Regardless of union outcome, Amazon effort inspiring. Ballots from voting at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., facility are being counted at press time, but labor leader Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants/CWA said it’s a win-win no matter the results.
“Whether they win or lose, this is the catalyst of mass organizing,” she said.
Already, the week after the election, Amazon workers in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood picketed at the corporation’s distribution hub.
College athletes push for compensation. College basketball players from more than 15 teams in this year’s NCAA basketball tournaments blasted the NCAA, demanding reforms allowing student athletes to be compensated. While the NCAA is expected to make almost $900 million during March Madness and split it among member schools, players don’t see a penny. Athletes leading the charge included Iowa’s Jordan Bohannon and Michigan’s Isaiah Livers, who tweeted “#NotNCAAProperty” as part of a protest by the National College Players Association.
The players also hope the Supreme Court rules in favor of college athletes in “Alston v. NCAA,” which is considering whether players should be compensated.
States including California, Colorado and Florida have passed laws making current NCAA rules illegal.
The Jewish Labor Committee – “the voice of the Jewish community in the labor movement” – in solidarity with unions, condemned the killing of eight women at Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American and Pacific Islanders,
Second City educators file for unionization. Workers at Second City – which includes world-renowned stages and training centers for artists in Chicago, Hollywood and Toronto – filed cards with the National Labor Relations Board affirming their intent to form a union, the Association of International Comedy Educators (AICE).
“Today the teachers, facilitators and other education professionals at Second City are making our collective voice heard,” said Taylor Walters-Chapman, acting teacher in Chicago. “We are standing up for our rights as professionals and the needs of the students we proudly serve.”
The Chicago-based AICE members will be part of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
A music-industry leader with ties to Peoria is among advocates supporting California State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s newly introduced FAIR (Free Artists from Industry Restrictions) Act.
Joining with the SAG/AFTRA union (Screen Actors Guild-America Federation of Television and Radio Artists), the Black Music Action Coalition, and other groups, Irving Azoff of the Music Artists Coalition said, “Streaming has been an unprecedented bonanza for the record labels, but not so for artists. We must protect artists and modernize this archaic law.”
Azoff, who managed artists such as the Eagles plus Peoria native Dan Fogelberg and REO Speedwagon, featuring Peoria-area guitarist Gary Richrath, referred to a state law that limits personal-services contracts to seven years – EXCEPT for recording artists. Gonzalez’s bill would return them to the law, which corporations had changed in 1987.
Campus organizers hope dozens of unionization campaigns may be ahead following a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision to dump a proposed Trump-era rule barring graduate students from unionizing.
In St. Louis, the WashU Undergraduate & Graduate Workers Union (WUGWU) is an independent group of student workers formed in 2016 to push for reforms. Unable to collectively bargain, it still achieved pay raises for some graduate workers and helped establish a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers.
“Everything is a battle between bosses and workers in this country,” said WUGWU co-chair Trent McDonald. “It’s true in most countries, but some have better labor relations than we do and not as many biases against organizing unions.”
Nurses: hospital bosses put profits over all. A year after the pandemic hit, hospitals still put profits ahead of patients, nurses and safety, forcing nurses to cut corners, a National Nurses United survey found.
Four out of five of the 9,200 Registered Nurses surveyed said they must re-use what are supposed to be single-use protective gear.
“Hospital administrators are continuing to jeopardize one of society’s most valuable workforces during COVID-19,” said NNU Director Bonnie Castillo.
Almost half of hospitals still aren’t testing incoming patients for the virus, the RNs said. Only two-thirds of hospitals have separate COVID-19 units.
Hospitals also remain short-staffed, concerning 53% of RNs, and 47% report nurse-to-patient ratios have worsened.
Illinois’ charter schools would stay neutral in a measure introduced in Springfield by Rep. Will Guzzardi (D-Chicago). The bill to give workers the chance to unionize was approved by committee 15-10 and can move to the legislature.
The country’s first unionized coffee chain could be the Colectivo Coffee Roasters company based in Chicago and Milwaukee, as workers are organizing with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper