The 2023 WGA / SAG-AFTRA strike and other Labor Discussion

[Nonlinear FC]

I'm sure there are dozens and dozens of words where I've never questioned the origin like that.

[The Sybian]

Well, AB... TIL...

I bet you feel extra dumb!

I'll up the ante, I never knew that, and I am an employment lawyer.

[EdRomero]

Day 2 of the teachers' strike is happening tomorrow. Was really hoping it would end, but it looks like the Mayor, School Committee, and new superintendent are enjoying the pissing contest. With inflation and ridiculously rising insurance costs, this is going to get a lot more common. Personally, I'm still getting paid for now, but each day of the strike my summer vacation shrinks.

[EdRomero]

And it continues. 4 days and counting.

[cerranoredux]

And it continues. 4 days and counting.

Sorry man. The article says that you guys have been without a contract only since September? What’s the real story because it might appear to many that NTA pulled that trigger a little quick? What were the other job actions? Was the union leadership getting tagged by admin or something? Or is it more “strike while the union iron is hot” logic?

Fucking puns.

[EdRomero]

And it continues. 4 days and counting.

Sorry man. The article says that you guys have been without a contract only since September? What’s the real story because it might appear to many that NTA pulled that trigger a little quick? What were the other job actions? Was the union leadership getting tagged by admin or something? Or is it more “strike while the union iron is hot” logic?

Fucking puns.

I'm not part of the strike. I'm in a private program that pays rent to be in the school and we are locked out of the building during the strike for now. We also work closely with teachers and a lot of administrators, so I guess my official position is "why can't we all just get along." I get most information second hand, but what I've heard is the relatively new mayor and very new superintendent have refused to negotiate for over a year, saying this is the offer, take it or leave it. It's been ugly for awhile, way before the contract expired. Last spring an override ballot was rejected by voters and they eliminated a lot of support staff for elementary schools and drastically increased class size in the high schools. Now the Mayor is saying that if we give in to the demands, we'll have to lay off more staff. The counter argument is she did a terrible job with the city budget, including not touching a lot of COVID relief funds, so the money is there, supposedly. 98% of the union voted for the strike, which I think shows how frustrated teachers have been for awhile, and it seems most parents are supporting the teachers. My guess is the superintendent, mayor, and most of the school committee members will not be around after the next few elections.

[rass]

Sorry romero. Those fines seem pretty persuasive, though.

[Johnny Carwash]

Best wishes, romero. Hope it works out for the best.

[cerranoredux]

It sounds like the situation is pretty dire for a school system and the kids in it. I’m glad 98% of the staff is standing up for the community. Teachers know all too well how guilt over whether they’re doing enough for the kids can be exploited to extract more and more time and commitment than was literally bargained for.

It’s frustrating that we don’t put a premium on our public institutions because in our current system we can’t predict or quantify the collective benefit because it doesn’t show up as a line-item in our 401.K statements.

Hopefully the parent pressure works in favor of the staff this time and you can get back to what you’re supposed to do ASAP.

[EdRomero]

Strike continues tomorrow and I ran out of bourbon. I'm having so many flashbacks to Covid times, where I eventually got laid off and ended up taking one of those low paying jobs they're striking about -- at one point I was working 8-6, making half of what I make now in the high paying field of day care, and I would say the majority of the people in those positions have masters degrees.. Anyway, I have so much shit to do -- we're switching databases with a tedious transfer of data and a lot to learn with the new cheaper, which probably means worse, database. And I'm supposed to get through progress reports, and have a Zoom meeting, which is all easy if I could actually put in a real 8 hours of work at home, but I am so pathetic working at home.

Back to the support staff thing. Most only work 30 hours a week, with summer off, so it makes sense they get paid little, but they're also the one-on-ones for special needs students, behavior therapists, and the people who do everything in the school...and every school system that I know is desperate to hire more..so maybe pay them a lot more.

