This Labor Day, we’re standing in solidarity with the ongoing labor battles and picket lines happening across the country. Here are just a few of the many instances of workers in this country rising up to demand more rights & dignity on the job:
All U.S. Nabisco factories are still on strike. Workers at Nabisco sites in 5 states are protesting cuts to wages, pensions, and overtime pay. #NoContractNoSnacks
Over a thousand @MineWorkers at Warrior Met Coal have been on strike since April 1.
They’re demanding a new, fair contract that restores the wages & benefits they gave up 6 years ago in order to save the coal company from bankruptcy.
Nearly 700 nurses have been on strike at St. Vincent Hospital for over 6 months. It’s the longest nurses’ strike in MA history.
The @MassNurses say that Tenet Healthcare, which owns St. Vincent, has been short-staffing the hospital just to turn a profit.
Amazon workers on Staten Island are taking on the corporate goliath and organizing four NYC warehouses to form @amazonlabor. They’ve already signed up over one thousand workers.
In a huge recent labor victory, workers from Colectivo Coffee won their union election and formed the largest cafe workers union in the United States.
They now enter into negotiations with Colectivo management to bargain for a fair first contract.
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NEW: What happens when progressives defeat corporate-funded Democrats?
In Prince George’s County, Maryland, lobbyists & business groups are attempting to overturn an election in plain sight to keep control of a $2 billion school board budget.
The corruption is shocking.
In 2020, a slate of progressives defeated business-funded incumbents to take over the PG County school board.
Now, contractors and lobbyists are trying to overturn the election results and remove the new board members from office, with the help of some establishment Democrats.
Once they took office, the progressive slate tried to investigate irregularities in construction contracts. They passed a Community Benefits Agreement that ensured construction contracts created good, union jobs.
Then, lobbyists launched an effort to remove them from office.
The American Rescue Plan has transformed how we fight hunger in the U.S. More than *30 million children* are now eligible for food benefits this summer through the new P-EBT program.
And the mainstream media has mostly ignored it.
When the media does cover hunger, they often show long lines at food banks. This spreads the idea that most food aid comes from private charities.
It doesn't.
The federal government spends 15x more on food support than *every charity in America.*
The federal safety net is "the largest and frankly the most effective" anti-hunger force in the country, says @Joelsberg, CEO of the nonprofit @HungerFreeUSA.
More than one thousand @mineworkers are taking their strike from Alabama to NYC today and picketing in front of the offices of BlackRock — the largest shareholder in Warrior Met Coal. They’re joined by union allies from across the country, including @SusanSarandon.
.@KooperCaraway: “I’ll tell you this — young workers... South Dakotans, Californians, workers all over the world are going to stand with you and support you and there’s nothing BlackRock or any other rich asshole can do about it.”
.@WillAttig: "I'm not just fighting for you, the individual coal miners. I'm trying to show an example for a generation of workers to begin to use their collective power... and take the power back."
NEW: Moments ago, we sent @FritoLay the questions below.
They are simple, factual questions about the extent to which they abuse workers in this country.
We hope they answer. If they refuse, it will be a damning admission. What are they hiding?
Here's what we want to know:
1. How many Frito-Lay facilities in the U.S. currently force people to work suicide shifts?
(Suicide/"squeeze" shifts are back-to-back 12-hour shifts with only 8 hours off in between.)
2. How many Frito-Lay facilities use forced overtime (aka “overtime requirements”) to compel people to work more than 40 hours/week under threat of termination?
Frito-Lay factory workers are penalized or even fired for taking time off.
The company makes workers earn “points” to get time off. Earning one point requires working 31 days in a row and points are docked for opting out of overtime.
Workers regularly do 84-hour weeks.
Workers in Topeka reveal they’ve worked up to 5 months without a single day off.
They say that forced overtime is destroying families, ruining marriages, and even costing lives. Multiple coworkers, driven to exhaustion, have died by suicide.
In response to the striking workers’ demands to end forced overtime, “suicide shifts,” and 84-hour weeks, Frito-Lay management offered this:
“There will be no more working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (84 hours), unless an employee volunteers to work that much.”
NEW: Texas Republicans have a new voter suppression bill that's even worse than the one Democrats stopped in May.
This time, Republicans want *monthly* voter purges and a ban on drive-thru voting.
They've just launched a special legislative session to ram it through.
The ban on drive-thru voting and the voter purges would disproportionately impact disabled voters and Latino voters.
“They’re actually going backward because of these discriminatory acts, and frankly, it just pisses me off," one disabled voter said. texastribune.org/2021/07/05/tex…
Democrats & activists rallied in Austin on Thursday, promising to do whatever was necessary to block a new voter suppression bill.
They also called for the Senate to drop the filibuster and pass the #ForThePeopleAct to end the GOP attack on voting rights.