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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

16 hours ago

All Solidarity with Uber/Lyft drivers uniting in solidarity and fight back against the super-exploitation of the world-wide, billion-dollar gig-corporate monsters!

Yesterday in Saugus, MA ... See MoreSee Less

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

19 hours ago

unions4durham.org/durham-workers-assembly-supports-the-unc-teaching-assistant-and-professor-strik... ... See MoreSee Less

Durham Workers Assembly Supports the UNC Teaching Assistant and Professor Strike against white supremacy! #SilenceSam – Durham Workers Assembly

unions4durham.org

Action Alert In the News Durham Workers Assembly Supports the UNC Teaching Assistant and Professor Strike against white supremacy! #SilenceSam by admin|Published December 11, 2018 In response to the B...

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Support the Unions

Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers added 5 new photos — with Claude J St Germain and Stevan Kirschbaum.

1 day ago

Team Solidarity wins justice for unjustly terminated veteran driver & Team Solidarity stalwart Jean Willvey Blaise! Back to work tomorrow am! When we fight, we WIN! Congrats brother Blaise! ... See MoreSee Less

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

2 days ago

Cost Cutting, Austerity, Union-Busting at Public Utilities like Columbia Gas and National Grid is Criminal Negligence!

>A 42-year Columbia Gas employee repeatedly raised alarms about policy changes and staff changes to his critical gas-pressure monitoring department, warning the changes could lead to catastrophe.

>Bart Maderios gave an exclusive interview to the NBC10 Boston Investigators in which he said he warned Columbia Gas’s general manager, Frank Davis, and another senior employee, Dana Argo, that what he described as cutting corners would make work on gas lines less safe.

>“I had left months before, yes, and that’s probably my biggest problem,” said Maderios. “If I was there we wouldn’t be having this conversation today because that would have been prevented.”

>Maderios was manager of the meters and regulation department, which monitored gas pressure and the underground sensor system in the Lawrence area.

>He retired from Columbia Gas three months before the Merrimack Valley explosions, which federal officials say were caused by over-pressurized gas lines.

>And before he left, he said he warned Davis and others “that they were going to miss something. When you deplete the resources somebody’s got to cut corners.”

>Maderios said company officials also cut his department – the one responsible for monitoring the gas pressure–from four employees down to one.

Click for more
www.necn.com/news/new-england/Whistleblower-Columbia-Gas-Cut-Corners-Prior-to-Explosions-50250596... ... See MoreSee Less

Whistleblower: Columbia Gas Cut Corners Prior to Explosions

necn.com

A 42-year Columbia Gas employee repeatedly raised alarms about policy changes and staff changes to his critical gas-pressure monitoring department, warning the changes could lead to catastrophe. Bart ...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

2 days ago

Victory to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at Amazon!

>Employees backing the union effort said issues at the warehouse include safety concerns, inadequate pay, and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks and unreasonable hourly quotas, after which they lose more of their day waiting unpaid in long lines for security checks.

>"They talk to you like you’re nothing -- all they care about is their numbers," said Rashad Long, who makes $18.60 an hour and commutes four hours a day to work at the warehouse. "They talk to you like you’re a robot."
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/employees-at-amazon-s-new-nyc-warehouse-launch-unioniz... ... See MoreSee Less

Employees at Amazon's New NYC Warehouse Launch Unionization Push

bloomberg.com

A committee of employees at Amazon’s recently opened Staten Island fulfillment center is going public with a unionization campaign, a fresh challenge to the e-commerce giant in a city where it plans...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

4 days ago

>Tensions have been rising in Haiti for decades, but have sharpened in particular since the disastrous earthquake of 2010. Both the Nov. 20 Washington Post and the Nov. 23 New York Times reported on this uprising in Haiti as if it were not connected to Haiti’s extreme poverty, reinforced by the U.N. occupation acting as a proxy for the U.S., nor to the U.S. picking the last two Haitian presidents.

>The Haitian government is currently under tremendous popular pressure to resign. However, the U.S. embassy in Haiti issued the following statement: “The United States supports the human rights of people everywhere to freely express themselves and peacefully protest, and supports the Haitian government as it safeguards both those rights, and the security of public and private property.” This has to be seen as interference in another country’s internal affairs.

>Haiti has every right to make its own decisions without any U.S. intervention.

www.workers.org/2018/12/03/haitians-strike-on-vertieres-anniversary/ ... See MoreSee Less

Haitians strike on Vertières anniversary

workers.org

It’s an uprising. Some 80 percent of Haitians went on strike for days after massive protests throughout the country on Nov. 18. That date marked the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, wh…

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

5 days ago

All Solidarity with yellow-vest workers' rebellion and CGT strike in France!

>France’s hard-left CGT trade union on Thursday called on its energy industry workers to walk out for a 48 hours from Dec. 13, saying it wanted to join forces with ‘yellow vest’ protesters.

>The CGT said President Emmanuel Macron’s long-term energy-transition plan would hurt jobs and increase France’s energy dependency on neighboring countries.

>It urged its workers at state-utility EDF (EDF.PA), gas and power supplier Engie (ENGIE.PA) and all other companies in the sector to down tools. It had already called a 24-hour strike, but said it was extending that.

>The union said its members were “joining the protests which the country is currently experiencing.”
www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-energy-strike/frances-cgt-union-calls-48-hour-energy-s... ... See MoreSee Less

France's CGT union calls 48-hour energy strike in support of yellow...

reuters.com

France's hard-left CGT trade union on Thursday called on its energy industr...

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

6 days ago

www.lockoutatnationalgrid.com/blog/media-alert-statement-from-the-gas-workers-on-national-grid-ne... ... See MoreSee Less

Media Alert: Statement from the gas workers on National Grid negotiations | USW | Lockout at National Grid

lockoutatnationalgrid.com

The following is a statement from John Buonopane and Joe Kirylo, presidents of USW Local 12012 and 12003, following today's negotiations with National Grid. “Af

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 week ago

>The Boston agreement, reached after workers spent a month on the picket lines, marching and chanting in the wind and rain and snow, includes a roughly 20 percent increase in wages over four and a half years, a 37 percent increase in pension contributions, and six weeks of paid maternity leave, plus two weeks for spouses.

>But it’s the wide-ranging job protections that really stand out: a five-year job guarantee for immigrants if their protected status is revoked; 165-day advance notification of new technology and mandatory training for workers whose jobs will be affected by it; an alert system for housekeepers in case of an assault, as well as a registry of guests accused of sexual misconduct and possible banishment from the hotel.

>The far-reaching contract reflects the need for companies to keep employees happy in a tight job market, labor experts say, especially with workers increasingly standing up for their rights. And the high-profile nature of the agreement between the workers and Marriott, the largest hotel chain in the world, could invigorate the labor movement and influence public policy on pressing 21st-century workplace issues such as technology, sexual harassment, immigration, and retirement.
www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/12/05/progressive-marriott-union-contract-could-have-ripple-eff... ... See MoreSee Less

Progressive Marriott union contract could have ripple effects - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com

Protections for immigrants, required training for new technology, and a registry of guests accused of sexual harassment seen as a boon for workers everywhere

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

2 weeks ago

Boston hotel workers victorious in historic national strike against Marriott
By Ed Childs and G. Lechat posted on December 1, 2018

Photo: Unite HERE Local 26

Boston’s UNITE HERE Local 26 Marriott hotel workers ended their 46-day strike with a decisive victory. Chanting “One job should be enough!” — the slogan of this historic national strike that included locals from Detroit, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle and Hawaii — Boston workers ratified a new contract with anti-union Marriott International on Nov. 17.

For Local 26, which also represents dining hall workers at Harvard University who struck for 22 days in 2016, this is a second landmark victory for the working class in the current national struggle against “right-to-work” (RTW) laws and other anti-union actions like the Janus decision.
www.workers.org/2018/12/01/boston-hotel-workers-victorious-in-historic-national-strike-against-ma... ... See MoreSee Less

Boston hotel workers victorious in historic national strike against Marriott

workers.org

Boston’s UNITE HERE Local 26 Marriott hotel workers ended their 46-day strike with a decisive victory. Chanting “One job should be enough!” — the slogan of this historic national strike…

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

2 weeks ago

ACT UP with the UAW!
GM is an organized crime operation.
www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/11/26/slashing-factory-and-white-collar-jobs-north-america/ufIu... ... See MoreSee Less

GM slashing 14,700 factory and white collar jobs in North America - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com

General Motors will also put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

3 weeks ago

Somali Workers in Minnesota Force Amazon to Negotiate

Labor organizers and researchers said they had not heard of Amazon previously coming to the table after worker pressure, even for private discussions.

By Karen Weise
New York Times, Nov. 20, 2018

Soon after Hibaq Mohamed immigrated to Minneapolis from Kenya, where she had been living as a refugee, in 2016 she got a job at a new Amazon warehouse near the city. At first, she enjoyed packing boxes for delivery to consumers.

But over time, she said, Amazon required her and her co-workers to pack at a faster rate, at least 230 items an hour, up from 160. Ms. Mohamed, who is Muslim, said that Amazon let her take paid breaks to pray, as required by state law, but that her managers had told her that she still needed to keep pace.

“There is just pressure,” Ms. Mohamed, 24, said. “The people they don’t fire worry one day they will be fired.”

Ms. Mohamed and scores of East African colleagues, many of them, like her, born in Somalia, responded in an unusual way for Amazon workers: They organized to complain.

Now, tied together by a close cultural connection and empowered by a tight labor market, they appear to be the first known group in the United States to get Amazon management to negotiate.

After modest protests over the summer, the workers have had two private meetings with management in recent months. Labor organizers and researchers said they were not aware of Amazon coming to the table previously in the United States amid pressure from workers, even for private discussions.

Last week, Amazon offered some compromises at its facilities in the Minneapolis area. The company said it would require a general manager and a Somali-speaking manager to agree on any firings related to productivity rates, designate a manager to respond to individual complaints within five days and meet with workers quarterly.

By Saturday night, though, a group of about 40 workers had decided the compromises were insufficient, with a primary concern being the pace at which they are expected to work. They voted to stage a large protest and walkout on Dec. 14, in the thick of the holiday season.

“Each community is a little different, and in each one, we work to ensure our employees have a great experience with the most important element being our direct connection to our employees,” Amazon said in a statement.

Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One.
Ashley Robinson, a company spokeswoman, added that the company did not see its work with the East African workers as a negotiation but rather as a form of community engagement similar to its outreach efforts with veterans and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

To workers, the formal meetings were the result of more than a year of organizing by the Awood Center, a nonprofit focused on helping East African workers.

“Nobody would assume a Muslim worker, with limited language skills, in the middle of Minnesota can be a leader in a viable fight against one of the biggest employers in the world and bring them to the table,” said Abdirahman Muse, Awood’s executive director.

Amazon has sought to squeeze more profit out of its operations as growth slows. Brian Olsavsky, the company’s finance chief, told investors in October that “getting better efficiencies” from operations was a corporate priority.

The company now has more than 110 so-called fulfillment centers across the country, and other outposts that handle logistics. Each is like a mini-city, as another company spokeswoman once described them, with a unique culture and demographics.

Amazon opened a warehouse the size of 20 football fields in the suburb of Shakopee in 2016. It needed more than 1,000 workers to operate it, and the local unemployment rate was around 3.5 percent. That left the company with a limited labor pool to hire from. Immigrants make up a growing share of Minnesota’s work force, particularly in low-skilled jobs.

Somali refugees began resettling in the area in the 1990s, fleeing the country’s growing violence and civil war. More than 46,000 Somali-born residents and their children live in the state. About four out of five live at or near the poverty level.

Amazon recruited East African immigrants heavily with local advertisements and billboards. Hundreds signed up through the Confederation of Somali Community, a nonprofit. For a while, Amazon ran buses to Shakopee from the Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, known as Little Mogadishu, and the company has spaces at local warehouses dedicated to prayer and the ritual washing custom in Islam.

Sixty percent of Amazon’s 3,000 workers in the region are East African, Awood estimates, but the group has found only one manager who speaks Somali. Amazon said that the number of East Africans was notably lower, and that four of its managers in the area spoke Somali. For one of the meetings with workers, in September, Amazon flew in from Texas a Muslim manager who works on accommodating Islamic practices. He was originally from Libya.

Safia Ahmed Ibrahim, 52, said that in Somalia, she worked for American and United Nations aid groups before fleeing to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. She was hired to work at an Amazon sorting facility in 2016.

“I worked hard, and I got employee of the month,” she said. It was the first time she really loved a job, she said, and she remains impressed by the business built by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder.

But after Ms. Ibrahim returned from breast cancer treatment, a new manager scolded her for working slowly, she said. She felt the manager did not see her as a woman who had worked for aid groups, overcome breast cancer and raised a daughter who got into medical school just five years after arriving in the United States. Instead, she said, the new manager saw her as a worker who, on one particular day, was slow.

A white co-worker stood up for Ms. Ibrahim, she said, and the manager apologized.

“The new managers are like military — they don’t give you respect,” Ms. Ibrahim said. “At the beginning, I was paying attention to Awood, but finally the pressure they were talking about became the reality that I see every day.”

Awood said it had connected with hundreds of workers at the Shakopee warehouse and nearby facilities, with support from local mosques and community leaders. It shares space with the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations at a Lutheran church and has political allies. Ilhan Omar, elected this month as one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, has attended an Awood event, as has her fellow Democrat Tim Walz, the incoming governor.

Awood has four employees and is financed by grants and the Service Employees International Union, Mr. Muse said. A Somali immigrant himself, Mr. Muse worked for the union organizing home health aides and then as a senior policy aide for the former mayor of Minneapolis before joining Awood this year.

By the time he arrived, many recent immigrants were already connecting with one another as Amazon workers because of the company’s initial recruitment campaign and coordinated transportation. Workers talked about Awood during breaks and car pools.

They have a WhatsApp text message group and have held several smaller actions to build awareness of their organizing and concerns. After workers at one of the facilities near Minneapolis planned to wear light blue, the color of the Somali flag, on the same day, Amazon said it would build a dedicated prayer space there. When Amazon’s annual Prime Day shopping event coincided with Ramadan, they held a protest seeking lighter workloads during the fast.

“One thing to know about our community — we talk a lot on the phone and chat over coffee,” Mr. Muse said. “That makes organizing easier.”

Awood has also found leverage in the number of East African workers and the time of year.

“Because there is such a density in that work force, at this stage in the game, Amazon would have a very difficult time replacing that many workers, particularly at this peak season,” said Beth Gutelius, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a focus on warehouses.

Mr. Muse said Awood’s goal was not to unionize. No unions represent Amazon workers in the United States, although a group is trying to organize employees at Whole Foods, which Amazon owns.

Brishen Rogers, a labor law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, said union-organizing drives were long and grueling, coming down to a yes-or-no vote. Oftentimes, Professor Rogers said, worker centers like Awood that organize along affinity lines of culture or religion can force change.

“It is a perfectly legitimate way for workers to exercise collective voice in the work force,” he said.

Khadra Kassim, 31, was three months pregnant when she went to work for Amazon in 2017. After lifting a heavy box in the summer heat, she grew faint and fell down. She was bleeding and, fearing a miscarriage, went to Amazon’s in-house medical clinic. There, she said, staff members said they could not help her and did not offer to call an ambulance or her family. She had hoped for at least some compassionate treatment.

Amazon does not comment on individual cases, Ms. Robinson, the company spokeswoman, said. But she said the company worked to reduce safety risks, had climate-controlled warehouses and accommodated medical needs.

Ms. Kassim spent several months of unpaid leave on bed rest, and gave birth to a healthy girl in December.

When she returned to work, co-workers told her that something had changed while she was gone: Awood had begun organizing.

“I said, ‘I’m in,’” she recalled. “‘I want to get my rights.’”

Correction: November 20, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated Abdirahman Muse's initial association with the Awood Center, a nonprofit focused on helping East African workers. He joined Awood in 2018, he did not start the organization in 2017.
www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/technology/amazon-somali-workers-minnesota.html ... See MoreSee Less

Somali Workers in Minnesota Force Amazon to Negotiate

nytimes.com

Labor organizers and researchers said they had not heard of Amazon previously coming to the table after worker pressure, even for private discussions.

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

3 weeks ago

Boilermakers and Revolutionary Building Trades know how to turn up the heat on bigots! ... See MoreSee Less

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared UNITE HERE Local 26's post.

4 weeks ago

Union Power!

UNITE HERE Local 26
BIG NEWS! We have reached a tentative agreement and have a ratification vote scheduled for 2pm at the Hynes Convention Center tomorrow. No picket lines tomorrow! See the moment workers walking the final picket lines of the day heard the news. ... See MoreSee Less

Play

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers shared Usw Gasworkers's post.

