The Year That Labor Hung On By Its Fingertips

Disasters, missed opportunities, and a few bright spots in 2020.




December 26, 2020 Hamilton Nolan WORKING IN THESE TIMES




https://portside.org/2020-12-26/year-labor-hung-its-fingertips





A lot of things hap­pened for work­ing peo­ple this year, and most of them were bad. But even in a year as deranged as 2020, the broad­er themes that afflict and ener­gize the labor move­ment have car­ried on. If you are read­ing this, con­grat­u­la­tions: There is still time for you to do some­thing about all of these things. Here is a brief look at the Year in Labor, and may we nev­er have to live through some­thing like it again.
The pan­dem­ic

Broad­ly speak­ing, there have been two very large labor sto­ries this year. The first is, ​“I have been forced into unem­ploy­ment due to the pan­dem­ic, and I am scared.” And the sec­ond is, ​“I have been forced to con­tin­ue work­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and I am scared.” America’s labor reporters spent most of our year writ­ing vari­a­tions of these sto­ries, in each com­pa­ny and in each indus­try and in each city. Those sto­ries con­tin­ue to this day.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment left work­ing peo­ple utter­ly for­sak­en. They did not cre­ate a nation­al wage replace­ment sys­tem to pay peo­ple to stay home, as many Euro­pean nations did. OSHA was asleep on the job, unin­ter­est­ed in work­place safe­ty relat­ed to coro­n­avirus. Repub­li­cans in Con­gress were more intent on get­ting lia­bil­i­ty pro­tec­tions for employ­ers than on doing any­thing, any­thing at all, that might help des­per­ate reg­u­lar peo­ple. And, of course, Trump and his allies unnec­es­sar­i­ly politi­cized pub­lic health, lead­ing direct­ly to hun­dreds of thou­sands of unnec­es­sary deaths and the eco­nom­ic destruc­tion that goes with that. It was a bad year. The larg­er polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed to pro­tect work­ers did not do their jobs. The labor move­ment was left very much on its own. And its own track record was mixed.
Front-line work­ers

The year of the hero! We love our heroes! Our front-line work­ers, our deliv­ery peo­ple and san­i­ta­tion work­ers and bus dri­vers, our para­medics and nurs­es, our cooks and clean­ers and gro­cery work­ers: We love you all! Sure, we will bang pots and pans to cel­e­brate reg­u­lar work­ers who had to push through dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and we will write you nice notes and have school chil­dren draw signs cel­e­brat­ing you. But will you get paid for this?

How well have unions rep­re­sent­ing these front line work­ers done this year? In many cas­es, not well. I think first of the gro­cery work­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by UFCW, who were gen­er­al­ly award­ed with tem­po­rary ​“haz­ard pay” bonus­es rather than actu­al rais­es. Or of the UFCW’s meat­pack­ing work­ers, whose plants were encour­aged to stay open by an exec­u­tive order, and who suf­fered ter­ri­bly from the coro­n­avirus and from management’s utter dis­dain for their wel­fare. These are work­ers who, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the pan­dem­ic, had a ton of lever­age. Had they struck, or walked out, ask­ing for basic safe­ty and fair pay for risk­ing their lives, the pub­lic would have neared pan­ic, and their demands prob­a­bly would have been met. Their employ­ers would have had no choice. Instead, there was a great deal of out­cry from their unions, but no real labor actions at scale. Thus, the meat­pack­ing work­ers con­tin­ued to suf­fer, and the gro­cery work­ers saw their ​“haz­ard pay” bonus­es dis­ap­pear, and here we are.

