Boston School Bus Drivers |

Don’t Believe the Anti-Union, Labor-Hating, Blame-Shifting LIES of the media

September 3, 2018

We Want Safety for the Children, Contract Justice for the Drivers!

August 27, 2018

Harvard blockade bans neo-Nazi Bannon

December 7, 2016

Striking Dining Workers Win at Harvard

November 21, 2016

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared a post.

3 days ago

BREAKING NEGOTIATION UPDATE: Minutes ago, UFCW reached a Tentative Agreement with Stop & Shop. In our union process, local unions democratically vote on whether to accept the Tentative Agreement at a contract meeting. If they vote yes on the agreement, the protest will officially end. In the meantime, while we wait on these meetings to be scheduled, our members WILL return to work tomorrow. This is a very positive development that we could not have achieved without your unyielding support. Please, stay closely tuned to this page over the next 72 hours as we will update you with more information when we have it. ... See MoreSee Less

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1 week ago

2 PM > Thursday 4/18
> Stop & Shop South Bay - Dorchester
Solidarity Forever!
Shut ‘em Down! ... See MoreSee Less

2 PM > Thursday 4/18
> Stop & Shop South Bay - Dorchester
Solidarity Forever!
Shut ‘em Down!

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1 week ago

Solidarity is everywhere! ... See MoreSee Less

Braintree Food Bank Offers Help To Stop & Shop Workers On Strike

patch.com

Any striking Stop & Shop workers are welcome to stop by the Marge Crispin Center in Braintree and take what they need.

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Thanks to Braintree food shop offered to Stop and Shop strikers, bravo!

Boston House of Pizza delivered food to the picketline in Roslindale when I was there last weekend. The workers said they had received other food from them at other times, too.

Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

2 weeks ago

>The UFCW, in its statement Thursday, said Stop and Shop was flush with cash.

>“Stop & Shop’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, saw over $2 billion in profit last year and got a US tax cut of $225 million in 2017,” the release said.

>The union continued, “While Stop & Shop continues to propose drastically cutting worker benefits, Ahold shareholders voted on April 10 to give themselves an 11.1 percent raise in dividends over last year. The expected payout will be on April 25 for around $880 million.”

>Bollen, the union president, said in his video message that the union would maintain solidarity.

>“We’re going to stick together,” Bollen said. “We’re gonna fight hard. We’re done playing games with this company. We told you we were going to fight like hell to get a good contract, and we’ve been trying to do that since January. We have not succeeded. The company will not give in, and it’s time for action.”

>Bollen continued, “Stay strong, stay united, talk to the customers, and we’re going to stay till we win.”
www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/04/11/stop-shop-workers-walk-out-after-negotiation-impasse/VOpLd3F... ... See MoreSee Less

Stop & Shop workers walk out after negotiation impasse - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com

Stop & Shop workers walked off the job Thursday afternoon, after more than 31,000 employees last month authorized their labor leaders to call for a work stoppage amid increasingly strained contract ne...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared a post.

2 weeks ago

Solidarity with UFCW
ON STRIKE!
Don't Scab
or Patronize Stop & Shop!
www.facebook.com/ufcwlocal1445/videos/658589027939364/

UFCW Local 1445
OVER 31,000 workers from STOP & SHOP On STRIKE. This is SOUTH BAY BOSTON ... See MoreSee Less

UFCW Local 1445

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2 weeks ago

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3 weeks ago

THE MORNING MEME
Five New England UFCW locals continue their negotiations with Stop and Shop owner Ahold Delhaize. The company, which made more than $1 billion in stock buybacks last year, is seeking concessions from its local workforce.

The Joint Council supports the UFCW and Stop and Shop workers in their efforts to maintain quality, living wage jobs in New England.

READ MORE: bit.ly/2uMpcQt
#newenglandteamsters #ufcw #stopandshop ... See MoreSee Less

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3 weeks ago

Lyft and Other Gig Economy Giants Cash In with IPO's Before Labor Laws Catch Up with Them

Recent filings suggest that the gig economy giants are hoping to get ahead of a wave of enforcement actions and new legislation that could force these companies to finally and formally classify full-time workers as employees.

April 3, 2019 Lee Fang THE INTERCEPT

GIG ECONOMY COMPANIES Lyft, Uber, and Postmates are racing to file IPOs this year, a mad dash replete with ever-increasing multibillion-dollar valuations. But is the rush to start trading on the public markets also a sprint to evade compliance with current labor law?

