Comcast’s “Easy Pay” locations throughout Massachusetts were visited on May 11 by their customers and local community leaders concerned about the company’s treatment of its employees and lack of respect for workers’ rights.
Customers and community activists are disturbed about Comcast management’s refusal to discuss wages and working conditions with the majority of workers at its Fairhaven and Fall River, Massachusetts garages who freely decided to form a union with IBEW Local 2322 last fall.
“The workers at these garages have exercised their basic rights to form a union and have requested that management begin good faith negotiations with them,” said Eric Hetrick. “Giant corporations like Comcast should respect their civic and moral duty to comply with the law and our community’s values.”
The “day of action” coincided with Comcast’s Annual Shareholders meeting in Philadelphia.
“While the top bosses are celebrating their huge profits in Philly, community leaders are delivering letters asking local managers to communicate our concerns,” said Russ Davis, director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice. “We need this company to respect workers’ rights and begin negotiations for the good jobs that our communities need.”
Jobs with Justice is one of the groups organizing visits to more than 45
Rite Aid Negotiating Committee after signing Tentative Agreement on May 1, 2011.Rite Aid workers at the company's massive Southwest Distribution Center in Lancaster declared victory on Sunday, May 1 in their five-year effort to form a union and improve working conditions.
Workers signed a 3-year tentative agreement with management on May 1 – subject to a May 12 ratification vote – that will improve conditions at the million-square-foot facility in California’s high desert by guaranteeing:
Health insurance rates that are fair for both individual workers and their families,
Job security provisions to prevent work from being sub-contracted,
A worker voice in production standards and ability to challenge unfair standards,
Protection against intense summer heat and winter cold, using innovative indoor-temperature standards,
A fair and impartial process for resolving disputes,
Wage increases in each of the next 3 years.
“We’re excited about winning this victory, even if it took longer than it should have,” said Carlos “Chico” Rubio, a 10-year warehouse worker who helped negotiate the union contract with a team of eight co-workers.
Last Friday, more than two dozen Rite Aid drugstores across the country had some unexpected visitors. Activists in 10 states converged on 30 stores on April 1 to protest the company’s unfair labor practices and management’s efforts to impose unaffordable healthcare costs on employees.
Workers at six Cleveland Rite Aid stores—whose employees are members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 880—have been on strike since March 14. After nearly a year of fruitless contract negotiations, the strike started because Rite Aid management committed dozens of unfair labor practices, violating members’ rights through illegal threats, harassment, retaliation, surveillance and refusing to bargain in good faith.
Rite Aid resorted to these illegal tactics in Ohio as part of a nationwide effort to convince workers to move into a more expensive company health insurance plan. Many Rite Aid retail employees are paid such low wages that if their union accepted Rite Aid’s plan, they would be forced to decline company coverage and instead rely on taxpayer provided benefits such as Medicaid for their medical needs.
Rite Aid employees backed by Jobs with Justice and other community supporters are organizing a nationwide “Day of Action” on Wednesday, December 15 to focus public attention on the company’s culture of corporate greed and its assault on workers’ living standards and job rights.
Dozens of actions are scheduled at Rite Aid locations across the country, including stores in California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. At each store, Rite Aid customers will be informed about:
Rite Aid’s decision to hike its CEO’s compensation to $4.5 million despite the company’s poor performance.
The company’s effort to impose huge cost increases on workers for health insurance.
Rite Aid’s disturbing pattern of delays and difficulty in reaching fair agreements with workers.
The company’s conversion of good jobs into low-wage positions with few benefits and no rights on the job.
The nationwide actions were sparked by a rash of recent decisions by Rite Aid officials:
In Cleveland, OH, executives are trying to dramatically increase employee health care costs. The company announced plans to impose higher costs on Jan. 1 that could lead to a possible strike.
In Lancaster, CA, Rite Aid executives stalled talks with 500 warehouse employees for nearly
Congressman Stephen Lynch, Fall River Mayor William Flanagan and community leaders representing the Massachusetts Workers’ Rights Board reviewed a list of employees at Comcast’s Fall River and Fairhaven locations and then checked it against union authorization cards voluntarily signed by employees at the same locations requesting IBEW Local 2322 to represent them.
Based on their card count, an overwhelming majority of Comcast employees in the above named locations desire to unite in IBEW Local 2322.
Rep. Lynch and Mayor Flanagan sent a letter immediately afterwards, “urging Comcast management to respect the employee majority and voluntarily recognize IBEW Local 2322 as their representative and begin collective bargaining for an agreement covering their wages, benefits and working conditions.”
