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BY HAMILTON NOLAN
https://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22489/Bernie-Sanders-would-have-won-2020-labor-movement-organizing
I was in Las Vegas for the Nevada caucus in late February (ah, a different and simpler time!) and the reporters on the ground—including me—believed Bernie Sanders was poised to go forth and win the Democratic nomination. A few short weeks later, it was clear it was not to be.
Bernie had money and name recognition and a villain to run against. Yet he also had, it turns out, a ceiling of about a third of the electorate.
Growing that base into a majority is the central task of left-wing electoral politics. Most campaign postmortems focus on tactics or strategy: messaging that could have been tweaked, personnel changes that could have been made, gaffes that could have been avoided. Less often do they look at the nature of the electorate itself. The simplest version of the Bernie Sanders theory of winning could be expressed as, “A true left-wing candidate and campaign will attract support and drive new voter turnout because the policies are actually what’s necessary to fix our most pressing problems.” That made sense to me, but did not turn out to be true. It was completely predictable that the Democratic establishment would unite to try to stop Bernie. Had his theory been true, though, the establishment would have failed in the face of a massive upswell of voter support. Instead, when all of the smoke cleared, Bernie’s share of the vote in key primary states never rose much above a third.
The political Left does not need to be forever frustrated by the process of using campaign speeches to drag a skeptical or disinterested 18% of the public into enlightenment every four years. Elections are not the time to magically instill mass class consciousness; that has to be done between elections. And it will not be done by politicians, no matter how good they are. It can only be done by giving millions of people the firsthand experience of class consciousness in their own lives.
The only institution that can do that is the labor movement.
I have witnessed countless people who considered themselves fairly apolitical participate in a union drive at their workplace and emerge as fire-breathing advocates of equality and worker power. They were transformed not by reading a book nor by watching MSNBC, but by personally experiencing the reality of the class war that Bernie and his allies talk about. Coming together with your coworkers and organizing and fighting the boss for a raise and better treatment is a tool for radicalization more powerful than a million tweets. In a union drive, it does not matter if someone is young or old or black or white or Democrat or Republican; they practice solidarity, they fight and they win—often while a richer person with a bigger job title uses lies and threats to try and stop them. It is a demonstration of the truth of what the Left is always saying, without having to hear it from a media personality or politician they might despise. Participation in the labor movement earns people a union, a raise and a political awakening all at once.
Frustration at the existing power structure is bred by a lack of opportunity. The question at hand, then, is how to channel that frustration. If many more Americans had the chance to experience the magic of organizing at work, they would tend toward leftism and justice more than hatred and fascism. Because they would have a model of socialism working in their own lives.
As it stands, only one in 10 working people are in unions. It’s not enough. The Democratic Party has neglected the labor movement (to its own detriment, since the party feeds on union money), so it remains up to the Left to galvanize new organizing campaigns.
Build the labor movement and watch the electorate change. That’s when the left will find its power. Water the grassroots. We don’t need to constantly fret about changing tactics; we need to change people.
BY CHRISTOPHER D. COOK
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22495/mass-strike-covid-19-labor-may-day
Toiling amid a pandemic and a callous response from corporate America and the federal government that is exposing millions to deadly hazards and deepening poverty, workers across the country are rising up, planning hundreds of strikes and sickouts for International Workers’ Day on May 1.
At a time when worker organizing could be stifled by physical distancing rules and the Trump administration’s disabling of the National Labor Relations Board, workers are walking off the job in massive coordinated walk-outs and sick-outs targeting major employers such as Amazon, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, FedEx, and Instacart, demanding hazard pay, personal protective equipment and other basic protections.
May Day actions throughout the United States will include worker strikes, car caravan protests, rent strikes, and a host of social media onslaughts urging work stoppages, and boycotts of major corporations that are failing to fairly pay and protect their workers amid the pandemic, activists say. Activists are also pressuring for rent and debt relief, and a “People’s Bailout” demanding a more equitable stimulus and economic recovery plan that prioritizes workers.
Long overworked and underpaid, warehouse and food industry workers (including grocery clerks, meatpackers, and farmworkers) are now deemed “essential”—responsible for hazardous jobs at the epicenter of the Covid-19 storm. Yet while some unionized workers have secured hazard pay and protective gear, millions of these workers on the pandemic’s front lines remain in or near poverty and without adequate healthcare or safety protections. Now they’re striking back, shining a spotlight on the struggles of low-wage workers laboring amid viral hazards while corporations like Amazon and Instacart report booming business and profits.
