SAG-AFTRA’s National Board has voted unanimously to send a strike authorization vote to SAG-AFTRA members in preparation of the union’s forthcoming bargaining dates with signatory video game companies, which include:

• Activision Productions Inc.,

• Blindlight LLC,

• Disney Character Voices Inc.,

• Electronic Arts Productions Inc.,

• Epic Games, Inc.,

• Formosa Interactive LLC,

• Insomniac Games Inc.,

• Take 2 Productions Inc.,

• VoiceWorks Productions Inc., and

• WB Games Inc.

And May Day in U.S. was supplanted by Law Day ("to celebrate the rule of law") but it didn't take off because it wasn't a public holiday.

Ya can't make this up any better.

As a US-ian I can tell you this propaganda works. I grew up not knowing shit about May Day (that's like flowers in a basket, right?) or Labor Day and I routinely confused Labor Day and Veterans Day. This coming from a solidly LIB-slash-Non-Political household of teacher parents.

Instead of their pay, workers are being offered a money order that must be paid back due to what USPS called a "programming issue."

The USPS missed payroll for more than 45,000 rural postal workers this week due what their union called “an egregious payroll error.”

Workers will instead have the option of effectively taking out a loan via money order. The timing is not the most auspicious as it comes during a push by some rural carriers to decertify their union, which is seen by many workers as not doing enough to protect their interests after more than two-thirds of them took a pay cut determined by an algorithm earlier this year.

Earlier this week, posts started trickling onto USPS message boards indicating some kind of payroll error would result in some carriers not being paid and others being underpaid. Yesterday, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the union that represents about 100,000 rural carriers, issued a statement saying “The NRLCA has learned about an egregious payroll error this pay period affecting more than 45,000 rural carriers,” amounting to about half of its members, and that it had negotiated a temporary workaround where workers could get a salary advance by a money order from their post office equal to 65 percent of their gross pay, roughly approximating the net pay carriers get per pay period after taxes and deductions.

The amount of that money order will then be subtracted from their next paycheck which will include the payment missed this week, a USPS spokesperson told Motherboard, and workers can decline the money order.

The workaround poses all sorts of complications. Anyone who is on vacation or out sick will, at the very least, have great difficulty getting their money orders, if they can at all. Money orders can take time to clear with a bank and for anyone with a low balance and automatic payments for things like rent or credit card bills, that delay could lead to an overdraft. And anyone taking the loan is relying on the same USPS departments that screwed up payroll to process all this properly. If various USPS subreddit threads on the issue are any indication, few seem to have faith that the institution that failed to pay them on time will handle this seamlessly.

“The Postal Service identified a programming issue within its payroll system that impacted some rural carriers paychecks to be issued on September 1, 2023,” said USPS spokesperson David Parteinheimer. “We have taken immediate steps to ensure employees will be paid through a salary advance in the form of a no-fee money order. The programming issue has been identified and remediated.”

The snafu comes at a particularly difficult time for rural carriers and the union that represents them. Earlier this year, two-thirds of rural carriers took a significant pay cut without having their work change at all due to the implementation of a new pay evaluation system called the Rural Route Evaluated Compensation System (RRECS) that uses an opaque algorithm to calculate their pay. Many workers are upset with their union, the NRLCA, considering this system was the result of years of negotiation with the USPS. Pay is calculated via the collection of thousands of data points from their handheld digital scanners, and many workers feel they were not adequately trained or prepared on what data points matter for calculating their pay.

Are you a USPS worker impacted by RRECS or involved in the decertification effort? Have you had to take on a second job or gig work? We’d love to hear from you. Email Aaron Gordon at aaron.gordon@vice.com.

Jamie King, a rural carrier out of Palm Bay, Florida, took a $15,000 pay cut due to RRECS even though his route is still the same. “I’m back to the same amount of money I made 13 years ago,” he told Motherboard. “You give 13 years to a company and you’d expect you’re not at the same level where I started.”

King called the pay cut the “last straw” of a list of grievances—most prominently the two-tiered pay system that compensates newer workers worse than longer-tenured ones—that catalyzed an effort to decertify the NRLCA and join another union. King, who is helping organize that effort, said they would need to collect 33,000 signatures in order to petition the National Labor Relations Board to hold a vote, at which point rural carriers could vote on keeping the NRLCA, decertifying and not joining any union, or decertifying and joining a different union. He said they have about 10,000 signatures so far and need to collect the rest before the next contract goes into effect in May.

But what union would take them appears to be an open question. The Decertify NRLCA website says the carriers plan to join the Teamsters, but Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz told Motherboard, “We are not in talks with the rural carriers.”

NRLCA president Don Maston didn’t return a call requesting comment for this story, but on Wednesday the NRLCA posted on Facebook that it is “ aware of the efforts to decertify the NRLCA” and that it takes “any and all attacks against this union seriously and we will not sit idly by to see what happens.” It included a one-pager telling members that decertification would mean they’d have to renegotiate their contract, lose their union stewards and representatives, and that “management will have ALL the power.”

