ORGANIZED LABOR — Year in Review
Looking back on 2014, much of the
movement in the U.S. labor movement
took place outside of — but with cru-
cial support from — traditional labor
unions. Nonunion workers — fast food
and WalMart workers, Los Angeles
port truckers, even taxi drivers — con-
ducted short strikes, sit-ins and labor
actions. And labor-community coali-
tions pushed pro-worker legislation in
city halls and state legislatures — be-
cause Congress wasn’t responding to
the needs of working people.
More than ever, labor is backing ex-
perimental strategies to escape a legal
framework that gives employers the up-
per hand in union organizing and in col-
lective bargaining. In 2014, that shift be-
gan to see results: Some big minimum
wage wins were labor’s top success
story of 2014, but state and local paid
sick leave mandates also spread, and in
November, San Francisco became the
first city to crack down on the inhumane
scheduling practices of retail chains.
LOW-WAGE WORKERS
ON THE MOVE
The progress began with a campaign
among America’s lowest-paid workers.
About 1,200 fast food worker activists
met for a first-ever national convention
in Chicago in July 2014 — a year and a
half after their movement began with
strikes at 40 fast food outlets in New
York City. On May 15, demonstrations
took place at fast food restaurants in 150
cities, and on Sept. 4, the campaign
upped the ante with restaurant sit-ins in
about 150 cities. Service Employees In-
ternational Union has spent more than
$10 million underwriting the fast-food
worker movement, which has united be-
hind demands for $15 an hour and a
union. In July, the campaign got a boost
with a favorable legal development: The
National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) said it will hold McDonald’s
“jointly liable” for labor law violations
by franchise owners. Since the strike
movement began in November 2012, at
least 291 charges have been filed against
McDonald’s alleging that it illegally
fired, threatened or otherwise penalized
workers for pro-labor activities. The
NLRB found enough evidence to pur-
sue the charges in at least 86 of those
cases, and 71 other cases remain under
investigation.
Meanwhile, labor activism contin-
ued in 2014 among Walmart workers
in the group OUR Walmart, which is
supported by United Food and Com-
mercial Workers Union. In January, the
online collective Anonymous leaked
internal Walmart documents telling
managers how to combat OUR Wal-
mart activity. On Nov. 28, OUR Wal-
mart reported protests at 1,600 Walmart
stores, as well as the first-ever sit-in at a
store near Los Angeles.
raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour
over the coming years. In July, San
Diego City Council passed an increase
to $11.50 an hour. In November, San
Francisco voters approved a measure
raising the minimum wage to $15. Vot-
ers also approved minimum wage in-
creases in Alaska, Nebraska, South
Dakota, and Arkansas. And in Oakland,
voters raised it to $12.25 — and guar-
anteed paid sick leave. Sick leave
measures also were passed by the Cal-
ifornia legislature, Eugene, Oregon,
city council, and voters in Massachu-
setts and two New Jersey cities.
Local action was necessary because
Republicans in Congress prevented na-
tional action. House Republican lead-
ers wouldn’t allow a vote on a mini-
mum wage increase, and in April, a
Senate proposal to raise it to $10.10
died when a motion to end debate
failed 54 to 42 (it needed 60 votes).
The notion of $15 as a new wage
floor also caught on in public sector
collective bargaining. For example, the
Los Angeles Unified School District,
Los Angeles International Airport, and
Multnomah County in Oregon all in-
corporated $15 minimums into their
union contracts.
UNIONIZING THE SOUTH
2014 saw fights to unionize big em-
ployers in the South, often with sub-
stantial opposition from local politi-
cians. In February, United Auto
Workers lost a union election among
2014: Year of the robot?
They work without pay, never tire or complain, and are positively inca-
pable of unionizing: Robots were on the rise in 2014.
In July, Daimler demonstrated a self-driving truck. The “Mercedes-Benz
Future Truck 2025” can respond to traffic while driving completely au-
tonomously down a freeway at speeds of up to 52 miles per hour. The idea,
says the company, is that a driver sits in the cab to take over when something
goes wrong. But who knows? Maybe that could eventually be done remotely,
one worker overseeing multiple trucks.
Then on Nov. 30, Amazon opened its doors to reveal that its warehouses
are now staffed by a reserve army of robots. Over the summer, the company
put more than 15,000 robots to work in 10 U.S. warehouses. The robots bring
shelving units to human workers, who pick items off the shelves and box
them for shipping. The robots then return the shelves to their location in the
warehouse.
And in December, a Lowe’s home improvement store in San Jose debuted
a customer service robot. The OSHbot greets shoppers, asks them what
they’re looking for, uses voice recognition to listen to their answer, and then
tells them where it is in the store. It can even take them there.
1,500 workers at a Volkswagen plant in
Chattanooga by 53 to 47 percent — af-
ter facing a high-profile opposition
campaign from Republican politicians
and outside political groups. But UAW
moved ahead anyway, formed a union
local, and in December was recognized
by the company as a “minority” union,
representing 45 percent of the plant’s
workers. UAW is also campaigning at a
Mercedes-Benz factory in Tuscaloosa,
Alabama, and Nissan plants in Canton,
Mississippi, and Smyrna, Tennessee.
In March, the Machinists union
opened an office to talk to Boeing
workers in South Carolina.
September saw the biggest union
win in the South in decades: 14,500
American Airlines agents voted by 86
percent to unionize with Communica-
tions Workers of America and the
Teamsters, and three-quarters of them
are in Texas, North Carolina, Florida or
Arizona.
PRESIDENTIAL ACTION
In his sixth year office, President
Barack Obama issued a number of ex-
ecutive orders that move the ball for-
ward for working people. Some of the
executive orders pertain to federal con-
tractors — requiring them to pay at least
$10.10 an hour, banning them from dis-
criminating against gay workers, re-
quiring them to disclose previous vio-
lations of labor law, and barring them
from requiring their employees to sub-
mit legal complaints to binding arbitra-
tion. In November, he issued an execu-
tive order allowing undocumented
parents of U.S. citizens and permanent
residents to apply for work authoriza-
tion and relief from deportation if they
can show they’ve resided in the country
for at least five years.
HOSTILE COURTS
2014 was a bleak year for workers’
rights in the courts. In June, a California
Superior Court judge tossed out a state
law on teacher tenure in Vergara v. Cal-
ifornia. And the U.S. Supreme Court hit
labor with a triple whammy. Its ruling
in Harris v. Quinn created a “right-to-
work” situation for home care workers.
In NLRB v. Noel Canning, it invalidated
years of pro-worker decisions by the
National Labor Relations Board on the
grounds that its members had been im-
properly appointed by the president.
And in Integrity Staffing Solutions v.
Busk, it said Amazon warehouse work-
ers don’t have to be paid for the time —
up to 25 minutes — they spend waiting
in line for security screenings before
they can leave work.
MINIMUM WAGE AND SICK
LEAVE BREAKTHROUGHS
Demands by fast food workers for
$15 an hour really bore fruit in 2014.
In June, the Seattle City Council passed
an ordinance (unanimously) that will
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
JANUARY 2, 2015