The Other New York Times Workers On Strike

The newspaper’s IT specialists, security guards and sales coordinators — some of whom earn as little as $52,000 a year — strike alongside reporters for better wages.

Claudia Irizarry Aponte— THE CITY

Dec 8, 2022

Security workers Karen Letellier, left, John Garafalo and Lila Rivera were among the 1,100 employees of The New York Times who walked off the job for 24 hours, Dec. 8, 2022.
CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE/THE CITY

When a man wielding a sword and an axe entered the New York Times building last month and demanded to speak with a reporter, it was security workers, among them Karen Letellier, who confronted him, ordering him to surrender his bag and drop to the ground.

“Our job is a huge responsibility,” said Letellier, 36, a concierge who has worked for the Times for five years. “There is no room for mistakes when people’s lives are at risk.”

Letellier, like other security workers, is also one of the lowest-earning employees at The New York Times. She is among the nearly 1,100 New York Times Guild members who walked off the job for 24 hours at midnight Thursday. They’re part of a union that includes reporters, editors and assistants, but also lower-wage workers like security guards, IT specialists, ushers and sales coordinators who earn as little as $52,000 annually.

They, like all the Times staffers on strike, contend they’ve lost out on the Gray Lady’s boom of recent years. One of the few profitable media companies in the country, it reported a $36.6 million profit in the third quarter and an operating profit of $51 million, up from $49 million the previous year, even as it spent $550 million to purchase the sports news website The Athletic, and an undisclosed amount in “the low seven figures” range for the Wordle game app this year.

Among the union demands still on the table: Increasing the salary floor to $65,000, which the company has so far refused even as it authorized $150 million in stock buybacks this year.

The union estimates the proposals would cost the company roughly $100 million over the four-year life of the contract. Management and the union have been bargaining for 20 months, ever since the contract spanning roughly 1,400 staffers expired in March 2021.

Bill Baker, a unit chair and IT specialist at The New York Times, speaks at the picket line on Thursday.
CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE/THE CITY

Many workers have not received any merit or negotiated increase, aside from contractual raises, in more than a decade, said Bill Baker, an IT specialist at the Times company for 16 years. Many in his department earn annual salaries in the range of $55,000, Baker said.

“There has been no real upward mobility for people in my department” other than being promoted to non-union positions, he said.

‘We Deserve It’

The work stoppage, the likes of which has not been seen at the Times in decades, left several major desks without staff. The last major Guild-led work stoppage at the scale of Thursday’s strike was a multiday strike in September and October of 1965. In 2017, Times staffers staged a brief lunchtime walkout to protest planned cuts to the newsroom’s copyediting staff.

The union currently includes reporters, editors and research and news assistants across the country, plus security personnel and workers on the business side — including the IT, finance and advertising departments — who are employed by the company in its headquarters on Eighth Avenue near Times Square.

While much of the public’s attention has focused on the Times’ reporters and editors, who make up the bulk of the bargaining unit, union activists are conscious that the most pressing needs are felt by administrative staff.

“We’re representing people with such varied jobs and interests, so this can be a chance for us to make sure we’re covering all those bases and a big part of our ask this time around,” said grievance chair Jim Luttrell, a senior editor.

“We’re not being greedy. We deserve it,” said concierge Lila Rivera, 49, of the union’s demand for a $65,000 salary floor. “It’s our responsibility to make this place safe.”

Workers at The New York Times have been represented by the NewsGuild of New York since 1940. The unit has historically included security guards, sales coordinators and customer service representatives alongside reporters and editors.

In previous decades, the unit also included cafeteria workers and building management at the Times’ old headquarters before those positions were outsourced, said Baker, who is a unit chair.

A separate unit representing some 700 tech workers — engineers and designers who manage the website interface and its news apps — voted to unionize with the NewsGuild of New York this year. Those employees staged a “collective lunch break” in solidarity with their striking coworkers on Thursday.

Seeing Red

Scores of Times workers — wearing red clothing, the NewsGuild’s color — attended an afternoon rally in front of the newspaper’s headquarters near Times Square.

Among the speakers was Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, a unit council member.

“When this paper struggled, all of us had to share in its austerity,” said Hannah-Jones. “When this paper is doing well, the people who work hard every day to make this place a global phenomenon deserve to share in success.”

Hundreds of reporters and workers of The New York Times formed a picket line outside their Times Square building as contract negations stalled.

CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE/THE CITY

No labor action has stopped production of the paper since the New York City newspaper strike of 1978, which halted the print and distribution of several newspapers in the region, including The New York Times, for 88 days.

“It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in a statement. “Though we’ve made progress and offered several new proposals this week to address issues identified as priorities by the Guild, we still have much more work to do when we return to the bargaining table.”