4 weeks ago

End the criminal National Greed lockout, now! ... See MoreSee Less

Usw Gasworkers

1200 Gasworkers still Locked our by National grid...

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End the National Greed lockout!

Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

4 weeks ago

School bus drivers kick world-class ass.

>Merrill, a 54-year-old school bus driver from Sunapee, N.H., faced off against elite arm wrestlers from all over the globe last month at the 2018 World Armwrestling Championships for the dual honor of earning first place in the Grand Master Women’s category (for women age 50 and over) in both the right-and left-handed competitions.
www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/11/13/new-hampshire-woman-wins-two-gold-medals-international-armwr... ... See MoreSee Less

N.H. woman wins two gold medals at international arm-wrestling competition - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com

Cathy Merrill, a 54-year-old bus driver from Sunapee, faced elite arm wrestlers from all over the globe at the 2018 World Armwrestling Championships last month.

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 month ago

>The NLRB has never been a consistently reliable friend of unions. Its original purpose was to maintain class peace, not to make it easier for unions to engage in class struggle. Now, in the generalized anti-labor climate epitomized by the 2018 Supreme Court Janus decision, the board is openly functioning as a union-busting agency.
www.workers.org/2018/11/10/why-capitalists-love-trumps-nlrb/ ... See MoreSee Less

Why capitalists love Trump’s NLRB

workers.org

A majority of the five-member National Labor Relations Board are currently Trump appointees. With one seat vacant, they hold three seats, and that will jump to four when Trump replaces an outgoing …

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 month ago

>“It’s perfectly within the rights of white millionaires to take legal action to try to silence black and brown working-class people,” said Brian Lang, president of Unite Here 26, the hospitality workers union.

>Given that dynamic, it’s not hard to choose a side. And as white people all over the country continue to earn stern rebukes — and mocking nicknames — for calling police on black people performing everyday activities? Well, this all sounds a little like BBQ Becky goes to court.
www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/11/09/residents-sue-over-racket-ritz/RCg6LRPL4HQds71cEnOaxL/story.... ... See MoreSee Less

Residents sue over a racket at the Ritz-Carlton Boston - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com

Residents of the swanky condos above Marriott strikers say the constant drumming and occasional brass-band section have made their homes nearly unlivable.

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Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 month ago

Kathy Durkin: Google employees walked out around the globe on Nov. 1 to demand an end to sexual misconduct at the multibillion-dollar technology corporation. In total, 20,000 workers demonstrated in cities in the U.S. and Canada, Europe and Asia. This coordinated job action was the first international protest against workplace sexual misconduct — and a show of solidarity with those who had experienced abuse. Also protested were gender pay inequity and systemic racism.

The groundbreaking protest was effectively a rolling strike, lasting nearly a day. Workers first walked off the job in Tokyo at 11:10 a.m., and then at exactly the same time in each time zone, in Singapore, followed by European cities, including Berlin, Zurich, London and Dublin. The work stoppage then spread to many Canadian and U.S. cities.
www.workers.org/2018/11/06/times-up-google-as-tech-workers-walk-out-in-global-rolling-strike/ ... See MoreSee Less

‘Time’s Up, Google!’ as tech workers walk out in global rolling strike

workers.org

Google employees walked out around the globe on Nov. 1 to demand an end to sexual misconduct at the multibillion-dollar technology corporation. In total, 20,000 workers demonstrated in cities in th…

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www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/11/08/after-walkouts-google-agrees-step-its-transparency-harass...

Team Solidarity- the Voice of United School Bus Union Workers

1 month ago

Local 24 tweeted: “Union workers at the Westin Book Cadillac proved that even in a right-to-work state, when working people stand in solidarity, we win.”
www.workers.org/2018/11/06/victory-in-detroit-hotel-strike/ ... See MoreSee Less

Victory in Detroit hotel strike

workers.org

After almost a month of 24-hour pickets at the swank Westin Book Cadillac hotel in downtown Detroit, UNITE HERE Local 24 has reached a settlement with the Marriott-owned hotel. While details have n…

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Boston School Bus Drivers' Union

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

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

Harvard blockade bans neo-Nazi Bannon

Striking Dining Workers Win at Harvard