December 20 — After negotiating with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 20 months, and without a contract for a year, 35,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) have set a strike date of Jan. 10.  Strong community and labor support is mobilizing for the teachers.

LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country. There hasn’t been a strike since 1989.

In the union’s strike vote, 83 percent of membership participated with 98 percent voting in favor. Three hundred unions in the County Federation of Labor have voted their support, and LASchoolReport.com has announced that the California School Employees Association — also representing LAUSD workers — has asserted their right to carry out a sympathy strike.  

On Dec. 15, a mass rally and march in downtown Los Angeles — estimated at up to 50,000 people — illustrated union members’ determination and support in a big way. Thousands wore red shirts, banged drums and snaked through the streets. Chants of “U! T! L! A!” “Union power!” and “Beutner! Beutner! You can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!” echoed from the walls of the city’s business center.  

Who is Austin Beutner?

The face of LAUSD’s intransigence in bargaining is the newly appointed superintendent of schools, Austin Beutner. His May 2018 appointment to that position drew an outcry from educators, staff and parents. His appointment was made through the support of Los Angeles billionaire developer Eli Broad, Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings, the Walton Foundation and others who are fueling and funding the national campaign to “charterize” and privatize public schools.

Beutner is a former investment banker with a reputation for breaking up companies and selling off the parts. He worked in Russia to help sell off all the workers’ socialized property of the former Soviet Union. He was also the publisher of the Los Angeles Times until he was fired in 2015. He plans to break up LAUSD into 32 “neighborhood networks.” According to UTLA’s website, in July he reportedly told a group of corporate supporters that the school district may “be no more” by 2021.  

With Beutner’s addition as superintendent, the Los Angeles School Board is dominated by pro-charter and privatization forces. UTLA’s membership knows that they are fighting not only for fair wages and working conditions, but for the survival of a public school system serving 90 percent students of color and 85 percent low-income.

The money’s there

LAUSD claims that there is not enough in the budget to meet the union’s demands of a 6.5 percent salary increase, smaller classroom sizes, more nurses and mental health counselors, and more school supplies. UTLA negotiators point to the district’s $1.7 billion reserve fund, which would be more than sufficient to make all the improvements that educators say must be made.

The claim that the district is legally bound by the state of California to save the reserve for “emergency use only” is a ruse. The state of California requires only that 1 percent of the district’s budget be put into a reserve, but the reserve of $1.7 billion is actually 26 percent of the LAUSD budget.

Classroom conditions have already reached what any objective observer would recognize as an emergency situation, with some classes having 45 or more students, school premises lacking even the most basic maintenance and nurses rarely available for sick or injured students. Often there is not even paper available. LAUSD claims the teachers don’t care about their students, but on average, teachers spend $500 annually out of their own pockets for supplies.

The Push for Charter schools: Racist, discriminatory

Los Angeles already has the largest number of charter schools in the country: 279 at last count. Charter schools are most often nonunion. UTLA’s membership has dropped by nearly 10,000 members in recent years because funding for public schools is cut when public schools lose students.  

The charterization and privatization drive is a racist and discriminatory campaign. The positive effects of the massive struggles and victories to desegregate public schools in previous decades are being chipped away. Charter schools can reject any students with no oversight. As families with more resources transfer their children to a charter, public schools lose children and teachers. The students left behind in public schools are often low income, those struggling with developmental disabilities, and as a whole, are disproportionately students of color.

In a recent Jacobinmag.com  interview, UTLA Secretary Arlene Inouye, explained why the charter school drive has made such an impact: “This is a form of segregation … with the charter school often having more resources, not being held up to the same standards, choosing the students they want, leaving the students needing more services in the public school. … Privatization serves corporate interests and is about control. Given the years of attacks on public schools, it’s understandable why some parents are looking to the charter model.”

Workers’ exploitation hardly disappears at charter schools, as their advocates might have us believe. If there is a silver lining — it is that UTLA is now representing more than 1,000 education workers in charter schools who have announced their total solidarity with the public school workers’ struggle. Like the unions representing educators in other public school systems throughout the country, UTLA  is continuing to organize charter school workers as well.

A historic series of teachers’ strikes that started in West Virginia and then spread to Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona and Colorado, began 2018. Of the five, only Colorado is not a right-to-work (for less!) state where workers’ rights to organize are legally obstructed . All of those electrifying struggles won at least partial — and what was thought were improbable — victories. They also broadcast the steep decline in living standards and classroom conditions in public schools nationally.

UTLA says that those strikes have strengthened the confidence and resolve of their 35,000 members. Community support has grown as well. If the current momentum for a UTLA victory is any indication, 2019 could be a year of victories for teachers and for workers in general. All out to support public schools and UTLA members!

Hundreds of union members and their supporters rallied in Boston in solidarity with 1,250 National Grid gas workers who have been locked out of their jobs for nearly six months. The lockout began after the union rejected a contract offer that would have increased workers’ health care costs and eliminated the existing pension plan. The workers are represented by USW Local 12012.

• Part 1: Robotics on steroids

It was still dark driving to work on Saturday, Nov. 3. That’s when I heard on the news that part of an Amazon warehouse had collapsed. Two workers had been trapped and killed. It was unclear which warehouse was impacted. Was I reporting there?

No word from Amazon, which constantly emails and texts us. I didn’t know what to think. When I arrived, I saw trees down, and roads to the adjacent smaller warehouse on Holabird Avenue were blocked off. Police and firefighters were stationed around the area, but the building I worked in seemed intact.

Everything felt surreal. The atmosphere was business as usual. I expected at Stand Up ― our early morning “Amazon pep rally” ― that there would be a moment of silence to recognize the workers who died in the building collapse. Somehow, my heart felt even sadder for their deaths, maybe because Amazon didn’t seem to recognize their value, not even a minute of morning silence.

My co-workers agreed with me. There should have been something, some way of recognizing the workers who died. Only after the 10-hour shift had passed were the flags around the building lowered to half mast.

Stand up for capitalism; stand up for Bezos

So what is Stand Up? Every Amazon worker knows what I’m talking about. I hated it. It is about 10 minutes of phony pep talks that are really designed to squeeze every drop of human effort out of every worker.

At the start of the shift, workers gather by department to get their workstation assignments. Stand Up starts with perfunctory stretch exercises, supposed to cut down on injuries. Following this, the manager ― with a mic in hand ― exhorts us each to be the “power picker” of the day. Sometimes, Michael Jackson music is played to energize Amazon’s morning pep rally. I doubt that Jackson authorized the free use of his music being to make billionaire Bezos richer. And at every Stand Up you either have to “clap it out” or do a raised fist huddle at the end.

I always hung back, disgusted at this display of New Age capitalist hypocrisy. I wasn’t the only worker who pretended to be half asleep. Very few of us displayed any enthusiasm, even lured with the offers of discount merchandise or free lunches as rewards for a “productivity record.”

Brutal productivity rates

The stories that are told by Amazon workers about the levels of expected productivity are not exaggerated in the least. In fact, probably understated. Pickers, which is the job I do, are assigned to a individual workstation. We are relatively isolated with just a computer, conveyor belt, plastic bins and 6-foot-tall robot towers that continually move on the floor.

From the moment we start until we turn the station off, our motions are clocked and watched ― yes, there are cameras everywhere. How quickly you pick each item to put it in the bins is measured. Slow? You can be written up. And I was written up for this.

If you make a mistake, especially if it’s misjudging something and marking the item missing, it is a write-up. Three write-ups and you’re on the way out the door, if not fired outright.

A young worker who had been a picker at the warehouse for about two and a half years clued me in on the production rate. He told me when he first started the highest number for picking rate was 250 per hour; the expectation now is as high as 450.

What’s it like? The computer screen tells you to pick a specific item from a specific shelf in a tall robot bin ― so tall, that if the item is on the top shelf  it can mean climbing a ladder. Get it, scan it, and put it in one of four or five bins indicated by a flashing light. All to be done in as little as 6 seconds.

You cannot sit. There is nowhere to do so with the exception of the portable ladders and this is forbidden. Even if the conveyor belt jams up and everything stops, you can’t rest.

On top of that, everyone gets exhorted frequently to pick faster. Win the prize. Be the “power hour picker.”

Several times I was singled out by my supervisor, who told me I was too slow and at the bottom rung of pickers. Amazon shames slower workers to push production ― they actually announce names.

Breaks that are barely breaks

We get two breaks during our 10-hour shift; both are supposed to be 30 minutes. One is paid and the other you have to punch out. But the truth is that you could spend up to 5 to 10 minutes walking to your break area, and maybe longer, plus the same returning to your workstation. You are expected to start up in exactly 30 minutes.

