All posts by Bob Cain

All current MOUs are now posted under the 304 Resources tab as per the request of the membership. Consult your Steward if you have any questions.

With one of the oldest demographics in any industry, power generation and electrical transmission workers are finally turning the corner to bring in younger workers to become the next generation of power plant operators and transmission and distribution lines technicians.

The Utility Workers Union of America established  Power 4  America as an educational trust to train new employees to take their place among one of this country’s most professional and well trained groups of workers in the United States.

Consumers Energy has just reached a historic agreement with the UWUA to take over the training on all their employees. It’s a case of people who already work in the industry taking the responsibility of passing on their knowledge and experience to keep America’s electrical infrastructure safe and reliable.

P4A doesn’t only focus on existing technologies, but is also training those power industry students about evolving and future “Green” technologies, responding to the trends that affect the America’s energy mix.

Another route utility companies are using to augment their dwindling workforces is cooperative partnerships they have formed with local colleges, like the PSI Program (or Power Plant Technology) available at Fairmont State College’s  Pierpont Technical Institute (click for a full description,  course outline, and cost).

According to a recent article in The State Journal, PSI graduates are finding work in the industry (click link to read). UWUA Local 304 can attest to this by the graduates that have joined us at Harrison Power Station. These new employees an important and welcomed addition to our plant, and our union.

It’s incumbent of every 304 member to help these employees in any way possible as they learn the equipment and the job of running a power plant. It’s equally important that we pass on the legacy of labor and explain their part in the struggle to keep wages, benefits, and working conditions that respects and acknowledges the talent all Utility Workers bring too the industry.

UWUA Local 304 welcomes our newest employees to Harrison! Now, let’s get to work!

America’s electorate is as diverse and fragmented as almost any time in our nation’s history.  There are groups divided by race, ethnicity, sexual preference, culture, education, differences in views on abortion, gun rights and responsibilities, and many other issues. Divide and conquer is nothing new, but never has it been so writ large across our country’s landscape.

Fueling these divisions is an underlying, yet powerful, amount of anger and frustration. This manifests itself in ugly feelings of intolerance, bigotry, class rivalry, and racism on display across our country. There are even those begrudging their fellow citizens of their constitutionally protected First Amendment Right to free speech with counter-protests and violence.

America’s institutions are under attack like never before, as the social safety net gets thinner and weaker all the time. We’ve been told we can’t trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation,  we’ve seen local law enforcement constantly being ridiculed and scrutinized in nationally publicized tragedies that get little right except the victims names and age. The housing crisis told us we can’t trust banks, and the most recent recession proved that Wall Street isn’t trustworthy either.  Our teachers have quietly weathered the erosion and dismantlement of the public school system without pay raises and even cuts in their pension and retirement as the same spiraling healthcare costs eats away at the little job security they once enjoyed.

The American Dream of getting rich quick was replaced by an economic model of suffering thirty to forty years of penal servitude, under incompetent managers and petty bosses who are too stupid to realize that they too are caught in the same trap as yourself.  All of this was worth it because the light at the end of the tunnel was a pension and retirement.

Here we are, almost thirty years later, and we still have the same incompetent bosses and petty game playing managers but what’s gone is the sense of security and that brass ring of retiring comfortably and with dignity.

Those American households that are lucky enough to have both a father and mother still have both parents working while teachers raise their kids, with no authority or mandate, and TV and video games fill up the time at home.

Unions are especially sensitive to these effects. While union workers are regularly stereotyped as lazy and ungrateful, the real truth is that union members are better informed and painfully aware of the precarious situation facing workers. Union members are usually more well versed on WHY and HOW unions came to be, and the REAL and often bloody sacrifices that workers paid to form them.  They speak out because they can, confident in the union to protect their rights. They speak out for ALL workers. They set the bar.

There’s no doubt that this is why the labor movement is a prime target of those destroying the middle class .

The same ones pushing “Right To Work” and trying to cripple and dismantle the National Labor Relations Board and weaken, or even get rid of the National Labor Relations Act have weaponized  the anxiety and fears  of working people and are using it to further the agenda of making corporations stronger and governmental oversight and regulation weaker.

It’s an easy thing to churn out propaganda under covert 501(C) groups with secret donor lists, buy politicians, fund massive campaigns, and hire slick talking heads and time for them on the airwaves, and wrap themselves patriotically in the flag or hide behind the Holy Bible; whatever it takes to fan the flames of people’s prejudices,; whatever it takes to direct the anger of workers to each other instead of the architects of chaos.

The hard truth is that anybody who works for a living has more in common with each other than they do with pampered corrupt politicians, the very rich, or the lawyers and P.R. people they have working for them, yet many choose to forgo the power that unified action gives them by being distracted by those feeding and manipulating their fears for their own advantage.

Solidarity seems an archaic, even foreign, word. It should, since unions have a long history and are worldwide. There are some countries that being a union organizer is more dangerous than being a militant or a drug trafficker. Organizers and union officers are regularly harassed and even executed in many societies across the globe, just like they were in our country over 90 years ago.

It has taken that long for working people to forget or take for granted what organized labor is doing or has done for them. That opened the door for the unscrupulous profiteers to do some organizing, having learned the lessons of the battles between themselves and labor.