Even as unemployment skyrockets above 20% (with an astounding 30 million new claims since the beginning of March), Amazon alone is raking in $11,000 per second and its shares are rising, the Guardian reports. The company’s CEO Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, has seen his personal fortune bloat to $138 billion amid the pandemic.
Protesting unsafe conditions and lack of hazard pay for many employees, Target Workers Unite is waging a mass sickout of the retail chain’s workers, stating, “We want to shut down industry across the board and pushback with large numbers against the right-wing groups that want to risk our lives by reopening the economy.”
On its website, the group describes “atrocious” foot traffic in stores, “putting us at needless risk when greater safety measures are required to ensure social distancing. Workers nor guests have been required to wear masks…Our maximum capacity of guests have been set too high.”
Whole Worker, a movement of Whole Foods workers pushing for unionization, plans a mass “sickout” for what is also being called #EssentialWorkersDay. Workers at the non-union corporate chain, which is owned by billionaire Bezos, are demanding guaranteed paid leave for employees who self-quarantine, reinstating healthcare coverage for part-time and seasonal workers, and the immediate shutdown of any store where a worker tests positive for Covid-19. According to organizers, 254 Whole Foods workers have tested positive for the virus nationwide, and two have died.
Gig economy workers for Instacart, the app-propelled tech corporation that dispatches “shoppers” for customers, will wage their second work stoppage in a month, after a March 30 strike demanding hazard pay, paid sick leave and safety protections. Despite Instacart’s booming business amid the Covid-19 pandemic, “Most workers STILL haven’t been able to order, let alone receive, proper PPE,” according to the Gig Workers Collective.
This week, dozens of workers at an Amazon fulfillment center warehouse in Tracy, CA walked off the job after learning that a co-worker who had tested positive for Covid-19 had died. One employee told a local television station, "We are short handed now working extra hard, and I'm questioning what I'm still doing here honestly…I'm actually nervous now and wondering if it's even worth coming."
Citing a “lack of response from this government in terms of PPE and mandatory [safety] standards,” the AFL-CIO will be supporting and “uplifting” striking workers at Amazon, Target, Instacart and elsewhere who are “risking their lives every day on the job,” said spokesperson Kalina Newman. “While our affiliates who work with retail workers, UFCW and RWDSU, aren't helping organize the May Day strikes, they may uplift them. At the end of the day, we support workers who are standing up for their rights.”
In an email, Newman elaborated that the AFL-CIO is encouraging union members “to contact their congressperson stressing that the coronavirus relief packages approved so far leave many working families behind, including hardworking immigrants who provide essential services.”
Since the pandemic began, union workers at Safeway, Stop & Shop and Kroger’s have won hazard pay and protective equipment guarantees, Newman added, following pressure from the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Other prominent labor groups are backing the May Day strike actions. Jobs With Justice “is supporting worker walkouts across the country, from Amazon workers to Instacart drivers,” and will be “standing in solidarity with workers who are walking off the job and demanding safer working conditions,” organizing director Nafisah Ula said in an email.
A range of other groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America and new grassroots initiatives like Coronastrike will also be backing up the workers on May Day. Launched by Occupy Wall Street alumni, Coronastrike aims to “amplify the efforts and voices of those striking,” says organizer Yolian Ogbu, a 20-year-old climate justice activist.
“We’re frustrated by the inaction by these corporations,” Ogbu adds. “There is all this pent-up energy, and we’re asking people to put it somewhere. People are desperate.”
According to Fight for 15, the nationwide coalition for a $15 federal minimum wage, fast food workers have already been striking for fair wages and safety protections as they attempt to survive low-wage work and exposure to Covid-19. Since the pandemic began, fast food workers have walked off the job in Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Miami, St. Louis and other major cities, demanding personal protective equipment, hazard pay and paid sick leave.
In early April, hundreds of workers from more than 50 fast-food restaurants across California—including McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King and Domino’s—walked out of work to demand better pay and safety protections, Vice reported. This week, Arby’s workers in Morris, Illinois, walked out in the middle of their shift to protest conditions and climbed into their with windows festooned with big posters stating, “We don’t want to die for fries,” and “Hazard pay and PPE now!” They are demanding $3 per hour in added hazard pay and say the corporation has not provided masks or any other protective gear.
Since March, there have already reportedly been at least 140 documented wildcat strikes across the country.
As the Covid-19 pandemic intensifies and exposes America’s inequalities, workers, so long stifled and embattled, are showing renewed force.
BY STEVEN GREENHOUSE
https://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22491/frontline-workers-organize-with-DSA-UE-EWOC-Bernie-campaign-organizers
As shoppers crowded into the McAllen, Texas, branch of Sprouts Farmers Market in mid-March to stockpile food, store clerk Josh Cano grew alarmed at the lack of safety precautions in place.
