Tag Archives: Protest

Home, Labor Studies

B&H: Labor Exploiter?

This past Sunday, dozens of B&H workers publicly aired their grievances against their employer, the largest non-chain photo retailer in the country. Employees marched into the NYC store to deliver a letter and launch a campaign calling for the business to “fix dangerous workplace conditions, end discrimination against Latino employees, and stop wage theft at their two Brooklyn warehouses.”

Laura Gottesdiener covered the action for Al Jazeera America (“Photo retailer B&H faces unwanted exposure over worker safety“), writing:

In the main B&H warehouse located in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, the walls and ceilings are insulated with fiberglass that fills the air and flecks off onto the worker’s skin, causing rashes, respiration problems and daily nosebleeds, employees say. Inside a second warehouse, on Evergreen Avenue in Brooklyn, employees say they have worked amid asbestos-insulated tubing. “They would tell us to clean the tubes,” recalled maintenance worker Miguel Angel Muñoz Meneses, “but nobody wanted to touch them.” Continue reading B&H: Labor Exploiter? →

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News Roundup 7/31/15

July flies by, swirls of activity and here we are: the fight for fifteen changing the landscape for low-wage workers across the country, while the deaths of Sandra Bland and Samuel Dubose make it clear that #blacklivesmatter remains as pressing as ever.

  • Greenpeace activists in Portland, Oregon suspended themselves from the St. John’s Bridge to obstruct a Shell icebreaking trip en route to the Arctic. After forcing the ship to turn around yesterday, today the activists were removed by law enforcement officers. (via DemocracyNow!)
  • The NYTimes featured a long-ish read by Ian Urbina on “sea slaves,” workers from Cambodia and Myanmar sold into forced labor on fishing boats, fueled by “lax maritime labor laws and an insatiable global demand for seafood.” A horrifying and eye-opening article.
  • Teamsters labor organizers are holding a vote to unionize Google Express, the low-wage workers who power the online empire’s shopping service (via MotherJones)
  • The Guardian US became yet another media outlet to successfully unionize, when the newsroom staffers voted unanimously on Wednesday to unionize (via HuffPost)
  • Chicago unions won a court ruling stating that pension cuts are unconstitutional
  • Last week, 1000+ protesters headed to San Diego to demonstrate against the annual meeting of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Committee, “a conservative nonprofit organization known for drafting and sharing legislation amongst politicians, thus facilitating the collusion between corporations and government” (via WagingNonviolence)
  • How can the labor movement support police unions in a time of police brutality and oppressive injustice, particularly against communities of color? According to Shawn Jude at Jacobin, we can’t.
  • Trying to make sense of the New York State wage panel’s minimum wage proposal? Here’s an explainer, courtesy of the New York Times.

Photo by Twelvizm via flickr (CC-BY-ND).

Home, Labor Studies, Murphy News

Happy May Day — and Happy Birthday!

It’s May Day again — that’s International Workers’ Day, for those not in the know. Here in NYC, the Guggenheim’s been occupied, Free University’s been liberating education from the university-industrial complex,  the Immigrant Workers Justice Tour has marched through Manhattan and at 5pm, we’ll be Shutting It Down for Freddie Gray, starting at Union Square. (For more on today’s events — of which there are many — check out the calendar at 99pickets.org.)

Here at Murphy, we celebrate May Day as the yearly commemoration of those who have fought for a better life for the working class — while continuing to wage our struggle.

This year’s May Day marks yet another milestone: the one-year anniversary of this blog.  Continue reading Happy May Day — and Happy Birthday! →

Home, Labor Studies

Black Friday Protests

On the eve of what is — for many Americans — the biggest consumer holiday of the year, many of us in the labor movement are making plans to voice our discontent with the exploitative practices that fuel Black Friday.

Check out blackfridayprotests.org to learn how you can come out tomorrow and support Walmart workers in their fight for rights and fair standards.

Need some convincing? Watch this video from Robert Reich on How 1.4m Americans Could Get a Raise Right Now:

[youtube:http://youtu.be/_-SMetMkcVI]

Photo by UFCW Local400 via flickr (CC-BY).

Home, Labor Studies

Italians Demonstrate in Opposition to Jobs Act

In Italy, a proposed change in labor laws has demonstrators taking the streets. Known as the Jobs Act, this as-yet unwritten law is seen as a “rolling back” of labor protections, that many protestors see as an erosion of rights for those living in increasingly precarious situations.

According to an article in the New York Times by Elisabetta Povoledo last week,

…in a country where the first article of the Constitution declares it a republic “founded on work,” rolling back labor protections is not to be taken lightly. It is particularly telling that many of those opposing Mr. Renzi’s plans are young people.

They are deeply skeptical that the proposed change would in fact open jobs to them — so many other overhaul efforts before it have failed to do so. Instead, they are demanding the same guarantees that their parents have had, something it is not at all clear Italy can still afford.

“All he’s doing is destroying the rights of full-time workers without giving rights to people in precarious job situations,” said Francesco Raparelli, 36, one of the coordinators of a nationwide strike last Friday by thousands of workers who hold temporary contracts.

Continue reading Italians Demonstrate in Opposition to Jobs Act →

Home, New Labor Forum, Urban Studies

Rev. Al Sharpton Talks Protest and Policing at Murphy

Earlier this semester, a full house attended a special forum entitled “From Protest to Policy: Policing in Communities of Color,” kicking off the Fall 2014 Labor Breakfast Forum series at the Murphy Institute.

The event was moderated by CUNY Prof. John Mollenkopf and featured the Reverend Al Sharpton, who talked about the controversial policing tactics seen in present-day and past New York City, the effect these tactics have had on minority communities as well as the effect they have on the overall crime rate, and the quality of life for all New York City residents. The discussion also looked at arrest trends and potential public policy interventions.

Reverend Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts his own radio talk show, Keepin’ It Real, and he makes regular guest appearances on Fox News (such as on The O’Reilly Factor), CNN, and MSNBC. In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, a nightly talk show.