For his part, King said he would have taken a second job driving for Uber Eats or similar gig work like some of his colleagues except it would mean he couldn’t spend any time with his family. He’s stuck renting instead of buying a house, the rent keeps going up, and he needs to pull money out of his savings to cover expenses.

“We want a union that can represent us,” he said, “and we want a union that can represent us well.”

“It’s not looting if it was your fuckin money to start with”

On the 1st of septmber in 1920, the first of many worker occupations and seizures of factories in Italy began, a movement that more than half a million workers participated in.

During the month of September 1920, a widespread occupation of Italian factories by their workers took place. Although originating in the auto factories, steel mills, and machine tool plants of the metal sector, the occupation/revolt spread to cotton mills and hosiery firms, lignite mines, tire factories, breweries and distilleries, and steamships and warehouses in port towns. At its height, more than 600,000 workers were involved.

The worker rebellion was the culmination of years of labor strife - weeks before the occupations, the Italian Federation of Metallurgical Workers (FIOM), the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), and the General Confederation of Labor (CGL) called for "obstructionism" (essentially, a work slowdown) to be applied in all the engineering factories and shipyards starting on August 21st.

By the 24th, production at the Romeo factory in Milan had come to a complete standstill. A week later, production at the FIAT-Centro plant was reduced by 60%. On the morning of the 30th, the 2000 workers of the Romeo plant found the gates locked and the factory surrounded by troops. The FIOM responded by calling on its members to occupy the 300 engineering factories in Milan. Historian Lynn Williams describes what happened next:

"Between the 1st and 4th of September metal workers occupied factories throughout the Italian peninsula...the occupations rolled forward not only in the industrial heartland around Milan, Turin and Genoa but in Rome, Florence, Naples and Palermo, in a forest of red and black flags and a fanfare of workers bands...Within three days 400,000 workers were in occupation. As the movement spread to other sectors, the total rose to over half a million."

Although some radical elements within the workers' movement (Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Syndicalist Union) called for revolution, referring to the occupations as "an expropriating general strike" and demanding total socialization of the economy, more moderate forces (the CGL) prevailed, using the pressure of the rebellion to cut a deal with employers, granting better conditions to the workers on the condition of returning to work.

The Italian Factory Occupations of 1920

Italy September 1920: The Occupation of the Factories: The Lost Revolution

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In Las Vegas-area Clark County, over 18,000 teachers are preparing to strike. The teachers are upset that money set aside by the state to give teachers significant raises isn’t being used for that purpose.

Since teachers are not allowed to strike in Nevada, formal dates have yet to be set for a strike. However, teachers say they are prepared to begin engaging in walkouts unless something is done.

Teachers say they are refusing to work overtime until the situation is resolved. They are now asking that Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo intervene to resolve the dispute.

“It is reflective of a statewide problem right now. We have a crisis of vacancies, and it is not being addressed. The governor and the legislature passed money to address that, and it is not happening,” Clark County Education Association President John Vellardita told KTNV. “So we are asking for that intervention.”

For more, check out KTNV : https://www.ktnv.com/news/education/why-is-governor-lombardo-expected-to-step-in-on-clark-county-teacher-salary-negotiations-we-find-out

Led by trans mechanics, Blue Krewe United received union recognition this month.

Just after she turned 18, Syrah May Lark rode a unicycle across the United States. Now a month shy of 24, the precocious bike mechanic has been a co-lead for the successful Blue Krewe United unionization campaign in a state where union density is at its lowest in the last decade. As a trans woman, helping to organize her coworkers in Louisiana — a state which ranks among the bottom seven states for union members in the workforce, and where trans lives have been under attack by the state legislature — it was also an adventure requiring balance, boldness and bravery. “The way we win our rights at work is the same way we win our collective liberation,” Lark told Truthout. “By daring to struggle, daring to win, and organizing.”

Working During a Heat Emergency

It’s been an unnerving few months for the mechanics and technicians working in Blue Krewe’s warehouse, about the size of a Walgreens, located in New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood. The summer was so hot the governor declared an official heat emergency. Their only respite is two paid 15-minute breaks in a small break room, which, along with the bathroom, is cooled. Workers are also welcome to spend their unpaid lunch hour cooling off, but the remainder of their eight-hour shifts are either spent in the field or in the vast unairconditioned workspace housing the mechanics stations, bikes and batteries. If the heat index rises to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, they are allowed to clock out, no questions asked, but they will not be compensated for the time. It’s a policy that is not often used because “well, we need to get paid,” Lark said.

Blue Krewe is the community-based nonprofit that manages the fleet of around 800 Blue Bikes available for rent at hubs throughout the city, a number that has been promised to swell to 2,500 by 2025. These e-bikes are accessed exclusively with an app on a smartphone.

Blue Krewe CEO Geoff Coats joined the company in October 2020 after the original owner who’d launched the company in December 2017 with 115 bikes pulled out in March 2020. (Blue Cross is credited for bringing Blue Bikes back to New Orleans in part as a safe mode of transport that allows for social distancing during the pandemic.) Under Coats’s leadership, Blue Bikes came back online for riders in March 2021.

