across the world to protest their governments’ inaction and complicity.
Keating issued a warning to shipping companies stating “you don’t want protests in the ports, declare that you will not move any Israeli owned or made goods”. He also singled out the Israeli shipping firm ZIM: “we don’t want your vessels in our ports!”
The MUA and the Block the Boat movement have targeted ZIM specifically due to their role as the largest Israeli shipping company. It has been revealed that Australia has exported $13 million in arms and ammunition to Israel over the past five years.
Deputy Leader of the Greens and NSW Senator Mehreen Faruqi spoke to Australia’s role in the atrocities in Gaza by “aiding, abetting, and arming the state of Israel” while freezing “6 million dollars of life-saving aid funding to UNRWA without having seen any evidence of Israel’s claims.”
Likewise, NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge condemned Australia’s bilateral arms trade with Israel emphasising that “we [Australia] should not permit this port to be used to import weapons from Israel and to export Australian weapons to the genocide thats occuring at the moment in Gaza.” Most recently, the Australian Army awarded the Israeli firm Elbit Systems a $917 million contract.
Speakers also spoke to the history of the unions in supporting the plight of the oppressed. National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) Christy Cain mentioned the role of the unions in dismantling South African apartheid and supporting East Timorese independence. Shoebridge spoke of the role of the MUA, often standing in opposition to the Australian government, in withdrawing labour in the face of war. He pointed to the MUA refusing to load ships bound for Imperial Japan before the Second World War and for the Vietnam war.
Speakers condemned the escalation of police violence against protestors, referring to 23 protestors arrested at the Port Botany action last November charged with anti-protest laws and the brutality the police used against the crowd. Keating called on the “Minns government to abolish the anti-protest laws.” Shoebridge highlighted the already large police presence at the press conference and asked “imagine what the kind of police presence will be when there will be protests here.”
Cain ended with a rousing call to action, speaking “to any politician, to any trade unionists out there, this is genocide, make no mistake about it” and that “peace is union business”.
