class struggle

By staff - More Perfect Union, July 29, 2022

By Joe Allen - Tempest, July 28, 2022

When Esteban Chavez collapsed after making his last package delivery for the day in Pasadena, California on June 25, it was another twenty minutes before someone discovered him and called for emergency help. He died soon afterward. Esteban was 24 years old and had been working at United Parcel Service (UPS) for four years. It was his second day back to work after recovering from a shoulder injury.

Esteban went to work that day not expecting to die on the job. Temperatures, however, soared into the upper nineties in Pasadena, and UPS package delivery cars do not have air conditioning. “It hurts, it’s a pain that’s never gonna go away. And that’s something I wish on nobody, having the experience of losing your child,” his father Esteban, Sr. told the local ABC news affiliate. While the Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office hasn’t released an official cause of death, Esteban’s family believes with good reason that it is directly related to high temperatures and dehydration. “I’m thinking it’s heatstroke, but that’s just me,” Esteban’s aunt, Gloria Chavez, told ABC. Esteban’s father hopes that his son’s death “could bring awareness to his line of work, to the other drivers out there, just making sure you’re staying hydrated.”

Less than two weeks later in Scottsdale, Arizona the security camera of a homeowner captured a UPS driver collapsing on his front porch in 113-degree heat. Business Insider reported:

The homeowner, Brian Enriquez, captured the incident on video via his Ring doorbell on Thursday. He told local news that by the time he saw the video of the delivery man it was too late to provide any help, but he checked in with the company and reported the incident to local police for a welfare check.

The video shows the UPS driver struggling to walk to the customer’s front door while delivering an envelope. The driver then collapses in front of the door after he sets down the delivery, eventually falling onto his back. After a few moments, the delivery man stands up, rings the doorbell, and slowly walks back to his vehicle.

There has been a longstanding awareness about the dangers of heat in the workplace whether it be in vast agricultural fields, underfunded public schools, construction and road work, warehouses and factories, and for package delivery drivers. Climate change has accelerated the dangers for these workers.

When a local ABC News affiliate was able to track down the driver who collapsed on the Scottsdale porch—he was interviewed anonymously—and he told reporters:

(The) fact of the matter is that no amount of training can prepare your body for 160 degrees, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week,” says one UPS driver who spoke with ABC15 anonymously, saying the way they’re treated is inhumane.

It’s not just him. The driver described apocalyptic conditions, “Every week drivers are dropping like flies due to heat conditions and UPS is killing drivers because of this.”

His problems don’t stop at the end of the long workday:

There’s been several times where I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, cramping up, my legs cramping, my hand is cramping. I’m telling my wife I can’t sleep because I’m having these issues and I end up having to call out the next day because it’s clearly not safe for me to come back to work. And UPS will reprimand me.

UPS drivers and Teamsters’ spouses took to social media to highlight the lack of air conditioning, which most people found shocking. UPS driver Aiden Mann’s Tik-Tok post has garnered over five million views, while Theresa Klenk’s change.org petition demanding air conditioning for all UPS drivers has been signed by over 1.3 million people. Klenk and her UPS driver husband were featured in an NBC News expose of UPS three years ago about the risk for heat-related illness and death on the job.

By staff - Trades Union Congress, July 25, 2022

Executive summary

Publicly-owned energy retail companies can deliver fairer bills for households, accelerate the rollout of household retrofits and reduce energy use.

Soaring energy bills are causing untold suffering for low-income households and workers across the UK. The “typical” bill was increased by 54% with Ofgem’s April increase in the energy price cap.[1] Many households have already seen bills go up by over a thousand pounds. Ofgem is expected to increase the electricity and gas price cap again in August by a further 51%, so that average bills pass £3,200.[2]

But allocating the burden of the gas price crisis to domestic households at this scale is not inevitable. Other European countries have demonstrated that it is possible to insulate many or all households from the fallout of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s gas politics and global volatility in terms of energy bills. Our analysis shows that this is because governments in those countries have more levers to intervene in energy pricing – and are more prepared to use the levers that they have. Part of this comes down to questions of who owns and controls our energy system, and whom it serves.

There is widespread recognition that the UK’s energy system is broken.

By Jeff Schuhrke - In These Times, July 25, 2022

After Biden appointed an emergency board to help resolve the labor dispute, rail workers warn: “We have the ability to stop the trains from moving.”

After waiting over two years to secure a new union contract, and still reeling from the impacts of Wall Street-ordered cost-cutting measures, 115,000 beleaguered workers who operate the nation’s freight railroads are inching closer towards a possible strike, which could come as soon as September. 

In an effort to drive down operating expenses and reward their wealthy shareholders, in recent years railroad companies have implemented ​“precision scheduled railroading,” or PSR — a version of just-in-time, lean production that centers on reducing the workforce and closing facilities. 

