On the picket line

CIW targets Chipotle chain

After successfully helping to pressure Trader Joe’s to sign the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Agreement in February, sumofus.org is supporting CIW’s newest target: the national Chipotle chain. As the progressive website notes in its petition, “If you believe its marketing hype, you’d think Chipotle does everything it can to source its ingredients ethically.” But even though it claims to promote “food with integrity” on its website, Chipotle has refused to sign the FFA. To help Florida tomato pickers, many of whom are immigrants, earn more than starvation wages and have better working conditions, sign the petition on the home page of sumofus.org. Many fast-food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King, and retail food chains like Whole Foods, have already signed the FFA.

Raise minimum wage for tipped workers!

Did you know that tipped workers earn a much lower federal minimum wage than other workers? That their minimum of $2.13 an hour hasn’t gone up in 21 years? And that two-thirds of these workers are women? No wonder the Restaurant Opportunities Center called a protest on Equal Pay Day, April 18, outside the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., to protest the NRA’s opposition to raising the minimum wage for tipped workers. Dressed in black uniforms with white aprons, demonstrators chanted, “21 years of $2.13, the NRA is greedy and mean!” ROC-Philly’s Victoria Bruton said during the rally: “I serve families food for a living, but I’ve had to be on food stamps. We deserve a fair wage!” (Union City, online newsletter of Metro Washington AFL-CIO, April 18) And she’s the rule, not the exception. According to a ROC report, servers, 71 percent of whom are women, “are almost three times more likely to be paid below the poverty line than the general workforce and are nearly twice as likely to need food stamps.” The report also noted that keeping the federal minimum wage low for tipped workers is “institutionalizing the gender gap in pay.” A ROC banner summed it up: “Women are worth more than $2.13.” The protest was supported by the National Organization for Women, MomsRising and other allies. (campusprogress.org, April 20)

L.A. port truckers win union

After a hard-fought, year-long battle for union recognition, the port truck drivers in Los Angeles who haul brand-name fashion imports voted April 12 to join Teamsters Local 70. The workers had to battle the Australian-owned, $8.8 billion Toll Group, which waged a vicious, expensive, union-hostile campaign to intimidate workplace leaders and suppress free choice. Though the workforce is small — the vote was 46-15 — the union victory is huge, heralded by local and international supply chain workers, other labor unions and community allies as “a trailblazing private sector win in a market arena that decimated middle-class jobs when it was deregulated in 1980.” After the workers exposed their misclassification as independent contractors and their inhumane, unsanitary working conditions (for details, see tinyurl.com/7z7zbsn), Toll retaliated with such hostile actions that it’s facing a federal trial. The International Transport Workers Federation condemned Toll for undermining the rights of 110,000 U.S. port truck drivers and called for worldwide solidarity. The Transport Workers Union, which represents 12,000 Toll employees in Australia, answered with huge support. (press release, ­teamsterslocal70.org, April 12)

Too many job-related deaths

Every year since 1991, the AFL-CIO has commemorated workers killed at work and those who die from work-related causes on Workers Memorial Day, April 28. According to the 2012 edition of its report, “Death on the Job,” 2010 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show 4,690 workers — an average of 13 a day — were killed at work, with an estimated 50,000 dying from occupational diseases. Latino/a workers, often immigrants working in high-risk construction jobs, continue to have the highest fatality rate — 3.9 per 100,000 workers. More than 3.8 million work-related injuries and illnesses were reported, but that’s way below the reality. The report estimates an accurate toll is two to three times that — between 7.6 million and 11.4 million a year. The total cost of job injuries and illnesses is estimated at $250 billion to $300 billion a year. The report concludes that U.S. workers need more safety and health protection, not less. (AFL-CIO Now blog, May 2)

S.F. Labor Council supports protests of NATO/G8

The Executive Committee of the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a resolution May 7 opposing the G8 nations for imposing harsh austerity measures on working people around the world and NATO for fighting unjust wars throughout the world, all while people in the U.S. have lost jobs and vital social services due to bloated military budgets. The resolution supported the anti-NATO protest in Chicago on May 20 that was endorsed by labor unions, community groups and anti-war organizations, and called for the permitted demonstration to be allowed to proceed peacefully so that the protesters’ grievances could be heard.