Category Archives: Organizing
Report from PDA’S Winslow Leadership Meeting
‘This Is Our Year!’
McDonald’s ‘Guest Workers’ in Harrisburg Area Stage Surprise Strike
McDonald’s Workers in NYC
By Josh Eidelson
Beaver County Blue via The Nation
March 6, 2013 – Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonald’s workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike at 11 this morning. The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program. Their employer is one of the thousands of McDonald’s franchisees with whom the company contracts to run its ubiquitous stores.
“We are afraid,” striker Jorge Victor Rios told The Nation prior to the work stoppage. “But we are trying to overcome our fear.”
The McDonald’s corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The J-1 visa program is officially intended to promote educational and cultural exchange. But advocates allege that J-1, like the other guest worker programs that collectively bring hundreds of thousands of workers in and out of the United States each year, is rife with abuse. The National Guestworker Alliance (NGA), the organization spearheading today’s strike, charges that such programs—whose future is intimately tied up with the fate of comprehensive immigration reform—offer ample opportunities for employers to intimidate workers, suppress organizing and drive down labor standards.
“McDonald’s is just the latest in a long line of corporations that have hijacked the US guest worker program to get cheap, exploitable labor, and that’s what the students are,” NGA Executive Director Saket Soni told The Nation. “The conditions are horrific, but have become the norm for guest workers.”
The workers are striking over what they charge are rampant abuses at their stores in Harrisburg and nearby Lemoyne and Camp Hill. According to NGA, the visiting students each paid $3,000 or more for the chance to come and work, and were promised full-time employment; most received only a handful of hours a week, while others worked shifts as long as twenty-five hours straight, without being paid overtime. “Their employer is also their landlord,” said Soni. “They’re earning sub-minimum wages, and then paying it back in rent” to share a room with up to seven co-workers. “Their weekly net pay is actually sometimes brought as low as zero.”
Continue reading McDonald’s ‘Guest Workers’ in Harrisburg Area Stage Surprise Strike
Pitt Students in Solidarity with Garment Workers
University of Pittsburgh heats up over sweatshops
By Alex Zimmerman
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Feb. 24, 2013 – When Joe Thomas dropped off a letter signed by 25 student organizations at University of Pittsburgh chancellor Mark Nordenberg’s office, he thought he’d get a response.
When he didn’t get one, he helped persuade 24 more student organizations — including Pitt’s student government board — to drop off letters themselves.
"We were dropping off letters just about every day," Mr. Thomas said.
The letters ask Pitt to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring organization that works with 180 universities across the country to investigate factories where university-licensed apparel is manufactured.
Continue reading Pitt Students in Solidarity with Garment Workers
Rights for Immigrants Benefit All Workers
Immigration Reform Prevents Employer Abuse
By Leo Gerard
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost
Feb 4, 2013 –
Oscar came to the United States at the age of 16 to work. There were no jobs for him in his native Guatemala, and he felt obligated to help support his parents.
He was lured across borders by the promise of work. He believed, as so many immigrants do, that there would be a job for him in America.
For the past five years, he has worked at a Los Angeles car wash that cheated him and other immigrant workers out of pay, refused protective gear and even denied drinking water.
Employers such as car washes, corporate farms, construction companies and lawn care businesses entice immigrants into the United States by providing jobs with no questions asked. They lure undocumented workers in, and then abuse them with impunity. This endangers all workers because the low-wage, hazardous conditions undocumented workers endure can become the standard. This is especially true in bad economic times. More border security is fine. But to ensure safe, family-supporting jobs remain the norm, America must hold employers to account for baiting immigrants.
Like many immigrants, Oscar, now 29, stayed with a relative when he arrived in America. At first, he found work delivering cosmetics. The company treated him decently but laid him off when business declined. That’s when he got the job at Vermont Car Wash in L.A.
Want to Bust a Recession? Create More Jobs, Organize More Unions…
Organizing McDonald’s and Wal-mart, and Why Austerity Economics Hurts Low-Wage Workers the Most
By Robert Reich
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost
Nov 30, 2012 – What does the drama in Washington over the "fiscal cliff" have to do with strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza?
Everything.
Jobs are slowly returning to America, but most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that seven out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains. That’s why the median wage keeps dropping, especially for the 80 percent of the workforce that’s paid by the hour.
It also part of the reason why the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to 15 percent in 2011. More than 46 million Americans now live below the poverty line.
Many of them have jobs. The problem is these jobs just don’t pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.
So, encouraged by the economic recovery and perhaps also by the election returns, low-wage workers have started to organize.
Continue reading Want to Bust a Recession? Create More Jobs, Organize More Unions…
Here We Go Again, Get Ready for Round Two
Judge Expects Summer Trial on Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law
By Karen Langley
Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
HARRISBURG, Dec 13, 2012 – The legal battle over the Pennsylvania voter ID law is set to continue for months after a judge this morning said he anticipates a summer trial on a request for a permanent injunction.