The point of this is not to be harsh. Faced with an unex­pect­ed dis­as­ter, most unions have spent this year scram­bling des­per­ate­ly to keep them­selves and their work­ers afloat, and have been flood­ed with the task of deal­ing with the cat­a­stro­phe that has cost mil­lions their jobs. But when this is all over, there should be a seri­ous post­mortem about what could and should have been done bet­ter. And that will include, right up top, the fail­ure of front line work­ers to turn their new­found hero sta­tus — and the tem­po­rary, absolute neces­si­ty that they con­tin­ue work­ing through life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions — into any last­ing gains. It is easy to sur­ren­der to the feel­ing of just being thank­ful to be employed while oth­ers sink into pover­ty. But we need to be ready with a bet­ter plan for next time. Bil­lions of dol­lars and a good deal of poten­tial pow­er that work­ing peo­ple could have had has evap­o­rat­ed because unions were not pre­pared to act to take it.
Pub­lic workers

Teach­ers unions con­clu­sive­ly demon­strat­ed their val­ue this year. In gen­er­al, in cities with strong teach­ers unions, pub­lic schools did not reopen unless the teach­ers were sat­is­fied that ade­quate work­place safe­ty pro­ce­dures were in place. (In prac­tice this meant that many school dis­tricts sim­ply kept instruc­tion online.) While this earned the ire of some par­ents, they should think it through: Work­place safe­ty in Amer­i­ca only exist­ed where unions were strong enough to see to it that it hap­pened. Schools were the most promi­nent exam­ple of that.

Else­where, the news for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment employ­ees was gloomy. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion waged a years-long war against the labor rights of fed­er­al work­ers, and it is fair to say that the unions lost that war. Fed­er­al employ­ee unions in par­tic­u­lar, and state employ­ee unions in Repub­li­can states, have become pathet­i­cal­ly weak. Much of their bar­gain­ing pow­er has been out­lawed by Repub­li­can politi­cians. The unions have been reduced to writ­ing polite­ly angry let­ters as their work­ers are abused while wait­ing for a new Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tion that they can beg to restore their rights. It is not a work­able mod­el for a union. These unions must decide at some point that they are will­ing to break the law in order to assert the fun­da­men­tal rights of their mem­bers, or they will grow increas­ing­ly less able to demon­strate to mem­bers why they have any value.

That may not be fair, but it’s the truth.
Orga­niz­ing

The biggest issue for unions in Amer­i­ca — big­ger than any pan­dem­ic or pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle — is that there are sim­ply not enough union mem­bers. Only one in 10 work­ers is a union mem­ber. In the pri­vate sec­tor, that fig­ure is just over 6%. The decades-long decline of union den­si­ty is the under­ly­ing thing rob­bing the once-mighty labor move­ment (and by exten­sion, the work­ing class itself) of pow­er. If unions in Amer­i­ca are not grow­ing every year, they are dying.

Dis­as­trous years like 2020 tend to put struc­tur­al issues on the back burn­er, but they can also serve as inspi­ra­tions for peo­ple to join unions to pro­tect them. The annu­al fig­ures for the year are not out yet, but anec­do­tal­ly, union lead­ers and orga­niz­ers are opti­mistic that the pandemic’s hav­oc will serve as fuel for future orga­niz­ing. Most unions man­aged to at least con­tin­ue major orga­niz­ing efforts that were already under­way this year, like SEIU’s suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of a 17-year bat­tle to union­ize 45,000 child care providers in Cal­i­for­nia. Indus­tries that were already hotbeds of orga­niz­ing tend­ed to remain so. The safe­ty net of a union con­tract clear­ly demon­strat­ed its val­ue far and wide this year, at least in the abil­i­ty of union mem­bers to nego­ti­ate terms for fur­loughs and sev­er­ance and recall rights and all the oth­er things that mat­ter dur­ing dis­as­ters, as non-union work­ers were sim­ply cast out on their own.

Still, it is up to unions them­selves to have a con­cert­ed plan to take advan­tage of the wide­spread nation­al suf­fer­ing and chan­nel it into new orga­niz­ing. Since unions have spent the year trans­fixed by the elec­tion and by try­ing to respond to the eco­nom­ic col­lapse, it is safe to say that such a con­cert­ed plan does not real­ly exist yet. That needs to be done, soon, or this moment will have been wasted.