What is equally aggravating is the lunch break punch-in and punch-out system. You cannot punch-in early, so you have to stand and wait until the very minute strikes. But if you accidentally punch back in at your workstation-out 3 minutes late, you will be docked for an additional hour.

The pressure to meet production standards is so intense, even bathroom breaks are difficult to take. The bathroom may be quite a distance either on the other side of your floor or on a different floor altogether, difficult to reach within the time restrictions. On one shift, I was so worried about being written up that I didn’t go to the bathroom and had an accident.

Like leaving jail at the end of the shift

Okay, I’m older. I stumble at the end of the shift. I try not to. I try to walk straight and act like it doesn’t hurt, but it’s an act. One day at lunch, I  asked a worker who’d been there three years if it gets any easier. She said, “Nope. You get adjusted, but it never stops hurting.”

Other workers told us that conditions in the summer were brutally hot. “They finally installed fans at the workstations.” But people “still do fall out.” It’s so noticeable that there are signs posted in the bathroom stalls indicating the color of urine and other signs of dangerous dehydration.  

Although weapons and phones are not allowed in the building ― there is no scan when you enter. But to exit is like leaving jail. Place your keys and change in bins, walk through metal detectors, pick up your phone if you left it in a locker, scan your badge, go through the turnstiles and hit the doors to leave.

It’s dark out, but I’m happy to finally get to my car and sit down.

Two California teachers unions are on the verge of launching the West Coast’s biggest teacher walkout since 1989. At stake is far more than fair wages for school workers. Contract demands include smaller class sizes and less testing, as well as the addition of necessary health and social services staff.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Oakland Education Association (OEA) declared Saturday, Dec. 15, a day of solidarity.

Read more at Thousands of Teachers March Amid Looming Strike and Los Angeles and Oakland Teachers Rally Amid Deadlocked Contract Talks

Members of International Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 in the New York City area have been on strike against the Spectrum cable monopoly since March 28, 2017. The 1,800 strikers are fighting Charter Communications, which brands itself as Spectrum and which has assets of $146 billion.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge got a pay package of $98 million in 2016. But his greed knows no bounds. Now, he wants to steal workers’ health care benefits and pensions. Billionaire John Malone is the outfit’s largest stockholder, owning 27 percent of the shares. This rich pig gave $250,000 for Trump’s inauguration.

After buying Time-Warner’s cable operations in the New York area, Charter/Spectrum has become the second biggest cable operator in the U.S. It took on $27 billion in debt to finance the takeover. (Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2015)

The banks holding this debt, which Moody’s labeled as junk, are behind Charter’s strikebreaking. Finance capital wants to crush members of IBEW Local 3, one of the most powerful union locals in the U.S.All poor and working people should rally behind the Spectrum strikers. Check out their website at www.cutthecordspectrum.org The union movement should call a labor holiday to support these courageous workers.

The 500 Chicago charter school teachers at 15 UNO/Acero charter schools reached a tentative agreement with management on December 9. The strike has been suspended.

Chris Baehrend, the chairperson of the Charter Division of the Chicago Teachers Union, said: “This is a victory for students, parents, teachers and all staff. Because we stayed united, we won smaller class sizes, sanctuary schools, a reduced school year and equal pay with district [non-charter] teachers.”

Read the union’s announcement at CTU strikers reach tentative agreement with UNO/Acero management

First, a little bit about my background. I worked at a garment sweatshop when I was a teenager, piecing together pockets on raincoats, and later on a General Motors assembly line installing power window regulators until the energy crisis layoffs in the 1980s.

I worked at a food producing plant for 15 years — first as a packer on the assembly line, then as a machine operator, and at one point as a forklift driver.  All of the jobs there were unionized.

I’ve recited this history to illustrate my familiarity with physical labor, speed-ups and assembly lines to contextualize my experience with contemporary conditions.

Why work at Amazon? For two reasons: first, I was retired and trying to live on just Social Security, so I really needed the money; second, to better assess the potential for organizing. Frankly, I also missed feeling of camaraderie that comes from being on the job with other workers.

It’s one thing to read about Amazon life or talk to friends who are working at Amazon; it’s another to walk, talk and breathe it.

First observations  

I was hired at a Fulfillment Center (Amazon’s fancy name for a warehouse) that formerly was a GM auto plant where more than 1,100 workers had relatively good-paying jobs until it closed in May 2005.

This Amazon warehouse now employs over 3,000 workers. Approximately 1,500 additional workers were hired in October 2018 at another Amazon warehouse in the area, formerly the site of the historic Bethlehem Steel plant, as big as 13 football fields and once the largest steel mill in the country.

Approximately 5,000 Maryland workers labor at these huge sites along with two other Amazon warehouses: one where mostly part-time workers finish the last step of sending out products, and a smaller facility near BWI airport.  

Mass hiring: The cattle call process

Younger workers would probably laugh at me for noticing this: the hiring process is faceless and driven by the Internet. There is no human resources department in the commonly understood sense. You apply online and take a kind of aptitude test, with no past work experience asked for or needed.

Qualifications? You must be able to walk six to 10 miles a day and lift 50 pounds —  they mean that, too. The only time you face off with a human being is when you take your saliva drug test with 40 to 50 other people.  If you pass the test, your start date arrives via email.

Waiting for the test and orientation gave me a chance to talk to other workers and make friends.  

The majority were young. I believe only 3 of us, out of the 40 people in my group, looked over 50 years old. I was the oldest. About 80 percent were Black youth. The rest of those applying were white and a mixture of other nationalities: Latinx, Arab, Asian, etc. At least half were women. In other words, we looked like Baltimore. This cattle scene was repeated every hour as new hires went through the process.

One young woman, who told me she was 25 years old, was trying to get hired because of the pay. Her experience sums up why so many people are eager to get a job at Amazon.

She was still working at a Walmart warehouse for $11 an hour. Amazon was paying around $13. She didn’t really want to leave her old job, but she was taking care of her mother and desperately needed financial stability.  

Robotics

Amazon’s internal culture and the robotics end of it feel like a science fiction movie. I certainly remember as a very young auto worker being struck by the size and scope of the facility and at the same time the power of the workers who were unionized. In this case, I was struck by the power of the robots!  

We were ordered to never, ever set foot, or for that matter swing an arm, into the taped-off area where the robots reside. We were told that the robots on the special robot floor do not have eyes and can accidentally kill us. Violating this rule meant immediate termination.  Only those with special skills can go into that area. They wear vests and carry around special laptops.

I felt like I was living in the TV series “The Colony,” about to be transported aboard a giant spaceship to be taken to the factory, or in Boots Riley’s film “Sorry to Bother You.”  OK, I’m sure Jeff Bezos, billionaire CEO of Amazon, would take issue. But then he’s never worked in his facilities.

My job is as a “picker.” The robots and the coordinated computer system certainly run my life, my body, and ultimately my 10-hour shift.

No one wants to be a picker. I met several new hires who only came back if they could find work in other departments. They claimed that more workers assigned to be pickers were fired than from any other job. Usually 50 percent of the new hires don’t make it. (I’ll have more to say on this in Part 2.)

Our common refrain is that Amazon is like a big prison, only we are able to go home and sleep at night. At this time of the year, we go to work in the dark and get off in the dark. For full-time workers in the Maryland warehouses, there is no such thing as the 8-hour day — only 10-hour and 12-hour shifts.

Part 2: 21st century exploitation

With a settlement in San Francisco on December 3, the largest U.S. hotel worker strike in history has won better wages and job security for 7,700 Marriott workers.

Marriott workers went on strike in eight U.S. cities. The largest strike locations are Hawaii, Boston and San Francisco. Other cities include San Diego, Oakland, San Jose and Detroit.

Read the union announcement at With San Francisco Settlement, the Largest Hotel Worker Strike in Modern History Ends With Transformed Wages and Working Conditions for 7,700 Marriott Workers

Graduate student unions are making advances at Columbia University, Fordham University, Loyola University Chicago, Georgetown University, Brown University and other institutions of higher learning.

Columbia University’s graduate student union agreed to a bargaining framework with the university’s administration, a milestone victory in the union’s nearly five-year campaign for recognition.

Columbia’s decision is the latest — and one of the most notable — in a string of concessions by university administrators at private institutions across the country.

Read more at How Graduate Unions Are Winning—and Scaring the Hell out of Bosses—in the Trump Era

Chicago teachers have launched the first major charter school strike. The teachers and their union charge that the “independent” schools are overcrowded and underfunded. Charter schools are being used to create a second tier in the teaching profession, the union says.

The strike of 550 teachers and paraprofessionals in 15 charter schools is for pay equality with public school wages, more resources for students and smaller class sizes.

Read more at Chicago charter school teachers walk out in first major strike