“There weren’t sneeze guards or masks or gloves,” he says. “There was zero sense of urgency from management.”
Cano, 24, worried about bringing the coronavirus home because his mother has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. He had heard of an online form that activists from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical Workers union (UE) were using to help workers organize to make their workplaces safer as the Covid-19 pandemic spread. The two groups—which had previously worked together on the Bernie Sanders campaign—were calling their joint effort the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC).
The experience many EWOC organizers gained from the Sanders movement had a direct impact on their work. Officials from the DSA and UE said the group took ideas from the Sanders campaign—such as building a largely volunteer operation to do complex organizing—and applied them to workplaces rather than an election. Many former Sanders staff members also volunteered to help workers organize. It's one example of a possible path forward for the grassroots movement that powered the Sanders campaign—a way to channel its insurgent energy into new battles for social justice.
Cano filled out the form, and Michael Enriquez, former deputy field director of the Sanders campaign in Iowa and a member of the EWOC planning committee, responded to assist the Sprouts workers. With guidance from Enriquez, who previously ran the Fight for $15 office in Kansas City, Cano and a co-worker, Michael Martinez, soon got 44 of their store’s 50 workers to sign a petition demanding personal protective equipment, a $3 an hour increase for hazard pay, 14 days of paid sick leave and an in-store safety committee. “We started the petition out of fear,” Martinez says.
On the afternoon of April 1, six Sprouts workers marched on their boss’s office with their petition and protest signs saying, “Health and safety over profit,” and “Make the pay worth the risk.”
The workers wanted outside support, and with Enriquez’s help, they got the petition circulated through Change.org. Within a week it had 7,000 signatures, including workers from some of Sprouts’ 340 other stores. A huge boost came when Sanders himself tweeted his support for the Sprouts workers.
“Seeing that tweet made me and my coworkers feel we weren’t alone,” Cano says. “We were kind of scared about management. Seeing that tweet, we saw we had a lot of power on our side.”
Feeling heat from the petition, Sprouts agreed to provide masks, gloves and more sanitizer and to limit the number of customers inside the McAllen store at any one time. The workers hailed it as a victory, even though management refused to provide hazard pay. “There’s no power like workers united,” Martinez says. He adds that Enriquez’ expertise was “instrumental in our success.”
Colette Perold, a DSA activist and member of the EWOC planning committee, explains the project began when some DSA members started hearing from friends worried about the dangers at their jobs. “They were being forced to do a lot of dangerous things,” she says. So the DSA and the United Electrical Workers decided to reach out to workers. “The campaigns that workers are leading in their workplaces are life or death fights, and we want to support that self-activity and help them win,” Perold says.
Mark Meinster, an international representative with the United Electrical Workers, says his union helped form EWOC because “we’re seeing so many workers take risks to protect their own lives.”
“Unions have a choice right now,” he says. “We can either hunker down and ride out the storm, or we can get on the side of the workers in struggle, many of whom are nonunion workers. If we can help workers wage a broad, militant fight back, we can hopefully set the stage and make some changes in society for the common good.”
Since launching in early March, EWOC’s organizers have helped several hundred workers fight for improved safety at warehouses, fast-food restaurants, hospitals, bottling plants, supermarkets and child-care centers across America.
Dani Shuster, a cashier and customer service worker at a Mom’s Organic Market in Philadelphia, says she is thankful for the advice the workers at her store received from EWOC. For two weeks in early March, panicked shoppers flooded the grocery. (One day, Shuster says, actress Kate Winslet entered the store wearing gloves and filled up four shopping carts.) Many workers were putting in 10- or 12-hour days to meet the surging demand.
“A lot of workers expressed fear, anxiety, feelings of being overwhelmed, and we were hearing nothing from the corporate leadership,” Shuster, 29, says. Workers complained that Mom's — a chain with 19 stores in four states and Washington, D.C.—was not providing masks and that there wasn’t enough hand sanitizer throughout the store.
“We just seemed to be abandoned by the people in power," Shuster says. “We started to conclude we needed to do something.” Although she had no prior experience in workplace organizing, she was inspired by the message of the Sanders campaign. “The realization that our collective power can challenge corporate greed and we can win helped make the possibility of organizing in my own workplace a reality.”
After surveying their coworkers, Shuster and several colleagues plunged into drafting a list of demands and a petition. At that point, Shuster, recognizing she could use some organizing advice, reached out to EWOC, which she had heard about through an acquaintance in DSA.
Shuster says that EWOC felt like a “natural” outgrowth of the Sanders campaign. “In my own experience and observations, the Sanders campaign helped reignite worker organizing in this country," she says.