But health insurance rates are sky rocketing which is killing budgets, which gets to my next drunken point. How stupid is it that we tie health insure to employment? My employer should have nothing to do with my healthcare. I'm guessing that everyone with a shitty job would quit if their employer didn't provide healthcare, so..good. With your healthcare not tied to employment, employers would have to find others ways to entice employees -- more pay and maybe Taco Tuesdays. Health insurance rates go up for businesses, they just increase prices..Health insurance rates go up for public workers, they need to increases taxes or give shittier healthcare to workers. The whole thing is stupid.

[EnochRoot]

Strike continues tomorrow and I ran out of bourbon. I'm having so many flashbacks to Covid times, where I eventually got laid off and ended up taking one of those low paying jobs they're striking about -- at one point I was working 8-6, making half of what I make now in the high paying field of day care, and I would say the majority of the people in those positions have masters degrees.. Anyway, I have so much shit to do -- we're switching databases with a tedious transfer of data and a lot to learn with the new cheaper, which probably means worse, database. And I'm supposed to get through progress reports, and have a Zoom meeting, which is all easy if I could actually put in a real 8 hours of work at home, but I am so pathetic working at home.

Back to the support staff thing. Most only work 30 hours a week, with summer off, so it makes sense they get paid little, but they're also the one-on-ones for special needs students, behavior therapists, and the people who do everything in the school...and every school system that I know is desperate to hire more..so maybe pay them a lot more.

But health insurance rates are sky rocketing which is killing budgets, which gets to my next drunken point. How stupid is it that we tie health insure to employment? My employer should have nothing to do with my healthcare. I'm guessing that everyone with a shitty job would quit if their employer didn't provide healthcare, so..good. With your healthcare not tied to employment, employers would have to find others ways to entice employees -- more pay and maybe Taco Tuesdays. Health insurance rates go up for businesses, they just increase prices..Health insurance rates go up for public workers, they need to increases taxes or give shittier healthcare to workers. The whole thing is stupid.

btw - I'm sorry to hear this. That fucking sucks. But yeah:

How stupid is it that we tie health insure to employment? My employer should have nothing to do with my healthcare. I'm guessing that everyone with a shitty job would quit if their employer didn't provide healthcare, so..good. With your healthcare not tied to employment, employers would have to find others ways to entice employees -- more pay and maybe Taco Tuesdays. Health insurance rates go up for businesses, they just increase prices..Health insurance rates go up for public workers, they need to increases taxes or give shittier healthcare to workers. The whole thing is stupid.

...is spot on.

[govmentchedda]

Yeah, 100%

[GoodKarma]

I've often wondered why every chamber of commerce, business association, etc. isn't lobbying to get healthcare out of employers hands. My only guess is because it would probably mean higher taxes for the owners of the businesses.

[sancarlos]

I've often wondered why every chamber of commerce, business association, etc. isn't lobbying to get healthcare out of employers hands. My only guess is because it would probably mean higher taxes for the owners of the businesses.

I think you hit the nail on it’s head.

[HaulCitgo]

????

Employers do not want to pay employees healthcare any more than they want to match their 401k. Perhaps some tax benefits but no way that offsets the cost of the employee benefit.

[P.D.X.]

Employers do not want to pay employees

Coulda stopped there

[sancarlos]

????

Employers do not want to pay employees healthcare any more than they want to match their 401k. Perhaps some tax benefits but no way that offsets the cost of the employee benefit.

The point being that under the current system employers pay what they want or what they feel the market calls for. As GK said, employers sure as hell don’t want to pay a required amount through taxes.

[HaulCitgo]

But why would employer cuts in employee healthcare benefit costs result in more tax for employers. Maybe more accurately more tax but way less overall costs. Those costs would then be shifted to employees who would then pay 100% of whatever isn't subsidized by the govt and the govt tax increases to pay for presumed increased subsidies would fall primarily (or at least partially) back on employees through individual income taxes. Market theory would say employees would demand higher wages but we all know employees would only get back $0.60 of that dollar or less in wage increases. Even then probably only those industries that have to compete for talent.

