Here's the latest Labor South roundup, and guess what--it's all good news!
Fast-food workers get a break from the NLRB, and Republicans don’t like it
Fast-food workers get a break from the NLRB, and Republicans don’t like it
Reaction has been fierce to recent action by the National Labor Relations
Board that may lead to fast-food workers being able to negotiate with corporate
headquarters rather than being limited to individual franchises. The action helps unions in negotiating for better wages and benefits with corporate overseers at the table, something those overseers were often able to avoid during Republican rule over the NLRB.
“The board has set a dangerous precedent that will lead to
higher costs for consumers and fewer jobs for workers,” said U.S. House Health,
Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., in a
joint statement. “The National Labor Relations Board has pushed a culture of
union favoritism that is detrimental to workers and employers.”
Furthermore, “we will work to roll back this flawed decision
and the damaging effects it will impose on families and small business owners.”
The NLRB action comes amid long, ongoing protests across the
country by fast-food workers tired of being at the bottom of the economy’s food
chain. A report last September showed that the real earnings of low-wage
workers fell 5 percent between 1979 and 2013. That decline is in sharp contrast
to the 64.9 percent productivity gain reported during the same period.
The United States had the highest incidence of low-pay
workers among 26 countries surveyed in a report from the Economic Policy
Institute in 2014.
New Orleans organizer
who helped Indian workers in Mississippi win their fight with human trafficker
Signal International sees “dreams to build on”
Facing South posted
a compelling interview this week with Saket Soni, the New Orleans labor
organizer who has championed migrant workers in post-Hurricane Katrina New
Orleans and who helped Indian migrant workers on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast win a
$20 million settlement with the shipbuilder Signal International. Signal was
convicted of human trafficking earlier this year.
“The task of rebuilding New Orleans and rebuilding the South
is a big one,” Soni told writer Allie Yee. “If I’ve learned anything from the
people we’re organizing, it’s that they have extraordinary dreams. … There are
lots of dreams to build on, and lots of work to be done.”
Soni is executive director of the New Orleans Workers’
Center for Racial Justice and the National Guestworker Alliance.
At Katrina's 10th anniversary, Soni said he sees progress toward "a reversal of power and governance by the people who are at its lowest rung."
At Katrina's 10th anniversary, Soni said he sees progress toward "a reversal of power and governance by the people who are at its lowest rung."
Student labor
organizers in Nashville help gain big victory for Davidson County workers
Benjamin Eagles and other student organizers in Nashville,
Tenn., were instrumental in securing a huge victory for local workers during
recent municipal elections.
On the ballot, Metro Charter Amendment 3 required that “40
percent of the work on metro government construction projects totaling $100,000
or more be done by workers from Davidson County," where Nashville is located.
Nearly 57,000 citizens voted for the amendment. Against it
were a little under 41,500.
Opposing the amendment were powerful forces in Nashville,
including the Nashville Tennessean,
local chamber of commerce, contractors, and almost all of the candidates for
mayor in the election. The student
organizers have been active in the city and on campuses for some time on behalf
of local workers against the growing trend among public and private employers
to outsource work.
Museum in Matewan,
West Virginia, tells the region’s labor history
A great silence looms over much labor history in the United
States. It is rarely taught in history classes, and political and economic
leaders tend to pretend it doesn’t exist.
That’s why it’s gratifying to know that since last May a
museum exists on the hallowed ground of Matewan, West Virginia, that is devoted
to the compelling labor history of the region.
West Virginia residents were the driving force in creating
the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, which received funding support from United
Mine Workers Local 1440 in Matewan and from the West Virginia Humanities
Council.
Matewan was the site of the bloody Battle of Matewan in 1920
between union supporters and anti-union detective agents, leaving 10 people
dead. It was the subject of John Sayles’ film Matewan in 1987.