Submitted on Thu, 07/06/2006 - 8:22pm
By Charlie Deitch - Pittsburgh City Paper, July 6, 2006
For the third time since 1993, workers at the 50-employee East End Food Co-op are mounting a drive to join the Industrial Workers of the World union. This time around, they’ve received a less-negative reaction from management — only to see their efforts stymied in a novel way.
“Management has been much more favorable to the idea of a union than management in the past had been,” Co-op staffer Stacey Clampitt told City Paper while the drive was building. But on June 28, a Co-op management employee resigned to become a wage-earning worker … and began circulating fliers for a different union — one that does not seem to exist.
Submitted on Thu, 07/06/2006 - 8:04pm
The founders of Chicago's first bike messenger collective think there's gotta be a better way.
Written by Scott Eden; photographs by Jon Randolph.
June 23, 2006
The Chicago Reader
RENE CUDAL WAS the last to quit. The Friday after Labor Day 2005 was the day he’d marked in his calendar, but he procrastinated all morning and afternoon, dreading the moment his boss would put two and two together. Finally the boss went home. Cudal called him that evening and gave him two weeks’ notice.
A bike messenger quitting isn’t so unusual—messengers will tell you they all develop a strategy to extract themselves from the job, which is defined by a high risk of bodily harm, low wages, and few or no benefits. Michael Carey, Cudal’s boss at On Time Courier, was a former messenger himself. But Carey, a big, block-shouldered man with a reputation as both a polished salesman and a hard-line intimidator, didn’t take Cudal’s news well. “What’s happening?” Cudal remembers him saying. “What are you doing? Starting your own messenger company?”
Submitted on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 3:50pm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Stacey Clampitt (412) 758-9045
Evan W. Wolfson (412) 951-5204
East End Food Co-op Workers Committee
PO Box 90315 / Pittsburgh, PA 15224
[email protected]
East End Food Co-op Workers Organize to Improve Conditions and Restore Healthy Workforce at Local Organic Food Store.
PITTSBURGH, PA – Workers at the East End Food Co-op, Pittsburgh’s only member-owned natural and organic food market, have organized with the Industrial Workers of the World to improve working conditions, pay and benefits, and to address long-standing issues of low staff morale and high turnover. The Co-op employs approximately 50 workers who could bargain collectively with their employer.
Submitted on Sun, 06/18/2006 - 3:31am
BERKELEY 6:30 PM -- This afternoon workers at Landmark Shattuck Cinemas voted an outstanding 22 to 2 in favor of unionization. Despite new promises by Landmark and an attempt by CEO Bill Banowsky to thwart the union attempt, workers at the Shattuck say they've never really been worried about the vote.
"I've felt extremely confidant that the union would go through since the beginning." said Ryan Hatt, cinema employee age 21. "Support has been almost unanimous since day one. There was no contest, if you would have asked me two months ago I could've guaranteed a landslide victory."
Now that the vote has gone through, workers are looking ahead to the contract negotiation process. Contract negotiations at Kendall Square Cinemas in Cambridge, MA, the only other Landmark theatre to hold a union, have been moving extremely slowly with Landmark officials meeting only the bare minimum requirements to keep the negotiations process "in good faith" over the last year.
Submitted on Sun, 06/18/2006 - 3:30am
At 2:45 on Friday, June 16th a delegation of the IWW Starbucks workers union entered Starbucks at 57th and Lexington.
Workers on the shop floor put on their IWW union pins and let the company know that they too were members of the Starbucks Workers union. Workers stopped working as they presented theirdemands to their store manager Patrice Britton.
The Store manager refused to take the list of demands and ordered everyone back to work. Workers spoke out and let the manager and customers know their concerns. Meanwhile several wobblies were passing out leaflets outside letting customers know what was happening inside.
There was chaos on the floor where the manager was telling workers to get back to work meanwhile customers were asking what was happening and why they weren't being served. There was shouting and arguing.