In 2021, Biz New Orleans reported that, “Between insurance, fuel, and maintenance and repairs, the typical motorist in Louisiana can expect to spend about $4,123 per year on vehicle ownership — the highest annual cost estimate among states. Nationwide, the average cost is about $2,807.” With limited public transportation options in New Orleans, Blue Bikes is meant to fill a crucial transportation gap for poor and working-class people and lessen auto-dependency in a move toward climate mitigation.

There are 20 Blue Krewe workers who retrieve and repair the bikes and replace any faulty parts rattled loose by New Orleans’ famously rutted roads and legendary potholes. They know firsthand the uneven terrain, and before they send the bikes back out to the street, they perform safety checks so riders can get where they’re going, often to work, without the hassle of breakdowns.

The base wage for most of Blue Krewe’s mechanics and technicians has been stuck between $15-$17 an hour for the last couple of years, something they learned once they started talking to each other this spring, which is when the movement to unionize the nonprofit began in earnest.

There have been other friction points that spurred organizing efforts.

The bikes have batteries that motor the pedals to assist riders to go faster or further with a little help from the battery’s juice. As the temperatures climbed and remained excessively high, the risk of heat-sensitive bike batteries exploding became ever greater. E-bike battery explosions were the subject of a recent fire department investigation in New York City that found of the 114 explosions there, 80 of the fires happened inside structures. What if the whole building blew? Lark wondered on more than one occasion. How far could the fire spread?

Blue Bike’s human resources department, which is outsourced to a third-party contractor, was good for venting but not much more, according to Lark. “At the end of the day, the CEO is writing her checks as much as ours,” Lark said.

Eventually, she says, it hit her: “If anyone’s gonna make any changes, we have to do it.”

Blue Krewe Workers Begin Organizing

Up until this spring, many of the workers didn’t know each other very well, or even at all. There are day shifts and night shifts, and even within shifts, some roles require independent field work. Nonetheless, they turned to each other for relief. The grumblings of dissatisfaction on a Signal group chat evolved into weekly Monday night meetings at an Irish pub.

Another co-lead organizer, Krisy Schaffer, is also a bike mechanic and trans agender; they’re a former professional soccer player and avid mountain biker who’s lived and biked all over the world. Schaffer told Truthout the plan was to invite everyone to hang out to relax and ease into talking about how things at work could be better. But it proved challenging.

“A toxic work environment, where no one has job security, has a trickle-down effect. Nobody trusts what anybody’s saying because the culture … was to not trust anyone,” Schaffer said. One recent example they point to is a June 13, 2023, email from management provided to Truthout announcing the termination of an employee, along with a request that the matter not be discussed because of privacy concerns. “It was really difficult to overcome,” Schaffer said.

At a certain point, they contacted the Southern Workers Assembly (SWA) for advice. Formed in 2012, SWA is a network of local unions, worker organizations and organizing committees building worker power throughout the South.

“They were really helpful in igniting that fire that we are worthy of all the things we’re now asking for, that we do deserve them and we can make it happen,” Schaffer said. “They told us our power is in our numbers.”

That was a powerful incentive for Blue Krewe employees to unite. One thing they hadn’t fully realized before the get-togethers was that of the 20 employees at Blue Krewe, five, including Lark and Schaffer, were transgender or trans agender.

Schaffer explains it as an affinity within the service industry. “I’ve found in the past that I, and a lot of people I know, have been able to blossom into our trans identity, or whichever identity, because of support from people on the floor in the service industry. I don’t know what it is about the culture, but it’s just the most diverse, welcoming experience.”

On June 27, the four-person organizing committee submitted to Blue Krewe’s board of directors a petition explaining their needs. They requested “Installation of industrial ceiling fans, such as ‘Big Ass Fans’ to enhance the comfort and safety of our warehouse working conditions.” New Orleans experienced “feels like” temperatures of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit that day. The organizing committee also asked for a base salary of $23 an hour. Schaffer said that Blue Bikes boasts a living wage for all employees, which is “technically true,” per the MIT wage calculator indicating that in Louisiana a living wage is $15.86 for an adult with no children. “But we’ve all talked about our expenses and what would be the bare minimum not to have to choose between groceries or paying electricity every month, and we came up with $23 an hour as doable and fair and a truer living wage.”

The following day, they cheered at the news delivered from CEO Coats that Blue Krewe would be ordering and installing a fan by September 20. Though he remained silent for the moment on the other demands, the workers had a tangible win to show for their organizing, one that spurred them on to dream bigger for themselves and those they serve. They’re aiming to be included in having a say in planning and logistics. Schaffer says the organizing committee would like to bolster the company’s stated commitment to equitable practices and access to a truly “community run” bikeshare. They want the company to work toward developing an alternative method of access so those without smartphones can use the service, and they have a concern around the proportion of the marketing budget dedicated to advertising to tourists rather than informing locals.

“We want hubs built in the lower socioeconomic areas of New Orleans, just like Blue Bikes said they would,” Schaffer said. “Instead of $4 a month for unlimited rides for Medicaid card-holders, we want [the price] to be zero. We want to eliminate punitive service fees that riders can incur if they return the bike outside of the zone. There are other ways to deal with those minor deviations from the rules.”

