"All That Harms Labor Is Treason To America" --- Abraham Lincoln

Despite the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, this year's Labor Day March was a spirited affair. Members of the Iron Workers union, the Illinois Education Association, IBEW, Campus Faculty Association, and the Graduate Employees Organization joined other local unions for a march through Urbana.

Unemployment in Champaign County is the highest it's been in decades at 9.8%. Yet among many local unions morale is high as there have been successful strikes both with the GEO in November 2009 and more recently in Mahomet where the local chapter of the IEA won a strike. More Labor Day Coverage: Boston Labor Day Rally/March | Buy "Made In The USA" and Support Jobs at Home! | (Anti) Labor Day Special: Rhee's Reign | The Jimmy Johns Workers struggle, after Labor Day | Michael Moore's Response to Anti-Union, Zionist, Rahm Emanuel | Labor Day: Immigrants Build the U.S. Economy

Yesterday, on 'Labor Day' I met with new Buffalo resident & UB student, Crescenzo Scipione, a former Students for a Democratic Society activist in Rochester. Crescenzo alerted some of Buffalo's activists to the new labor dispute between the new Jimmy Johns Workers Union (JJWU: ), organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and Jimmy Johns a new national greasy sub & sandwich franchise. The IWW has organized the JJWU in response to the company's owners disdain to their workers grievances. The national owners have refused to sit down with the fast food workers union campaign.

The demands of the workers are for fairness and fair compensation. The Jimmy Johns Workers Union demand: higher wages above the minimum; consistent schedules and minimum length shifts; sick days; direct compensation for work related injuries; an end to sexual harassment at work; and, basic fairness at work. These conditions to some degree are enjoyed by workers in union shops around the country.

At the moment Jimmy Johns' owners, Rob and Mike Mulligan of Miklin Inc., have refused to talk to the JJWU and their campaign. According to the JJWU website, Rob and Mike make an annual profit of $2.3 million individually and their planned franchise expansion will cost $1.2 million alone. Including the owners personal profit & the cost of capital expansion the Jimmy Johns franchise makes $264,270.00, thereby making their non-union, low-wage, sub franchise very profitable. Their small sub-sweat-shop franchise has opened up a beachhead in Buffalo (one of three shops in New York State).

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This following email was sent from one Ashland, Oregon resident to another... so in the spirit of "keepin' it local" this important message is now posted on the Rogue Independent Media Center...

LET'S ALL START PAYING ATTENTION. IT WILL PAY OFF IN THE END.

One Light Bulb at a Time....A physics teacher in high school, once told the students that while one grasshopper on the railroad tracks wouldn't slow a train very much, a billion of them would. With that thought in mind, read the following, obviously written by a good American.

Good idea .. . one light bulb at a time . .

Check this out . I can verify this because I was in Lowes the other day for some reason and just for the heck of it I was looking at the hose attachments. They were all made in China . The next day I was in Ace Hardware and just for the heck of it I checked the hose attachments there. They were made in USA. Start looking.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is regularly touted as a hero by the Washington Post for aggressively pushing so-called "school reform." On the occasion of Labor Day, it may be appropriate to examine Rhee's record from the perspective of labor: What do the teachers enduring Rhee's reign have to say about her "reforms"? (For a perspective from one of the countless teachers who have fled Rhee's reign, listen to James Boutin HERE.) Chris Bergfalk is a graduate of DCPS, a parent of three children who attend DCPS, as well as teacher who was a finalist for 2009 DCPS Teacher of the Year. Bergfalk said, "[W]hat's happened under this administration is wrong and taken us in the wrong direction. And it's really poisoned the core of our educational system: the core of the educational system is the teacher, and is the teacher's relationship with the student, and is the teacher's relationship with parents. That's the core. And now what we've seen is [that] Michelle Rhee has been denigrating teachers and blaming teachers for all that's wrong in the school system and that's poisoned the relationships that make up the basis of our educational system." Audio

Minimum wage workers fight for justice

"I wanted to join the Jimmy Union because I made better wages when I was 16," said one worker at the picket line outside the Block E Jimmy John's Thursday evening.  "I worked at a turkey farm in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota.  And I made better wages then."

Wearing shirts that read "Wages So Low You'll Freak"--a play on the profitable fast food chain's slogan--a couple dozen members of the newly formed Jimmy John's Workers Union organized through the Twin Cities Industrial Workers of the World walked the line with supporters in downtown Minneapolis, hours after simultaneously coming out at nine Minneapolis area stores owned by Mike and Rob Mulligan of Miklin Enterprises.

Before the picket began, members of the new union went in the store to seek a meeting with management. A worker knocked on the boss' door: "Hello, Jimmy John's Workers Union."  But there was no answer, and outside a fold-up "neogtiating table" sat empty until the picketers went home for the night.

Read more with photos | More Coverage: First in Nation, Jimmy John's Sandwich Workers Join Union | Jimmy Johns Labor Dispute Bursts onto National Stage with Coast-to-Coast Actions Planned for Labor Day

Fast Food Chain Rocked by Work Stoppages in Sign of Mounting Economic Frustration among US Workers

Press Conference and Rally: 4pm September 2, Block E Jimmy Johns, Minneapolis

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Here comes Labor Day! Its our annual Labor Day Picnic and celebration brought to Southern Oregon by the Southern Oregon Central Labor Council.