Long way of saying that seems like the wrong tree if your interested in employee rights.

[EdRomero]

Strike continues tomorrow. I chose a bad time to try to reduce drinking and being on the internet too much.

[rass]

At least your access to free glue has been limited.

[govmentchedda]

At least your access to free glue has been limited.

Slow clap

[EdRomero]

I am missing the work supplies. My nox gear tubing snapped and I was ready to fix it with a hot glue gun and some duct tape at work. End this strike.

[EdRomero]

On to day 8 and I'm running out of vodka.

[sancarlos]

On to day 8 and I'm running out of vodka.

[EdRomero]

Still going. 11 school days and counting missed. School committee just canceled February Vacation; probably over half of Newton families have already committed to vacations or other programs (I'm also supposed to be in Florida that week too), so things are going great.

[tennbengal]

Still going. 11 school days and counting missed. School committee just canceled February Vacation; probably over half of Newton families have already committed to vacations or other programs (I'm also supposed to be in Florida that week too), so things are going great.

So sorry, Ed.

[duff]

Still going. 11 school days and counting missed. School committee just canceled February Vacation; probably over half of Newton families have already committed to vacations or other programs (I'm also supposed to be in Florida that week too), so things are going great.

If everyone is on vacation they will have to cancel school because they won't have any teachers or staff to man a building. Enjoy Florida.

[EdRomero]

Still going. 11 school days and counting missed. School committee just canceled February Vacation; probably over half of Newton families have already committed to vacations or other programs (I'm also supposed to be in Florida that week too), so things are going great.

If everyone is on vacation they will have to cancel school because they won't have any teachers or staff to man a building. Enjoy Florida.

Except parents are paying for after school care, for every school day, so if we are unable to provide care, do we need to give a refund. Not to mention that we agreed to pay everyone during the strike and nornamally our hourly wage people do not get paid during vacation weeks so that's gonna be wonderful for the budget. And then things will get very interesting at the end of June, when half the staff leave to work at camps.

At this point, I'm pissed at everyone. One, I don't think are has been one good article written about the situation. It's quotes and then a bunch of comments from people just fulfilling their twitter/reddit-fueled reality of the world. Maybe it's out there, but I'd like to know what percentage of Newton's budget goes to schools compared to similar cities, and compared to what percentage went to schools in Newton a few yeats ago. I'd like an honest explanation for why after school programs aren't allowed in the building even though their still paying for custodians and the after school programs have nothing to do with the strike (other than a few employees who work for both the school system and an after school program).

Instead, we just get a bunch of propaganda from the Mayor, who is emailing and robocalling families every night with this nonsense. Some of her recent highlights was her claiming the teachers stormed city hall, January 6th, style, despite lots of evidence of a peaceful protest. And then her reposting a letter saying why can't these greedy teachers end the strike and comparing the school budget to other city department budgets, without provide the context of the amount of employees and their roles in the town. The letter compared how much is spent for education with how much is spent for the board of health and public works. I don't know if the mayor is genuine in thinking she's being fiscally responsible, but it really looks like she just wants to build a strong union busting repuation. And the union and teachers are starting to look bad the longer this goes, but whenever I hear someone complain about them, I counter with imagine how awful town leadership is that 98% of the union decided to go without pay, lose valuable vacation time, take several steps back in the progress of their students (which, ignore the conservative internet commentator, teachers care a ton about) and ruin relationships with families. Only horrendous leadership and mistreatment from city leaders would cause such drastic action.