The next turning point came when Schaffer, after researching various unions, reached out to Workers United’s Richard Minter, a veteran labor organizer in the service sector. Schaffer says he gave them guidelines to follow, a playbook, and all the reassurance of being protected by law. Plus, they really appreciated his kindness.

“When I talked to Richard, everything he said, he was just so kind,” Schaffer recalled. “We’re all pretty kind, gentle, calm people, and that’s how we wanted to go about it. I think if someone came in guns blazing, ‘Let’s take them down,’ I think we would have searched around a little more.”

From Minter, they learned there were two routes to unionization: gaining recognition from the company directly, or filing cards from 70 percent of workers declaring their intent to form a union with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They did both, knowing if the company voluntarily recognized them, they could rescind their NLRB application. On August 2, they contacted Blue Krewe’s board of directors to demand recognition for Blue Krewe United being organized with Workers United in its Southwest Region. They had already collected declaration cards from 15 of the 20 employees for the NLRB. They wrote to the board:

Every one of us is in this work because we recognize the need for equitable public transportation. We’ve seen this power firsthand, from sparks of creativity when we started three years ago to almost 500,000 trips revolutionizing the future of New Orleans. We know the value of solidarity because we have experienced it through the organizing strength of our colleagues in our shared struggle to make the planet better for all who live here. …We will need a mutually supportive work environment in order to succeed, so we, so far 80% of the workforce, have chosen the path of unionization.

On August 11, the board recognized Blue Krewe United.

Minter told Truthout they are seizing the day, already working through the Recognition Document. In September, they’ll start the work of creating a contract, which he says will be “all encompassing” — fans, insurances, pay rates, job classifications, directives for what happens when someone leaves and there’s an opening and how they fill it, and a grievance procedure to protect it all.

“I’m expecting it will carry Blue Krewe into the future with a positive effect and mitigate a lot of the differences standing between them and management,” Minter said.

Now that the first e-bike workplace has been organized, Minter hopes the spirit will catch fire. “I know there’s a larger e-bike workforce out there. [Y]ou could have several thousand folks that find this industry to be their home. It’s just a matter of how to get to them.” He wants the Blue Krewe unionization experience to be a positive example to other kinds of urban workers who are marginalized in their workplaces. “I think it could set a standard, that we could end up with something that could be a catalyst for change in a lot of inner-city settings.”

Schaffer said the evening the workers were scheduled to celebrate was postponed because everyone needed to rest. “It feels like it happened in the blink of an eye, but also it was a lot of hard work by a bunch of courageous people who were tired of that shit,” they said. “I’m just so proud of everyone coming together.”

At 9.40 am on Tuesday 26 August 1913 Dublin tram car men (drivers) and conductors pinned the Red Hand badge of the Irish Transport and General Workers‚ Union to their lapels and abandoned their vehicles. Within forty minutes most of the trams were moving again. The Dublin United Tramway Company chairman William Martin Murphy had contingency plans in place to use inspectors and office staff (many of them former car men) to replace the strikers. Trams would still not venture out at night, for fear of stoning, and crews would often carry revolvers for protection, but within a few days daytime services would operate relatively normally.

The dramatic opening of the 1913 dispute was a demonstration of weakness rather than strength. Normally tram strikes begin at daybreak with mass pickets to prevent vehicles leaving the depots. But on 26 August 1913, ITGWU leader Jim Larkin knew he could rely on less than 200 of the 800 DUTC employees. Another 200 Transport Union members had already been sacked by the company and the rest of the workforce frightened into submission. What followed was unbridled class war, only mediated by a distant British government distracted by domestic problems and the home rule crisis.

After outbreaks of violence between striking workers and strike-breakers occurred, James Connolly, Larkin and ex-British Army Captain Jack White formed a worker's militia, the Irish Citizen Army, to protect workers' demonstrations.

The lock-out concluded in early 1914, when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain rejected Larkin and Connolly's request for a sympathetic strike. Most workers, many of whom were on the brink of starvation, went back to work and signed pledges not to join the ITGWU, which was further weakened when Larkin fled to the United States and James Connolly was executed following the 1916 Easter Rising.

In retrospect the lockout represents the coming of age of the Irish trade union movement. Perversely, the aid from Britain and the well meaning but ineffectual interventions of the TUC in the dispute made the younger generation of Irish trade union leaders all the more determined to assert their independence. During the lockout people ranging from female suffrage campaigners to Catholic curates began to question in fundamental ways what sort of society home rule Ireland would be. Issues as relevant today as then, such as children’s rights and the effects of the internationalisation of capital (globalisation) were hotly debated. The lockout was the first major urban conflict to impinge itself on the national consciousness. Ironically the next great urban event was the Easter Rising and the lockout was relegated to the role of curtain raiser to the national struggle.

