Upcoming Events 🗓
- The next semester of EWOC’s Workplace Organizer Training Series begins this October! The six-session program will cover many fundamental workplace organizing practices like mapping and charting a workplace, leader identification, building an organizing committee, organizing conversations, inoculation and preparing for boss campaigns, escalating campaign strategy, and taking public action on the boss. The first sessions will be held Wednesday, October 6 and Sunday, October 10. Register today!
- EWOC’s sustaining donor driver is underway! Our goal is to raise $5,000 in monthly donations between September 14 and October 12, to keep this project going throughout 2021 and into 2022. When you sign up you will get a fundraising guide, help in setting a goal, and weekly updates on your progress. You will also get your very own EWOC donation link that will help you track your donations. Will you help keep this important volunteer powered, and worker centered project going? ✊ Sign up today ✊ Everyone who signs up four people will get their very own EWOC hat! 🧢
Workers across the nation have had enough. After years of skyrocketing living costs, stagnant wages, the erosion of benefits, and the lack of reasonable rest periods, they are taking matters into their own hands. Which helps explain the growing wave of strikes, both in progress and on the horizon, some of which could make history.
In Seattle, the Northwest Carpenters Union strike is entering its second week, after four rejected tentative agreements and years of discontent over rising living costs in the city. In California, amidst chronic staffing shortages that have led to burnout, a union representing 24,000 nurses and health professionals is threatening to go on strike against Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare provider that turned a $3 billion profit in the last quarter alone. Meanwhile, film and TV workers will vote on whether to strike this week, after talks broke down between members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). If IATSE votes to strike, it will be the first in the union’s history, and the largest private sector strike in over a decade, with more than 60,000 workers.
Across every industry, it’s been increasingly hard to ignore the contrast between the glittering success of the business and the pain, struggle, and sacrifice of its workers. We’ve seen our working conditions grow worse and our jobs less secure, while billionaires and CEOs take home more money than ever. This is an exciting and possibly historic moment. After years of declining union power and a dormant labor movement, we’re standing up and fighting back again.
World of Work 🌍
NH: Workers at a Bull Moose record store have voted 15–0 to unionize after being fired and later rehired by management. The workers say they were fired because they opposed lifting a mask mandate at the store.
KY: The Heaven Hill bourbon distillery workers’ strike is entering its third week, as employees represented by UFCW Local 23 D are protesting attempts to lengthen their work week while cutting their benefits. In response to the strike, Heaven Hill distillery has reportedly robbed employees of health insurance and obtained a court-issued injunction regulating behavior at the picketing site, threatening fines if workers don’t comply.
NY: New York City has passed groundbreaking legislation to protect app-based delivery workers, in a series of bills that set minimum pay and working conditions. This comes in the wake of a study out of Cornell University which found that 42 percent of workers reported being underpaid or not paid at all, and nearly half had crashed while delivering food. While this is an important step forward, there is a lot more work to be done, as these workers are still classified as independent contractors who lack workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits.
USA: Across the country, restaurant hosts have been charged with enforcing mask rules and checking for proof of vaccination, making them targets for abuse by noncompliant and aggressive customers. These hosts, who are overwhelmingly young women, feel ill-equipped to handle the abuse and often lack the support of management, which is leading them to quit their jobs.
CO and CA: Over 1,300 Hello Fresh workers have voted to unionize, in a first for the meal kit industry that includes celebrated startups like Blue Apron. Hello Fresh workers report being unable to pay their rent on the low wages, chronic understaffing, and unsafe conditions that lead to injuries.
New From Our Blog 🗣
Mandatory anti-union meetings have been a standard union-busting tactic for years. For our blog, we broke down how to tell if you’re in a captive audience meeting, what you can expect, and how the PRO Act would make them illegal.
We talk about EWOC’s model for increasing union power and whether or not an app can help.
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
