The California Nurses Association held a press conference Thursday, August 19th accusing Sutter's California Pacific Medical Center, which operates St. Luke's Hospital, of discriminating against Filipino nurses. The nurses presented declarations from three former hospital managers documenting a policy of discrimination and data showing a precipitous decline in the number of Filipino nurses hired at St. Luke's. Union and community leaders suggested that the decline is related to Filipino nurses' leadership in the 2008 campaign to save the hospital.

Last week, Prince George's County taxicab drivers won another major victory in their fight to have the county issue 400 medallions directly to individual taxicab drivers instead of issuing the medallions to the few companies which dominate the Prince George's County taxicab industry. Read More | | Aurora Vasquez Interview | | Lemma Desalegne Interview

Photo from Philly IMC

August 19, 2010 — The first day of school for Mahomet Seymour students did not happen today because the Mahomet Seymour Education Association (MSEA) has been out on strike since 7 am.

The union has had previous struggles with the school board over employment issues. The summer of 2009 was spent pressuring the district to bargain with MSEA about staff performing medical procedures like the insertion of catheters. The district board had refused to negotiate the matter and expected non-medical staff to perform medical procedures.

This same spirit of poor negotiation from the district school board permeated the current contract negotiations.

From the newswire: "In recent years, Hilton workers in Chicago and across North America have endured staff cuts, reduced hours, and excessive injury rates. Now Hilton, run by one of the largest private equity firms on Wall Street—-the Blackstone Group, wants to take more away, add to the already burdensome housekeeping workload, and lock workers into recession contracts even as the economy rebounds.

"On Aug. 18-19, workers at four hotel properties managed by Hilton are taking a stand to stop the company from taking unfair advantage of the recession. Among those voting to authorize a possible strike are workers from some of Chicago’s most notable hotels -— the Drake, Palmer House, Chicago Hilton, and Hilton O’Hare." Read more

This follows on the cusp of a vote in July by Chicago-area Hyatt employees to strike, which resulted in civil disobedience actions and arrests. Both Chicago hotel strike votes could and would join the longest hotel strike in American history, the Congress Hotel Strike at Chicago's Congress Hotel, which has been underway for seven years and counting. See past CIMC coverage

Additional resources: UNITE HERE website | Congress Hotel Strike

As students were moving into campus dorms along Florida and Pennsylvania Avenues in Urbana, the SEIU Local 73 and the Campus Labor Coalition held a rally to bring attention to the deepening crisis in public education. The union also held other pickets across campus throughout the day. At lunchtime, they marched in front of students and parents chanting “Students Move In! Tuition Hikes Out! Students Move In! Wage Freezes Out!”

As freshmen students return to campus this fall, they face a 9.5% tuition increase voted on this summer by the Board of Trustees. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is asking workers to accept wage freezes and recent hires among the Building Service Workers are recommended to take a 13.5% pay cut. Across the campus, empty faculty positions are not being filled, job searches are being cancelled, tuition waivers for graduate students in Fine Arts are being rescinded, and annual contracts for lecturers and instructors are not being renewed.

While the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has almost 5,000 members and regularly forces some of the largest corporations on earth to the negotiating table, the organization has quite humble beginnings. In 1992, Lucas Benitez and seven other farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida began meeting Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM at a local church to discuss the injustices they faced. Prior to the founding of C.I.W., Immokalee farmworkers did not have an organization they could turn to when growers withheld their wages, or even when they were beaten, Benitez said. The discreet Wednesday evening meetings brought together individuals from different nationalities - Mexican, Guatemalan, Haitian. C.I.W. encouraged pickers not to be divided, but instead to see themselves as the industry saw them. Benitez said, "We saw that the agricultural industry and the companies that buy those tomatoes see us just as workers. It doesn't matter to them what country we're from or if we have a family or not. All that matters is how fast you pick. They look at us as if we were just machines. And so we saw that we also had to look at ourselves just as workers in that same way: That we were all together and unite to change the conditions." Audio

Filipino migrant teachers in Louisiana today (August 5, US Central Time) filed a class lawsuit against Universal Placement International (UPI) and its Philippine based partner, PARS International for various offenses ranging from racketeering, human trafficking, extortion and mail and wire fraud.