The Dublin 1913 Lockout - History of Ireland

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On August 22, day 113 of the WGA strike, the two sides met again, but with an important addition: previous negotiating sessions had been led by AMPTP president Carol Lombardini, the studios’ hired hand, while at this one, the bosses who make the decisions were in the room.

Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley came to the table to face the WGA’s elected leadership in the room outside of the AMPTP’s Sherman Oaks, California, headquarters where the negotiations have taken place. Workers, suffering the devastating effects of a months-long strike, hoped that the studios might finally offer counterproposals that meet their needs. Instead, the bargaining session led to further unraveling.

So when you unionize, you sign cards or a petition saying you want a union. It's then up to the employer to either start negotiating a contract with the workers (lol) or to hold an election.

If a majority votes "yes", then the employer is required to recognize the union and begin bargaining (negotiating) or face fines.

The problem is that most employers will hold and election and then run a campaign of dissuasion and intimidation.

The NLRB (the US's organized labor referee, set up to prevent outright class conflict) just ruled that if an employer abuses the election process to keep the union out, they can be required to bargain.

If this law had been in place before, the Bessemer Amazon warehouse would probably be union right now.

On this day in 1921, the first skirmishes of the Battle of Blair Mountain took place. Involving more than 10,000 armed workers battling with state and strikebreaking forces, it was the largest post-Civil War uprising and the largest labor uprising in U.S. history.

The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia as part of the "Coal Wars", a series of early 20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia.

The rise of the UMWA in West Virginia

West Virginia—which seceded from Virginia in 1861 to remain in the Union—can be credited for developing much of American capitalist industry. In the years after the Civil War, land was seized up in great swaths by American capitalists. By the turn of the century, over 80% of the mining operations in the Southern counties of West Virginia were owned by absentee landowners.

Capitalist mining ripped up West Virginia, chewed up its rolling hills, spat out black dust, and made great fortunes. Nothing stood in its way. But the concentration of capitalist coal production created more than just cheap coal to fuel the factories in the industrial North. The booming coal industry also created the great mining proletariat in Colorado, across the Midwest, and into Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

In 1890, an organization of workers was finally created to confront the coal kings: the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Notably, the early UMWA emphasized class solidarity and wrote in its founding constitution that “no local union or assembly is justified in discriminating against any person in securing or retaining work because of their African descent.”

The First Mine War

The 1902 strike was a partial victory for the Kanawha miners. But in 1912, unionized mines in the Midwest had won the 8-hour day, a pay increase, the right to free speech, and other concessions.

A strike broke out in April 1912, demanding union recognition and a two-and-a-half-cent raise. In May, the bosses along Paint Creek brought in Baldwin-Felts agents and began evicting families from company-owned homes. Evicted strikers and their families created a massive tent colony nearby and were soon ambushed by the bosses’ thugs with a hail of gunfire. At the end of May, a contingent of miners attacked Baldwin-Felts strikebreakers in Mucklow. This was the beginning of what would be a sanguinary war between capital and labor for over a year.

From May 1912 to March 1913, the miners on Paint and Cabin Creeks fought tooth and nail, utilizing hit-and-run tactics against armed mine guards, sniping trains full of scabs, and miners’ wives even ripped up train tracks in the middle of the night. Striking miners wore red neckerchieves around their necks or arms as a symbol of solidarity, and strikebreakers began to call strikers “rednecks” for short. Between September 1, 1912, and February 10, 1913, the state-imposed martial law three times.

All the miners’ leaders were arrested, including Mother Jones. The coal bosses were thrilled that the strike was on the verge of collapse. But a historical accident came to the miners’ rescue: Governor Glasscock’s term was up, and the newly elected Henry D. Hatfield took office.

The “Hatfield Contract” was not a complete victory but did impose union recognition on the Paint and Cabin Creek mine operators. Cabin Creek miners led by John Keeney refused the settlement and continued to fight until the end of July when the bosses finally agreed to their terms. Frank Keeney, the leader of the Cabin Creek strike, was elected president, and Fred Mooney became secretary-treasurer.

This struggle was a great spur for the American labor movement and inspired Ralph Chaplin’s well-known song, Solidarity Forever. Rank-and-file workers showed that militant tactics and class solidarity across racial lines are the only way to victory.

The Redneck War & the Battle of Blair Mountain

In April 1917, the US entered World War I. To fuel the war effort, West Virginia coal production reached 90 million tons and profits increased by 500%. In response, wildcat strikes broke out throughout the West Virginia coalfields, and tens of thousands joined the UMWA. To stop the rising strike wave, the bosses volunteered to make favorable deals with the UMWA.

Immediately after the war, the world descended into economic depression. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, workers across North America began a struggle to maintain the advances made by the labor movement during the war. This resulted in a massive explosion of class struggle and labor militancy in 1919. Over 4.2 million workers came out on strike that fateful year. However, despite their heroic efforts, these struggles all went down in defeat due to the lack of revolutionary leadership.

The mood of radicalization was reflected at the UMWA’s 1919 national convention, which expressed growing support for the nationalization of the coal industry. The Wall Street Journal wrote worryingly: “Lenin and Trotsky are on their way.” In the fall, a massive nationwide miners’ strike for higher wages shook the country. Despite draconian repression by the federal government, the UMWA secured a compromise victory and a 14% wage increase.

