VRWC War on Employees: "Working Families Flexibility Act."

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Blame Home Delivery Driver Layoffs on Proposition 22

Vons and other supermarkets will soon start replacing their delivery drivers with gig service contractors.

In the runup to last November’s election, critics of California’s Proposition 22, which rideshare app companies spent an unprecedented
$224 million to pass, said that

it would encourage even more companies to reclassify employees or fire them in favor of gig workers.

Now home delivery drivers who bring food directly to residents during the pandemic are finding these warnings to be prophetic.

Starting in late February, Vons, Pavilions and other Southern California stores owned by Albertsons Companies will begin

replacing their delivery drivers with independent contractors using a third-party delivery service.

https://capitalandmain.com/blame-hom...sition-22-0107

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Cops Hired by Amazon Are Intimidating Workers and Supporters of the Union Drive


Almost immediately, a police car pulled up next to us.

The cop inside told us that we were trespassing and couldn’t film on private property. “You can’t film here!”

We were nowhere near the facility, only a dozen feet from the main road.

There is no signage demarcating where public land ends and Amazon’s property begins, no signs prohibiting filming or pictures.

As we began to collect our things, another cop car rushed up to where we were, lights flashing.

“Stay where you are. My supervisor needs to collect your names and IDs,” the cop said.

“You’re with the press? Which publication?”

The two cops got out of their cars and stood close to us to make sure we didn’t move.

A few minutes later, a man in a golf cart rolled up behind the police cars. He came up to us and demanded our IDs.

“I need to take your names down.”

When we asked why, he gave no reply.

The cops demanded our IDs again and we refused.

After some back and forth, they finally let us go and we walked the two steps back to where other supporters were standing by the side of the road.

The cops stayed behind to keep watch.

The company has pulled out all the stops in its union-busting effort,

including financial incentives for “unhappy” workers to quit,

mandatory anti-union meetings, and

placing a mailbox on company property to “collect ballots.”

Amazon even pe ioned the city to shorten stop light times at its entrance so that workers leaving their shifts could not talk to staffers standing at the entrance or be exposed to pro-union signage.

Amazon has also enlisted the efforts of the Bessemer Police Department to act as “security” for the facility to intimidate not only workers,

but also the many supporters, canvassers, and press who have come from far and wide to cheer on and agitate for the workers’ struggle.

Off-duty cops guard the facility at all hours. Bessemer police trucks constantly ride up and down the streets around the facility and patrol the parking lot.

Moonlighting as union-busters for Amazon, the cops are key actors in Amazon’s behemoth campaign to kill the BHM1 union

They are literally being paid to contain the union campaign and to create a hostile environment for the workers coming in and out of the facility each day,

many of whom are people of color who are already the regular targets of police violence and harassment off the job.

https://truthout.org/articles/cops-h...e-union-drive/

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Biden’s 180-Degree Shift on Trade Policy

Thanks to the Rapid Response mechanism in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, trade is now being used as leverage to protect workers’ rights.

Last week, something revolutionary happened in the history of U.S. trade policy. The government used trade law to help labor, not to help capital.

The specific case involved an auto parts company called Tridonex, located in the border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Tridonex is owned by a Philadelphia outfit called Cardone Industries—which in turn is owned by a Canadian hedge fund!

It sends most of its products to the U.S., and is a classic case of offshoring jobs to Mexico, as enabled by NAFTA.

USMCA, includes tough, enforceable labor rights provisions, guaranteeing workers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada the right to organize and join unions free from harassment.

if worker rights at a plant in Mexico are denied, the U.S. can slap tariffs on the factory’s exports and U.S. Customs can block them from entering the U.S. entirely.

In May, the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and Public Citizen filed a complaint under the USMCA’s Rapid Response provision. The U.S. trade representative confirmed the validity of the complaint, threatened retaliation, and in less than three months they and the company devised a settlement.

Under the agreement, 154 workers will get a total of $600,000 in back pay (about $4,000 each), and

the Mexican government commits to supervising an honest election.

In another, more clear-cut case, the Biden administration did not wait for a union complaint, but initiated action directly. (

That case, also filed in May, involved a General Motors factory in the town of Silao that makes light trucks for export to the U.S.

the remedy agreed to by GM and the Mexican government is a do-over election with international monitors from the International Labour Organization.

The new election must be held by August 20. GM must be scrupulously neutral. If the election is not deemed fair,

the Silao GM plant faces tariffs or customs denial of entry of its trucks.

https://prospect.org/economy/bidens-...-trade-policy/

ing amazing, even incredible

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Google reportedly underpaid employees for years and tried to hide it

Google faces more employee payment problems.

https://www.androidcentral.com/googl...mployees-years

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USPS HAS CHEATED MAIL CARRIERS FOR YEARS

“I knew what was going to happen,” said Campos, who delivers mail in Midland, Texas, “because it happens every pay period.”
Two weeks later, when she checked her paystub in the payroll system, she said she was missing six hours of overtime pay. That added up to about $201 in lost wages — a week’s worth of groceries.

Postal workers across the country share her frustration.

The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay,

Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.

From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages,

Supervisors found to be cheating were rarely disciplined — often receiving only a warning or more training.

In four cities, arbitration do ents show, post office managers continued to alter time cards after promising union leaders they would stop.

The agency determined that those workers lost about $659,000 in pay.

But it allowed the Postal Service to pay back less than half after negotiations with the agency — a common practice at the Labor Department.

These findings point to widespread wage theft at the iconic quasi-governmental ins ution.

https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/workers-rights/cheated-at-work/usps-cheated-mail-carriers

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Walmart raises wage from $11 to $12, but stops the quarterly bonus

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Starbucks CEO begs workers not to unionize by comparing the company to Holocaust prisoners



Starbucks employees are inches from forming a union to advocate for safer working conditions, better wages and benefits.

Schultz compared Starbucks to Holocaust prisoners in his effort to stop the unionization.

He described the experiences of prisoners in rail cars headed to their torture and death in Nazi concentration camps,

Schultz explained that in those rail cars only a few were given blankets and had to share them with others.

He told the workers that the Starbucks workers should share the company's blanket instead of demanding their own individual benefits.

One of the many problems with Schultz's argument is that the workers are still the Holocaust prisoners in that analogy.

https://www.rawstory.com/starbucks-h...ocaust-blanket

I heard interview of Schultz on NPR.

The voice was flat, robotic, lacking in emphasis and affect, sounded like it was a recording of a synthesized voice.

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More than $3 billion in stolen wages recovered for workers between 2017 and 2020

rise in poverty and pay inequality is compounded by wage theft, which robs millions of workers of billions of dollars from their paychecks each year

https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021

one of the biggest wage thieves is USPS

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University of California academic workers strike over wages and benefits in largest walkout in U.S. higher education

Teaching assistants, researchers and other scholars seek higher pay and benefits amid soaring housing costs and inflation.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/1...trike-00066767

Cost of higher eduction due to cutting state/Federal taxes to pay for state schools, and egregious bloating of college staff

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'Victory for American Workers':

FTC Proposes Ban on Noncompete Clauses

Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted that

"noncompete clauses give companies unfair power over workers,

enabling them to cut wages and benefits

without fear of workers finding a new job or starting their own business."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ft...ompete-clauses

Would never see this from a Repug FTC