Daily Kos: Labor

Great news for the top one percent! This group of people who definitely needed more good news got their highest wages ever in 2017, averaging $719,000. The top one percent also got the satisfaction of knowing that their wages grew by 3.7 percent, much faster than the one percent growth that the bottom 90 percent of earners saw in the same time. Alas, news was more mixed for the top 0.1 percent. While their wage growth of eight percent was faster than any other income group, it still only left them at their second-highest wages ever—$2,757,000.

Taking the long view:

… the top 1.0 percent of earners now earn by 157.3 percent more than they did in 1979. Even more impressive is that those in the top 0.1 percent had more than double that wage growth, up 343.2 percent since 1979. In contrast, wages for the bottom 90 percent only grew 22.2 percent in that time. […]

The bottom 90 percent earned 69.8 percent of all earnings in 1979 but just 60.9 percent in 2017. In contrast the top 1.0 percent increased its share of earnings from 7.3 percent in 1979 to 13.4 percent in 2017, a near doubling.

Never forget, this is the economy Republicans want.

Thousands of Marriott hotel workers are on strike in eight U.S. cities in a campaign with the slogan “one job should be enough.” The workers’ union points out that Marriott’s profits have risen by 279 percent since the great recession, while worker pay has gone up only seven percent. “As the largest hotel employer in the world, Marriott can set the standard in the hotel industry,” they write, and that standard should be that one job is enough.

Workers are on strike in Boston, Detroit, Oakland, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Maui, and Oahu, pressing for contracts that pay them a living wage as well as improving workplace safety through panic buttons for housekeeping staff and a reduction in some of the most grueling physical labor—hotel housekeepers have a very high rate of injury on the job. Workers are also worried about automation and other labor reduction efforts by the company.

Yleine, a room attendant in Vancouver, says in a video that “I’m doing two different jobs because I’m not getting enough hours in my hotel, and don’t have enough time to look after my son. I feel like, still, I can’t make it.”

In Hawaii, other unions got behind the strike, with flight attendants, sheet metal workers, and others moving their business away from Marriott hotels.

The Supreme Court took a big swing at public worker unions in its Janus decision, which allows workers to demand the benefits of unions without contributing to the costs, essentially forcing their coworkers who are union members to subsidize them. But many unions are rising to the challenge. 

In Connecticut at least, defections amount to a tiny trickle — just a fraction of 1 percent in most cases. […]

AFSCME Council 4 and other state employee unions are rapidly cutting into the ranks of non-members, restoring dues payments that were cut off from a total of about 7,100 people, depending on the month. 

In Illinois, the Peoria Federation of Teachers is training teachers to be organizers, talking to other teachers about union issues:

We offer extremely good services for our members, but we realized if we don’t shift to an organizing model, we might get decimated,” said Jeff Adkins-Dutro, a Peoria English teacher who also serves as the local union president. “In my opinion, this is really going to strengthen our union.”

The transition requires a change in thinking and a lot of legwork. That’s why teachers like Innis and Grace gave up some of their summer break, taking part in an internship program organized by unions and a community group. They sat through seminars run at their local union hall across from the Illinois River, then hit the pavement to speak with teachers about school funding and whatever else they had on their minds.

Organize, organize, organize.

As Black Friday shopping has crept into Thanksgiving, it’s become notable for major retail chains not to open on Thanksgiving, forcing many of their workers to put in hours on the holiday. Best Black Friday has compiled a list of stores that won’t be open on Thanksgiving, though, from Ace Hardware to American Girl to Barnes & Noble to Costco to Crate & Barrel to Guitar Center to Marshalls to Nordstrom to Patagonia to Sur La Table. See the whole list of more than 60 stores below.

According to a survey from Best Black Friday, Thanksgiving shopping is not a by-popular-demand kind of thing: more people strongly dislike Thanksgiving openings than like them at all, strongly or not. But all stores need in late capitalism is enough shoppers to make it all feel worthwhile, and the threat of losing out to competitors that are open more hours. Many of the stores that choose not to open cite something different: values, like the idea that their workers should be able to spend the holiday with family. Or just have a holiday at all.

● Both houses of Congress have now approved an FAA reauthorization bill requiring that flight attendants get 10 hours of rest, minimum.

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● California just banned for-profit charter schools. Why?

● Speaking of which, this Arizona lawmaker stands to make millions on his own charter schools, thanks to his votes on education policy laws.

● Workers at Marriott hotels in Boston go on strike.