NFL Players union files over anthem policy. The NFL Players Association on July 10 filed a grievance with the league challenging its new National Anthem policy, saying the new policy was imposed without consultation with the union, is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement, and infringes on players’ rights.
In May, the NFL approved its National Anthem policy at its owners meetings in Atlanta. The policy allows players to protest during the National Anthem by staying in the locker room, but forbids them from sitting or taking a knee if they’re on the field or the sidelines. Teams that don’t comply will be subject to fines, and the league could punish individuals.

Planned Parenthood engaged in union busting, SEIU says. Workers at 14 clinics of the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in December voted to organize their workplaces with the Service Employees International Union Local 105, but Planned Parenthood – represented by the law firm of Fisher Phillips, which says it specializes in “union avoidance” – has subjected workers to “captive audience” meetings and appealed to the GOP-dominated National Labor Relations Board to overturn workers’ vote on the grounds that the union wouldn’t include distant facilities in New Mexico and Nevada.

Key issues are wages, the high costs of health insurance, high turnover, and Planned Parenthood’s closing clinics without consulting with workers, SEIU says.

“If this conservative board rules against the workers, which they likely will, it could set a dangerous precedent,” said SEIU Local 105 health-care organizing director Stephanie Felix-Sowy. It would set “a precedent that workers can only organize if they have the resources to organize an entire company and the ability to cross many state lines.”

Teachers unon leaders urge members to “refuse to be silent.” Facing well-financed, continual corporate and political attacks on teachers and democracy, National Education Association leaders are sounding more militant, following the lead of state chapters and students.

“Refuse to be silent,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia at the union’s convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul last month. “Dig deep, keep fighting, keep educating, keep organizing!”

They’ll need to. NEA, the nation’s largest union, met days after the Supreme Court ruled in “Janus v. AFSCME District Council 31” that decided by a 5-4 partisan vote that every government worker, including teachers, could use union services without paying for them.

A study by the University of Illinois calculated the nation’s teachers unions – NEA and the American Federation of Teachers – could eventually lose 88,000 members as a result.

Activists said the answer to Janus and the billionaires who funded it is to follow the lead of grass-roots organizing that saw teachers and staffers in the Right-To-Work states of West Virginia, Arizona, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma win more funding to fix schools, replace outdated books and win overdue raises for teachers and staffers

The union has millions of allies, said Executive Director John Stocks.

“More and more people want to stand for something, they want to be active, they want to associate themselves with a cause and an organization that is not only good but that is powerful and has the infrastructure to make a real difference,” he said.

Marriott workers rally for better wages, working conditions. Under the theme of “One Job Should Be Enough,” thousands of union and non-union Marriott workers this summer marched across the U.S. and Canada, calling on the giant hotel chain to use its influence to create jobs paying enough for workers to live on and protect working conditions for female workers.

Unite Here, which represents 20,000 Marriott North American workers, organized the protests.

The union says Marriott “is the largest and richest hotel company on the planet,” earning nearly $23 billion in revenue in 2017, making them “uniquely positioned to lead” a worldwide effort to ensure “one job should be enough to live in the city where we work, to raise our families, to retire with dignity. We are calling on Marriott: Make one job at Marriott enough to live on.”

Organized labor part of world peace process: Trumka. The labor movement is part of the solution for world peace through constant efforts to represent and campaign for workers who want to raise living standards, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

“We’ve fought, and continue to fight, to bring economic opportunity and justice to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, who they worship, or who they love,” he told a group gathered for a June awards ceremony at the AFL-CIO. There, the World Peace Prize Awarding Council, which has given overall world peace prizes since 1999, established a Labor Leadership Peace Prize, and Trumka was the first recipient.

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper