As a matter of fact, if your employer fires you for anything relating to forming a union, that’s retalition, and it’s illegal under federal law. If this happens to you, vontact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Hundreds of union employees at three U.S. Nabisco bakeries that make Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookies and Ritz Crackers have gone on strike to protest proposed changes amid contract negotiations with parent company Mondelez International, Inc.
Approximately 200 workers at a factory in Portland, Oregon, have been on strike for two weeks and were joined on Monday by about 400 employees at Nabisco's bakery in Richmond, Virginia. On Thursday, workers at Nabisco's bakery in Chicago also walked off the job to go on strike.
Employees at a sales distribution center in Aurora, Colorado, also joined the strike on Aug. 12. All of the workers on strike are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union, which announced the Chicago strike on Thursday.
"This fight is about maintaining what we already have," Mike Burlingham, vice president of BCTGM Local 364 in Portland, told TODAY Food. "During the pandemic, we all were putting in a lot of hours, demand was higher, people were at home, and the snack food industry did phenomenally well.
"Mondelez made record profits and they want to thank us by closing two of the U.S. bakeries (last month) and telling the rest of us we have to take concessions, what kind of thanks is that? We make them a lot of money. It's very disheartening. How is that supposed to make us feel?"
The union is in the midst of negotiating a new four-year contract with Mondelez after the previous one expired in May.
Union leaders say that Mondelez has proposed switching from eight-hour shifts, five days a week, to 12-hour shifts, three or four days a week, without overtime, and with increased mandatory work on weekends without extra pay.
Don't let them go the way of Hostess.
Oh man, this is gonna be messy. I’ve said it loads of times in both fantasy and real life, and it always rings true : you NEVER cross the bakers’ guild.
Read up on the New York bagel famines. Bagel Bakers Local 338 practically brought the city to a standstill back in the day.
If you also didn’t hear, Danny DeVito got unverified briefly by Twitter for voicing solidarity with the union. Dan Rather got involved. It’s messy. Don’t cross the line if you can.
No contracts. No snacks.
A strike can only go on as long as its strike fund is deep. Workers have set up a GoFundMe - if you can, support them in solidarity!
Just checked and this does appear to still be ongoing as of Monday Sep. 13, 2021. Don't cross the picket line.
Railroad Workers United ✊ (@railroadworkers) Tweeted:
No contract. No snacks.
Flour and sugar stays on tracks. https://twitter.com/railroadworkers/status/1431277919549235209?s=20
Nabisco workers are striking for beter conditions. Dont cross the picket line dont buy Nabisco
With the IPCC report and climate change in the news, a couple of reminders are due:
"The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” - contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015."
"Luxury consumption by the rich concentrates economic activity and delivers negligible extra wellbeing, yet sucks up vast amounts of resources."
"Affluent individuals can emit several ten thousand times the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to the global poor."
"Half of all our economic activity – all the mines, all the factories, all the power stations, all the shipping, and all of the ecological impact that’s associated with these things – is done to make rich people richer."
"The wealthiest 0.54%, about 40 million people, are responsible for 14% of lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions."
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis!
"The world’s superyacht fleet uses over thirty-two million gallons of oil and produces 627 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year . The world’s superyachts consume and pollute more than entire nations."
"The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury."
The wealthy pose our single biggest obstacle to environmental progress.
"The people who are actively cranking up the global thermostat and threatening to drown 20 percent of the global population are the billionaires in the boardrooms."
There no undivided, undifferentiated "humanity" that caused climate change. It is the fault of the ultra-rich, of capitalism, and of an economic system that prioritises growth over all else.
ayiam (@femm3bot) Tweeted:
doordash workers are going on strike today (july 31st, 2021). they’re demanding tip transparency and a base pay of at least $4.25 per hour. don’t cross the picket line. https://twitter.com/femm3bot/status/1421469032818036742?s=20
Hospitals are struggling for nurses right now because people are leaving the profession entirely or leaving for temporary travel contract positions that pay well. They have been treated poorly, underpaid for the work they do, and inadequately protected this year, and they’re done.
My brother in law said they’re advertising for a position in his normal unit, offering twice his salary. But they won’t offer him extra to stay after risking his life working in the COVID unit for months, so he’s out. It’s absolutely insulting, and so many industries are going to have a major reckoning coming up.
My father retired early because they refused to hire just one person to help with the work load. They had to hire 5 people to replace him.
This is a common occurrence amongst his retired coffee group.
One lady was a head nurse that ran two floor at her hospital. They wanted her to take on more work. She agreed to do so oy if they gave her a small raise and hired an assistant for her. They refused so she retired early. They had to replace her with 20 people.
You are NOT replaceable!!! They tell you this to make you complacent to their exploration of you.
Fun fact! This sort of reckoning happened after the Black Plague, also! I'm no historian, (and history side of tumblr, please come in with the accuracy) but I did look into the history of the Black Plague for writing purposes, and in that case, it was because there were so few people left that peasants started agitating for better treatment and fairer wages, and because there were so few people who could do the work they had been doing that they were able to gain better wages and better hours. Historically, the labour shortage created by pandemics means a heightened bargaining capacity for workers of all sorts - an if there was ever a time to take advantage of knowing history, it's now. Because the thing is, in these "unprecedented times" there are precedents, and the precedent leans toward workers. During the Black Death, villages emptied, fields were left, and people migrated to find work that paid them better and offered a better way of life. Wages for lower-class workers rose drastically. In Oxfordshire; a plowman who had earned two shillings per week before the plague could command 10 shillings per week afterward. Pay rates for artisans increased, too. In Paris, wages for masons quadrupled between 1351 and 1355.
This isn't to say that the elites just let this happen, either. Laws were passed to limit wage increases, and threats were made, but the workers had economic bargaining power on their side. Labour was in such short supply that employers and landlords had to take what they could get. The people held out - and so can (and should!) YOU.
This was the start of peasant revolts, popular rebellions, and - ultimately, more labour protections, political representation for the lower classes, lower taxes, and an end to serfdom. People could afford to own their own land, the feudal system vanished, and eventually, the Renaissance would rise. In these unprecedented times, there is a precedent, and that precedent is that when workers know their worth, agitate for better and for more, when they hold out and unite, they force the elites to loosen the reigns, giving more power, autonomy, rights, and profits back into the hands of the workers, and with that freedom, society improves.
Know your worth. Know that you have bargaining power. Let's make this pandemic part of the precedent. <3
👆 “Historically, the labour shortage created by pandemics means a heightened bargaining capacity for workers of all sorts - an if there was ever a time to take advantage of knowing history, it's now. Because the thing is, in these "unprecedented times" there are precedents, and the precedent leans toward workers. “
🚫🚫TODAY, JULY 28TH, 2021, DO NOT LOG INTO THE FOLLOWING GAMES🚫🚫
Here is the statement of intent from the striking employees and ways you can support #Actiblizzwalkout
Log out of the BNet launcher too.
So, this hasn't crossed my dash yet. (Not blaming anyone, there is soooo much going on in the world and I'd also missed it in the noise).
There is currently a strike at Frito-Lay. in Topeka. These workers are striking because:
They were being forced to work 84 hour weeks. The company's best offer so far is a 60 hour cap. This is shit we fought for a century ago, people.
Their generous offer also includes a whole 4 percent wage increase...over the next 2 years. I'm not sure what COL is in Topeka, but... Well, it's better than the entire 77 cents they've apparently gotten in the last decade.
There's also a report that a worker literally collapsed and dropped dead on the line and the foreman's response was to make them move the body out of the way and put in a replacement. (However, this is unconfirmed and, of course, the company denies it).
There have been multiple OSHA violations at this plant over the last few years, including a forklift accident that's under investigation.
They've now been striking since July 5 but, of course, it only hit the national media yesterday.
So, why am I signal boosting this?
Because Frito-Lay is refusing to budge. They are attempting to make the excuse that union leadership agreed to the 60 hour work week and crappy pay cut...when union leadership only agreed to put it to a vote.
And this means that we need to put the thumbscrews on them. Remember, this is about 19th century style working conditions.
So, I'm calling on my followers to boycott Frito Lay's until the strike is involved.
Frito-Lay owns:
Lay's
Doritos (Sorry. I really am. I KNOW there's no good alternative to Doritos, although Zapp's are good if you can find them).
Fritos
Tostitos
Cheetos
Ruffles
Sun Chips
Baken-ets
Chester's
Cracker Jack
Islen plantain chips
Funyuns
Grandma's (the cookies)
Matador Meat Snacks
Maui style potato chips
Miss Vickie's
Munchies
Munchos
Rolled Gold
Sabritones
Santitas
Simply
Smartfood
Stacys
The Walking Taco
NatuChips
PopCorners (this one wasn't on their website, but was bought by Pepsi's in 2019 with the intent of adding it. So best avoided just in case). Yes, this really is more than half of the snack aisle. Suggested alternatives:
Kettle Brand Chips
Zapp's (If you can find them. My supermarket had them once and not since, so I'm guessing the culinary cowards in this neighborhood were afraid of "Voodoo" flavored chips).
Pringles
On the Border for salsa.
Wise Cheez Doodles
Bugles
Utz
Store own brand alternatives, if your store has ones that are any good.
Cheez-its
Check before you buy and let's tell these people they don't get to treat workers like that.
This was posted on FB recently by someone supporting the strike!
National general strike the time is now.
let's do it
This tumblr blog does not suport deviding the working class. Blue collar or white collar youre still wearing a collar.
A few I’ve run into/witnessed:
- if you’re salary and they drop you to hourly on weeks that are under 40 hours
The Seattle Times conducted its own analysis of Amazon’s workforce data last year, putting the company’s turnover at 111% during the pandemic. A New York Times investigation published this week put the figure even higher, at 150%, showing that Amazon was shedding 3% of its workers every week before the pandemic began.
A turnover rate above 100% doesn’t mean every single worker quits or gets fired in a year: It means the number of workers who leave is greater than the average number of workers employed during the same time period. So while some workers may last years, others last days. Under a turnover rate of 100%, every theoretical position inside the warehouse would turn over once in a year, on average.
That has huge implications for organizing.
Before the National Labor Relations Board schedules an election, a union must secure signed union authorization cards from at least 30% of the workers in an expected bargaining unit. In reality, a union wants far more than that ― ideally two-thirds or greater ― since they will need to win a majority of votes cast, and the employer may launch an anti-union campaign that weakens support.
At an Amazon warehouse, high turnover means a union would be losing cards every day as workers leave and new employees unfamiliar with the campaign replace them. Even if the union manages to win an election, high turnover could hurt its position at the bargaining table if some of the most active organizers have quit or been fired. And churn could even help the employer purge the union from the facility by convincing newer workers to decertify it….
On a more fundamental level, high turnover makes it harder to build solidarity. Those who come to see the warehouse as just a place to get a paycheck for a few months would feel less invested in the job, or a campaign to improve it. Workers who barely know one another would be less likely to trust each other or take risks together.
Gene Bruskin, a longtime labor organizer, said Amazon’s turnover also creates basic logistical hurdles as workers try to establish networks. Bruskin is in regular touch with Amazon workers who are trying to organize their warehouses.
“When you’re trying to build a committee and sort of track leadership, map the place out and figure out where your good connections are, you just can’t count on that,” Bruskin said. “The best you can do, knowing that you’re going to lose a lot of folks, is to try and create a culture of solidarity and activity … so that when somebody [new] comes in they sort of pick up the vibe. You just can’t be as dependent on a particular group of people.”…
Amazon openly encourages some of the turnover, offering employees annual buyouts to leave the company if they believe Amazon isn’t right for them. Under the pay-to-quit program, workers with a year under their belts are eligible for $2,000 or more to leave under the condition they can never return.
this is a good article, but there’s another one in harper’s with numerous anecdotes that speak to just what amazon has done to workers: Hard Bargain How Amazon turned a generation against labor
the article mentions that turnover is a big issue, but adds that this is compounded because most young people don’t have any experience with being in a union in the first place and don’t know what it is or does:
