U.S. Labor News Roundup
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Unions are joining the fight to stop banks from evicting homeowners.
Ramon Suero, for example, a hotel worker and UNITE HERE Local 26 member in Boston, fell behind on his mortgage payments after he got fired for organizing a union. The bank demanded the family get out of their house.
Local 26 members and activists from the housing justice group City Life/Vida Urbana vow to thwart the eviction with a human blockade if necessary.
The connection between workplace problems and housing problems is clear. People lose their homes because of unemployment, underemployment, low wages, or health care bills.
The freedom of strategy is a refreshing change from workplace fights, said one organizer. Labor law imposes heavy penalties for the most effective union tactics, such as sit-downs. Housing struggles offer “more openness to think creatively and make effective uses of our strength”—such as with blockades and civil disobedience.
Many of the groups borrow City Life’s organizing model: the Sword (legal defense), the Shield (public protest), and the Offer (alternative financing). Last year City Life toured to 12 cities to spread the model.
Postal Unions Agitate to Keep Delivering the Mail on Time and on Saturday
The National Association of Letter Carriers is calling for a national day of action March 24 to save six-day delivery. Hundreds of actions, in every state, are being organized to persuade Congress to keep Saturday delivery.
The rank-and-file network Communities and Postal Workers United (CPWU) is urging unions and the public to raise other demands as well: reverse the closures of mail-processing plants and post offices and stop the delay of the mail.
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Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is ripping apart the postal service. His mantra is “shrink to survive.” Over the past two years, he's eliminated 60,000 union jobs and closed 70 mail-processing facilities. On July 1, he changed standards for delivery, eliminating overnight first-class mail. Since September, he's closed 500 post offices. Ending Saturday delivery will lead to the loss of another 80,000 postal jobs.
Customers are experiencing delays in delivery and workers in the consolidated plants face mandatory overtime and speed-up.
Student Guestworkers Pressure McDonald’s
Foreign guestworker students walked off the job at three McDonald’s restaurants near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania March 6. They were protesting shifts of up to 25 hours in a row, wage theft by their employer, and overpriced, miserable housing, in basements.
The abuse throws a spotlight on guestworkers just as Congress is considering expanding the guestworker programs as part of “immigration reform.”
The students came to the U.S. on four-month J-1 cultural exchange visas. They were supposed to work full-time for three months and travel for one month. But they were given only 25 hours a week of work, while, said Argentinian student Jorge Rios, “we couldn’t do anything else because we were expected to be on call all the time.”
American co-workers heard the students’ complaints, said Rios, but said, “How do you think we feel? We have to take care of our families, pay our mortgages, you come and take our hours.”
There is no limit on the number of J-1 visas that can be issued, unlike the rules for other guestworker programs. Guestworkers under the H-2A (agricultural) and H-2B (nonagricultural) programs account for just over 105,000 workers every year, while the J-1 program brings 130,000 students into low-wage jobs.
Striking students said that after three months of minimum wages, wage theft, and inflated rents, they had no money to travel.
After press coverage of the students’ conditions—and presumably pressure from McDonald’s headquarters—the students’ employer said he will sell his stores.
“None of us told our families that we were living under these conditions,” said Rios. “That’s a sign something was wrong.”