This past March, nurses at the Washington Hospital Center were scheduled to begin negotiations with MedStar Health, the company which owns the Washington Hospital Center. Just weeks before negotiations were set to begin, February's record-breaking snowstorms hit D.C., crippling the region. In what may have been a 'shot over the bow,' the hospital violated its own existing policy and fired 18 members of Nurses United who were unable to make it to work during the blizzard. Of these 18 nurses, nine have had their positions reinstated. Read More | Audio| nursesunited.org

On July 22nd, about 1500 members of UNITE HERE! Local 2 and supporters demonstrated in San Francisco, culminating in a mass civil disobedience in front of the Grand Hyatt in Union Square. Police arrested 150 people in San Francisco and 10 at a similar demonstration at the Hyatt Santa Clara. The Bay Area protests were two of fifteen that took place in North America at Hyatt hotels on the same day.

National Press Club: Protestors from Rain Forest Action Network, disrupt Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Mines, the one that killed many miners in West Virginia. Massey CEO Blankenship On Mine Disaster: No Regrets"

Saying that Meg Whitman's election would threaten their meal and rest breaks and put patient care in jeopardy, nurses protested in front of the Republican candidate's home on July 15th. Nurses decided to take to the streets in large numbers after Whitman mailed letters and fliers to nurses' homes telling them not to believe statements made by the California Nurses Association. The day of action started with over 1,100 people chanting in protest in front of Whitman's Atherton home and ended with a rally and speakers' event at Cañada College.

July 14, 2010 -- Medford, Oregon

Jackson County citizens rallied with strong support for county workers & for county services. Local organizations such as the Southern Oregon Central Labor Council, Oregon Action and Jobs with Justice stood side by side with workers in front of the old Jackson County Courthouse. "Enough is enough: We Demand Quality Public Services."

- CONTRACT BARGAINING PROBLEMS -
The harsh, unreasonable and unwarranted demands of county negotiators do NOT have community support. The taxes we pay get the best bang for the buck when we invest in a workforce that provides top notch services. Jackson County employees have done their share in downsizing government this last few years. At its peak several years ago the Jackson County budget supported a workforce of over 700 employees while today the numbers are below 550. Fewer workers work harder while at the same time this workforce has made concessions year after year.

Photos of Rally (click to make larger)

Prince George's County's taxicab industry is dominated by a few large companies, such as Silver Cab and Paramount Cab. According to witnesses at yesterday's hearing before the Prince George's County Council, these companies pay only $100 a year for each of their taxicab's medallions, yet drivers are routinely charged $330 a week - or $17,000 a year - to lease a taxicab from these companies. Getachew Mengesha is an organizer with the Prince George's County Taxi Workers Alliance. He said, "When I came to the United States, I thought I came to [a] free country… but when I get into this industry, I was like a volunteer slave." Audio

Tom Emmer, the endorsed Republican candidate for MN Governor made a stab a damage control Wednesday. Last weekend Emmer emerged from a restaurant in St. Paul with tales of restaurant servers making $100,000 a year while the owners scrape by on leftovers. The problem he pointed to on Saturday was minimum wage laws. While he didn’t actually say the words: “ I want to cut minimum wages for servers”, he argued that minimum wages interfere with the “market” and presumably make things harder for owners who are the gooses with the golden eggs. (You can see the video here.)

Emmer’s gullibility at believing that that servers are making more than owners (in reality the average MN server makes $19,000 a year), and his suggestion that minimum wage laws are the problem, the implication being that it’s elimination or reduction would be some kind of solution, has caused quite an uproar in these parts. Emmer’s reaction has been to parse out his statements and deny wanting to cut wages. Today he took that message to Ol’ Mexico, a restaurant in Roseville.

Video from The UpTake: Activist Robert Erickson dumped a bag of 2,000 pennies on Emmer's table, effectively ending the event.  The action connected Emmer's statements on the minimum wage to his anti-immigrant views, as many Minnesota servers are immigrants - both documented and undocumented. More: MinnPost | TwinCities.com

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At a Press Event at the Blue Heron Paper Mill in Oregon City, details of a new study were released which finds trade-related job loss a significant factor in Oregon's high unemployment rate. 12 minute video

Spontaneously, following the Press Event, citizens walked a few blocks through downtown Oregon City to the office of Rep. Kurt Schrader, the Representative from Oregon's 5th District, who has not been forthcoming about his views on a recent piece of legislation called the H.R. 3012, Trade Act.

About a month ago Schrader promised to get back to trade activists concerning his views on this Congressional bill, and had not as of that afternoon. Read More