Recent financial and lobbyist filings suggest that the gig economy giants are hoping to get ahead of a wave of enforcement actions, new legislation, regulatory requirements, and lawsuits that could force these companies to finally and formally classify full-time workers as employees.

Virtually every major gig economy company — whether its focus is ride-sharing or grocery delivery — has fought to treat on-demand workers as independent contractors regardless of the amount of time they work. The independent contractor classification generally prevents on-demand workers from engaging in collective bargaining and unionization, and it allows the gig economy industry to avoid paying health care benefits and unemployment, complying with standard workplace rules guarding against harassment, or ensuring mandatory breaks.

Despite promises of high pay with flexible hours, ride-share workers have found that they often earn less than $10 an hour after vehicle expenses. Earlier this year, Lyft and Uber drivers faced new pay cuts, fueling unprecedented protests across California.

“For a lot of platform companies, profits are predicated in large part on exploiting workers, and people need to understand that,” said Maya Pinto, a senior researcher and policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project. “These companies either flout labor standards and hope they get away with it, or legally carve themselves out of those standards so they can exploit workers with impunity.”

According to some estimates, compliance with standard labor practices for full-time employees, such as paying for health-care benefits, could pose a 20 to 30 percent of cost increase for gig economy companies, which currently are not accounted for in their business models. Requiring compliance would radically reshape and negatively impact gig economy companies’ public valuations, and have been acknowledged by the companies as potential existential threats.

Avoiding Labor Compliance
In filings made to the Securities and Exchange Commission, many gig economy firms concede that their business models rely on misclassifying their entire on-demand workforce as independent contractors.

In a lengthy disclosure, Lyft told regulators that classifying drivers as employees would open the company up to claims for discrimination and harassment, collective bargaining, and requirements that they meet wage and hour laws. The ride-share company wrote that such a classification could lead to an “injunction prohibiting continuance of existing business practices” and that the firm would need to revisit its “existing business model.”

Upwork, a digital platform for finding contract labor, which filed for an IPO late last year, told the SEC that an adverse worker classification determination could be costly to both the company and its clients, and could unleash lawsuits, unionization, and a requirement for the firm to pay benefits to its network of freelancers.

Grubhub, a gig economy firm that provides food delivery services, told the SEC that classifying its drivers as employees would not only add legal liabilities and other costs, but would also make it “cost prohibitive” to deliver orders in many areas. Square, which owns food-delivery platform Caviar, has made similar disclosures.

These companies’ rush to file IPOs coincides with a flood of lawsuits from workers who say they have worked full-time jobs without the benefits afforded to full-time employees.

Just last year, the California Supreme Court handed down an unexpected ruling in a case involving the courier service Dynamex that limited the scope of companies’ abilities to classify workers as independent contractors. In the case, Dynamex had reclassified its entire workforce of drivers as independent contractors to avoid paying benefits as a cost-cutting measure.

The ruling opened the door to new legal challenges for companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Postmates, among other gig economy giants. Lyft, in its filing to the SEC, also lists nearly a dozen punitive class-action lawsuits over worker misclassification, including four class-action cases working their way through California state courts.

“The legal positioning of these companies’ business practices are incredibly precarious,” said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California-Hastings. “In fact, I would characterize the treatment and classification of workers as independent contractors as illegal.”

Litigation Tactics
These gig economy companies, however, are trying to get ahead of potential legal compliance with labor standards as they exist today. “The reason that — up until now — no court in the U.S. has made this determination is based largely on the legal maneuvering of these companies,” Dubal said.

Despite the setback in California, gig economy firms won a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court last year. In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, the court decided that workers can waive their rights to class-action lawsuits when they sign arbitration agreements, contract stipulations that have become standard for gig economy workers. Uber, for instance, swiftly cited the ruling in one of its major class-action lawsuits over misclassification of drivers last year. In October, a federal court decertified one of the class-actions brought against Uber, ruling that each of the 240,000 drivers in the suit must submit to arbitration for claims one at a time.

“They have hid behind arbitration agreements, used their significant capital to pay lobbyists, and settled cases where they are worried about getting an adverse judgment,” said Dubal.

In an apparent attempt to shed legal some liability ahead of its IPO, Uber this month paid $20 million to settle another major worker classification class-action case.

Despite their legal maneuvering, however, pressure is mounting. One arena where there has been a response to the precarious conditions faced by gig economy workers is in state legislatures. Lawmakers in Oregon and Washington state have proposed legislation that codifies a test to determine worker classification that follows the same lines as California’s Dynamex decision. In December, New York City passed the first minimum-wage law for gig economy drivers.