Strikes

Dur­ing the ear­ly months of the pan­dem­ic, a frag­ile sort of labor peace reigned. The grip of the cri­sis was such that most work­ers were sim­ply try­ing to hang on. As time went by, and the fail­ures of employ­ers became more clear, that peace began to evap­o­rate. Teach­ers unions around the coun­try used cred­i­ble strike threats to head off unsafe school open­ing plans. And in the health­care indus­try, unions have had mul­ti­ple strikes, as nurs­es and hos­pi­tal work­ers have passed their break­ing points.

Lever­age for work­ers varies wide­ly by indus­try right now, as cer­tain indus­tries are besieged with unem­ployed work­ers look­ing for any job they can get (restau­rants), and oth­ers are des­per­ate for skilled work­ers, who are extreme­ly vital (nurs­es). At min­i­mum, every union should look at its lever­age in the spe­cif­ic con­text of the pan­dem­ic and ask if they should act now, lest an oppor­tu­ni­ty be lost forever.
Gig work­ers

You can think of many enor­mous com­pa­nies as huge algo­rithms that are mak­ing their way through the Amer­i­can labor force, turn­ing employ­ees into inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors or free­lancers or part-timers. There is mon­ey to be made in free­ing busi­ness­es from the respon­si­bil­i­ty and cost of pro­vid­ing for employ­ees (a sta­tus that comes with ben­e­fits and a host of work­place rights, includ­ing the right to union­ize). The ​“gig econ­o­my” is not just Uber and Lyft and Instacart and oth­er com­pa­nies that exclu­sive­ly work in that space — it is an eco­nom­ic force of nature push­ing every com­pa­ny, includ­ing yours, to get your job off its books, and to turn you into some­thing less than a full employee.

Coun­ter­ing this force is prob­a­bly the sin­gle most impor­tant legal and leg­isla­tive issue for labor as a whole, because this process inher­ent­ly acts to dis­solve labor pow­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the most impor­tant thing that hap­pened on the issue this year was the pas­sage of Prop 22 in Cal­i­for­nia, leg­is­la­tion specif­i­cal­ly designed to empow­er the gig econ­o­my com­pa­nies to the detri­ment of work­ers. Scari­er yet is the fact that the suc­cess­ful leg­is­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia will now be used as a blue­print for state leg­is­la­tion around the coun­try. Com­pa­nies are pre­pared to spend hun­dreds of mil­lions or bil­lions of dol­lars on this issue, because they save far more mon­ey on the back end and pre­serve their busi­ness mod­el, which depends in large part in extract­ing wealth that once went to work­ers and redi­rect­ing it towards investors. Either Amer­i­ca will have a nation­al reck­on­ing with what the gig econ­o­my is doing to us, or we will con­tin­ue bar­rel­ing towards a dystopi­an future of the Uber-iza­tion of every last indus­try. Includ­ing yours. If ever there were a good time to launch a work­er coop, it is now.
The elec­tion and Washington

After an ear­ly peri­od of hope for a Bernie-led insur­gency of the left, unions coa­lesced around Biden. They spent a ton of mon­ey on him, and indeed, his rhetoric and his plat­form are both more defin­i­tive­ly pro-union than any pres­i­dent in decades. Unions expect a lot of things from Biden, and expe­ri­ence tells us that they will not get many of them.

What they will prob­a­bly get: a much bet­ter NLRB, a func­tion­ing OSHA, a pro-labor Labor Depart­ment rather than the oppo­site, and, par­tic­u­lar­ly for unions with long­stand­ing ties to Biden, rel­a­tive­ly good access to the White House. What they prob­a­bly won’t get: pas­sage of the PRO Act, a very good bill that would fix many of the worst prob­lems with U.S. labor law, but which has no hope in a divid­ed Con­gress. (And, I sus­pect, even with full Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of Con­gress, many of the more cen­trist Democ­rats would sud­den­ly find a rea­son to oppose the act if the Cham­ber of Com­merce ever thought it might actu­al­ly pass). It is true that the cen­ter of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is slow­ly mov­ing left, but Biden is a man who nat­u­ral­ly stays in the mid­dle of every­one, and he will be con­ser­v­a­tive in his will­ing­ness to burn polit­i­cal cap­i­tal by push­ing pro-labor poli­cies that don’t enjoy some amount of pub­lic bipar­ti­san sup­port. The polit­i­cal cli­mate for unions will be sim­i­lar to what it was under Oba­ma. The words will be nicer, but any action will have to be pro­pelled by peo­ple in the streets.

