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Welcome to The Labor Prospect, our weekly round-up highlighting the best reporting and latest developments in the labor movement.
Good news for labor: More and more Americans are recognizing that unions are a crucial component in the workplace, according to a new Gallup poll. Rising five percentage points since just last year, 58 percent of Americans approve of unions and slightly more want to increase (not lessen) the influence that unions wield. Organized labor's image has greatly improved since its rock-bottom point in 2009 when just 48 percent of Americans approved of unions.
Shattered Perceptions and Misconceptions
Buzzfeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti, we think, is a little confused about unions and maybe a tad megalomaniacal. After a growing number of digital media companies have successfully unionized, Peretti felt compelled to share his thoughts on why Buzzfeed is too exceptional to benefit from a unionized workplace.
"A lot of the best new-economy companies are environments where there's an alliance between managers and employees," Peretti said. A union "wouldn't be very good for employees at Buzzfeed-particularly people who are writers and reporters because the comps for writers and reporters are much less favorable than comps for startup companies and tech companies."
As Gabriel Arana points out for Huffington Post, that is a bunch of hogwash-unionized workers are better compensated and have better benefits. "As much as Peretti may want to characterize unions as a relic of America's manufacturing past, the truth is that digital media is on its way to becoming a unionized sector of the economy," Arana writes.
In other news of trendy companies, The New York Times dropped a bombshell on everyone's favorite tech company, Amazon. In interviews with more than 100 current and former "Amazonians," the report painted a picture of Amazon's corporate culture that's quite different from its public image. Workers are often pushed to the brink, forced to constantly push the boundaries of what one person can do. As the Times writes, "At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another's ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are 'unreasonably high.'"
Echoing Claude Rains' Inspector Reynaud's declaration that he's "shocked" to find gambling in Rick's Café American in Casablanca, while pocketing his winnings, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos seemed flabbergasted about the cutthroat culture in his workplace. He told workers that "I don't recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don't, either." Former White House flack-turned-Amazon flack Jay Carney defended the online shopping giant on "CBS This Morning" as "an incredibly compelling place to work."
As The Onion incisively quips, Bezos has assured his workers that the HR department is working 100 hours a week to address the problem. "Nothing matters more to me than the well-being of our employees, and our HR staff will continue to work their fingers to the bone-not seeing their families or friends or anything at all outside their offices-for as long as it takes to make this right."
Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, a Teamsters local that is trying to unionize sub-contracted drivers for Google Express alleges that the subcontractor Adecco is running an anti-union campaign and suspended a driver for talking to the media about the union drive. Both Google and Adecco are declining to comment on anything, from whether they will pledge to stay neutral during the drive to the allegations of anti-union actions.
Is College Work?
After a drawn-out affair, the NLRB has thrown out a request by Northwestern University's football players to unionize. The rationale in the decision is that since most Division 1 football teams are from public universities-and therefore out of the NLRB's jurisdiction-the case didn't meet the threshold for promoting stability in labor relations. But as Politico's Allie Grasgreen explains, the board's decision was more notable for what it didn't do. The ruling very narrowly pertained to this case, and notably leaves open a pathway for private college athletes to unionize. But it also does little to answer the question of whether college athletes are actual employees, nor does it expand caselaw that could ease organizing for other university students-most prominently graduate students-to organize.
"The NLRB made the right call," said a coalition representing the largest college sports conferences. "It's important to remember we are talking about students, not employees."
For The Nation, Michelle Chen encapsulates the long struggle for graduate students to organize within the latest defeat at the New School, where graduate instructors were thwarted by a 2004 NLRB precedent from Brown University that declared them to be non-employees. Chen unpacks the continuing push by union organizers to make headway at the New School, and elsewhere.
Minimum Wagers
Despite passing an ordinance last month to raise the minimum wage to $13 an hour by 2020, Austin Alonzo writes for the Kansas City Business Journal that nothing is yet set in stone. With pressure coming from local business groups, the city is currently considering whether to put the minimum wage hike to a referendum vote in November. Meanwhile, a local Fight for 15 group has filed a petition with the city council urging them to reverse their previous decision and raise the minimum to $15 an hour (this is called making the perfect the enemy of the good).
Rather surprisingly, minimum wage hike fever has spread to the Deep South. The city council in Birmingham, Alabama, is reportedly considering an ordinance that would raise the city's minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2017. If passed, the move would set a significant precedent as the biggest city raises its minimum wage in one of the five states (all in the South) that doesn't even have a minimum.
For The Washington Post, Lydia DePillis asks an interesting question: Will the spread of minimum wage increases around the country accelerate automation in the fast-food industry (and beyond)? "Many chains are already at work looking for ingenious ways to take humans out of the picture, threatening workers in an industry that employs 2.4 million wait staffers, nearly three million cooks and food preparers and many of the nation's 3.3 million cashiers. In cities that have enacted the wage increases, DePillis adds, the expense rising the fastest isn't wages; it's rent.
So will the rise of machines lead to labor cuts? That's a question of much debate: Some say machines aren't much cheaper than human labor; others contend that it'd have a profound impact on productivity.
Tidbits
In light of the national conversation on police violence, Black labor organizers are urging the AFL-CIO to reconsider its relationship with a number of police unions.
Uber's misclassification woes are giving cause for many workers around the country to take a close look at their own employment statuses.
A new report finds that by 2020, 7.6 million workers will be a part of the gig economy. Forty percent will be in the contingent workforce.
With an impending contract deadline, United Steelworkers will hold a number of rallies this week to push steel companies to agree to a fair deal for workers. The mega-companies with USW workforces-Arcelor Mittal and U.S. Steel-are seeking to impose pay and benefit cutbacks.
Hillary Clinton collected her second union endorsement from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers this week, after surveyed members supported her candidacy by a 2-1 margin. Just last month, she got an early endorsement from AFT.
At the Prospect…
Amalgamated Bank recently announced it will raise its starting pay to $15 an hour and, as Justin Miller writes, it's a move that's indicative of a growing push among labor activists to organize bank workers on the frontlines. "Banking is a heavily unionized sector in other countries and international trade unionists were pressuring the U.S. movement to get on board," Miller writes, "arguing that there are global ramifications for the most powerful banking sector in the world to not be unionized. Read more…
For the Tapped blog, Rachel Cohen reports on the rejection of merit pay policies-pay tied to student test performance-by unionized charter school teachers in Chicago. Of the unionized charter schools in the city, all but one has rejected merit pay. Read more…