Dan advised her on how to get coworkers to sign a petition; its demands included hazard pay of time and a half, a midday break for sanitizing, and limiting the number of customers in the store to 20 at a time. “Dan helped me feel confident in having direct conversations with workers and really posing the question, ‘Are you willing to sign this petition to protect your own life and the lives all around you?’” Shuster says.
Nineteen of the store’s roughly 33 workers signed, and Shuster presented the petition to store management with six coworkers on April 6. They then held a protest outside the store as a caravan of supporters drove around honking. (Many supporters came from a community group, One Pennsylvania.) Management did not respond immediately, although the grocery says it stepped up cleaning procedures and installed protective plexiglass at the registers.
In the days after the protest, the workers grew increasingly impatient, and pressure on Mom's grew. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office even got involved, holding meetings with organizers and, Shuster says, contacting the CEO of Mom's. Mom’s ultimately provided masks and more sanitizer and agreed to set customer limits in sections of the store. It also said it would institute a special shopping hour for seniors and vulnerable populations—something the Mom’s workers had demanded. Management also agreed to a retroactive bonus, though it disappointed the workers by refusing to grant regular hazard pay.
“We saw what happens when you speak out individually—not much,” Shuster says. “We demonstrated that when workers come together, they can accomplish a lot.”
Asked about forming a union, Michael Martinez of Sprouts says, “A labor union, that’s not what we’re going for. We’re trying to show that the workers have strength in numbers and that we won’t accept the bare minimum.”
The UE’s Meinster acknowledges that what EWOC is doing is not typical union organizing. “These are immediate fights around immediate demands,” he says. “The kind of tasks confronting the labor movement is to provide support and leadership to those workers and help develop the workplace leaders we’ll need in coming years."
BY HAMILTON NOLAN
https://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22486/amazon-workers-paid-time-unlimited-jeff-bezos-coronavirus
Amazon warehouse workers across the country today decried the company’s decision to end a policy of unlimited unpaid time off, and said that working conditions inside Amazon fulfillment centers are putting their lives at risk.
Employees from New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan and New York, working with Athena Coalition, said on a call today that a policy change announced late last week—which will replace the unlimited paid time off offered to workers as a response to the coronavirus crisis with a more restrictive policy at the end of this month—is “outrageous” in light of the very real level of danger that still persists for those forced to work in close quarters. “People have to choose, do I stay home and risk losing my job, or go to work and risk getting sick?” said Hafsa Hassan, who walked out of work yesterday in protest, along with about 50 colleagues at the Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota.
Amazon’s announcement that it will roll back unlimited unpaid time off at the end of April means that employees will soon be required to apply to be granted leaves of absence if they must be away from work for health reasons, or to take care of children who are out of school, or to protect vulnerable family members. But employees say that system is confusing and broken, even for those who should qualify. Rachel Belz, an Amazon warehouse worker in New Jersey who also works with the activist group United for Respect, has not been at work since mid-March because of fears of infecting her family, especially her son. Her attempts to apply for a leave of absence, though, have resulted in multiple dropped calls, unanswered emails, and no response from the company. “H.R. is overloaded. You can open a case, and they won’t get back to you,” she said. “If you’re expecting people at a high volume to apply to these things, you need to work out the kinks in the system.”
Belz, who is in contact daily with other workers at the facility, said that the company’s attempts to keep the warehouse free of coronavirus are inadequate. Among the problems, she said: No soap in the bathrooms, cleaning supplies that are kept locked in cages that can only be opened by managers, and temperature screenings for workers that are being conducted using only a thermal camera—and workers who appear too warm are encouraged to go outside for a few minutes, cool down, and try again.
Amazon spokesperson Rachel Lighty said that “we are providing flexibility with leave of absence options, including expanding the policy to cover COVID-19 circumstances, such as high-risk individuals or school closures.” She also called Amazon employees “heroes fighting for their communities and helping people get critical items they need in this crisis.” The company had its first confirmed Covid death two weeks ago, when an operations manager at a California Amazon warehouse died.
Multiple workers said that their facilities lacked cleaning supplies, and that hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes are being kept in one location away from work stations, making it impossible to regularly sanitize your individual work area throughout a shift. They said that Amazon’s current hiring boom is making break rooms and common areas even more crowded, making proper social distancing impossible. They expressed doubt that the single mask being issued per person per shift is enough to keep them safe. And they described the unnerving experience of seeing fully protected cleaning crews descend on their job sites after a coworker reported testing positive for Covid.
Jordan Flowers, who works at the Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island that has been the target of protests and walkouts in recent weeks, said that he knows coworkers who are now choosing to sleep in their cars, rather than going home and risking getting their families sick. “It’s frightening,” he said. Billie Jo Ramey, an Amazon worker in Michigan who has been taking unpaid leave since March after getting ill with Covid-like symptoms, fears what the policy change will mean for her, and for those around her. “I’m in no shape to go back. I’m at high risk,” she said.
Several workers noted the wealth of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos—who's gotten tens of billions of dollars richer since the beginning of this crisis, thanks to Amazon’s booming stock price—and contrasted his resources with the lack of resources they feel they’re being given on the job. “That’s not just terrifying,” said Rachel Belz, “it’s pathetic that we can’t trust a trillion-dollar company to do the most basic thing, which is to clean.”
The Big Issue: Strike For Your Life
Having navigated, with great imperfection, the chaotic early stage of this crisis, it is now safe to say that the U.S. government has come to the conclusion that its preference is to reopen business as soon as possible. This decision will predictably kill a significant number of workers in many industries, and the U.S. government does not care, and neither do the executives and investors with ultimate control over those industries. They will do what they feel they can to minimize those deaths—without losing too much money—but the calculation has already been made, in the rooms where such things are decided: Getting the machinery of business up and running is the top priority. The deaths that result are an acceptable price to pay.
In the real world, when we are done fantasizing about CEOs undergoing sudden bouts of empathy, how do we change this dynamic? How do regular working people alter a life-threatening situation, when it has been decided by the business owners who employ them, and by the politicians who control the power of government, that they must go back to work again, safe or not? There is only one way to change this dynamic, and that is to strike. Strike for your life.
Nobody is obligated to work under conditions that are intrinsically unsafe. Everything is in place to get the machinery of business running again—but if the workers do not work, the machine does not run. Period. The government had made the choice to put an economic gun to the head of a large part of the population and say: We will not give you sufficient benefits to stay home; we will open your place of work again, and you will work, or you will be kicked off unemployment.
That is the pressure. The Democrats are not coming to save you. The only way to change this is to strike. Tons of working people realize this already, and many of them are bravely striking today. Supporting these people striking for their lives is the absolute highest purpose of the labor movement today. If people have the courage to risk their livelihoods to protect their lives, we have to make sure it is possible for them to win. If they cannot win that basic fight, the future is dark, dark, dark.
BY JOE CONCHA - 04/30/20 02:30 PM EDT
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/495502-pelosi-tells-reporter-she-doesnt-need-a-lecture-on-biden-kavanaugh-comparison
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a reporter that she doesn't "need a lecture or a speech" comparing the treatment of sexual assault allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Washington Examiner reporter Kerry Picket asked Pelosi at a press conference how "Democrats square with the idea that they're essentially standing by Biden but used a comparatively different standard with Justice Kavanaugh when you demanded an investigation against Kavanaugh when a similar allegation came out against him."
“I respect your question, and I don’t need a lecture or a speech,” Pelosi responded.
“I have a complete respect for the whole 'MeToo' movement,” she added. “I have four daughters and one son. And there's a lot of excitement around the idea that women will be heard and be able to be listened to."
“There is also due process, and the fact that Joe Biden is Joe Biden,” the Speaker later added. “There's been statements from his campaign — not his campaign but his former employees who ran his offices and the rest, that there was never any record of this, there was never any record, and that nobody ever came forward or nobody came forward to say something about it apart from the principle involved.”
The comments come after Pelosi told CNN earlier Thursday that she was "satisfied with how [Biden] has responded."
Tara Reade, a former Senate aide, said last month that Biden sexually assaulted her in a secluded part of Capitol Hill in 1993 when he was a Delaware senator.
A number of people including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have claimed there is a double standard in the way Democrats and the media have responded to and covered the accusations against Biden and those leveled against Kavanaugh before he was confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Biden has yet to be asked about the allegations, which his campaign denied in a statement on March 28.
Reade was one of several women who came forward last year to say that Biden’s public touching had made her uncomfortable. He later said he would adjust his behavior.
This week, Reade’s former neighbor said she recalled Reade telling her about the alleged assault at the time. Reade’s brother also previously said that she told him that Biden “had his hand under her clothes at some point.”
Reade has said that she confronted Biden’s aides, but the aides Reade listed have gone on the record to say that they were never confronted about the allegation. She also says she filed a complaint with the human resources office in the Senate about the allegations of inappropriate touching. Media outlets, however, have not been able to track down the complaint.
Reade said she believes the complaint is in Biden’s archives at the University of Delaware, which is currently not releasing the former vice president’s records.