The nine-month odyssey between the pas­sage of the CARES Act and the next relief bill that Con­gress actu­al­ly passed is a use­ful demon­stra­tion of the lim­its of labor’s lob­by­ing pow­er. While par­tic­u­lar unions, espe­cial­ly those in trans­porta­tion and the USPS, showed skill at get­ting con­crete mate­r­i­al gains for their mem­bers into bills, the inabil­i­ty to force any sort of time­ly action from Con­gress in the face of mas­sive human suf­fer­ing shows that labor as a spe­cial inter­est will nev­er have the polit­i­cal pow­er it craves. Until many, many more Amer­i­cans are union mem­bers, it will be impos­si­ble to break out of this trap.

The labor move­ment at its high­est lev­el must break itself of the addic­tion to the false belief that sal­va­tion will be found if only our Demo­c­rat can win the next elec­tion. It won’t. Orga­nize mil­lions of new work­ers and teach them to always be ready to strike. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty must be dragged towards progress by an army, and our army is weak. The AFL-CIO got burned in the protests this year. It remains to be seen if it learned any­thing from that.
End­ing on a pos­i­tive note

It may be the per­pet­u­al nature of unions that the lead­er­ship is often dis­ap­point­ing, but the grass­roots are always inspir­ing. The big pic­ture for orga­nized labor in 2020 has been… close to okay, in some aspects, but cer­tain­ly not great. But when you pull out a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and look at what indi­vid­ual work­ers and work­places and units are doing, you will find thou­sands and thou­sands of inspir­ing things. And not even a pan­dem­ic has changed the basic fact that orga­niz­ing is the most pow­er­ful tool that reg­u­lar peo­ple have at their dis­pos­al in a sys­tem that val­ues cap­i­tal over humanity.

If you are an employ­ee, you can union­ize your work­place. If you are a gig or tem­po­rary work­er, you can orga­nize with your cowork­ers. If you are unem­ployed, you can march in the streets now, and union­ize your next job. All the labor move­ment is is all of us.

BIDEN: Status Quo Protector -- "Nothing Will Fundamentally Change"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2v8EUnC0uc&ab_channel=SUVRVingSUVRVing

The Censored Day One Agenda For Pres. Biden

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0R1e17J00&ab_channel=RedactedTonight

FORCE THE VOTE!

 

We demand that every progressive in Congress refuse to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House until she publicly pledges to bring Medicare for all to the floor of the House for a vote in January.


VISIT THE WEBSITE AND SIGN THE PETITION!




https://forcethevote.org/

Connecticut educators denounce right-wing record of Biden’s pick for Education Secretary

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/card-d24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Robert Milkowski
24 December 2020







The response of the corporate media and the teachers unions to President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of Miguel Cardona as his nominee for Education Secretary has been nothing short of effusive.

In the eyes of the Democratic Party and all of its backers, Cardona’s two chief qualifications for the position are that he is Latino and that he has forcefully advocated the reopening of schools during the pandemic as Connecticut’s commissioner of education. If Biden takes office in January, Cardona will immediately promote racial politics to accelerate the school reopening policies pursued by the Trump administration, fraudulently claiming this will be for the benefit of “black and brown” students.

In its article, headlined, “Biden Picks Latino Chief of Connecticut Schools as Education Secretary,” the New York Times glowingly wrote, “The selection of Dr. Cardona, a Latino, would fulfill Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to appoint a diverse cabinet and a secretary of education with public school experience—a blunt juxtaposition to Ms. DeVos, a billionaire champion of private schools that she and her children attended.”

The Times quotes multiple union officials praising Cardona, including Stuart Beckford, the second vice president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, who states, “He has provided the stability the state has needed, and also focusing on equity and diversity.” The article quotes American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, who hailed Cardona’s “deep respect for educators and their unions.”