These times of economic strife see Corporate America "sitting on" 8 Trillion dollars of accumulated wealth while hard working families are losing their jobs, their homes, and in way too many cases their belief in the future. We have a National Jobs Emergency!

This year's picnic celebrates the enormous contributions of the working class. The only real turnaround for this recession will come from America's internal engine, the people who do the work from sea to shining sea. Labor Day never meant more than it does in 2010.

Please join us this Labor Day Monday, September 6, 2010 for our annual picnic here in Southern Oregon-

* * * LABOR DAY PICNIC 2010 IN SOUTHERN OREGON * * *
*Starts at 11:00 a.m.
*Tou Velle State Park
8425 Table Rock Rd.
Central Point, Oregon

The California Nurses Association held a press conference Thursday, August 19th accusing Sutter's California Pacific Medical Center, which operates St. Luke's Hospital, of discriminating against Filipino nurses. The nurses presented declarations from three former hospital managers documenting a policy of discrimination and data showing a precipitous decline in the number of Filipino nurses hired at St. Luke's. Union and community leaders suggested that the decline is related to Filipino nurses' leadership in the 2008 campaign to save the hospital.

Last week, Prince George's County taxicab drivers won another major victory in their fight to have the county issue 400 medallions directly to individual taxicab drivers instead of issuing the medallions to the few companies which dominate the Prince George's County taxicab industry. Read More | | Aurora Vasquez Interview | | Lemma Desalegne Interview

Photo from Philly IMC

August 19, 2010 — The first day of school for Mahomet Seymour students did not happen today because the Mahomet Seymour Education Association (MSEA) has been out on strike since 7 am.

The union has had previous struggles with the school board over employment issues. The summer of 2009 was spent pressuring the district to bargain with MSEA about staff performing medical procedures like the insertion of catheters. The district board had refused to negotiate the matter and expected non-medical staff to perform medical procedures.

This same spirit of poor negotiation from the district school board permeated the current contract negotiations.

From the newswire: "In recent years, Hilton workers in Chicago and across North America have endured staff cuts, reduced hours, and excessive injury rates. Now Hilton, run by one of the largest private equity firms on Wall Street—-the Blackstone Group, wants to take more away, add to the already burdensome housekeeping workload, and lock workers into recession contracts even as the economy rebounds.

"On Aug. 18-19, workers at four hotel properties managed by Hilton are taking a stand to stop the company from taking unfair advantage of the recession. Among those voting to authorize a possible strike are workers from some of Chicago’s most notable hotels -— the Drake, Palmer House, Chicago Hilton, and Hilton O’Hare." Read more

This follows on the cusp of a vote in July by Chicago-area Hyatt employees to strike, which resulted in civil disobedience actions and arrests. Both Chicago hotel strike votes could and would join the longest hotel strike in American history, the Congress Hotel Strike at Chicago's Congress Hotel, which has been underway for seven years and counting. See past CIMC coverage

Additional resources: UNITE HERE website | Congress Hotel Strike

As students were moving into campus dorms along Florida and Pennsylvania Avenues in Urbana, the SEIU Local 73 and the Campus Labor Coalition held a rally to bring attention to the deepening crisis in public education. The union also held other pickets across campus throughout the day. At lunchtime, they marched in front of students and parents chanting “Students Move In! Tuition Hikes Out! Students Move In! Wage Freezes Out!”

As freshmen students return to campus this fall, they face a 9.5% tuition increase voted on this summer by the Board of Trustees. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is asking workers to accept wage freezes and recent hires among the Building Service Workers are recommended to take a 13.5% pay cut. Across the campus, empty faculty positions are not being filled, job searches are being cancelled, tuition waivers for graduate students in Fine Arts are being rescinded, and annual contracts for lecturers and instructors are not being renewed.

While the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has almost 5,000 members and regularly forces some of the largest corporations on earth to the negotiating table, the organization has quite humble beginnings. In 1992, Lucas Benitez and seven other farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida began meeting Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM at a local church to discuss the injustices they faced. Prior to the founding of C.I.W., Immokalee farmworkers did not have an organization they could turn to when growers withheld their wages, or even when they were beaten, Benitez said. The discreet Wednesday evening meetings brought together individuals from different nationalities - Mexican, Guatemalan, Haitian. C.I.W. encouraged pickers not to be divided, but instead to see themselves as the industry saw them. Benitez said, "We saw that the agricultural industry and the companies that buy those tomatoes see us just as workers. It doesn't matter to them what country we're from or if we have a family or not. All that matters is how fast you pick. They look at us as if we were just machines. And so we saw that we also had to look at ourselves just as workers in that same way: That we were all together and unite to change the conditions." Audio

Filipino migrant teachers in Louisiana today (August 5, US Central Time) filed a class lawsuit against Universal Placement International (UPI) and its Philippine based partner, PARS International for various offenses ranging from racketeering, human trafficking, extortion and mail and wire fraud.