(Photo: AP/Wichita Eagle/Brian Corn)
Welcome to The Labor Prospect, our weekly round-up highlighting the best reporting and latest developments in the labor movement.
Tales of the Modern Worker
Even Doc Brown couldn't have predicted the current plight of the American worker.
We've heard the horror stories of fulfillment centers of online shopping companies like Amazon-but never have we heard it as David Jamieson told it, with the harrowing story of Jeff Lockhart Jr. After a long spell of unemployment, Lockhart finally found work as a perma-temp warehouse worker when Amazon opened up shop near his home in Virginia. Working the overnight shift, Lockhart operated at a break-neck pace in the hope of Amazon taking him on as a direct employee, with better pay and access to health care. One night, he was unresponsive on the warehouse floor-he died soon after from a sudden heart attack that may have been linked to his hectic working conditions. But because both Amazon and its subcontractor were found to be without fault, and because of the unclear cause of Lockhart's heart attack, his family has been unable to collect any sort of compensation or benefits.
Then there's the tale of Shellion Parris, who was facing deportation when she shook President Obama's hand at the White House Summit on Worker Voice a few weeks ago. As Michelle Chen writes for The Nation, Parris indebted herself to a third party in order to get a guestworker visa to leave Jamaica and work as a cleaner in the U.S. But she soon found that the job paid little and that she was essentially held hostage by her employer, who controlled her visa. It's an all-too-common form of modern indentured servitude-too common, apparently, for immigration services to grant her relief. Instead, without a visa, she faces the possibility of deportation.
And last week, Computerworld exposed an absurd clause in severance deals for IT workers at SunTrust Banks, who are losing their jobs to offshoring. The severance agreements stipulate that, as a condition of receiving their severance pay, these 100 workers would be required to provide technical assistance, including in person, for two years-without pay. Adding insult to injury, many of the tech employees are currently training their replacements. Thankfully, four days after the story broke, SunTrust announced that the clause was eliminated. Still, it's indicative of the increasing power employers try to hold over workers even after they leave-like requiring low-wage food workers to sign non-compete clauses.
Municipalities Matter
In Missouri, the state's new preemption law that prohibits local wage hikes continues to beat back raises already enacted. Last week, St. Louis dropped plans to increase its minimum wage to $15. This week, the Kansas City council repealed legislation to increase its minimum wage.
Meanwhile, an effort to get a $12 minimum wage on the ballot in Ohio cleared its first hurdle as the state's attorney general approved petition language. The election board now must clear the petition before the signature-gathering process may begin. In less-heartening news, a Republican state legislator announced his intention for Ohio to become the latest Midwestern state to go right-to-work. The political prospects aren't great though, given that many Republican lawmakers, and Governor John Kasich, have voiced concern about such a law.
In Dallas, the city council is pushing hard to mandate a living-wage ordinance for city contractors. The mayor and city manager, however, want to just include wage considerations as a part of the contract bid process.
While Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti helped push for a new city minimum wage of $15, he appears to be taking a reluctant Hillary-like tack whether there should be a statewide $15 minimum, citing varying high costs of living. "As I've said before, geography matters," he said in a speech last week. An initiative to raise California's minimum to $15 by 2021 looks like a sure thing to qualify for the November 2016 ballot; the campaign for the measure is chaired by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf.
Going statewide for another burgeoning pro-worker policy-paid sick leave-seems to be working out well for California. As Bloomberg Politics reports, the state's employment growth has outpaced the national rate by 2 percentage points during the ten years since the legislature enacted universal paid sick leave.
The political power showdown continues between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Last week, Cuomo said that ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft should be regulated by the state, not on a city-by-city basis. This is a clear response to de Blasio's recent attempts to curb Uber's aggressive expansion the city.
Upstate, the mayor of Syracuse unilaterally increased the minimum wage for city employees to $15 an hour-effective immediately. Cuomo is currently pushing for a more incremental statewide increase to $15 for all workers.
Next week in Spokane, voters will decide whether to implement an ambitious workers' bill of rights. As Simon Davis-Cohen writes for In These Times, such a bill would serve as something of a universal union contract for all workers, mandating a higher minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, protecting against wrongful termination, and prioritizing workers' rights over corporations' rights.
As Lydia DePillis writes in The Washington Post, a new labor-backed organization might help get similar measures on the ballot in other parts of the country. The Fairness Project, which is funded by SEIU's California-based UHW mega-local, has targeted California, Maine, and Washington, D.C., to get wage hikes to $15 on the 2016 ballot, and is already behind the seemingly successful drive to place the measure on the California ballot-"seemingly," because the Secretary of State has yet to certify the signatures on the petitions for placing the initiative on the ballot. DePillis notes that such minimum wage measures have been quite successful, passing 18 times in 16 different states since 1996.
Prospect writing fellow Justin Miller, for In These Times, highlights the business-backed opposition in Minneapolis to what could have been the strongest "fair scheduling" ordinance in the country.
On the Campaign Trail
Hillary Clinton's big week included another major union endorsement. Last week, AFSCME became the largest non-teacher union to back her campaign. The union endorsed her in 2008 and was a major supporter of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Clinton now has endorsements from unions representing more than half of the country's union members.
In New York City on Monday, Bernie Sanders joined a picket line with Verizon workers, who are currently engaged in drawn-out contract negotiations. The Sanders campaign claims that he is the first major presidential contender to join a picket line since Jesse Jackson in 1988.
CNBC has compiled the Republican presidential smorgasbord's views on the minimum wage, and it ain't pretty. There's plenty of lip service on the need to create better-paying jobs, but also on how higher minimums will destroy jobs and hurt the vulnerable, along with other general nonsense. The best that some of them have to say is that the matter should be left to the states.
Tidbits
The NLRB agreed to consider whether graduate students who work as teaching assistants have the right to unionize at private nonprofit universities.
A new report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center United details the stark racial pay disparities for restaurant workers.
The United Autoworkers are winning good contracts for its members at the Big Three. Will those wins spread to non-union plants?