The Times writes, “Teachers in Connecticut, who endorsed Dr. Cardona’s nomination, said that his leadership had struck the right balance of transparency and flexibility, even during the coronavirus crisis.”

In fact, the “teachers in Connecticut” referred to are the Board of Education Union Coalition, including the Connecticut Education Association (CEA), the American Federation of Teachers Connecticut, and state affiliates of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Auto Workers (UAW).

The union bureaucrats that co-signed an endorsement of Cardona inhabit a different world than the rank-and-file educators that teach and work in schools across Connecticut, whose lives have been thoroughly endangered by the policies pursued by Cardona.

When the CEA posted their endorsement of Cardona on their Facebook page, they were met with a torrent of denunciations by Connecticut educators, with one commenting, “Commissioner Cardona has played fast and loose with teachers’ and students’ lives, and is not pro-teacher. The CEA should be embarrassed at this political pandering, and should never have put teachers’ support in their endorsement. CEA support of this potential nomination is yet another slap in the face to the teachers it is supposed to represent.”

Dr. Tina Manus, a public school teacher in Connecticut, told the World Socialist Web Site, “The fact that the Education Union Coalition endorsed Miguel Cardona without surveying members is disgusting. No action taken by them speaks more to their tone deaf approach to leading educators in CT, as well as their blatant and purposeful disconnection from the Rank and File.”

Dr. Manus added that Cardona “put the entire state of CT at risk, opening schools and allowing those schools to become vectors of community COVID-19 transmission. His policies are the reason COVID numbers went up and poor communities are suffering now…. He further exacerbated the already wide gaps in economics, social class and healthcare poor communities suffer within.”

Nicole Rizzo, who has been teaching in Connecticut for seven years, and is also an organizer for Connecticut Public School (CTPS) Advocates, told Newsweek magazine Cardona “was biased in his representation of reopening schools. The metrics that he and the governor proposed for school reopening, they continually revised without explanation.”

She added, “Many of these schools are lacking basic, rudimentary resources including personal protective equipment and sanitization products.”

Rizzo conducted a survey on the (CTPS) Advocates Facebook page in reaction to the Education Union Coalition’s endorsement of Cardona, which found that an extremely small percentage of the 392 educators polled supported his nomination (7.1 percent), while the majority voted against him (92.9 percent).

Another Connecticut teacher, Thea Bell, told the WSWS, “Cardona has not spent much time in a classroom and apparently fast tracked it out as soon as he could. He smiles all the time when people are suffering. He delivers policy with a smug ‘let them eat cake’ smile of an elite who, now that he has risen above, could not care less about those still struggling.”

She added, “My school refused to allow me to teach remotely. They ultimately fired me for basically being medically fragile and high risk. At the last minute they rescinded my termination and put me on unpaid leave this year. My lawyer intervened. Cardona had NO plan to shield vulnerable educational workers in his demand to open face to face. Instead, he is letting teachers fight singular legal battles, lose their jobs, retire, get fired, etc.”

Since the summer, Cardona has joined Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Ned Lamont in falsely claiming that schools are not vectors for the spread of COVID-19. In an op-ed in the News-Times last week, without citing any evidence, Cardona claimed, “Cases reported by schools, which include students who are in full remote learning, are being traced back to community spread happening outside the building.”

A Hartford educator who chose to remain anonymous spoke about this to the WSWS, stating, “Cardona never allowed for the possibility of school closures. He claimed teachers would receive PPE, but no improvements made to ventilation systems in extremely old buildings. Data was being manipulated; the CSDE kept saying kids don't contract the virus to justify the reopening. The decisions were not based in reality. They kept moving the goalposts on what would require a closing, and Cardona didn't listen to the teachers pleading not to reopen the schools. Teachers have gotten sick and some have died.”

He continued, “The state's own reopening safety thresholds were set at 25 out of 100,000 as the trigger to move to full remote. We moved way beyond those thresholds. As the infection rates rose, the CSDE just kept re-writing the reopening plan... moving the safety threshold. We documented all of it. Our numbers of infection are now way over 100 out of 100,000 in some towns. He does not care, he wants it open for optics. I would say also because now it seems to suggest he has ‘found a way’ to keep it open.”

