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labor strike
Spanish H&M Workers Strike for Better Wages and Conditions
Unions UGT and CCOO called for strike action June 12 after months of negotiations over staffing, hours, and pay.
Jun 26, 2023
Hundreds of workers at the Swedish retail giant H&M Group joined a one-day strike in Spain on Monday to demand better working conditions and higher wages as living costs increase.
Monday's walkout is the second full-day strike against H&M Group this month as part of a series of labor actions called by the unions UGT and CCOO to coincide with summer sales.
"H&M's workforce deserves better working conditions and salaries," the unions said when calling the strike on June 12, as El Diarioreported, "which is why we ask you to join in the stoppages and strikes."
"We need to increase wages substantially."
The unions are negotiating on behalf of more than 4,000 workers at H&M brands including H&M, Cos, and Other Stories, The Associated Press reported. The unions want the retail giant to improve staffing after H&M laid off 400 workers in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to El País. The shortages have put additional strain on the remaining employees, most of whom are part time. Further, the unions want the company to offer more hours and improve wages, which are set by many different provincial agreements and as low as the minimum in some places.
"H&M workers in Spain earn less than 1,000 euros a month," 42-year-old worker Santiago Sanza said while protesting in front of a Madrid store on June 20, as Reuters reported, adding that most employees only netted 24 hours a week.
"We need to increase wages substantially," Sanza said.
Union leader Ángeles Rodríguez Bonillo said that low salaries had been made harder to bear with inflation, which is at 2.9% in Spain, according to the AP.
"Salaries that have been frozen for many, many years," Bonillo said, but the status quo had become intolerable "with the economic situation and the high cost of living."
The unions have been negotiating with H&M since January, El País reported. The store said it had offered to improve staffing and hours and implement a rewards-based pay system, but the unions said their proposals were "too abstract."
"The company has not put forward a single solution to the issues we raised," the unions said in their June 12 strike announcement, as El Diaro reported, "because of which we have decided to plan protests so that the company will understand the extent of the workforce's plight."
The UGT and CCOO initially announced three actions: partial work stoppages June 20 lasting from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm local time and again from 8:30 to 10:30 pm, a full 24-hour strike June 22, and another 24-hour strike June 26.
The strike action went ahead after negotiations derailed June 19 following a 12-hour session, according to the AP and Reuters.
During the June 22 strike, 80% of the workforce participated, shuttering around 95 stores, Reuters reported Friday.
"In general, there's been a lot of success," a CCOO spokesperson told El País, adding that the walkout had closed all the H&Ms in Fuerteventura, Asturias, Jaén, Murcia, Granada, Alicante, and Málaga, with only one store open in both Madrid and Barcelona.
The unions have since announced that strikes will continue July 1 and 8.
"The strike is extended because negotiations are blocked," union leader Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez said, as Reuters reported Friday.
"This move by management in Spain is not an isolated example."
UNI Europe, which represents service workers in the European Union, said H&M's actions in Spain, from the part-time hours to the stalled negotiations, reflected continental trends.
"This move by management in Spain is not an isolated example," UNI Europe regional secretary Oliver Roethig told the AP. "Even in the company's home country of Sweden, workers are being pushed into the precarity of zero-hour contracts."
At the same time, the company has become less willing to compromise.
"From Sweden to Spain, we are seeing that they are adopting a more conflictual approach to labor relations recently," Roethig said in a statement. "Workers and their unions will not allow management to cut hours and normalize low pay in a bid to divert income away from workers and towards profits. We urge management to rethink their approach."
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University of Illinois Chicago Faculty Strike After Contract Negotiations Fail
"The campus is thriving, but many faculty are not," said one striking professor. "Management needs to invest in resources that strengthen our entire community."
Jan 18, 2023
Hundreds of University of Illinois Chicago faculty members went on strike Tuesday after nine months of deadlocked contract negotiations over pay and student mental health resources.
The approximately 900 members of the UIC United Faculty union have been working without contracts since August. In November, 97% of the 77% of faculty who voted opted to strike. The union announced late Monday that its members would walk off the job the following day after a marathon 12-hour negotiation session failed to produce a deal.
“We started bargaining this contract back in April, and we've made some progress since then. But we have not won yet," UIC United Faculty president Aaron Krall toldBlock Club Chicago.
\u201c"Our students have a lot of needs that aren't being met."\n\nThe University of Illinois Chicago works because the faculty members of @UICUF do. They're on strike for a #FairContractNow to get the resources students and educators need to thrive. #WeLoveUIC\u201d— AFT (@AFT) 1674064832
According to the Chicago Sun-Times:
The union is striking for higher minimum salaries, bigger pay raises that match inflation, mental health support for students, better job security for non-tenure track faculty, learning disability assessments for students, and more.
The UIC administration is offering raises of 17% over four years, averaging 4.25% per year, the union said. That figure is composed of merit raises and other specific pools of raises that do not apply to all union members across the board.
Union leaders called that offer insufficient, and said "seven years of record enrollments and over a billion dollars in unrestricted reserve funds" was "evidence that the university can afford to take demands for faculty raises seriously."