And there is renewed interest in worker classification among resurgent left-leaning national politicians. Democratic presidential contenders Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Kamala Harris, D-Calif.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have sponsored legislation to narrow the terms under which workers can be classified as independent contractors.

Gig economy companies, however, have worked hard to stay ahead of this legislative curve with an onslaught of aggressive lobbying. In a report released this week and authored by Pinto, the National Employment Law Project detailed how the gig industry financed a coast-to-coast lobbying campaign “to rewrite the rules of worker classification to carve themselves out of labor standards and to codify misclassification.” The National Employment Law Project estimated that Uber and Lyft lobbyists outnumbered lobbyists hired by Amazon, Microsoft, and Walmart combined.

In largely Republican-controlled states, gig companies have worked to get laws passed that completely carve their workforce out of consideration for employee classification. In states ruled by Democrats, they have opted for a carrot approach, offering legislation that shifts 2.5 percent of every business transaction into a general benefits fund for workers in exchange for the carve-out for drivers or delivery people to remain independent contractors.

“What is ultimately a better business decision? To try to change the law in a way that you think works for your platform, or to make sure your platform fits into the existing law?” Bradley Tusk, a political strategist guiding Uber and Handy, an online platform for contract labor, told CNNMoney.

While armies of gig economy lobbyists have delayed action on worker classification, the future remains unclear.

Amid this uncertainty, early investors will have a chance to reap a massive windfall when these companies file their IPOs. On Friday, Lyft was finally listed as a public company, instantly enriching a small set of early investors. Once other gig firms are also listed on the stock markets, however, the public market will be left to deal with the legal uncertainty of worker classification. Public investors will have to address the aftermath of any decision on how to classify workers, while early private investors will have already reaped their rewards from the IPOs.

“To be moving forward without clarity on the issue of the status of drivers is incredibly irresponsible,” said Dubal, the law professor. The IPOs stand to enrich the early investors, such as venture capitalists, by transferring risk to retail investors. Pressure to produce profits could also translate into more wage cuts for workers.

“Many of us will be investing in the companies without even knowing it — through our pension or retirement plans,” Dubal added. “And we — very much like the workers — are going to be at significant risk.”

Lee Fang is a journalist with a longstanding interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money. He was the first to uncover and detail the role of the billionaire Koch brothers in financing the tea party movement.

portside.org/2019-04-03/lyft-and-other-gig-economy-giants-cash-ipos-labor-laws-catch-them ... See MoreSee Less

Lyft and Other Gig Economy Giants Cash In with IPO's Before Labor Laws Catch Up with Them

portside.org

GIG ECONOMY COMPANIES Lyft, Uber, and Postmates are racing to file IPOs this year, a mad dash replete with ever-increasing multibillion-dollar valuations. But is the rush to start trading on the publi...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

3 weeks ago

Live Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968 ... See MoreSee Less

Live Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!
January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

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3 weeks ago

Local 8751 contingent on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., March 30, 2019 ... See MoreSee Less

Local 8751 contingent on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., March 30, 2019

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

3 weeks ago

Let me hear you say, "Union!!" at Amazon.

>A Guardian investigation has revealed numerous cases where Amazon workers are left to suffer after sustaining workplace injuries, leaving them unable to work, deprived of income, and forced to fight for months to receive benefits and medical care.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/02/revealed-amazon-employees-suffer-after-workplace-injur... ... See MoreSee Less

Revealed: Amazon employees are left to suffer after workplace injuries

theguardian.com

Amazon made its CEO is the wealthiest person in the world. So why can’t the company care for those injured while working there?

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers added 38 new photos.

4 weeks ago

Team Solidarity, USW Local 8751, Boston School Bus Union bus to the March 30th DC demonstration to say “No to NATO! No war on Venezuela!” We plan to demonstrate our solidarity in action. Long live the spirit of Hugo Chavez! Support President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution! US/CIA Hands off Venezuela! Join us!!! Let me hear you say “UNION”!!! ... See MoreSee Less

Team Solidarity, USW Local 8751, Boston School Bus Union bus to the March 30th DC demonstration to say “No to NATO! No war on Venezuela!” We plan to demonstrate our solidarity in action. Long live the spirit of Hugo Chavez! Support President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution! US/CIA Hands off Venezuela! Join us!!! Let me hear you say “UNION”!!!

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4 weeks ago

“The largest corporations and the richest folks in the world don’t recognize borders and neither should the unions. If we implement a working-class solidarity that runs across all borders, there’s nowhere for the corporations to go.”

“All borders” includes those of the nine sovereign Native nations within South Dakota. Kooper, who is Native on his mother’s side, has made relationships between Native workers and the labor movement a top priority. We discussed the American Indian Movement in 1970s South Dakota—“I don’t know if there was a courthouse in the state that wasn’t burnt down by the movement, including the one down the street”—the current exploitation of Native hotel workers in the Black Hills, and the trafficking of Native women throughout the Dakotas. Kooper stressed that Native politics, like labor politics, are complicated, but he’s optimistic: “It’s shameful that the labor movement has sat this fight out for 400 years. That’s over. Labor is on the front line of this fight from now on.” ... See MoreSee Less

‘Organize or Die’: Kooper Caraway Ushers in a New Labor Movement

thenation.com

The 28-year-old president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO puts international solidarity to work in South Dakota.

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4 weeks ago

A detailed report of the current general strike movement in Algeria.
www.marxist.com/algeria-wave-of-strikes-terrifies-ruling-class.htm ... See MoreSee Less

Algeria: wave of strikes terrifies the ruling class

marxist.com

As strikes get underway throughout Algeria, the ruling class is yet again retreating in the face of the revolutionary masses. More and more top officials are calling for the resignation of Abdelaziz B...

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4 weeks ago

Team Solidarity, USW Local 8751, Boston School Bus Union is organizing a bus to the March 30th DC demonstration to say “No to NATO! No war on Venezuela!” We plan to demonstrate our solidarity in action. Long live the spirit of Hugo Chavez! Support President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution! US/CIA Hands off Venezuela! Join us!!! Here are a few of our placards and Banner (which is being produced on a bright yellow material by our fabulous Union printer, Jeff). ... See MoreSee Less

Team Solidarity, USW Local 8751, Boston School Bus Union is organizing a bus to the March 30th DC demonstration to say “No to NATO! No war on Venezuela!” We plan to demonstrate our solidarity in action. Long live the spirit of Hugo Chavez! Support President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution! US/CIA Hands off Venezuela! Join us!!! Here are a few of our placards and Banner (which is being produced on a bright yellow material by our fabulous Union printer, Jeff).

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

4 weeks ago

Get on the Local 8751 bus Friday night!
Tell Trump and NATO, “Hands Off Venezuela!” ... See MoreSee Less

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared a link.

1 month ago

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How Billionaires Are Using Hate to Divide Us

commondreams.org

The only way to deal with them is with solidarity.. The union I lead, the United Steelworkers (USW), believes in unity, that “all working men and women, regardless of creed, color or nationality” ...

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1 month ago

fpif.org/unions-can-take-on-international-fights-and-win/?fbclid=IwAR2wqDTfrg9m-L2mg6aWkVxCK2OCud... ... See MoreSee Less

Unions Can Take on International Fights — and Win

fpif.org

The United Electrical Workers are a model of the working-class internationalism that can build a more just world.

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 month ago

>Wabtec is a company that supplies technology products and services to freight rail and passenger transit markets worldwide. On Feb. 25, Wabtec consolidated a merger with GE Transportation. That very day, the company announced it would no longer abide by the contract terms that the United Electrical workers union had previously negotiated with General Electric in Erie, Pa.

>Wabtec attempted to unilaterally impose major concessions, including forced overtime, pay cuts of up to 38 percent, a two-tier pay scale, extensive use of temporary workers and arbitrary schedules.

>UE Local 506, representing most of the 1,700 workers at the Erie plant, and Local 618, representing a smaller group of workers, did not waste any time trying to plead with the company for fairness. They hit the picket line!

>Nine days later the strike is over and the union is claiming a win. The tentative agreement is for 90 days, but UE is confident it can win a long-term contract. Terms of the short-term agreement include no pay cuts, no benefit cuts, no forced overtime and no plant closure or permanent layoffs during the term of the agreement.
www.workers.org/2019/03/15/rank-and-file-unionism-pushes-company-back-in-wabtec-strike/ ... See MoreSee Less

Rank-and-file unionism pushes company back in Wabtec strike

workers.org

Wabtec is a company that supplies technology products and services to freight rail and passenger transit markets worldwide. On Feb. 25, Wabtec consolidated a merger with GE Transportation. That very d...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared a post.

1 month ago

BREAKING: Tufts University dining hall workers vote YES to authorize a strike! With a vote of 137 to 17, now a strike can be called at any time. ONE JOB SHOULD BE ENOUGH! ... See MoreSee Less

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