In concluding he said, “We have had several iterations of the Connecticut school reopening plan. Again, the CSDE just kept rewriting it as the infection rates rocketed. They gaslit everyone. It's been really tragic for many. I no longer want to be an educator. There is no integrity in the public system.”

As a result of these and other policies implemented by the state’s Democratic politicians, Connecticut now has the fifth highest ratio of deaths per person among all US states. In total, 170,705 of the state’s 3.6 million residents have been infected with COVID-19 and 5,736 people have died. Cases have surged in the past two months following the reopening of schools throughout the state, with a record 8,129 cases on December 7.

Educators must draw the necessary conclusions from Biden’s selection of Cardona, which underscores that his administration will pursue the same homicidal policies as the Trump administration of opening all schools and nonessential businesses as the pandemic rages.

Although the Democrats’ tactics may vary, their fundamental goal—keeping the economy open in the interests of Wall Street—remains the same. Both parties are beholden to the same ruling elite, whose wealth has vastly increased alongside the ever-greater suffering and death of workers during this global pandemic.

Educators and all workers must organize themselves independently of both corporate-controlled parties and the pro-capitalist unions, through the formation of rank-and-file safety committees. These committees must prepare for a political general strike, with the goal of closing all schools and nonessential businesses to stop the spread of the pandemic and save lives.

Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/24/labo-d24.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws



Asia
China: Apple electronics factory workers protest in Shanghai

Thousands of temporary workers from Apple’s Taiwan-invested Pegatron facility in Shanghai demonstrated outside the plant on December 19 to protest against the forced transfer of workers to another facility. Large numbers of police blocked the plant entrance, sparking clashes.

The protest erupted after Pegatron tried to transfer thousands of workers from its Shanghai factory to another facility at Kunshan in Jiangsu Province. Workers were told that if they refused to transfer they would be fired and would not be eligible for their share of finders’ fee commission usually shared between recruitment agencies and workers.

The fees form a substantial part of temporary workers’ overall remuneration package. A worker could accumulate 11,000 yuan ($US1,700) in such payments after 55 days working at Pegatron.

Faced with the large number of angry protesters, management said it would revise the relocation package to ensure that transferring workers would retain all of their existing salary and benefits.
Cambodian garment workers occupy closed factory demanding unpaid wages

A group of half a dozen former garment workers from a closed factory 50km south of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh are occupying the factory, standing guard over the sewing machines. The owners shuttered the factory in March without paying outstanding wages and bonuses.

The workers have large debts because they took out loans to feed their families after the plant closed. They have fought off people sent by the factory owner to remove the machines, hoping to win their outstanding pay.

“Those machines are my money; they are my life,” Vanna, a worker said, pledging to hold them hostage until she receives about $US2,000 in wages and bonuses owed since the bosses shut the factory.

Cambodia’s $7 billion garment sector—the country’s largest employer with 800,000, mostly female, workers—was dealt a double blow this year by the coronavirus pandemic and by unlawful crippling tariffs imposed by the European Union over claimed human rights abuses.
India: Punjab police brutally attack unemployed teachers

Several people were injured when police used canes to attack a demonstration of unemployed teachers while they marched towards the chief minister’s residence in Patiala, Punjab state, on December 19. Teachers held a sit-down protest near the residence alleging that the government was not considering their demands which are more than three years old.

The unemployed teachers, who have passed the Elementary Teacher in Training and the Teacher Eligibility Test, were demanding the repeal of the provision Bachelor of Education entry to elementary schools, and for 10,000 new posts to be immediately advertised. Elementary Teacher Training is a diploma level course for teaching the preschool curriculum and equips teachers with required skills.
Tamil Nadu COVID-19 door-to-door screeners demand wages

Former workers employed on contract by the Madurai [municipal] Corporation to undertake door-to-door screening protested outside the Madurai City health office on December 18 demanding their wages.