“We requested the certification because we wanted to prove beyond a doubt to management that a genuine majority of our co-workers want to form a union and begin collective bargaining,” said Brian Almeida, a Comcast technician from the Fall River office who stared with the company in 2001.
Almeida was accompanied at the certification event by about 25 other Comcast employees
Striking workers at the Supervalu- owned Shaw’s Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., have been marching from Methuen to Boston for justice since Sunday, May 23.
The 310 workers, members of UFCW Local 791, have been on strike since March 7 over the company’s insistence that the burden of increasing health care costs be borne by workers.
As a resident of Somerville, I chose to meet up with the strikers on their march from Medford to Somerville, the third day of their four-day journey. While we marched, the 50 or so workers and supporters enjoyed broad support from passing motorists, as well as cheers from many residents in the neighborhoods along the route.
It was easy to see how bringing the strike into the community gets people mobilized in different ways than just walking a picket line. All kinds of people get involved. I especially liked the opportunity to meet up with other labor activists from Somerville.
I also had a surprising connection with one of the strikers–Al Bowers, a former Teamster Local
Over 200 labor and community supporters turned out for a rally in at the Shaw’s Supermarket in Dorchester to support striking warehouse workers at the company’s Methuen Distribution Center.
Over 300 members of UFCW Local 791 voted overwhelmingly to reject the company’s final contract offer and have now been on strike since March 7th.
The company’s substandard wage proposals combined with its demand for increased employee health care contributions would result in a net loss of income for workers during the term of the proposed contract.
The company’s final offer would also allow for the use of outside agencies to perform work at the facility, costing union jobs.
In addition to Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, the rally was sponsored by UFCW Local 791, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Greater Boston Labor Council.
Don’t shop at Shaw’s until it respects its workers and reaches an agreement that preserves good jobs with decent wages and benefits!
BOSTON—More than 90 union members, students and community activists jammed the SEIU Local 888 union hall here on Saturday for a “Troublemakers School” sponsored by Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.
IBEW Local 2222 Business Manager Myles Calvey gave a rousing welcome to kick things off. “We’re not going to get labor’s problems solved in Washington or on Beacon Hill unless we take a page from the civil rights and gay rights movements,” said Calvey, a former New England telecom strike leader. “We’ve got to be a lot more aggressive so that politicians are forced to deal with our issues. We’ve got make our problems, their problems!”
Calvey was followed by a panel of local organizers from the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Angelica Laundry strike, Service Employees’ Local 1199′s Caritas hospital campaign and American Federation of Government Employee’s Transportation Safety Officers organizing drive. Their presentations were followed by a wide-ranging discussion about organizing strategies and reports from other workplace struggles. (To learn more about these campaigns, go to www.ufcwlocal1445.org/Open1445Intro2.htm; http://fairunionelections.org
A diverse group of trade unionists, environmentalists, academics and social justice activists gathered at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City for the third annual “Climate of Change” conference.
Conference organizers – The Healthy Planet Mobilization Committee* – kicked it off with a well attended press conference on Friday night featuring dozens of scientists, climate experts and the former Mayor of Salt Lake City. All the speakers took a strong public stand against a resolution adopted by the Utah House of Representatives earlier this month that rejected scientific evidence of global warming, criticized federal efforts to deal with it, and called for the state to abstain from regional collaboration to reduce carbon emissions. The press event was well covered by the local media.
On Saturday morning, former CWA Rep. and well-known author Steve Early and I opened up the conference with a workshop on reviving the labor movement and building labor – community coalitions. The roughly sixty participants were drawn from a great mix of local union leaders and staffers, rank-and-file activists, students, faculty members, and longtime Salt Lake City progressives. There was a lively exchange on topics like labor-environmental coalitions, based on the emerging Blue Green Alliance model,
Twenty years ago, 60,000 workers from New York City to Maine rallied against healthcare cost-shifting at the telecom giant then known as NYNEX (since “rebranded” as Verizon).
NYNEX was a very profitable, multinational company seeking to capitalize on a demoralizing decade of lost strikes, contract givebacks and widespread unionbusting. At a time when many workers were forced to make concessions, NYNEX strikers held the line for four months and emerged victorious. They successfully resisted the company’s demand that they pay hundreds and eventually thousands of dollars a year for medical benefits. But this singular union win didn’t come cheap. Customer service was disrupted by the work stoppage, resulting in tens of millions of dollars worth of lost wages. Hundreds of strikers were arrested, fired or suspended–and one, Gerry Horgan, was killed on a picket line in Westchester County.
In every other advanced industrial nation, the contentious issue of who pays for medical care was taken off the bargaining table long ago. And no worker would ever lose his or her life defending job-based private health insurance.
To this day, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical
