Upcoming Events 🗓
Join us for the eighth series of the Workplace Organizer Training Series, starting on Wednesday, August 10, and running weekly on Wednesdays through August 31! In 90-minute sessions over four weeks, we will discuss the problems that workers are facing and how you can come together with your co-workers to address them. Learn some fundamental skills to help defend yourself and your co-workers from unjust working conditions! Register today.
As Starbucks union elections have spread like wildfire, organizing campaigns at Amazon warehouses have also progressed under the radar. Workers at warehouses in Albany, N.Y., and Campbellsville, Ken., announced that they have teamed up with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) — which notched the first-ever union election win at Amazon in April — to unionize their workplaces. Workers organizing at a third facility in Garner, N.C., also are considering partnering with ALU.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon and Starbucks have responded to these organizing efforts with the usual resistance. Once again, they are resorting to veiled threats and propaganda and even blatant violations of labor law to try and crush their workers’ spirits and solidarity.
But the workers are fighting back. Last week, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Starbucks and their illegal retaliation. Federal labor regulators have acted on these complaints by asking a court to issue a nationwide cease-and-desist order that could weaken Starbucks’ ability to counter-organize. Meanwhile, Starbucks workers at the Seattle roastery went on strike yesterday in protest of the company’s union busting.
Corporations like Starbucks and Amazon, and their billionaire CEOs, react with threats and intimidation because they have long known what millions of workers are now realizing: There is power in a union. Once working people realize and begin to exercise their power, the game is up. All over the country, a growing number of workers are throwing down for a chance at a better life. Their struggle shows that the fights ahead will be difficult. But the labor upsurge is real, and it is growing stronger every day. If you’re thinking about joining the fight in your own workplace, contact us for organizing support and come to our next Workplace Organizer Training Series, set to begin on Wednesday, August 10.
World of Work 🌍
NJ: New Jersey Medieval Times votes to join the American Guild of Variety Artists. The outcome of the vote means that performers at the Lyndhurst castle, one of the company’s 10 venues in the United States and Canada, have officially become the first to organize.
MA: Striking has been illegal for public employees in Massachusetts since 1919. But in Brookline, a small suburb of Boston, educators did it anyway. In short, they won all our demands with minimal compromise.
Argentina: Argentina’s federal intelligence agency is currently subject to a major investigation. It was found to have conducted a series of illegal operations against targets ranging from Argentina’s political elite, to families of the crew of the lost navy submarine ARA San Juan, to journalists applying to cover the 2017 World Trade Organization conference in Buenos Aires.
Week in Labor History 📚
July 17, 1947: On this day, the first major bank strike begins. Members of the Financial Employees Guild, local 96, voted to strike Brooklyn Trust. Facing intense union-busting tactics after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, strikers demanded reinstatement of fired pro-union employees and access to grievance procedures.
Solidarity,
Team EWOC