Protesters said that many workers were hired on a contract basis in June but were asked to quit the job on September 23 without prior notice. They have been demanding settlement of wages due for the past two months.
Puducherry public transport workers oppose against privatisation

Over 200 contract drivers and conductors for the Puducherry Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) stopped work on December 21 and demonstrated in front of the PRTC workshop demanding permanent jobs and for the government to reverse its decision to sell several bus routes to private enterprise. The town bus services were suspended during to the strike.
Tamil Nadu power distribution workers demonstrate against privatisation

Tamil Nadu Electricity Board workers protested against privatisation at different locations across the state on Monday. The state government plans to hand over maintenance of five power stations to private operators for two years. Workers fear the move is the first step to full privatisation and are demanding the government reverse its decision.

Workers have also demanded that the government withdraw its decision to recruit employees on contract basis through agencies. The workers alleged that the board has less than 82,000 employees, instead of the required strength of 142,000, which has impacted their workload.
Sri Lankan garment workers on strike over year-end bonus

Workers from the British-owned Next Garment Factory in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone (KFTZ), north of Colombo, have been on strike since December 16 demanding that the year-end bonus be paid in full.

Workers at the factory, which employs about 2,000 people, began protesting after management announced that bonuses would be slashed due to profit losses this year. The factory was only closed for several days in October after 11 workers were tested positive for COVID-19.

Striking workers were holding daily protests outside the plant until management called the police to disperse them on December 18. Management also threatened workers who have raised their concerns on social media.

Districts near the KFTZ were under a curfew in October due to a high number of coronavirus infections in the factories. All free trade zone employees, however, were ordered to keep working and to use their service identity cards as curfew passes.
Sri Lankan development officers demand permanent positions

Development officers affiliated to government departments across the island demonstrated in 19 districts, including Colombo, on Tuesday, demanding that their appointments be made permanent. The protest was prompted by the government’s failure to make their jobs permanent, even four months after their mandatory one-year training period ended.

The Joint Development Officers Centre coordinated the demonstrations. Protesters in each district chanted slogans and displayed placards in front of the district secretariats and in front of the Ministry of Public Administration in Colombo.
Pakistan: Punjab police attack teachers demanding permanent jobs

Over 700 contract-based teachers from Punjab government schools were attacked by police using teargas and batons as they marched toward the prime minister’s residence in Islamabad on Saturday. Many protesters were injured and 44 were arrested.

The teachers continued their demonstration blocking a main transport artery of the city in defiance of police orders to move their protest to the Press Club. Later the protest was moved to a different area after police agreed to release those arrested. The demonstration ended later in the day when the government agreed to hold discussions the next day.

Teachers want immediate job permanency and repeal of new regulations that disqualify many teachers despite their years of service. The new rules impact on 11,000 teachers currently in service.

The government is aggressively seeking to reform public education in Punjab including handing over the administration of schools to non-governmental organizations, as part of its overall cost cutting plans. The increasingly large number of contract-based workers is a result of this policy.
Australia and New Zealand
Royal Flying Doctor Service paramedics and nurses maintain eight weeks of industrial action

Nurses and paramedics who transport patients in Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) ambulances in Victoria are maintaining low-level industrial action begun on October 29 over the organisation’s proposed enterprise agreement (EA). The action includes writing slogans on their vehicles, returning back to base for meal breaks rather than eating on the road, and not working extra time before or after their rostered shift (incidental overtime).

The highly specialised workers are members of the Victorian Ambulance Union and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. They are opposed to the RFDS’s attempt to impose a two-tiered wage system that would slash the pay of new recruits by 16.8 percent ($4,000 per year). The management also wants to end recognition of the registered nurse classification and critical skills and experience, and cut leave benefits of part-time employees.

The RFDS wants to limit annual pay increases to no more than the consumer price index (CPI) and has refused to include back pay in the new agreement, even though wages have been frozen for three years while negotiating a new agreement.

The RFDS attempted to implement a non-union EA in 2017 with provisions similar to those in the current offer, but it was decisively rejected by the ambulance crews. An “in principle” agreement was reached with the unions in 2019 but its implementation was stalled when the RFDS applied to the Fair Work Commission in May for a delay while the RFDS’s contract with the Victorian Labor government’s Ambulance Victoria was renegotiated.