The “Battle of Matewan” was a significant turning point. Sid Hatfield was declared a hero by the UMWA, and the defeat of the Baldwin-Felts agents was an enormous impetus to the unionization drive. Although the local government was by no means a workers’ government, smaller towns can be more susceptible to working-class pressure than the state and federal government under certain conditions.

The Battle

On September 1, as the battle raged in Logan County on Blair Mountain, Keeney and Mooney—the official leaders of the insurrection—fled the state for Kentucky out of fear for their own lives. This left the miners’ army headless and reliant on Bill Blizzard for leadership. Chafin, desperate to break the miners’ lines, ordered biplanes to drop gas and shrapnel bombs, but this proved insufficient to cow the miners. One defender remarked that “the miners pushed the attack desperately; they had no sense of fear.”

Finally, President Harding sent in the army to quash the rebellion. By September 3, over 21,000 troops had entered and occupied southern West Virginia. The miners, many of them veterans of WWI, refused to fight against the army. That day, Bill Blizzard began a ceasefire, and the miners’ army was slowly disarmed and sent back home. Over one hundred lives had been sacrificed in the struggle, and the miners saw this as their victory. They naively believed that the federal troops would side with them and end Davis’s dictatorship in Mingo County. However, this illusion was short-lived as Harding was convinced by the coal barons that the federal government ought not to get further involved.

Disorganized by their own union leaders, confused by their local leaders’ vacillations, and now disarmed by the federal government, the miners of West Virginia were exposed to a reign of terror by the bosses and the state. Governor Morgan fumed at John L. Lewis: “Your silent encouragement of unlawful acts would indicate that Lenin and Trotsky are not without sincere followers in your organization.”

Over 900 miners were arrested and placed on trial for a plethora of offenses. The leaders of the UMWA, Keeney, Mooney, and Blizzard, among many others, were arrested on the grounds of treason and murder. The strike in Mingo was crushed, and all attempts to resurrect the struggle ended in failure. Lewis eliminated the left-wing of the UMWA and placed District 17 in receivership. Reaction swept through the state, graphically illustrated by the appearance of the Ku Klux Klan in West Virginia for the first time in 1924. The Mine Wars had come to an end.

Towards the next Blair Mountain!

The Battle of Blair Mountain remains one of the most heroic chapters of the American class struggle. From being the most backward segment of the American proletariat, the West Virginia miners became the most militant class fighters, combating not only their bosses and the bourgeois state but also their own union’s conservative bureaucracy. Nobody could demand more heroism, self-sacrifice, or examples of solidarity from these miners and their families.

Battle of Blair Mountain RLR :meow-tankie: :meow-anarchist:

Labor History: 100 Years Since the Battle of Blair Mountain

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I've seen too many people get in trouble, not ask for their rep, and get fired. Then, they go to worse paying jobs to avoid the union, because they feel betrayed.

Please please please tell everyone that the minute you're called into your bosses' office, ask for your rep or steward.

I don't want to lose any more co-workers for dumb shit because they don't know their rights.

On this day in 1970, the largest U.S. farm worker strike in history, known as the "Salad Bowl Strike", began when field workers, organized with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW), struck, doubling the price of lettuce and costing sellers $500,000 a day.

The UFW had just won the Delano Grape Strike, which had lasted an astonishing five years, winning contracts with dozens of grape growers that were the first of their kind in agricultural history.

The origins of the Salad Bowl Strike lay in a jurisdictional dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which had won the right to organize field workers after concluding a successful strike of drivers and packers in the lettuce producing sector in July.

The UFW strongly contested this claim, and, after negotiations broke down, between 5,000-7,000 field workers went on strike. The labor action was not just a strike, but also included mass pickets, boycotts, and secondary boycotts by the participants.

The price of lettuce almost doubled immediately, and the interruption to work cost lettuce growers approximately $500,000 a day. The strike was a bitter dispute which suffered violence and state repression. César Chávez, a leading labor organizer, was jailed after refusing to stop the picketing on court order. On November 4th, 1970 a UFW regional office was bombed.

The strike ended on March 26th, 1971 when the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW's right to organize field workers, however jurisdictional disputes between the UFW and Teamsters continued for years afterward. In 1975, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA) became law, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in that state, a first in U.S. history.

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The Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909 was an American labor dispute which ran from July to September in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The strike was triggered on July 10th, a payday on which many workers were shorted by the Pressed Steel Car Company.

The strike began on July 13th, and grew to include more than 8,000 workers, 3,000 of whom were also from the Standard Steel Car Company. By the next day, 500 cops began working to protect strikebreakers and evict strikers from company houses. The New York Times called the immigrant workforce "savages" and "illiterate foreigners".

Management refused to speak with the workers' representatives and James Rider, manager of the Pressed Steel Car Company, responded to their strike by hiring Pearl Bergoff, a notorious owner of a strike-breaking paramilitary force.

The workers were joined by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), including founders William Trautmann and "Big Bill" Haywood, as well as "Smiling Joe" Ettor.