The law requiring photo identification at the polls was the subject of an extended courtroom battle that resulted in an order lifting the requirement for the election last month while postponing a decision on permanently stopping the law.
Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, who issued the temporary injunction, said he expects to issue an order in the coming days scheduling a trial for the summer. The schedule would be intended to allow time for the Supreme Court to review the decision before the November 2013 elections.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Cawley, arguing for the state, suggested holding the trial sooner so the future of the law could be resolved before the May 21 municipal primary. But attorneys for the parties challenging the law argued more time is needed for legal discovery.
The parties referred to the possibility of a hearing in the spring to determine whether the law will be enforced during the May primary election. Karen Langley: klangley@post-gazette.com or 717-787-2141 .
Standing Firm: PDA Organizing at Charlotte Convention
Stage being set up for PDA’s Progressive Central’ forum near the Democratic Convention in North Carolina
2012 Convention: Pulling Democrats’ Platform to the Left
By Martin Wisckol
Beaver County Blue via Orange County Register
Sept 5, 2012 – Proudly liberal activist Tim Carpenter, who toiled in Orange County for more than 20 years before resettling in Massachusetts and co-founding Progressive Democrats of America, has made a career of standing staunchly to the left of mainstream Democrats, relentlessly beckoning and cajoling others to come a little closer.
His 8-year-old PDA group was at it again Tuesday, with a “People’s Convention” at a Charlotte church and soup kitchen that featured the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, a couple Congress members, several Congressional hopefuls – including Paul Ryan‘s Democratic opponent – and a host of progressive leaders.
“The country would have been a lot better if Jesse Jackson was elected and, if not, Michael Dukakis,” said Carpenter, recalling the 1988 presidential field from which George H.W. Bush emerged victorious.“We wouldn’t have had Bush I and maybe not Bush II. But (Jackson and Dukakis) are still engaged. And they’re coming here instead of parading around the convention.”
As usual, Carpenter is pushing an agenda beyond which most Democratic lawmakers are ready to support. But before outlining the list, Carpenter took a moment to celebrate a Tuesday victory: At the Democratic convention, delegates approved a platform backing marriage rights for gays – a clear distinction from Republicans.
“This election is not simply a choice between two candidates or two political parties,” the platform summarizes, “but between two fundamentally different paths for our country and families.”
The specific support for gay marriage comes after President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law and, until recently, Barack Obama opposed gay marriage.
“That’s a victory that’s been a struggle for a long time,” Carpenter said.
Among the 240 people who paid registration dues for the Tuesday event were 92 convention delegates, rallying around eight central issues including:
A single-payer, “Medicare for all” health-care system that, unlike the Affordable Care Act, would leave no American without health insurance. A series of initiatives to diminish corporate influence over the political system. “Main Street, not Wall Street,” Carpenter said. A carbon tax and other measures to address global warming. Immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. A diplomatic solution to the brewing conflict with Iran. “We’ve got to stop the saber rattling,” Carpenter said.
While it’s trying to pull Obama more toward these positions, PDA supports the incumbent’s reelection as far preferable to a Mitt Romney presidency.
And Carpenter remains as positive and optimistic as ever on a number of fronts. Take, for instance, Rob Zerban, the PDA member challenging vice presidential candidate Ryan in his other race, reelection to Congress.
“Now we get to beat Paul Ryan twice,” he quipped.
July 28 – Discussion of Worker Coops at Aliquippa Coffee House
Needed: Worker Organizing and Education
There is No Substitute for Organizing:
How Unions Might Help Win Future Battles
By Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jane McAlevey
Beaver County Blue via The Nation
July 3, 2012 – Before Wisconsinites voted down the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker, and certainly since, principled progressives inside and outside of unions have disagreed on whether or not the campaign should have happened. In fact, between the two of us, we don’t fully agree about whether or not the recall was the correct tactic.
But with the defeat in the rear view mirror, two clear lessons can be drawn from Wisconsin: unions need to reinvest in mass participatory education—sometimes called internal organizing in union lingo; and, unions need to stop focusing on “collective bargaining” and actually kick down the walls separating workplace and non-workplace issues by going all-out on the broader agenda of the working class and the poor.
Once you get past the reports that Walker outspent the Wisconsin workers by 7:1, the next most startling fact is that 38 percent of union households voted to keep the anti-worker Governor. That’s slightly more than one third, and had the pro-recall forces held the union households, Walker would no longer be Governor.
With major media outlets drubbing us with the 38 percent number, the liberal political elite seem stuck on a rhetorical question: why do poor people and workers vote against their material self-interest? Actually, in our own experience, the poor and working class don’t vote against their self-interest—but there’s a precondition: we have to create the space for ordinary people to better understand what their self-interest is, and how it connects with hundreds of millions in the US and globally.
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 