“For years, they cut and cut and cut. It didn’t matter which department or terminal, it was indiscriminate,” said Michael Paul Lindsey, an Idaho-based locomotive engineer with Union Pacific.

Over the past six years, the major Class I railroads like BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern have slashed their collective workforce by 29 percent (around 45,000 workers), leaving the industry woefully understaffed and putting extra strain on workers already accustomed to long, irregular hours. 

Lindsey said the severe staffing shortages have resulted in ​“constant chaos and crisis,” with workers being called at all hours, day and night, expected to take on assignments they were not initially scheduled for. 

Cost-cutting has also meant freight trains are running with more cars and more cargo than existing infrastructure is equipped to handle, or else misrouting rail cars just to get them moving. This cost-cutting, along with a labor shortage, have been major contributors to the supply-chain crisis. 

Meanwhile, the railroad companies remain highly profitable, with owners raking in $183 billion in stock buybacks and dividends since 2010.

By staff - The Local, July 22, 2022

For a non pay-walled version of the article, see the Red Green Labor version.

A worker operates machinery at a factory in Trezzano sul Naviglio, near Milan, Northern Italy, on June 25, 2021. Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP.

The man, 61, fell unconscious and hit his head while performing routine tasks, according to La Stampa news daily. Efforts by colleagues to revive him with a defibrillator were unsuccessful.

The official cause of death is currently being investigated by police, but with temperatures pushing 40 degrees Celsius in parts of the country, heat exhaustion is thought likely to be responsible.

Factory workers from the local area organised an eight-hour picket on Friday outside the Dana Graziano plant in Rivoli where the man worked.

Italy is in the midst of a scorching mid-July heatwave, and most factories do not have air conditioning systems.

The Fiom CGIL metal workers’ union say they have recently received multiple reports of factory temperatures reaching over 35 degrees Celsius in the Piedmont area. At the Mirafiori Fiat manufacturing plant in Turin, workers have reportedly recorded highs of 40 degrees.

A previous strike called by auto parts workers on Tuesday protested the “intense pace of work” workers are required to keep up in the “unbearable heat of these past few days”.

“There are many of our members who are reporting illnesses in the factory due to the intense heat of the last few weeks,” Edi Lazzi, Fiom CGIL’s Turin general secretary, told La Stampa.

Italy does not have a nationally unified labor code, but worker’s rights are enshrined in the constitution and touched on in various laws.

According to the site Lavori e diretti (work and rights), article 2087 of the Italian civil code requires employers to protect employees’ health and wellbeing.

National legislation does not require companies to keep the workplace within any particular temperature range, though workplace accident insurance institute Inail recommends in summer there should not be more than a seven degree difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures.

A 2015 Supreme Court case recognised the right of workers to stop working while retaining the right to pay in excessively cold conditions.

By Simon Pirani - Peoloe and Nature, July 22, 2022

OpenDemocracy yesterday hosted a useful, and sobering, discussion about the war in Ukraine and the fight for climate justice, with Oleh Savitsky (Stand with Ukraine and Ukraine Climate Network), Angelina Davydova (a prominent commentator on Russian climate policy) and me.

By Max Alvarez abd Jeff Kurtz - Rising, July 15, 2022

By Josefina L. Martínez - Left Voice, July 12, 2022

Strikes over wage increases or working conditions are occurring in response to high inflation, aggravated by the aftermath of the war in Ukraine. These labor actions show a change in the mood of the European working class.

Are we heading toward a summer of discontent in Europe? Can we foresee a hot autumn on the Continent? It would be hasty to make such statements, but new strike activity is beginning to unfold among sectors of several countries’ working class. Inflation reached 8.8 percent as a European average in May (with higher rates in countries like the UK and Spain). After years of inflation below 1.5 percent, this is a significant change that is causing a fall in the population’s purchasing power, especially among the working class. Many analysts are already talking about the possibility of stagflation: a combination of recession and inflation.

This is in addition to the political instability of several governments and a widespread dissatisfaction with the traditional parties. The latter was expressed in France in the last elections, with high abstention and the growth of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party and of the center-left coalition grouped around Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Emmanuel Macron lost his absolute majority in the National Assembly and now faces a five-year period of great political uncertainty. Another government in crisis is that of the UK, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson is stepping down.

In this context, recent weeks have seen strikes taking place in key sectors, including transport, steel, ports, and public services, as well as in more precarious sectors. Although there are differences among these countries, the strikes are opening a breach in the climate of “national unity” that governments tried to impose a few months ago, when the war in Ukraine began. In this article we review some of these labor conflicts in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and other countries.

By Tom Wetzel and James Tracy - Firestorm Coop, July 7, 2022