The walkout drew national attention when, on this day in 1909, a bloody battle took place between strikers, private security agents, and the Pennsylvania State Police. The violence began after strikers boarded a trolley to search for scabs and they were confronted by an armed deputy, who opened fire. In the fighting that followed, between 12 and 26 people were killed.

The strike was settled on September 8th when Pressed Steel Car agreed to a wage increase, the posting of wage rates, and ended abuses in company housing practices. This labor dispute would be a precursor to the Great Steel Strike of 1919.

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Garments that can be packed with ice or equipped with fans are becoming increasingly popular among workers exposed to high heat.

It’s not the disease-carrying mosquitoes, the scorpions, or the 22-kilogram tanks full of pesticide strapped to his back that Wendell Van Pelt fears. It’s the heat. This summer, while spraying insect-killing chemicals in the gardens of the rich in Greater Scottsdale, Arizona, Van Pelt has endured temperatures well in excess of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Stepping past velvety green lawns and lagoon-like pools on his rounds, the field training manager at Mosquito Squad, a pest control service, has at times felt like he's “living in an oven.”

But Van Pelt has had respite from the scorching conditions: a cloak of cooling power wrapped around his torso—a vest filled with ice. “I love it,” he says, describing how his backpack filled with pesticide or natural repellent seems to amplify the effect: “That backpack is almost pressing the cold into your back. It just feels fantastic.”

Van Pelt knows that heat stress can be very dangerous. Everyone should be mindful of the risks, he emphasizes. And due to climate change and multiple recent heat waves, awareness of those risks is growing around the world. Millions of workers who toil outside, or in indoor spaces where temperatures can climb to unbearable levels, are increasingly adopting special strategies to cope. Cooling garments—vests, hats, and scarves—are among them.

It was only last year that Mosquito Squad rolled out cooling vests to employees in Greater Scottsdale. Many other firms are taking the same step, from power companies to real estate management businesses. Cooling vests have actually been around for decades, but in recent years their popularity, and variety, has exploded. Choosing the right one could potentially make the difference between going home after a good day’s work or heading to the ER. Over the past decade, hundreds of workers have died from environmental heat exposure in the US, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For Van Pelt, activating the cooling properties of his vest means stuffing it with flat, flexible packs of water ice straight from the freezer. These gradually melt as he works, but they can keep him cool for hours, he explains. There are many other technologies available.

Some use packs that contain fluids other than water—known as “phase change materials,” or PCMs. As these materials transition from solid or semisolid to liquid, they soak up heat, because this phase change requires energy. Non-water PCMs can be concocted in such a way as to remain flexible when cold or have higher melting points, which helps them last longer while maintaining a constant comfortable temperature. Other vests have tubes through which water is pumped around the wearer’s torso, or you might choose one with built-in fans that blow air directly onto your body. Finally, some vests are simply made with highly breathable fabric. Depending on the design and accessories, a top-of-the-range cooling vest could set you back close to $400.

“Demand this year has been so strong that just a few customers consumed 100 percent of our manufacturing capacity for months,” says Justin Li, cofounder and CEO of Qore Performance, a Tennessee-based firm that makes panel-like containers that you fill with 1.5 liters of water, freeze, and then sling against your chest, back, or both. A pair costs $148, and you can drink the water in them, via a tube, as it melts. Li got the idea, he explains, after talking to a soldier serving in Afghanistan, who told him how he and his comrades would put a frozen water bottle inside their body armour to try and stay cool while out on patrol. “We just reshaped it,” says Li.

Qore Performance has sold tens of thousands of the special water bottles, called IcePlates, to military personnel, Li estimates, but he has lots of commercial customers too. The surge in orders this year was largely driven by companies buying the devices for employees as heat waves erupted in the US and Europe. Known users of the IcePlate include factory staff, schoolyard supervisors, and fast-food workers, he says.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, EZ Cooldown has found clients for its cooling vests among roofers, cargo loaders, and TV production staff. But that’s not how things started. “The cosplay community and the fur-suit community was the group that I targeted first,” says Pepeyn Langedijk, founder and co-owner, who is himself a furry—someone who enjoys socializing while dressed in an animal-like furry suit.

Such suits are very hot, but they’re designed to look sleek—no one wants to wear a bulky cooling vest underneath them, even if the effect feels pleasant. Langedijk has a solution: a highly contoured, slimline vest, into the lining of which you can slip packs filled with a frozen, vegetable-oil-based fluid. “We have packs made to our specifications,” he says. “That product is something I created myself.”

Depending on how hot the user is at the time, EZ Cooldown’s packs might provide cooling for up to several hours. Once melted and no longer cool, they can be swapped out for a fresh set of packs straight from the fridge or freezer. Like Li, Langedijk says demand is booming—sales are up 35 percent this year, and he’s noticed rising interest from places like Scandinavia, where, he suggests, people are less adapted to the heat waves that are becoming more common there.

A lot of the vests require the user to swap out expired cooling components for fresh ones. Once the cooling substance has done what it can and has warmed up, the vest might in theory make things worse, since the wearer is then left with an unnecessary additional layer of clothing, notes Sarah Davey, an assistant professor at Coventry University in the UK who researches work and exercise in extreme environmental conditions, and who has studied cooling vests.

“They can help. However, we’ve seen that the effectiveness varies,” adds Andreas Flouris, an associate professor in the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Thessaly in Greece. “It varies based on the system that you use, and it also depends on the environmental conditions.”

Flouris has studied the use of cooling vests by a variety of workers—including those who helped to build stadiums for last year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He has also observed trials involving grape pickers in a Cypriot vineyard. In that scenario, vests with built-in fans proved problematic. They kept sucking vegetation against the workers’ clothing, and the vests were very cumbersome to wear. Garments containing phase-change materials are almost always the best option, he says.

A particularly effective technique isn’t to wear a body vest at all, but to instead cool down a person’s head and neck before physical exertion, Flouris says. In one study, adolescent tennis players wore a cooling cap for 45 minutes until their core temperature dropped by half a degree Celsius. Flouris and colleagues measured this by asking the players to swallow a capsule that could record their core body temperature and broadcast it to a nearby receiving device. “The cooling effect is tremendous,” says Flouris. He explains that cooling the blood vessels in your head helps chill the rest of your body relatively quickly. In the study, when players used the cooling cap pregame, they had lower skin temperature throughout and felt, on average, 14 percent more comfortable than when they didn’t use it. There were also some small improvements in player performance too.

There may be resistance in some quarters from those unwilling to admit that they need help to survive blistering heat. Workers who spoke to WIRED confirmed that such attitudes are common. But the threat is real, stresses Tom Votel, president and CEO of Ergodyne, which makes a range of cooling garments. Workers who embrace such tools are no less tough than their colleagues—they’re just savvier, he argues. Research in the US suggests that heat stress results in thousands of workplace injuries annually.

By and large, employers aren’t yet protecting workers enough from excessive heat, says Juley Fulcher, worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. There are many cheaper alternatives to cooling gadgets too. It’s important to provide employees with water, fans, breaks in cool locations, or the option to adjust their schedules when temperatures rise, she suggests. “If you can keep them from experiencing heat stress, you’re going to get a lot more productivity out of them,” says Fulcher, noting the benefit to businesses.

Rutger Standaart, an account manager at Bertschat in the Netherlands, which sells cooling and heating garments, recently visited a company that uses welding machines. In the summer, temperatures by the machines can rise above 50 degrees Celsius, meaning that working for longer than 20 minutes at a time is unbearable. “With our cooling vests, they can work for an hour,” he says.

Fulcher says that cooling garments work best if they can be made lightweight and ergonomic. As the technology improves, she says, such devices could provide an alternative to energy-hungry air-conditioning in some situations—since AC is accelerating the climate crisis: “You’re going to see a lot more of these cooling vests used as an option around the world,” she says.

One of the nation's biggest unions is coming out in favor of the 32 hour workweek. This is huge. It's people with real sway, real power, and a real platform saying it. It's morning for labor.

I work at a non profit and we just won union recognition and are slowly moving towards first contract negotiations and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. Would love to chat with some folks about their experiences, especially if you've negotiated around contracts/grants/etc.

Miners wearing safety equipment walk through an underground tunnel at the South Deep gold mine, operated by Gold Fields Ltd., in Westonaria, South Africa, on Thursday, March 9, 2017. South Deep is the world''s largest gold deposit after Grasberg in Indonesia, makes up 60 percent of the company''s reserves and the miner says it''s capable of producing for 70 years. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg

The Catholic Church says it is shepherding a class-action lawsuit through the courts against mining companies in South Africa on behalf of coal miners with lung disease.

The Southern African Bishops Conference said on Wednesday that lawyers filed papers with South Africa’s High Court on Tuesday.

“Very often ex-mine workers are no longer members of trade unions and, therefore, lack the means and capacity to seek legal recourse from large companies which are responsible for their lung diseases,” Archbishop of Cape Town Stephen Brislin said.

“It is thus incumbent on the church to give assistance where it can, … so that they can access compensation that is legally due to them.”

The miners are represented by Richard Spoors, a lawyer who has won compensation in similar cases before.

Filed on behalf of 17 former and current mine workers, the case targets mining giant BHP, its spin-off South32 and South Africa’s Seriti, Dasantha Pillay, a lawyer with Spoors’s firm, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

It seeks recourse for all miners who worked for these companies since 1965 and contracted lung disease as well as dependents of workers who died from coal dust-induced illness.

The firms did not immediately reply to AFP’s request for comment.

The church said it initiated and facilitated the case after it was approached by mine workers for assistance.

Coal is a bedrock of South Africa’s economy, employing almost 100,000 people and accounting for 80 percent of electricity production. The industry is concentrated in the eastern region of Mpumalanga, which environmental campaigners Greenpeace said has some of the dirtiest air in the world.

The class action accuses the companies of failing to provide their workers with adequate training, equipment and a safe working environment despite knowing the risks to coal miners.