This isn’t a liberal versus conservative thing, or a Republicans against the Democrats contest; it’s not  even an older generation versus generation “X” or “Y” conflict, or native born versus immigrant. This is an American thing!

So be angry, speak out, stand up, but most of all remember what it is that makes us Americans.

You’ve been fired. According to your employer’s data, your facial expressions showed you were insubordinate and not trustworthy. You also move your hands at a rate that is considered substandard. Other companies you may want to work for could receive this data, making it difficult for you to find other work in this field.

That may sound like a scenario straight out of a George Orwell novel, but it’s the future many American workers could soon be facing.

In early February, media outlets reported that Amazon had received a patent for ultrasonic wristbands that could track the movement of warehouse workers’ hands during their shifts. If workers’ hands began moving in the wrong direction, the wristband would buzz, issuing an electronic corrective. If employed, this technology could easily be used to further surveil employees who already work under intense supervision.

Whole Foods, which is now owned by Amazon, recently instituted a complex and punitive inventory system where employees are graded based on everything from how quickly and effectively they stock shelves to how they report theft. The system is so harsh it reportedly causes employees enough stress to bring them to tears on a regular basis.

UPS drivers, who often operate individually on the road, are now becoming increasingly surveilled. Sensors in every UPS truck track when drivers’ seatbelts are put on, when doors open and close and when the engines start in order to monitor employee productivity at all times.

The technology company Steelcase has experimented with monitoring employees’ faces to judge their expressions. The company claims that this innovation, which monitors and analyzes workers’ facial movements throughout the work day, is being used for research and to inform best practices on the job. Other companies are also taking interest in this kind of mood-observing technology, from Bank of America to Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc.

These developments are part of a larger trend of workers being watched and judged—often at jobs that offer low pay and demand long hours. Beyond simply tracking worker performance, it is becoming more common for companies to monitor the emails and phone calls their employees make, analyzing personal traits along with output.

Some companies are now using monitoring techniques—referred to as “people analytics”—to learn as much as they can about you, from your communication patterns to what types of websites you visit to how often you use the bathroom. This type of privacy invasion can cause employees immense stress, as they work with the constant knowledge that their boss is aware of their every behavior—and able to use that against them as they see fit.

Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute at Cornell University, tells In These Times that the level of surveillance workers are facing is increasing exponentially.

“If you look at what some people call ‘people analytics,’ it’s positively frightening,” Maltby says. “People analytics devices get how often you talk, the tone of your voice, where you are every single second you’re at work, your body language, your facial expressions and something called ‘patterns of interaction.’” He explains that some of these devices even record what employees say at work.

According to some experts, this high level of employee surveillance may actually harm the companies that use these techniques.

“In general, people experience more stress when they feel that someone is looking over their shoulder, real or virtual,” Michael Childers, director at the School for Workers, tells In These Times. “There is a large body of research documenting that stressful workplaces can potentially lead to many problems that reduce company profits, including increased turnover, more sick days used, higher workplace compensation costs, and ironically, even lower productivity.”

Richard Wolff, a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, tells In These Times that this type of surveillance “deepens the antagonism, mutual suspicion, and hostility of employer relative to employee. It degrades worker morale and will probably fail—leading employers to conclude not that such surveillance is a bad idea, but rather than they need to automate to get rid of workers altogether.”

While this level of worker surveillance may be alarming, it has so far gone largely unchecked. Congress has never passed a law to regulate employee surveillance, Maltby says, and he doesn’t think it will any time soon. However, he says that either Congress or the Supreme Court could finally decide that employers have gone too far when they start tracking employee movement during a worker’s time off.

“The fight we’re gearing up for is [tracking] behavior off duty,” Maltby says. “Every cell phone in America has GPS capabilities baked into it,” along with cameras and microphones. Maltby worries that employers could soon begin using this technology to track the behavior of their employees outside of work. If this were to happen, Maltby believes U.S. lawmakers could be compelled to step in.

One the of the fears that labor and privacy advocates hold is that, over time, workers could get used to these types of invasions, and begin accepting them as a normal part of the job.

“The first time people hear about the newest privacy invasion, they get extremely angry, but eventually they just get used to it,” Maltby says. For example, at many jobs drug tests are now seen as standard, despite the fact that they invade employees’ private lives by monitoring their behaviors outside of work.

At a time of soaring inequality, low-wage workers are bearing the brunt of efforts to increase productivity and profits. The rise of these new tracking techniques show that companies are moving toward increasing their control over the lives of their employees.

While workers at the bottom of the wage scale may be the first to face such dystopian working conditions, other industries could soon embrace them. If we don’t want to live and work under the constant supervision of a far-away boss, now is the time to speak up and push back.

by Thor Benson/Working In These Times

Reprinted with permission from In These Times. All rights reserved. Portside is proud to feature content from In These Times, a publication dedicated to covering progressive politics, labor and activism. To get more news and provocative analysis from In These Times, sign up  for a free weekly e-newsletter or subscribe to the magazine at a special low rate.

Never has independent journalism mattered more. Help hold power to account: Subscribe to In These Times magazine, or make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting.