Hello my friends,
One political convention is over. Another is soon to begin. I encourage you all to watch them, because it’s good to remember that there are things more interminable than union meetings. Heyo! And hey, it’s time to sign up for the big In These Times (online) annual gala. We’re celebrating 44 years—almost as long as it feels like a political convention lasts. Whoa!
Folks—let’s talk labor.
This Week in Working
A Pricey Private School Says “Quaker Values” Justify Aggressive Campaign to Destroy Its Union
By Hamilton Nolan
Brooklyn Friends School takes advantage of a Trump labor board ruling.
In The Gap
If you have not already, please check out In The Gap, a brand new 12-episode podcast series by Chandra Whitfield about the gender pay gap that Black women in America face.
The Working People Podcast
The People's Movement, the People's Media (w/ Mel Buer, Gabby, & Garrison Davis): Working People talks to Mel Buer (Protean Magazine), Gabby (DefendPDX), and Garrison Davis, three independent journalists who have been on the front lines this summer covering the anti-police protests in Minneapolis, Portland, and Omaha. We talk about how events have unfolded from their vantage point, the hazards of doing this vital work, and about the importance of anticapitalist media. Listen here.
The Big Issue: Reopening, Unions, and Strike Threats
There is a 100% chance that college kids, if they return to campus, will get drunk, have parties, and generally act in ways that will facilitate outbreaks of coronavirus. This is guaranteed to happen. To pretend that it will not happen is to exhibit a plainly idiotic refusal to recognize reality. Nevertheless, many major universities have forged ahead with the fantasy of reopening for in person classes. Some took less than a week to be forced to shut down again.
Universities are a good demonstration of the fact that, absent any serious countervailing pressure, businesses will reopen whether it is safe or not, because they fear the devastating economic consequences if they remain closed. Some businesses, like meatpacking plants, have been very up front about their willingness to sacrifice workers for profits since the beginning of the pandemic; others, like universities, have searched painstaking for fig leaves to cover this reality. But reality it is. All of these enterprises do different things, but none of them are in the worker protection business. Nor is the U.S. government very interested in worker protection, these days. That means unions are the last line of defense.
In industries that are dense with unions who are willing and able to make credible strike threats—public schools, entertainment—employers have been forced to put together believable safety plans for returning to work, or else their people are not going to return to work. In industries that are not unionized much at all, or have only unions that are unwilling or unable to make credible strike threats, businesses are mostly doing whatever they think they can get away with. Funny how that works.
So, unionize your industry. But don’t just unionize your industry. Make your unions organize to be able to strike. The threat needs to be real, so the strike isn’t necessary. If it is necessary, though, you want to be able to do it. It’s better than death.
Labor News This Week
The business model of Uber and Lyft—to attempt to destroy all competitors in the transportation market by subsidizing the cost of rides through a combination of investor capital and brash avoidance of labor costs by misclassifying workers as independent contractors—is, perhaps, collapsing, as courts slowly begin to enforce the law. Good.
This week in “America is a hell society”: California is having trouble fighting their deadly wildfires because so many of the prison inmates that make up a large portion of their firefighting teams are on lockdown due to prison Covid outbreaks. PRISON LABOR IS LABOR. Get these people in the firefighters union.
Here is a very long piece by an anonymous “research collective” detailing the history of the UFCW’s multimillion-dollar payments to a consultant in return for services of dubious value. If you are a UFCW insider who would like to share your thoughts on this, you can email me.
More public defenders are unionizing. So are Greenpeace workers.
ProPublica details how meatpacking companies spent years ignoring warnings about the very things that have happened to their workers in this pandemic.
And unions want slower line speeds in chicken plants.
An interesting look at how police unions have bullied public officials in various cities.
Employees at the Tate galleries in England are on strike.
More than 100 workers have tested positive for Covid at a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina. Send angry letters to Santa.
Final Thought
“I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.” —Emma Goldman
In solidarity,
Hamilton Nolan
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