class struggle

By Anna Markova - Trades Union Caucus, June 10, 2022

As Egypt prepares to take over the COP27 presidency and countries gather for the Bonn Climate Conference, trade unions are calling for Egypt to end its repression of workers, trade unions and activists.

How is a just transition or safe climate future to be agreed in Sharm El-Sheikh in November while the Egyptian government imprisons thousands of trade unionists, journalists and civil society organisers? 

The TUC is calling on the UK government and specifically the outgoing COP26 President Alok Sharma to use his influence to seek assurances for the freedom and safety of Egyptian trade unionists and human rights activists prior to COP27. This should involve immediate action to secure the release of British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, currently on hunger strike. 

Egypt has regularly ranked in the lowest categories of the ITUC’s Global Rights Index when it comes to trade union rights and freedoms. In the ITUC’s 2021 Global Rights Index Egypt was listed in the worst ten countries for workers.

By Damon Evans - Energy Voice, June 2, 2022

In response to the formal notice served by lawyers representing the Offshore Alliance, a labor union, as well as the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), issued on 30 May, Shell has “now resorted to industrial thuggery in a desperate effort to try and stop protected industrial action on Prelude,” the Offshore Alliance claimed in a post on Facebook today.

“One of the Shell leads, who has been parachuted onto Prelude, is throwing his weight around like he’s some sort of big king dick…this self-styled hero tough guy has been doing his best to intimidate some of the younger female tech’s by demanding they tell him whether they are in the Union and whether they intend to take Protected Industrial Action,” claimed the Offshore Alliance.

“Shell’s senior management need to pull this idiot into line as the Offshore Alliance will bang both him and Shell into the Federal Court for breach of Freedom of Association provisions if he doesn’t pull his head in. Pull off your management thugs, Shell,” added the union.

A Shell spokesperson told Energy Voice that “Shell recognises the entitlement of all workers to exercise their rights, including the right to participate in industrial action.”

The Offshore Alliance has listed 19 activities that will be banned at various times from June 10 to June 21, as part of their plan to implement “rolling stoppages of work and work bans.”

“Shell have had two years to sort out our key bargaining claims and nothing less than tier 1 rates and conditions and job security are going to cut it,” said the union, which combines the industrial and organisational resources of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), to provide effective representation of offshore construction, maintenance, catering, and rig workers in Western Australia.

By various - Institute for Policy Studies, June 2, 2022

By Robert Raymond - Sharable, May 19, 2022

Studies show that a shorter workweek is healthier for people and the planet — but much of the conversation is focused on its impact on worker productivity or efficiency. This is a big mistake.

With the average worker in the United States clocking 47 hours a week, Americans are among the most overworked populations in the world — in fact, they work more hours per year than workers in almost any other industrialized country. 

Advocates of a shorter work week had a brief moment of excitement in California last month when state Democrats proposed a bill that would have required private-sector employers with more than 500 employees to pay hourly workers overtime after logging more than 32 hours a week. 

Unfortunately, the proposal didn’t make it very far through the legislative bill-making machine before it stalled out in committee. For the foreseeable future, the bill will remain in legislative purgatory. 

However, despite a disappointing outcome, the mere existence of the proposed bill in the state legislature is an important step toward shortening the Californian workweek — something that would be a boon to workers.

There are many benefits of working shorter hours. One that has been particularly compelling to employers is the fact that shorter hours have been linked to increased worker efficiency and productivity. For example, a 2021 study from Japan empirically determined that “when long working hours are reduced, individual productivity increases, and fewer mistakes are made at work.” 

Studies have also shown that working fewer hours actually increases worker happiness — leaving employees feeling more energized and giving them more free time to pursue their interests outside of work. 

I’d hazard a guess that the majority of us would drool over the prospect of fewer hours of wage labor and more hours in our day for rest, leisure, or — as the 19th-century slogan of the 8-hour day movement advocated — more hours to do with “what we will.”

In fact, re-framing this discussion around the needs of labor rather than the needs of employers is critical for getting us on a path towards a healthier, more sustainable world where workers thrive.

By Penny Logsdon, Jeff Kurtz, and Carrie Duncan et. al. - Fight for Two Person Crews, May 17, 2022

By Kenny Stancil - Common Dreams, April 30, 2022

In an act of solidarity with Chevron workers fighting for a new labor contract as executives boast of a record-breaking quarter, Greenpeace USA campaigners joined United Steelworkers Local 5 union members on Friday to expand the picket line onto the waters of San Francisco Bay.

Nearly 500 workers from Chevron's oil refinery in Richmond, California have been on strike for more than a month in what USW Local 5 vice president B.K. White calls "a movement of working people rising up to challenge a corporation." 

Chevron announced Friday that its profits surged to $6.3 billion during the first three months of 2022—four times as much as the fossil fuel giant pulled in over the same period last year, as Common Dreams reported. That prompted fresh calls from progressives for a windfall tax to prevent further price gouging and war profiteering by Big Oil and underscored one of the reasons why workers are demanding better pay.

"What's the answer to corporate greed?" Greenpeace asked on social media. "Solidarity!"

By staff - Just Transition Partnership, April 22, 2022

The dramatic rise in the prices of oil and gas, compounded by the reductions in supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated the failings of our broken energy system. The social and environmental damage it causes have underlined the case for a just transition to renewable sources of energy, giving people power over the energy system. This must be planned to create good and secure new jobs and to protect the living standards of the poorest, the wellbeing of all and the health of the planet.

Consequences of fuel price rises for citizens and corporations

Wholesale gas prices quadrupled in the last year, according to Ofgem’s statement¹ made on 3 February when it announced that the energy price cap (the maximum prices which energy retailers can charge) would rise by 54%. Further rises are anticipated in September.

On the same day , Shell announced profits of $19.3bn for 2021. In the last few months profits made by oil corporations have soared. “The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of the year” reported the Guardian².

National Energy Action said that in the UK the number of households in fuel poverty is expected to go up from four million in October 2021, to 6.5 million after April’s price rise³. That would go up again to 8.5 million in October this year, if the typical bill increases to £3,000.

As Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said on 3 February:“The energy price cap rise will turn the cost-of-living crisis into a catastrophe for millions of people. This will plunge at least one in four families in Britain into fuel poverty”.⁴ With rates of inflation higher than wage increases and benefit upgrade, living standards are under threat.

The consequences for employment of rising prices and falling incomes have been predicted to be negative across the economy as a whole. In the energy sector there may be some stronger recruitment where production can be increased in the short-term in response to higher wholesale prices but in a volatile market the longer-term consequences are probably going to be determined mainly by the direction of government policies on both energy efficiency and fossil fuel licensing , with the prospect of largest employment rises in energy efficiency.

By Braxton Wright - Facing South, April 20, 2022

This month marks one year since 1,100 members of the United Mine Workers of America went on strike at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama following the failure of the union and company to agree on a labor contract. The strike continues today.

Warrior Met was created to buy the assets of Walter Energy after that company declared bankruptcy in 2015. A number of hedge funds own shares in Warrior Met, with New York-based BlackRock — the world's largest asset manager — controlling the most, at about 13% at the end of 2021.

Earlier this year, Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) held a hearing on Wall Street greed and growing oligarchy in the United States that used Warrior Met as a case study. Sanders invited the CEO of BlackRock to appear at the hearing, along with those from two other hedge funds and Warrior Met, but they all declined to testify.

When Warrior Met was facing bankruptcy, workers agreed to an across-the-board wage cut of 20% along with cuts to their health care and retirement benefits as part of a restructuring deal made by the private equity firms, saving the company an estimated $1.1 billion over the past five years. Since 2017, Warrior Met has paid over $1.5 billion in dividends to its shareholders while paying its CEO over $4 million per year.

"Yet, now that the company has returned to profitability and has seen its stock price skyrocket by 250% during the pandemic, Warrior Met has offered its workers an insulting $1.50 raise over five years and has refused to restore the health care and pension benefits that were taken away from them five years ago," Sanders said in a statement announcing the hearing. "Outrageously and unacceptably, the company has also demanded the power to fire workers who engage in their constitutional right to strike and give seniority to new hires, rather than miners who have given their adult lives to Warrior Met."

Among those who spoke at the hearing was Braxton Wright, a Warrior Met miner and striking UMWA member. He called on lawmakers to support the "Stop Wall Street Looting Act," a measure sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, both Democrats, to help to reform the private equity industry and to give employee compensation higher priority in bankruptcies. This is Wright's written testimony from the hearing.

By Kim Kelly - The Real News, April 13, 2022

It was supposed to be a terrible day. Thousands of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) members and supporters were scheduled to convene in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, on the morning of April 6, 2022, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Warrior Met Coal strike. But, much like the coal bosses themselves, the forecast was not cooperating. The weather report, in typical fickle Alabama fashion, had been fluctuating between rain, more rain, and certain waterlogged doom; the union had bought ponchos in bulk to prepare. As UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said before the rally, “A little bad weather isn’t going to slow us down.”

.@HaedenWright and I talk every day, so we got a little goofy when it was time to do an interview. She and the local UMWA auxiliary have kept the miners’ families fed throughout this very difficult year; Warrior Met tried to starve them out, but as she says, “We’re not starving.” pic.twitter.com/GtUFv6GO7U

— Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) April 13, 2022

By the time I arrived at Tannehill State Park that morning, I was fully prepared to spend my day stuck in the mud impersonating a drowned rat. I was not surprised to see that the day’s schedule had been moved up in a bid to outrun the rain. The original start time was slated for 11AM, but the rally was already in full swing by 10:30AM. Like all UMWA rallies, this one opened with a prayer, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in the crowd hoping (or praying) that the universe would see fit to send us some good luck after all.

Buses were still arriving as speakers took the stage; according to an emailed UMWA press release, at least 1,200 UMWA members and retirees had bused in from Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and they were joined by union members from across the South. It was a family reunion, with a greater purpose—when the call for solidarity went out, folks listened. They came to pay their respects by the hundreds, traveling across rivers and valleys and up from hills and hollers to be there alongside their afflicted siblings.