Feature Archives

3/8: Taco Bell announced today that it will fund a penny per pound "pass-through" with its suppliers of Florida tomatoes, and will undertake joint efforts with the CIW on several fronts to improve working conditions in Florida's tomato fields. For its part, the CIW has agreed to end its three-year boycott of Taco Bell, saying that the agreement "sets a new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry." Read more

The 2005 Taco Bell Truth Tour kicked off from Immokalee, Florida on February 28 and headed two different directions en route to Louisville, Kentucky--home of Yum! Brands corporate headquarters. Yum! is the parent company to Taco Bell which is itself one of the most profitable fast food chains in the world. Tomato pickers in Florida, organizing for better working conditions and wages for over a decade, have called a boycott against Taco Bell. Most tomato pickers in Florida are migrant workers and are vulnerable to exploitation. Aside from fighting for an increase in wages which have stagnated for over 25 years, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have helped to uncover multiple cases of modern day slavery.
The CIW has targeted Taco Bell because they "directly profit from farmworkers’ sub-poverty wages and substandard working conditions — including sub-poverty annual wages, no right to overtime, no right to organize, a per bucket piece rate that hasn't changed significantly since 1978, no sick leave, no health insurance, and no benefits whatsoever." The two legs of the 2005 Truth Tour are due to converge in Louisville March 6th culminating March 12th with a National Convergence for Farmworker Justice at Yum! Brands corporate headquarters. Stay tuned for daily updates:

Audio: Tour Departs from Immokalee (.mp3) | West leg hits Tallahassee (.mp3) | Cleveland IMC Radio Hour Interview with worker from Immokalee | CIW Teach-in Cleveland, OH | Connections b/w Civil Rights and Boycott
Video: Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four & Five
Photos: Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four | Day Five | Day Six
Stories: Taco Bell Truth Tour Rolls into Ohio [Cleveland IMC] | Farmworkers Stage Demonstration, Call for Boycott of Taco Bell [Tennessee IMC] | Boot the Bell [Houston IMC] | 2005 Taco Bell Truth Tour: First Stop Tallahassee [Tallahassee-Red Hills IMC] | Labor Solidarity: The Taco Bell Truth Tour Comes to Chicago [Chicago IMC] | Students Push to Boot Taco Bell from UT's Campus [ATX IMC]

Boycott Taco Bell song | Download film "Immokalee: From Slavery to Freedom" (.mov)
Archived articles from Democracy Now! 1 | 2
Article Leading Like Jesus | Values Voters, Desperate Housewives and Sweatshop Tacos

Student/Farmworker Alliance | Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Read more english (original)

On Tuesday February 22nd, dozens of members of LIUNA Local 261 protested at the SF Department of Public Works (DPW) against illegal layoffs, nepotism and corruption by the management of the DPW. Laid off workers are demanding that they be reinstated to their jobs with full seniority, that the City conduct an investigation of the 7514 General Laborers Civil Service Exam, and that the City investigate Deputy Director Mohammad Nuru's involvement with the firings. Mayor Gavin Newsom has so far refused to meet with the workers.
Video | Photos | Labor On The Job

Report from the IATSE Local's Business Agent: The Oaks got an 11-month contract keeping Richard at the same hours and benefits with $1.19 an hour pay cut. The second part-time operator's job was lost. They demanded the contract end on Richard's retirement date next January. "So, we will probably be out there again next year."

February 25, 2005: There will be no flying picket tonight because there has been an oral agreement reached. A contract should be signed on Monday, and the membership will vote on it on Tuesday. There will be no pickets in the interim.

February 22, 2005: After 80 years of union operators, the new owners of the Oaks Theater in Berkeley have announced their decision to let go two union projectionists. The two projectionists, who have both worked at the Oaks for over 20 years, are members of a small local of one of the oldest unions in show business, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (CQ), Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada (IATSE). The Oaks has been a union shop since the theater first opened in 1925. The new owner has said that it wants to change to a non-union shop and offered to dump one of the union projectionists and keep the other at reduced hours as a non-union projectionist for a year while he trains replacement workers.

People picketed the theater from Friday, February 18th through Tuesday, February 22nd. On Tuesday, the company began negotiating with the union and has made an offer to the union. As a good faith gesture the union took down the pickets on Tuesday at 6pm, and will be voting on whether to take the company's offer on Thursday. Currently, the union is still planning for the picket to return on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, from 30 minutes before the first show until 15 minutes after the last show starts. In a show of solidarity city workers have refused to pick up trash since the pickets went up, which proved to be an effective pressure point previously at the Elmwood Theater. Bus drivers and other community members are also showing their support as they pass the theater, and putting pressure on the company by calling them to complain about the firings. Mail, however, is still being delivered. There will be a Flying Picket at the theater on Friday (time to be announced).

The Oaks Theater is located at 1875 Solano Avenue between The Alameda and Colusa in North Berkeley and is easily accessible by AC Transit from Downtown Berkeley BART (the 43 and the 15). Transit Trip Planner

Berkeley Daily Planet article and reports | Oaks Theater Picket Website

Unions in California are keeping a close eye on Governor Schwarzenegger these days. On December 10th, he declared a state of emergency and announced that he was going to take away California workers' lunch breaks. He was forced to rescind the "emergency" status of his rule changes, but he is still attacking the guaranteed right to a lunch break for California workers.
The rule changes announced by the Governator would weaken workers' rights to breaks and meal periods and would shorten the amount of time that employers can be held liable for refusing to provide them. Companies like Wal-Mart that are being sued for cheating their workers out of lunch breaks could be off the hook if Governor Schwarzenegger’s changes go into effect.

Because the proposed rule changes are no longer classified as emergency regulations, the public was given 120 days to comment on them. Public forums have been held in Los Angeles, San Francisco (Video | Photos), and Fresno. People can also send written comments to the LWDA.

Hundreds of Workers Protest Governor’s Proposal to Weaken their Rights | California Labor Federation | Labor and Workforce Development Agency

The Transamerica Pyramid is San Francisco's most famous building, but ever since a co-worker died on the job, the janitors who clean it have been fighting to stop Transamerica's cleaning company, OneSource, from abusing them. The janitors have reported discrimination, harassment, and unsafe working conditions. OneSource has failed to address janitor's concerns and continues to pile impossible - and unsafe - amounts of work on janitors around the city, including the Transamerica Pyramid.
Photos | SEIU: Justice For Janitors

From the Newswire - In a labor battle with roots dating back 100 years, independent truckers and Starbucks employees are now joining the wild and contentious Wobblies.

On a fog-soaked December morning, near an Interstate 5 offramp on the outskirts of Stockton, about a dozen men huddled in a loose circle. Some wore the traditional long beards and Sikh turbans of their native India. The younger men were mostly clean-shaven and sported brand-name windbreakers. To the north was a truck dealership. To the south, shrouded in the fog, was a dog-food factory.

The men spoke animatedly in Punjabi and then broke up, shuffling around the empty lot, talking on cell phones and killing time. Occasionally, a taller man would call them together again for another meeting.

This is what a wildcat truckers strike looks like in the Stockton Valley. Read Full Article

From Fault Lines - Downtown San Francisco is quiet these days, no more are the hoarse cries of picketing hotel workers to be heard along Market street, in Nob Hill and the Financial District, where members of UNITE-HERE Local 2 were locked out for 38 days following a contract dispute. Yet whatever happens after the 60-day “cooling off” period brokered by Mayor Newsom, San Francisco has changed, and is changing. “San Francisco is a union town”, went one of the union’s chants during the lockout. The support that ordinary people lent to the striking workers suggests that this was no idle boast. But the strike and subsequent lockout of roughly 4,300 hotel workers here is not an isolated incident, nor is this particular to San Francisco. These issues are part of an ever-increasing trend in America today of labor struggles moving into retail and the so-called ‘service industry’.

It is hardly news in the U.S. today that our economy has moved from goods, that is, the production of tangible objects such as cars, televisions and lumber, to the service economy. This was hailed as a boon in the '90s, when the service jobs that were created were largely in high-tech, including internet jobs. After the dot-com bubble burst and the recession that followed in the wake of September 11, the jobs created have largely been ‘service industry’ jobs. Even conservative publications like the Economist admit that many of these are “McJobs”, a phrase coined by author Douglass Coupland in the 1991 novel ‘Generation X’ to describe “low-pay, low-benefit, low-prestige service industry jobs.” Read Full Article