A lot of the teachers suck at this point too. I know one of the louder ones, and this person is full of themselves, knows better than everyone, and truly thinks he's changing the world with this strike, and these are the type of people we're hearing from the most. Strike to get treated better, but enough of these self-centered heroes with the we're being the beacon to improve society by forcing changes in schools and getting the lower paid people better. There are better ways of going about it without ruining life for everyone else. Bottom line is most if them get paid better than other teachers in the area. That doesn't change the fact that the city has been terrible to them for the last few years, but it does affect your martydom. Oh, and they printed flyers for going out to eat earlier in the week for when they were done picketing. Anti-union people are now posting how the teachers are having a pub crawl. Just a bunch of shitty people. /rant

I should just retire and become a professional Swampcrash player

[mister d]

I imagine you'd need a winning record to turn pro.

[MaxWebster]

long post/quote alert

I've been getting this labor-related newsletter from Hamilton Nolan for a while - of late I more than often don't read it because directlinetodepression but he leads with a picture of the Newton strike and as one who grew up in almost an entire extended family of teachers it has been hitting home.

Ed - I truly feel for you; of course it's ending up a mess and too often the lone loud/obnoxious voice doesn't always align with the strong and quiet majority.


Anyways the newsletter is posted below for your perusal - I put most of it under Spoiler just because it is so damn long but left in the closing paragraph.

Getting Comfortable With Illegal Strikes
Laws are made up. "Nobody doing work" is real.
HAMILTON NOLAN
FEB 2



"This is the way"

[+] spoiler

One knotty dynamic of labor power is its tendency to limit itself the more it becomes institutionalized. Consider: In the first part of the 20th Century, before the passage of the laws that established and regulated and protected unions in America, working people faced far harsher conditions than they do today. Lower pay, worse health care, fewer legal protections, more unchecked control by employers, more outright violence. So how were the early industrial unions established in these conditions? Workers went on strike. In the barren coal fields, and inside the horrific mills and factories, the workers struck to demand a union. They struck, and struck, and struck. The government threatened them, and the police arrested them, and their bosses employed private armies of thugs who came and beat them and often killed them. That’s how it was. And still, they struck, and struck, and struck. What else could they do? That was their sole weapon. And after the employers had evicted them from their homes and beaten them with clubs and thrown them in jail and bombarded them with condemnation from friendly politicians and newspapers, the strikes continued. Eventually, the employers gave in. They had to give them their unions, because otherwise there would be no business. This process is the origin story of many unions that are still around today.

Were these strikes legal? [Now imagine me speaking in the tone of voice Jim Mora used in that famous “Playoffs? Playoffs???” clip] Legal? “Legal???” What the fuck was legal? They hadn’t even written the laws yet that might render them legal in a meaningful way. They were out fighting in the street and being shot at with tommy guns and sleeping in tents and watching their children starve. They won those unions with blood. What they knew—and what their victories demonstrated—was that strikes are exercises of power that exist outside of the boundaries of law. By that I mean that whether you call a strike legal or not, the fact is that when workers don’t work, businesses don’t run. It is an unassailable reality that employers must reckon with if they want to make money. Declaring a strike illegal, just like bashing strikers in the head with sticks or cutting off their healthcare benefits or having redneck local newspaper editors call them communists, is just one more tool that companies use to inflict pain on strikers in hopes that their will breaks before the company’s does. What matters when you get right down to it, though, is not how strikes are formally classified, but which side of the strike can hold out longer. As the famous piece of labor wisdom goes, “There is no such thing as an illegal strike, just an unsuccessful one.”

That is the incredibly difficult but otherwise very straightforward process by which workers who had nothing except their own solidarity broke the will of America’s most powerful companies. Now, consider what happens after the unions are won: They become legal entities. They collect dues. They have a budget and a treasury full of money. They have a full time staff. They play in the sandbox of electoral politics. They are, in short, institutions. Their focus shifts to bending the law in a favorable direction. A consequence of this is that they become much more averse to defying the law. Naturally! A group of ten thousand impoverished and hungry workers has very little to lose; a union with ten thousand dues-paying members and a bank account and an office and a staff does. The law weighs heavily on established unions. If they strike illegally, their officers can be jailed, their treasury confiscated, their hard-won contracts revoked. Things that they spent years painstakingly building up can be torn down by a single judge’s order. The more power that a union gains within the bounds of the law, the lower its incentive to flout those laws.

On one hand, legally established power as a respectable institution is what we want unions to have. It is a marker of the labor movement’s forward progress throughout history. Being a homeowner imposes a lot of legal obligations, but it is preferable to being homeless. I am not writing this to sound like some idiot kid yelling for unions to burn it all down, with no conception of what would be lost if that happened. I just want to point out that the integration of organized labor into the establishment comes with a very real downside of its own.

Namely: The more you feel bound to follow the law, the more potent a weapon against you the law becomes. When they told the mine workers who had been evicted from company housing for union organizing and forced to live with their families by the railroad tracks in tents that were periodically shot at by company goons “btw, strikes are not allowed,” I like to imagine that they had a hearty chuckle. Fast forward three generations, though, and think about all of the things the union has to lose, and the legal prohibition carries much more weight. If we lived in a nation with a healthy and fair democratic system of government in which the working class could exercise political power proportionate to its percentage of the population, this would not be such a big deal—the laws would be friendlier to the working class. We don’t live in a nation like that. We live in a nation where money buys political power and consequently the laws have been written to restrict labor power in favor of corporate power. The Taft-Hartley Act, which really fucked unions, was passed in 1947. We’ve been complaining about it ever since. But guess what we have not been able to do? Roll it back. Seventy seven fucking years. Any power analysis that has “first, make the laws better” as a central part of the plan is just not realistic. We have to figure out how to be strong in the real world that we live in.


Here is what that means on a practical level: Either get comfortable with an endless dissipation of organized labor power, or get comfortable with illegal strikes. Take your pick. I am speaking here to regular working people, and to union members. This is not something that elected leaders of unions, or union staffers, are going to take the lead on. There are some notable exceptions, yes, but in general, people who work at unions are not typically going to tell their members to go break the law. That is why, for example, the wave of teachers strikes that swept the nation in 2018 were grassroots efforts led by teachers themselves, who dragged their unions along with them. They were all illegal! And they fucking won anyhow! Because the hard fact of teachers not working was more powerful than a legal decree. A red state governor can whine and fume and make threats, but he cannot wave a magic wand and open schools with no teachers. Those teachers realized the core of their power, and used it, and in the end the law didn’t matter. The teachers who are right now on strike in Newton, Massachusetts are doing the exact same thing. Taking the step of striking illegally requires a good measure of bravery. All of us should support these strikes, whenever we see them.

The alternative to undertaking illegal strikes is to allow some of the most contemptible, inhuman, corporate-owned Republican state politicians in America to simply erase the ability of working people to stand up for themselves, with the stroke of a pen. Many, many states make it illegal for public employees to strike. Many of them also have laws that say things like, “okay you can negotiate a ‘union contract’ but all you’re allowed to negotiate for is your little pay raise and asking for anything else is not allowed.” Just the most brazen rejection of the basic right of workers to negotiate their own working conditions that you will find anywhere. It is a legal boot on the neck. Will those laws be rolled back one day? Maybe. Perhaps, one day. Or not. Will you spend your whole life hoping that maybe, perhaps, your inalienable rights will be recognized by people who understand their own job description to be to oppress you on behalf of corporate donors? You can wait, forever, or you can decide that you will do illegal strikes if you need to. That’s it.

This dynamic is old news to veteran labor strategists, but I find that many people have never had open discussions about this stuff with their coworkers, or with their own unions. I often write things encouraging people to organize unions and join the labor movement. But in many cases, when people do that, they gaze out at the brutal scene in front of them—an intransigent employer (whether public or private) and a bunch of laws that say they can’t do all the stuff they want to do—and sink into despair. Well, of course. Anyone would sink into despair if they were under the mistaken impression that all they could do were the things that the laws written by, you know, Scott Walker and ALEC and the Cletus McEvil Labor Consultants Inc. allowed them to do. The laws take away all the strongest weapons you have to use your collective power. That’s the point of those laws! You can either defy them, or accept that you’re fucked.