"The campus is thriving, but many faculty are not," UIC United Faculty negotiator Nicole Nguyen said in a statement. "We have spent the past three years scrambling to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, and our whole community—students and faculty—are exhausted. Management needs to invest in resources that strengthen our entire community."
\u201cFaculty with @UICUF are picketing across the UIC campus this morning on Day 1 of their indefinite strike.\n\nThere's a rally at noon with mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson, @AFTunion President Randi Weingarten and more\u201d— Nader Issa (@Nader Issa) 1673977525
Some UIC faculty also say they are working more to help students deal with mental health issues.
"I surveyed my students on the first day of class and asked what they perceived as the biggest challenges in need of intervention. Almost all listed mental health," Michael H. Pasek, an assistant psychology professor at the school, tweeted last week. "It's no wonder faculty... are about to strike over students' mental health resources."
Interim UIC chancellor Javier Reyes and acting provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs Karen Colley called the strike "disappointing" and "not in the best interest of the university or our students."
"UIC values the faculty for their key role in upholding and championing the university's academic mission," Reyes and Colley said in a joint statement. "Based on the shared principles between all involved, the university remains optimistic that a fair and beneficial bargaining agreement can be achieved."
Speaking in support of the striking faculty, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, asserted that "if we care about kids' academic success, if we care about their future, it is vitally important on this campus to have the mental health support and the other diagnostic testing and other support they need to thrive."
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The Real Lessons From the Railway Labor Dispute
The outrage and alarm produced by the mere threat of these workers to withhold their labor reveal that our economy functions because workers... work.
Dec 23, 2022
So, the threatened railway workers strike is over. President Joe Biden used his authority over interstate commerce to impose a settlement. As we all watch CNN and FOX News breath a sign of relief, let’s see if there is a lesson to be learned in these events.
Let’s take a brief look at the background to the dispute. The American railway system was deregulated in the 1980s. And, as always seems to happen, consolidation and profit-taking followed close upon the deregulation. What was once over 30 operating railroad companies was reduced to just seven through buyouts and mergers. These seven firms have all worked to increase their profits by reducing staffing, increasing and intensifying the workload of the remaining workers, and drawing back investment in safety equipment and other costly projects while increasing prices and rates.
The fact that labor’s ability to strike can threaten the normal workings of the economy reveals the true value of workers today.
For example, the companies introduced something called “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” which cut staffing and safety on the rails thereby endangering workers and the surrounding communities. The so-called upside of all these changes was reduced costs and increased profits. And, as usual, the latter were used to make payments to shareholders and investors. Unnoticed by many, these changes also meant that anything that allowed workers unscheduled time off (such as paid sick leave) would seriously disrupt what has become a more or less “bare bones” operation that relies on a minimum of employees to move a lot of stuff crucial to our economy which is built on “just-in-time” production, inventory, and logistics.
These profit-above-all changes made the railroad system especially dependent on a minimized workforce. It could not withstand the paid sick leave system the unions wanted. The new railroad system as a whole relied on the denial of the basic health and safety needs of the workforce. As a result, recent employee surveys showed three of the top five worst employers in the country were rail companies.
The question is: why didn’t President Biden opt to do nothing and simply let the bargaining process continue? Biden said he had to act because the imminent strike of railway workers would have devastated our already troubled economy. He more or less apologized for having to impose a settlement that did not include the seven days of paid sick leave desired by the four unions representing the majority of railroad workers. Their original proposal was for 15 days. His decision seems to have satiated the talking heads in the news media who had spent a couple of weeks underscoring the potential negative effects of a strike on the economy while giving very little by way of historical and sociological analysis. And, of course, it disappointed the 12 unions and 115,000 employees that make up the railway workforce.
But all this hand-wringing overlooks a very important point: the fact that labor’s ability to strike can threaten the normal workings of the economy reveals the true value of workers today. The outrage and alarm produced by the mere threat of these workers to withhold their labor reveal that our economy functions because workers... work. It is the labor of the employees at all the companies and institutions of our society that creates the things that people value and desire. Labor is the lifeblood of the economy.
Trains could run without railroad corporation majority stockholders and their CEOs, but not without maintenance workers and engineers; automobiles could be made without corporate honchos but not without the men and women on the assembly line; oil wells could pump petroleum without the folks who own oil company stocks but not without the workers at the rigs and pipelines; and, food could be grown and harvested without the persons who own the land but not without the farm workers who plant, weed, and harvest.
It is labor that makes the economy go. Amazon is successful because of its drivers and warehouse workers, nor because of Mr. Jeff Bezos. Tesla is able to make electric cars thanks to engineers and line workers, not because of Elon Musk. Walmart is able to sell stuff because of its associates—and they are not part of the Walton Family. And it's very a safe bet that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz doesn’t even know how to make a decent latte.
So the next time you hear or read some outpouring of praise and admiration for a rich corporate owner or finance mogul just remind yourself what is the real key to a successful economy: the workers, the employees. These are the ordinary people (you and I) who make the economy work.
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