Throughout Thursday, the Times was publishing and sharing stories across social platforms and its mobile app, including a news alert for WNBA star Brittney Griner’s release from a Russian prison in a prisoner swap.

The company began planning for the work stoppage last week, asking reporters to file stories early as if preparing for a major holiday, and using additional resources like its non-union international staff. Times management ramped up its efforts following more than 1,100 union members signing a pledge to walk out of the job on Thursday if the two sides did not reach an agreement.

By Wednesday, the company backed off a proposal to replace its existing adjustable pension plan with a 401(k) retirement plan, instead letting the union choose between the two, the Associated Press reported. The company also agreed to expand fertility treatment benefits.

Workers on the picket line said the decision to go on strike was not easy, nor one they were eager to make.

“But we need more money, we need job security,” said security guard John Garafalo, gesturing at the scores of Times workers picketing on 40th Street. “These are my people.”

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

The Public Health Consequences When Railroads Don't Pay Sick Leave

How workers, families, and employers suffer when sick leave policies are thin

A railway worker helps load railcars onto a train in San Diego, California,

 on November 30, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake

by Ajeet Singh and Priyanka Sethy

December 8, 2022

In June of this year, Aaron Hiles, a railway engineer and ex-Marine from Lee's Summit, Missouri, felt unwell enough to make a doctor's appointment. When his employer, a large freight rail carrier, changed his schedule at the last minute, he put off his appointment because his company does not provide paid sick leave and would have penalized him if he skipped a day of work. A few weeks later, Aaron died of a heart attack while on the job.

The U.S. freight rail network, extending almost 140,000 route miles, is the largest rail system in the world. It is also almost entirely privately owned. Railway companies and their workers' unions have been in negotiations for their next contract, and paid sick leave policy has been at the forefront of ongoing debates. Thanks to a nearly one-hundred-year-old bill, Congress has had the power to resolve disputes between labor unions and railroads to prevent disruptions to interstate commerce. U.S. Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh helped to broker a tentative national contract between the railways and unions in September, which included modest salary increases, but was rejected by multiple railroad worker unions for its omission of any paid sick leave.

Though negotiations were set to continue, President Joe Biden called on Congress last week to intervene. However, a subsequent amendment adding seven days of paid sick leave failed to pass, leaving rail workers little room to negotiate further. These tense deliberations across railways, unions, and the government heightened the national attention around not only the labor rights of railway workers, but also more broadly around employee health protections in the United States.

Paid sick leave is not only a strategy to protect an individual worker's health, it is also recognized as a public health tool that can improve health outcomes for families and communities, all while making workplaces safer. Failing to guarantee these protections risks exacerbating health inequities across racial and income divides, leaving us with a less healthy workforce for tomorrow.

Individuals with paid sick leave have higher odds of having appropriate vaccinations and preventative tests than those without

Paid Sick Leave Is Good for Families

Paid sick leave is a crucial policy measure with the potential to improve employee and family health. Across twenty years of studies, research finds that controlling for socio-economic factors, on average, individuals with paid sick leave have higher odds of having appropriate vaccinations (e.g., flu shot) and preventative tests (e.g., mammograms) than those without such leave. Adults with paid sick leave may also have lower emergency department utilization. Alternatively, U.S. workers without paid sick leave report lower rates of noncommunicable disease screenings (even when such screenings are free) and higher rates of psychological distress.

The protective effect of paid sick leave extends to entire families, as well. The odds that children with at least one parent with access to paid sick leave have had an annual doctor's visit are 27 percent higher than the odds for children whose parents have no paid sick leave. Some research suggests parental paid sick reduces a ​​child's likelihood of visiting the emergency room.

It is clear that the lack of paid sick leave is a significant barrier to accessing appropriate health care. Rail workers like Aaron Hiles are falling between the gaps because they have no paid sick leave. A preventative visit may have saved his life and led to an increased lifespan.

Health Care Utilization With Access to Paid Sick Leave

Workers with paid sick leave are...

Reducing the Working Unwell

Paid sick leave is also an effective public health tool. Research suggests access to paid sick leave may result in reduced presenteeism, the practice of working while unwell, which itself has been shown to significantly reduce productivity, resulting in delays in recovery and worsening employee mental health. Significantly, paid sick leave has been found to reduce the transmission of influenza-like illnesses among workers. A 2018 study compared the effects of paid sick leave policy in Washington D.C. and Connecticut and determined that the positive public health impact of paid sick leave could reduce overall absences due to sickness by 18 percent by limiting the spread of disease. This was acutely appreciated during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from an analysis of federal emergency sick leave measures during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that states that adopted new sick leave policies experienced an average of 400 fewer confirmed COVID-19 cases per state per day. These sick leave policies, however, expired in 2020.

Increasingly worrisome is the impact of paid sick leave—and the lack of it—on emergency department utilization. United Healthcare estimates that addressing avoidable emergency department visits could save the industry $32 billion each year. Research shows that even after controlling for confounding factors such as race, education, income, and insurance, availability of paid sick leave was associated with significant reductions in moderate (one to three visits) and repeated (less than three visits/year) use of emergency departments.

Paid sick leave has consequences for health equity as well. One study conducted during the H1N1 pandemic (2009-10) illustrated racial disparities across a range of social determinants of health—including housing context, job precarity, ability to social distance. The findings indicate that Black and Hispanic adults experience higher rates of exposure to illnesses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that nearly half of all Hispanic workers (48 percent) and more than one-third of Black workers (36 percent) report having no access to paid time off. These disparities are compounded when workers are stratified by income (see figure).

The expansion of remote work capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic presented additional challenges across racial and educational divides. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that nearly half of White respondents were able to work from home, compared to 38 percent of Black respondents. It also reports that almost 24 percent of individuals with a high school education could work from home, compared to nearly 68 percent of individuals with at least a bachelor's degree.

Access to Paid Leave for Civilian Workers, March 2021

The health of railway workers is uniquely endangered by the unpredictable scheduling requirements of their employers. Workers are also subject to a point scoring system and have reportedly lost points and faced penalties for calling out sick with COVID-19, suffering a heart attack, and getting into a severe car accident. Another employee lost points after missing work when his mother died. Even missing a phone call from the rail company results in point deductions. Once called, workers have ninety to one-hundred-and-twenty minutes to report to the station, depending on the time of day and geographic distance to the station.

Unpredictable work schedules, which have been extensively studied in the retail and food service sectors, have been associated with income volatility and an increased risk of experiencing housing instability or hunger. Irregular work patterns are also associated with smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, and acute sleep loss, which further risks harming employee mental and physical health.

In one study of twenty-two countries ranking highest on the Human Development Index—a composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators—the United States stands alone in its complete lack of mandated federal support for workers experiencing either short-term sick days or long-term sick leave. While most other industrialized countries (see figure) leverage legislative tools to guarantee these protections, the United States relies on a patchwork of voluntary employer policies as well as state and local laws to address this need.

Paid Sick Leave Policies Across the Developed World

Unpaid sick leave leads to delays in health care among workers, families, and children who fail to receive health care until emergencies arise, and it causes people who already experience health inequalities to face additional hurdles to accessing care. While Congress has rejected railway union demands for paid sick leave, public health advocacy organizations are using this opportunity to advocate for federally mandated paid sick leave across industries. American workers should not have to risk going to work sick—which lowers their productivity, damages their health, and exposes their coworkers and the public to illnesses—for fear of risking loss of their salary and employment. The United States can join other high-income countries that guarantee paid sick leave protections to workers.


Ajeet Singh is a physician advocate, working on the front lines of safety-net healthcare delivery while supporting a range of public health interventions to improve the lives of patients.


Priyanka Sethy is pursuing a PhD in government and political science at Harvard University. She is a former research intern at the Council on Foreign Relations, and previously worked as a research assistant at the Saltzman Institute for War at Columbia University and at Harvard Kennedy School's Evidence for Policy Design.

THE WORKERS ON STRIKE ARE GRAD STUDENTS

UC’s academic workers strike brings stress to undergraduates

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

1 of 4

FILE - Stratton Georgoulis, student researcher and strike captain, stands with hundreds of University of California graduate workers and supporters as they carry on a strike to decry the university's treatment toward students and employees in Sacramento, Calif., on Dec. 5, 2022. A month into the nation’s largest strike involving higher education, the work stoppage by the university's academic workers at 10 campuses is causing stress for many undergraduate students.

 (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)


BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — A month into the nation’s largest strike involving higher education, the work stoppage by University of California academic workers at 10 campuses is causing stress for many students who are facing canceled classes, no one to answer their questions and uncertainty about how they will be graded as they wrap up the year.

Some 48,000 student employees walked off the job on Nov. 14 to demand higher wages and better benefits. The employees, represented by the United Auto Workers Local 5810, say they were left with no other choice but to strike to demand increased wages necessary to keep up with the sky-high rents in cities like Berkeley, San Diego and Los Angeles.

Last week, university officials agreed to a 29% pay hike for postdoctoral employees and academic researchers who make up about 12,000 of the 48,000 workers. The university system also agreed to provide more family leave time, childcare subsidies and job security.

But the postdoctoral employees and researchers have refused to return to work until a deal is also reached for the 36,000 graduate student teaching assistants, tutors and researchers who are bargaining separately for increased pay and benefits. The strike is being closely watched and could have a ripple effect at schools across the country.

Colleges and universities increasingly rely on graduate student employees to do teaching, grade papers and conduct research that had previously been handled by tenured faculty.

Many University of California students fear the strike may extend well into next year, disrupting their plans to apply to degree programs.

University of California, Berkeley sophomore Janna Nassar said she believes academic workers should be better paid, but she is growing concerned as the strike continues. She was counting on final review sessions with her graduate student instructor for one of her economics classes before she takes the final exam next week. But now the 18 year old said that’s not an option.

Before the strike, she said she attended lectures for that class three times a week and two discussion sessions with the graduate student instructor. She is required to complete the class before she can declare a major in economics next year.

“This is the hardest I have studied in all of my semesters here, and I feel the least prepared,” she said. “It’s really disheartening to know that I might have to declare late or maybe I won’t be able to declare econ and will have to choose another major.”

Susana Sotelo, a UC Berkeley sophomore who plans to declare a psychology major, said four of her five classes were taught by graduate student instructors or lecturers. Those classes have been canceled or moved online and turned optional.

The one class taught by a psychology professor also moved online and he told the students that no new material would be taught for the rest of the semester to support the strike, she said.

Sotelo, 19, said she is not yet sure how she will be graded for her classes except for her psychology class, which will be considered successfully completed if she turns in her research project. Ironically, her research work is about the stress undergraduate students go through when choosing a major.

“My one professor has been very understanding. He sent various emails saying that to support the strikers, he would not give any assignments and would cancel discussions,” Sotelo said.

The average pay for UC student employees is about $24,000 annually and many academic workers say they have to skip meals or take additional work to make ends meet with their meager salary.

Jonathan Mackris, who is pursuing a doctorate in film and media at UC Berkeley, said he teaches an undergraduate class about silent film history but often must take on other jobs, including grading papers or teaching reading and composition.

He said he brings in $2,100 a month and pays $1,870 for a studio apartment near campus. His landlord recently told him his rent will increase to $1,950.

“I go through phases where sometimes I’ll wake up at like two in the morning and like be really stressed about it,” he said.

The bargaining units say they are demanding the university agree to pay that will lift workers out of “rent burden,” which is defined by the federal government as having to pay at least a third of your salary toward rent.

The student workers are also demanding childcare, no more supplemental tuition for international students and better protection from harassment in the workplace, especially for scientific researchers who can be pressured into working long hours into the night and on weekends.

UC officials said in a statement they believe the proposals they have made to the bargaining units “are fair, reasonable and honor the important contributions these bargaining unit members make toward the University’s mission of education and research.”

The university said it has proposed total compensation for those working part-time to range from $46,757 to $74,798, depending on the bargaining unit title and campus.

“The proposals offered by the university to the UAW would place our graduate students and academic employees at the top of the pay scale across major public universities and on par with top private universities,” the university said in a statement.

If graduate employees and researchers win better pay at the UC system, it could prompt similar changes at colleges that compete with UC or where graduate workers are organizing unions, said Tim Cain, associate professor of higher education at the University of Georgia.

“If the unions succeed in getting close to what they’re seeking, it will be eye-opening,” he said, adding that “if the conditions fundamentally change at the UC schools, then the marketplace changes for other schools as well.”

Across the country, 75% of academic workers doing research in labs, libraries and archives, and teaching undergraduate courses are graduate students, according to Cain.

Cain sees the strike as part of a broader shift in U.S. labor after the pandemic placed a heavier burden on workers and drew attention to nationwide wage disparities.

“We’re in a moment where there is a great deal of labor activity among workers who are not well treated by larger systems, and I think a number of people working in higher education see themselves as part of that larger disruption,” he said.

What the effects of the disruption will be on UC undergraduate students whose education had already been in disarray because of the pandemic remains to be seen. But for Nassar, who isn’t certain if she will be able to declare an economics major, the effect seems long-lasting.

“It’s like a breaking point,” she said. “It’ll probably affect us for the rest of our undergraduate careers.”

___

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed from Washington.

As Grade Deadlines Approach, Academic Workers Must Hold the Line and Expand Strikes

The end of the semester is a critical time for academic workers on strike. Part time faculty at The New School and student workers and postdocs at the University of California are fighting hard to hold the line against increasing attacks from their employers. At The New School, the rumor is they might be close to winning.

Olivia Wood December 8, 2022


Part time faculty at The New School in New York City (UAW Local 7902) and student workers across the University of California system (UAW Local 2865, UAW Local 5810, and SRU-UAW) are midway through the third and fourth week of their strikes, respectively.

Higher education is a key site for the labor movement right now, with all six of the biggest new bargaining units filing for election in 2022 coming from this sector. The UC strike is the biggest strike of academic workers in U.S. history, and the The New School strike is the biggest-ever U.S. strike of part time faculty. These workers are showing workers everywhere the value and power of organized labor action, and their power will only grow as students, full time faculty, university staff, and workers from other unions join the picket lines and refuse to do business with the schools.

At most colleges and universities in the United States, early to mid December means final exams, followed by the submission of final grades. From an economic standpoint, this concludes a production cycle for the university: course credits are “produced,” and dorm and meal plan contracts end. Winter commencement means new alumni are also produced. Financial aid paperwork is processed. All of this means that the end of the year is a critical time for universities’ bottom lines. Now is the time to press forward.

Accordingly, the administrations of the University of California (UC) and The New School are growing increasingly desperate to crush the strikes, settle union contracts for as little cost to the university as possible, and return to the status quo. As a result, the universities are escalating attacks on the workers while the unions fight to hold the line.

This week, The New School announced that it would begin docking pay and benefits of both union members and any full time faculty allies who were joining the strike in solidarity. Part time faculty make up 87% of the teaching staff at The New School. This means workers will be forced to pay the full cost of their healthcare premiums or lose their coverage, right as New York is experiencing a new post-Thanksgiving surge of Covid-19, RSV, flu, and other respiratory viruses. The university is also attempting to hire “temporary progress reviewers” (scabs) to grade student work in advance of the final grade deadline. This move comes a week after the university forced a vote using the legal tactic of “last, best, final offer” and union members resoundingly voted it down.

Part time faculty at The New School remain committed to the strike, and the full time faculty at three of the university’s constituent colleges unanimously voted to hold steady in their support of the union, demand that The New School rescind its plan to dock pay and benefits, and consult with lawyers on possible legal action. Thursday afternoon, students began an occupation of the lower levels of the main academic building.

This occupation comes just one day after students at five different campuses of the University of California occupied their dining halls and began distributing free food to all who came. Striking workers at some of the campuses have also been occupying administrative buildings on and off for the past two weeks. However, it is only this week that the University has begun to crack down on the occupations, sending in police to evict the workers at the UC Riverside Dining Commons, at the UC Office of the President, and other locations.

Similarly to the faculty at The New School, seven departments at UC Davis have signed a letter supporting the strike and pledging to support all faculty who choose to join the strike in solidarity. Additional letters have been signed by departments across other schools. According to the UC Faculty Association, more than 36,000 final grades will not be submitted, as faculty refuse to scab for the striking academic student employees (ASEs) who would normally be doing the grading for their courses.

Now, at the end of the semester, is a critical time for the unions to continue and expand their disruptions of university operations to whatever extent possible. This is the heart of a strike’s power. At the same time, workers from both inside and outside of these workplaces must organize in solidarity to expand the strike and support the workers, who are being attacked on all sides by their employers. Solidarity with the striking workers!

Readers can donate to the UC strike fund

or to the UAW Local 7902 hardship fund 

by clicking these links.



Olivia Wood  is a writer and editor at Left Voice and an adjunct English lecturer in the NYC metropolitan area.

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Selling Blood, Skipping Meals, Sleeping in Cars:

Why Academics Strike

BY EVE OTTENBERGFacebook

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Photograph Source: eilidh_wag – CC BY 2.0

Last week, thousands of railroad workers ready to strike got stabbed in the back by Biden and congress. These trainmen, constantly on call and without even one paid sick day, object to being worked to death. They aren’t the only ones. Another massive strike in another business sector was already underway: Forty-eight thousand academic workers struck in California November 14. They walked off the job in one of the biggest labor actions of the century and the largest in higher education history, due to starvation wages. Their employer, the University of California, has not reacted well, has in fact taken a divide and conquer approach, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in the Guardian December 5. This means offering some spoils for those who are already better compensated and a very hard line toward those at the bottom of the pay scale, namely graduate students. Because of course.

The striking researchers, postdocs, graders and teaching assistants want a minimum annual salary of $54,000 for graduate students and $70,000 for postdocs – something commensurate with the cost of living in California, where the average annual rent in Los Angeles surpasses $36,000 a year. For teaching assistants earning $24,000 that often means sleeping in their cars. Lots of these workers resort to selling blood to make ends meet. Welcome to the lousy underside of academic labor in America, famishing scholars so parasites in university administrations can bloat up on six-figure salaries.

United Auto Workers bargains for these workers. Its president of “Local 5810, which represents more than 11,000 UC postdocs and academic workers,” according to the Washington Post November 14, accuses the university of acting unlawfully at the bargaining table. This is probably a gross understatement. Negotiations have already dragged out over a year, so you can imagine the sorts of brazen shenanigans pulled by university poohbahs protecting their pelf. For those besotted with a tinsel image of these hacks, who cry, No! However on earth could it be? University luminaries twisting the financial knife with bargaining mischief? Shocking! To such people I can only say, the blood of impoverished intellectuals waters the groves of American academe, literally, and has done so for decades. The fact that “the University of California strike is also the largest strike in higher education in U.S. history, according to the UAW,” per the Post has more than a little to do with the nonsense labor has had to tolerate at the bargaining table.

The tenure-track model for these workers is a thing of the past. According to one academic striker quoted by the New Yorker November 29, “You don’t make very much as a grad student, and you’re expected to do menial tasks for your professors…for many of us, that same deal [eventual tenure] that made the whole thing function is really no longer on the table, which means that the way we’re paid in the meantime is much more significant.” In other words, these academics have accepted the reality that they are working stiffs.

“The University of California Strike Has Been 50 Years in the Making,” headlined a story in New York magazine November 18. In addition to higher wages, New York reports that these workers demand childcare stipends, transit passes and paid leave, the sorts of things essential to the survival of your average prole and one his or her bosses fiercely resist providing, “in a state where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years.”

The roots of the strike, however, reach back, according to New York, to Proposition 13, the property tax-slashing law adopted in California 44 years ago. “This bled the state of much-needed income,” with a recent estimate “that if just the state’s commercial-property owners were taxed at fair market value, it would provide California an additional $11.5 billion in annual tax revenue – most of which would be paid by giant corporations.” Without that money, the state struggles to support amenities like its flagship university system, and thus, at the bargaining table, officials claim poverty. Such protestations, however, omit the wildly expensive metastasizing class of university administrators who pull down small fortunes and whose utility is negligible. After all, prior to the late 1970s, most schools got along just fine without them. Universities ran much more cheaply and could afford to give postdocs and grad students salaries more in line with the cost of living. Those salaries were, in absolute terms, smaller than what they get today, but so were expenses.

So far, the rank and file has rejected the university’s stingy pay increases. “Many teaching assistants would earn less than $30,000 a year,” with what management offers, according to the Post. The proposed annual childcare stipend “would barely cover a month of childcare,” workers were quoted. One wonders what their employers expect these parents to do for the remaining eleven months? Lock their kids in the car and hope they’re alive when they return from the job? “Teaching assistants at UCLA earn an average of $24,000 a year,” the union told the newspaper. Students’ parents shelling out many tens of thousands of dollars a year in exorbitant tuition thus pay a fortune for instructors who must sleep in their vehicles. As for the children of those teachers, well, they’re not the university’s problem, or at least that’s the official attitude.

Lest you think this gigantic strike is somehow an isolated one-off, think again. All over the country, education workers have walked off the job. Massachusetts teachers defied a strike ban by walking out illegally three times recently, and six thousand Seattle teachers struck September 7. “The top issue was the district’s proposal…to end student-teacher ratios for many categories of special education,” labornotes reported. Almost a week later, bargaining got results, and members ended the strike. And 2022 featured other job actions in education as well.

Back in California, a wave of wildcat strikes hit UC Santa Cruz and other UC campuses in 2021. “Workers demanded cost-of-living stipends to account for the soaring price of housing in the state,” according to the Post. “Following the strikes, UC Santa Cruz agreed to increase housing stipends for teaching assistants.” Those assistants told the Post they commute hours for affordable housing. They, doubtless, are the lucky ones who actually have roofs over their heads.

One doctoral student described donating “blood plasma twice a week for roughly $200 in extra income.” Another teaching assistant mentioned skipping meals. So it’s no wonder that in August 2021 UAW “gained 17,000 student researchers, in the largest union victory of that year.” More recently, this month, “UAW announced that 97 percent of more than 36,000 workers who voted across the UC system had authorized an unfair labor practice strike.”

The UAW is now an old hand at organizing traditionally non-blue-collar workers. Years ago, as a UAW shop steward in the newspaper business, regularly filing grievances, I saw close up how this union works. People may complain about its performance lately in the more traditional automobile organizing field, but in journalism and academe, it has thrown desperate workers a life-line. The union officials who decided to expand in this way were prescient, correctly perceiving that employers who expect their underlings to survive on their jobs’ prestige exploit labor almost as badly as sweat shops. UAW’s expansion in these areas rescued a whole class of desperate employees. Lots of previously abused workers, who labor with their brains for a pittance, are grateful.

That’s why it was dismaying to read in Truthout December 2 that UAW negotiators told striking academics their original demands were “unreasonable.” This week, “the bargaining team sacrificed workers with disabilities, for zero concessions from UC and with zero accountability in addition to slashing child care in half and dropping dependent care,” according to Magally A. Miranda Alcazar, who cites other givebacks very unpopular with a rank and file now united under the banner of “No COLA, no contract!” The union hierarchy should listen to this protest. Especially at this dangerous juncture with the strike in its fourth week, and, as noted in the Guardian, management trying to split the strikers by dangling a decent offer to a smaller group of them, while leaving the largest cohort, that is grad students, out in the cold (literally). The union certainly has no business siding with the boss, not least because such a failure will only prolong the strike. The UAW must do what it’s there for: representing the interests of rank-and-file workers with unshakable solidarity. Anything else is a betrayal.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Hope Deferred. She can be reached at her website.

Union Wins Vote in First US Electric Vehicle Battery Plant

David Welch, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The United Auto Workers union won an election at a General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution Ltd. electric-car battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, giving the union its first win in a factory of that kind.

Workers at Ultium Cells LLC voted in favor of union representation with 710 employees for and 16 opposed, the union said. The plant will make battery cells for electric vehicles such as the Hummer electric pickup and Cadillac Lyriq SUV.

The UAW’s success in gaining support from the workers gives the union an important entry into the electric car business. The union plans to organize workers in future plants that are being planned or built across the US to support automakers making the switch to zero-emission vehicles.

“Liberated is the best work you can use for it,” said Tony Russo, an employee in the plant who voted in favor of joining the union. “I’m overjoyed. We look forward to working with the company on the next stage.”

Next, the union will set up a bargaining committee and start working on a contract for workers.

The union needs to organize factories making EV parts as automakers race to replace internal combustion engines with zero-emission vehicles. Plants making engines, transmissions and other parts for today’s conventional vehicles will eventually be phased out in favor of plants making batteries, electric motors and other components.

UAW leaders could use a victory like the organizing drive in Lordstown. Current President Ray Curry faces a run off against challenger Shawn Fain in January and other incumbent candidates lost.

“As the auto industry transitions to electric vehicles, new workers entering the auto sector at plants like Ultium are thinking about their value and worth,” Curry said in a statement. “This vote shows that they want to be a part of maintaining the high standards and wages that UAW members have built in the auto industry.”

The UAW has identified about 135,000 jobs — mostly nonunion right now — that are at risk of going away in favor of new work making EV batteries and parts.

GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra has said the company is “very supportive” of the unionization efforts.

Workers at Ultium start at $15.50 or $16.50 an hour, depending on the work they do. The victory allows UAW to negotiate a labor contract that pushes toward the $32-an-hour rate for workers at GM’s wholly owned auto-assembly plants. The union will push for similar elections at Ultium’s planned plants in Tennessee and Michigan and other joint-venture battery plants operated by other automakers.

Workers interviewed last week said they hope to make at least $24 an hour if the union organizes the plant. They also sought improvements in relations with management, better work scheduling and said they’d like to establish a safety committee to create better standards for workers who handle chemicals used in EV batteries and do other potentially dangerous jobs.

The Lordstown plant was built to make batteries for the electric trucks made in Detroit and other EVs made in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Next year, Ultium will open a second battery plant for Lyriq vehicles and plans another plant in Michigan and a fourth in a US location that hasn’t been announced yet. The union plans to hold organizing drives at those facilities and factories jointly owned by Ford Motor Co., Stellantis NV and their battery suppliers.

GM has a plan to build 1 million EVs in 2025. Ford wants to sell the same amount in 2026. Both automakers will need a supply of batteries to do it. 

The union has tried to get into Tesla Inc. factories, so far unsuccessfully, and accused the electric-vehicle maker of unlawfully restricting organizing efforts. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Tesla violated labor laws against promoting the union.

(Adds UAW President comment in 8th paragraph.)

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 

UNCLOS holds historic significance to all humankind: ambassador

December, 09/2022 - 

The 77th UN General Assembly session meeting celebrated the 40th anniversary of the adoption and opening for signature of UNCLOS

Vietnamese Ambassador Đặng Hoàng Giang at the 77th UN General Assembly session on the 40th anniversary of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) held in New York. — VNA/VNS Photo

NEW YORK — Vietnamese Ambassador Đặng Hoàng Giang underlined the historic significance of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to all humankind, while representing more than 40 member states of the UNCLOS Group of Friends at a meeting in New York on December 8 (US time).

The 77th UN General Assembly session meeting celebrated the 40th anniversary of the adoption and opening for signature of UNCLOS..

Co-chairing the meeting, Ambassador Giang, Permanent Representative of Việt Nam to the UN, said UNCLOS held historical significance to all humankind as it marked an important milestone in the development of international law of the sea and the orderly and sustainable use of the oceans.

More than 40 states from all continents and regional groups of the UN reaffirmed that UNCLOS was a globally recognised legal framework regulating all activities in the seas and oceans, which has been repeatedly emphasised in resolutions of the UN General Assembly. They held that the convention helped enhance international peace, security, and stability, resolving disputes, and promoting sea-based activities, fostering the development of each country and the entire international community, according to the diplomat.

He also stressed that UNCLOS's maintenance and full implementation was now more urgent than ever amid many long-term challenges, including sea disputes, transnational organised crimes at sea, resource exhaustion, and emerging maritime issues, including climate change impacts.

"Given this, all countries have to comply with obligations under the convention. Their activities, including maritime claims and sea-based activities, must accord with UNCLOS to help conserve and sustainably use the oceans and marine resources," Giang went on.

The ambassador said that all disputes needed to be resolved peacefully with full respect for the mechanisms and legal processes stipulated in UNCLOS.

On this occasion, he also said that the UNCLOS Group of Friends stayed steadfast in pursuing their original goals, especially improving the awareness and implementation of UNCLOS, promoting cooperation, identifying challenges, and working together to surmount those challenges.

In his speech, UN Secretary-General Guterres said the adoption of UNCLOS by most nations of the world 40 years ago was a "vital step to bring governance and order" to the vast collective treasure that is the ocean.

He held that the 40th anniversary should be "an important reminder to continue using this critical instrument to tackle today's challenges."

At the meeting, groups of states also highly valued the role of UNCLOS, perceiving that the adoption of the convention 40 years ago, for the first time, created a comprehensive legal framework for sea-related activities.

They also hailed enormous contributions by UNCLOS and the bodies established under this convention, including the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, and the International Seabed Authority, to the maintenance of the order of the oceans, as well as the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources.

 

A workshop on achievements and challenges since the adoption of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 40 years ago. — VNA/VNS Photo

The same day, Việt Nam, in coordination with Greece, Egypt and Senegal, hosted a workshop on achievements and challenges since the adoption of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 40 years ago.

The main topics at the event were the outcomes of the convention, sea level rise and the relationship between UNCLOS and Sustainable Development Goal 14, which is to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

Addressing the workshop, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Counsel Miguel de Serpa Soares emphasised that the convention's ratification was a historic milestone of the consensus among nations to develop a comprehensive legal framework for activities at sea.

He also highlighted the major challenges relating to the convention's implementation, such as conservation and sustainable use of the sea.

Countries should pay more attention to the rights of vulnerable people and those whose livelihoods depend on the ocean. At the same time, the diplomat said it would strengthen international cooperation, build capacity, improve ocean governance, and attract the participation of small and less developed island states at sea forums. 

Prof. Nguyễn Hồng Thao, a member of the UN's International Law Commission, spoke about the integrity of the 1982 UNCLOS in the face of "unforeseeable" issues when the convention was born, including sea level rise. According to the professor, all countries seek to handle many ocean issues within the current legal framework provided for by UNCLOS instead of building regulations outside the convention.  

Discussions at the workshop focused on the difficulties of developing countries in maritime boundary delimitation, the counselling function of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and some emerging issues related to the law of the sea and maritime governance.

In his concluding speech at the end of the workshop, Ambassador Đặng Hoàng Giang, who chaired the workshop, reaffirmed countries' commitment to the universal goals and principles outlined in the UNCLOS and expressed his wish to cooperate with other members to promote the convention's role in addressing common challenges, maintaining peace, stability, cooperation and sustainable development for the interests of present and future generations. — VNS

Rare wave clouds amaze sky-watchers in Wyoming

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IMAGE SOURCE,

By Max Matza

BBC News

Stunned sky-watchers in the US state of Wyoming have snapped photos of a rare cloud formation crashing across the horizon like ocean surf.

"This was special and I immediately knew I needed to capture it," said householder Rachel Gordon.

The billowy phenomenon was visible on Tuesday above the crest of the Bighorn Mountains from the city of Sheridan.

Known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, they form when a faster stream of air moves above rising air below.

Ms Gordon, who told BBC News she took the images from her back door before posting them to the Facebook page Wyoming through The Lens, said: "It was an awe-inspiring moment.

"I'm just glad others can enjoy the experience now, too."

BBC Weather's Matt Taylor says the pictures are one of the most stunning and epic examples of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds he has ever seen.

"Part of the beauty of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds is that they really show up the fluidity of the atmosphere," he said.

"How, like waves in the ocean, the atmosphere moves and responds to the environment around it. The air is effectively rising up and tumbling over on itself."

The cloud formation is named after scientists Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz, who studied the physics behind the phenomenon.

The UK-based Cloud Appreciation Society describes such formations as the crown jewel in many cloud spotters' collections.

Also known as fluctus clouds, they are seen as a possible inspiration for Van Gogh's painting Starry Night.