Fired Latino Workers at Pomona College Fight Back
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Sarah Seltzer writes for Alternet and other online publications and sends us this.
When a group of longtime food service employees of Pomona College in California—a prominent liberal arts school—lost their jobs due to their immigration status, it got an already tense campus talking. This wasn’t an ordinary firing, or even an unfortunate casualty of the nasty wave of anti-immigration sentiment. To people on campus who had been helping the workers speak up for their rights, it felt like union-busting. The terminated workers had been employed on campus for years, but only after they began a drive toward unionization with UNITEHERE! was their immigration status investigated by the college.
Because the internal investigation, which led to their dismissal, was self-initiated and not due to any government agency or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) interference, the timing made many on campus and elsewhere cry foul. Indeed, 16 of 17 employees whose jobs were taken from them happened to be food services workers—the very group trying to unionize. Read the rest of this entry »
Solis Highlights Plight of Vulnerable, Underpaid Workers
With a new webcast series, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is shining a spotlight on the plight of the nation’s most vulnerable workers. This month’s edition focused on perils faced by women who work in restaurants, where the pay for most is low and benefits nonexistent. Addressing the webcast panel discussion, Solis said:
[R]estaurant jobs provide poverty wages and little access to benefits, such as paid leave when a parent or their child gets sick. And because the majority of restaurant workers are women, the pay gap issue that affects all of us, affects them even more adversely. The gender pay gap for female restaurant workers is 86 cents on the dollar compared to male restaurant workers.
As we reported, the National Restaurant Association, a trade organization Read the rest of this entry »
Pomona Students Can’t Speak with Food Workers—They Might Join a Union
If you’re a student at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., you’d best not speak with a campus food service worker who’s on break, unless you do so in a management-authorized area.
Will Mullaney, a senior at Pomona who also serves as the communications officer for the student government, said that when he tried to talk to an on-break food service worker in the cafeteria last month, this is what happened, according to an e-mail signed by Mullaney and sent by UNITEHERE!:
I was asked to leave by one of the managers, who cited a college policy that forbids dining hall employees from talking to non-employees while on their break unless they leave the building. This policy was passed by the administration after cafeteria workers expressed interest in forming their own union.
With the support of pro-labor students, Pomona food workers have been working in alliance with UNITEHERE!, which represents 90,000 food service workers across the country.
Georgetown University Workers, Students Build a Union and Community
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Seth Newton Patel at the Kalmanovitz initiative for Labor and the Working Poor sends us this report on the organization’s first in a series of Kalmanovitz Initiative events exploring the state and future of collective bargaining, the Collective Bargaining Project.
Georgetown University Aramark workers, students and faculty joined in a panel this week to describe their successful campaign to organize a union of Aramark food service workers with UNITEHERE. Two workers from the union organizing committee, two student activists and Georgetown History professor Michael Kazin (who wrote a piece on the campaign in The New Republic) spoke on a panel moderated by the Kalmanovitz Initiative’s Executive Director Joseph McCartin.
Hyatt Workers on Strike in Four Cities
Thousands of Hyatt hotel workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu walked out this morning, striking for a fair contract at their own hotels and to take a stand against Hyatt’s poor treatment of hotel workers in cities across the country.
You can tell Hyatt to treat workers with respect. Click here to send a letter to Hyatt management demanding that they treat housekeepers fairly and with respect. Click here to send a message of solidarity to the strikers. If you live in one of the cities where workers are on strike, you can click here to join a picket line.
Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper in Los Angeles, says:
I’m picketing today because I don’t mind working hard but I won’t be abused. I believe in hard work but living in pain is a different story. I have to take medication regularly because my wrists and shoulders hurt from having to lift mattresses to change the sheets. Since I started working at the Hyatt my quality of life has diminished greatly. Hyatt must stop abusing housekeepers.
Rabbis Declare Hyatt ‘Not Kosher’
A group of 21 rabbis and other community faith leaders have declared several Hyatt hotels to be “not kosher” and have vowed to avoid the hotels until they provide decent wages and safe conditions for all their workers, expecially housekeepers.
Meanwhile, in California, pressure is building on the giant hotel chain to drop its opposition to legislation that would require companies to adopt a few common-sense practices to protect housekeepers from getting hurt.
The bill would require California hotels to provide housekeepers with fitted sheets (so housekeepers don’t have to lift 100-pound mattresses to tuck the bottom sheets underneath) and mops (so they don’t have to scrub bathroom floors by hand).
Hotel Workers Charge Hyatt with ‘Assault’ with Heat Lamps
Last week when hotel workers at the Park Hyatt Chicago hotel went on strike after nearly two years of fruitless negotiations, they set up a picket line at the front entrance. That’s when management turned the heat on, literally, by firing up 10 heat lamps in the awning above the entrance—on a day when the National Weather Service had issued an excessive heat warning for temperatures above 100 degrees.
Today, UNITEHERE! Local 1, the union representing housekeepers, dishwashers, bellmen and other hotel workers, filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. According to the complaint:
The employer assaulted the employees and tried to fry them by shining heat lamps on them in the middle of what was already a hot, humid day.
Laborers Rejoin AFL-CIO
Today, the Laborer’s (LIUNA) officially rejoined the AFL-CIO. The 500,000-member LIUNA brings the AFL-CIO’s total membership to 12.2 million workers in 57 unions, including the 3.2 million members of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America creates a strong and powerful voice for working families.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the LIUNA reaffiliation comes “at a critical moment for working people.” He said that LIUNA members—the vast majority of whom work in the construction industry—have been particularly hard hit in today’s economy.
As working people fight to rebuild a middle-class economy, now is the moment for a unified labor movement. Together, we will work to create good jobs and elect leaders who stand with working people. Read the rest of this entry »
Hotel Workers Add 3 Chicago Hyatts to Boycott List
Ross Hyman, a research analyst for the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, shares this info.
Joined by clergy and other community supporters, Hyatt hotel workers gathered outside Hyatt headquarters in Chicago yesterday to announce a boycott of the Hyatt Regency Chicago, the Park Hyatt Chicago and the Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotels. Hyatt workers, members of UNITEHERE!, have been working without a contract for nearly a year as Hyatt management continues in its insistence on cutting employee health care. Hotel workers are now boycotting 10 Hyatt hotels across the nation.
Gabriel Carasquillo, a server at the Park Hyatt, told the crowd:
I truly believe that my health should not be a point of negotiation.
Steve Earle Gives Up Dr. Pepper for Striking Workers—and More Bargaining News
Grammy winner Steve Earle gave up Dr. Pepper to urge the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group to negotiate a fair contract with workers at Motts, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
WORK STOPPAGES
RWDSU/UFCW, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group: Striking members of Retail, Warehouse and Department Store Union/UFCW (RWDSU/UFCW) Local 220 have won the support of Grammy winner Steve Earle, who is urging Dr. Pepper Snapple Group to negotiate a fair contract with the Mott’s workers and says that until then he will not drink his beloved Dr. Pepper. More than 300 workers went on strike May 23 to fight what they say is a highly profitable company just trying to take advantage of the weak economy by imposing wage and benefits cuts. To find out more about their struggle for justice and how you can help, visit www.nobadapples.com.