Organizing is a lot of work. No point doing all that work just to win your union and then be fucked. Waste of time. It is important that all of us who holler about how everyone needs to unionize be very up front and honest about this with people who follow our advice: Sometimes you will have to break the law in order to win what you want. Sometimes your choices are to strike illegally, or to lose. You are free to choose whichever of these options you prefer, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking that there is a secret third option. In many cases there is not. Furthermore, you should understand that whenever Republicans come into control of your state or federal government, they will be busy passing laws that further restrict your ability to unionize and collectively bargain and strike. In many substantive ways, the laws that unions face today are more hostile than they were in the late 1930s. If your bedrock assumption is that you can only do what the law says, you are, from the very start, leaving most of your potential power on the table. Which is exactly what the people who wrote the hostile laws intended. The worse the laws are, the more radicalism is required from organized labor in order to build and maintain its own power. A half century plus of declining union power in America goes to show that unions have not internalized this fact very well.

Take comfort in the fact that many, many working people before you have engaged in illegal strikes, and they have won. Laws are important to the extent that they are accompanied by sanctions that must be taken seriously as part of a calculation about what will be required in order to win a strike. But they ain’t the final word. They are not the boss of you. Laws are made up. Not doing the work is real. Never lose sight of the source of your own labor power. The strike is capitalism’s Achilles Heel. Don’t let anyone take that away from you, ever.

[HaulCitgo]

Hope it works out for you. Been a while already. Newton is an interesting choice for a strike. some years ago the best largest school systems. a big city wealthy suburb. I cant think of any wealthier suburb that has a larger school population.

Is proposition 2 1/2 still a thing?

[duff]

No matter how blustery the pro-labor/union person is. They are better than any of the administration of the school or the politicians. It sucks for those not getting paid. It sucks for the kids not being able to spend the days with learning and with their friends. It sucks for the parents that either have to miss work or hire child care. It doesn't suck for the politicians or the administration right now. It only sucks for them when they lose their seats. The best way to do that is continue to make them look like the idiots that they are. Fuck 'em. The education failure falls directly on their shoulders no matter how much they will try to pass the buck.

[MaxWebster]

i am strongly pro-duff.
\m/

[EdRomero]

Hope it works out for you. Been a while already. Newton is an interesting choice for a strike. some years ago the best largest school systems. a big city wealthy suburb. I cant think of any wealthier suburb that has a larger school population.

Is proposition 2 1/2 still a thing?

yes, and Newton voted against it last spring. 20% of the population sends their kids to private schools, then you have older citizens sick of paying taxes and hearing shit about schools, and then you have your basic Republicans, and low voter turnout and you end up with overrides failing and shitty mayors.

Brookline is probably the most similar city locally, but nowhere as wealthy and probably a much bigger young/single population

[EdRomero]

Strike is over; back to work on Monday. Thanks for letting me vent here.

[sancarlos]

I’m happy for you. And, those were some entertaining rants.

[tennbengal]

Great to hear , Ed - glad for you.

[Pruitt IV]

Good news for a change.

[rass]

Glad to hear

[EdRomero]

While many schools across Massachusetts are closed Tuesday due to the storm, Newton Public Schools will be open.

Mayor Ruthanne Fuller confirmed that decision in an email early Tuesday morning.

Newton's superintendent said Monday that there were "constraints" on the school calendar and many of the "safety days" that are normally built into the schedule have already been taken because of the recent teachers' strike.

Fuller encouraged drivers to "take it slow when you're driving" and to "look out closely for others."

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/ne ... m/3277846/

Looks like the storm is not supposed to be as bad as predicted, but this looks like a great excuse if there's an accident or two.

This is the same superintendent who canceled school last school year because it was too windy (and the day before December break).