class struggle

By Zachory Phillips - Construction Dive, May 30, 2024

With a state law restricting local governments from mandating heat safety on the horizon, immigrant laborers say bosses refuse their calls for relief.

It was a hot day in Florida and Javier Torres was working in the sun. He began to feel “dizzy and cloudy” when he collapsed. 

He fell from a ladder, dropping two stories to the ground below.

“They said I almost broke my back,” Torres told Construction Dive, communicating in Spanish through a translator. “I felt pain for more than a month, but had to get back to work to provide for myself.”

A Colombian immigrant who does residential roofing, painting and demolition work in the Miami area, Torres said he has been repeatedly denied the chance to take breaks to drink water or rest in the shade while working. He declined to share the name of his employer. 

Torres and other members of Miami-area worker nonprofit WeCount! perform physically demanding jobs in intense heat and say their employers often deny them the protections they need to carry out their work safely. They believe they’re treated this way in part due to their ethnic background.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 30, 2024

By Ron Kaminkow - Class Struggle Action Network, May 28, 2024

By Sarah Jaffe, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 27, 2024

By Zachory Phillips - Construction Dive, May 23, 2024

As summer begins, some states prevent cities from mandating water breaks. Still, there are commonsense practices to protect workers from soaring temperatures.

When the calendar turns to summer’s traditional start on Memorial Day, the longer days can help contractors deliver projects more quickly than during winter months.

At the same time, summer days bring intense heat in many parts of the country — so hot that it risks the health of outdoor workers. The safety of laborers in hot climates has garnered national attention in recent years, especially as research indicates that air temperatures are increasing around the globe and will continue to rise.

In many parts of the world, last summer was the hottest in 2,000 years, according to NASA. Miami broke its record for the city’s hottest July ever recorded. Temperatures hit over 100 degrees 70 times in El Paso, Texas. Phoenix hit 110 degrees 54 times.

For outdoor workers in some states, this summer will also be the first with new rules — and in some cases, new prohibitions against mandates — when it comes to water breaks. Texas and Florida have passed laws to stop municipalities within their borders from requiring employers to provide water breaks to workers.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 433, which will prevent cities and counties in the state from enacting their own heat safety regulations, starting in July.

The Texas law, dubbed “The Death Star Bill” by opponents, is currently in effect, though some cities, such as Houston and San Antonio, have sued over the legislation.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 22, 2024

By Jeremy Kimbrell - Labor Notes, May 21, 2024

I’m still hot as hell three days after losing a union election at the Mercedes factory complex in Alabama. After years of laying a foundation and six months of 100 percent dedication and putting everything on hold, it’s a tough pill to swallow—losing by 597 votes out of 5,000. That’s especially hard when a large majority of workers had committed to vote yes, but some flipped in the closing weeks.

It’ll take time to know everything that went wrong or what exactly led to the loss, but while things are fresh on my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts. I’ve worked at Mercedes for nearly 25 years and have been part of multiple efforts over those years to build a union. This was the first time we got to a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election on whether to unionize.

Until you go to an election, you can’t understand what it entails or what your company will do. We never really knew how many workers we had. We never really knew which workers would be included or excluded, including students, temps, or contractors.

Now we have a list with every employee on it that we never had before. And while these workers will now have to claim some ownership of every decision the company makes that impacts them, should the company end up lying—as I expect it will—we’ll be able to quickly capitalize on it and remind these workers that with a union contract we don’t have to trust in the company. We’ll have it writing.

By Jeremy Kimbrell - Labor Notes, May 21, 2024

I’m still hot as hell three days after losing a union election at the Mercedes factory complex in Alabama. After years of laying a foundation and six months of 100 percent dedication and putting everything on hold, it’s a tough pill to swallow—losing by 597 votes out of 5,000. That’s especially hard when a large majority of workers had committed to vote yes, but some flipped in the closing weeks.

It’ll take time to know everything that went wrong or what exactly led to the loss, but while things are fresh on my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts. I’ve worked at Mercedes for nearly 25 years and have been part of multiple efforts over those years to build a union. This was the first time we got to a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election on whether to unionize.

Until you go to an election, you can’t understand what it entails or what your company will do. We never really knew how many workers we had. We never really knew which workers would be included or excluded, including students, temps, or contractors.

Now we have a list with every employee on it that we never had before. And while these workers will now have to claim some ownership of every decision the company makes that impacts them, should the company end up lying—as I expect it will—we’ll be able to quickly capitalize on it and remind these workers that with a union contract we don’t have to trust in the company. We’ll have it writing.

By Jane McAlevey - The Nation, May 21, 2024

Mercedes put on an “A-level boss fight.” Which was only to be expected. So how can the union win next time?

Late last Friday afternoon, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, addressed workers at the Mercedes SUV plant in Vance, Alabama, after the union failed in a representation election (2,054 votes in favor, 2,642 against) many had expected them to win. He told them, “Justice isn’t about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice, getting your fair share.”

When Fain was sworn in as president on March 26, 2023—after winning the first direct election for the UAW presidency by just 477 votes—the challenges were monumental. He had national negotiations for the Big Three automakers coming up in less than six months and an organization plagued by decades of corruption. The union was burdened with staff used to taking the easy way out, allowing members’ contracts to worsen as its leadership indulged in fancy cigars, fine hotels, and gourmet food.

In the 14 months since his election, Fain has made remarkable headway. He launched a bold strategy in the Big Three negotiations—the stand-up strike—which resulted in significant gains. Next came the North Carolina Daimler truck negotiations for plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and the decisive unionization win at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. His intrepid leadership reaches far beyond the union and has uplifted the entire progressive movement.

Perhaps for that reason, the VW victory raised expectations that the UAW could win in Alabama. But Alabama isn’t Tennessee. Alabama’s top business, political, and community leadership are so hostile to unions that they implemented every nefarious tactic in the 1993 book by the notorious union buster Martin J. Levitt, Confessions of a Union Buster. In it, Levitt outlined a campaign just like the one headed by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey. “The enemy was the collective spirit,” Levitt writes. “I got a hold of that spirit and while it was a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to, anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce.” He forthrightly admitted that anti-union consultants are “terrorists…. as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people’s lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter families.”

By Luis Leon, Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 21, 2024