Ambulance Victoria has contracts with several patient transport providers to move patients between medical facilities, or in the case of RFDS patients, from the airport to a hospital. The RFDS says the attack on its workers’ wages and conditions is necessary to rein in costs as the industry had to become more competitive.
Blacktown Hospital nurses continue struggle for safe staffing levels

The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA), representing traumatised and overworked nurses at the state-owned Blacktown Hospital, in western Sydney, New South Wales, filed a dispute with the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) over the hospital management’s delay in following through in a commitment to resolve inadequate staffing levels.

On November 19, over 150 NSWNMA members walked out on a 24-hour strike demanding that staffing at the hospital be increased to safe levels. They were ordered back to work after several hours by the union on orders from the NSW Industrial Relations Commission. The government responded by saying it would employ an additional 15 full-time equivalent midwifery roles and launch a “thorough” review into staffing levels at the hospital.

Frustrated with hospital management inaction, off duty nurses began protesting outside the hospital forcing the NSWANF to register a dispute in the IRC.

According to the union, there are already eight vacant staffing positions at the hospital and nurses and midwives were not confident that the additional positions would be filled. Fifteen additional staff, moreover, could not properly cover all the wards and patients at Blacktown Hospital.

Adding to the nurses’ workload, midwives are being trained to take on more roles, increasing their workloads each shift. At least 20 senior obstetricians at the hospital threatened to resign in the first week of February 2021 if their concerns about understaffing, lack of experienced staff and access to birthing facilities are not addressed.
Tasmanian municipal workers strike for new work agreement

Outdoor workers from the Glenorchy City Council (GCC), on the outskirts of Tasmania’s capital Hobart, walked off the job on December 15 for a stop work meeting in an attempt to force GCC management to enter “genuine” negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. The Australian Services Union (ASU) has been in negotiations with the council since April. It said the workers have not had a pay increase since May last year but management refuses to present a “real” wage offer.

The union claimed that the council has not given a detailed response to claims around superannuation or allowances; not addressed the use of insecure employment; advised they wish to cap redundancy entitlements at 52 weeks and want to remove the Employee Support Benefit and Study Fees Reimbursement from the enterprise agreement.

Over 90 ASU members are involved in industrial action that could include stoppages up to 24 hours, bans on overtime, call backs, working on Saturdays and Sundays and pub holidays, outdoor equipment maintenance in parks and buildings, and bans on selected administration work.
New Zealand home care workers strike

Workers employed by the Auckland-based home support provider, Lifewise, continued industrial action this week after talks between the company and the E Tu union broke down.

The workers, who provide support for elderly people, began to hold partial strikes, lasting four hours a day, from December 14 and picketed Lifewise offices. They are calling for a guaranteed minimum number of work hours, as well as increased sick leave. Many workers are only offered 15 hours a week, making them unable to survive financially on low wages.

In July 2019, when bargaining began for a new collective agreement, workers say Lifewise agreed to an extra three days of sick leave, as well as more bereavement leave. But the company withdrew the offer in September this year, blaming the financial impact of the pandemic. E Tu is continuing to negotiate with the company.
Toll transport workers walk out

Workers for Toll Logistics, an Australasian transport company owned by Japan Post, walked off work on December 22 for 24 hours. Twenty-five workers participated in the action, around 70 percent of the company’s operational workforce. Workers are concerned about redundancy conditions after Japan Post decided to sell its New Zealand operations. This is the second strike by Toll workers this month, with further action planned if a settlement is not reached. The First Union is negotiating with Toll.
Fresh Collective supermarket staff hold one-hour strike

A group of workers at New World supermarket’s boutique offshoot store, Fresh Collective, held a one-hour picket line strike in the affluent Auckland suburb of Mt Albert. A First Union representative stated that workers are concerned at the lack of pay parity with other supermarket workers. Fresh Collective is a luxury store where customers pay high prices, while some store staff earn only 10 cents over the minimum wage of $18.90.

Force A Vote For Medicare For All

 

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