Bosses Hate This One Trick

Work-to-rule is not walking away from a fight, but a different way to fight.

IN THESE TIMES EDITORS TERRY LABAN 

Illustration by Terry Laban

work • to • rule

noun

1. a disruption of operations in which workers intentionally do the precise bare minimum — down to the ​“rule”

“Work-to-rule is not walking away from a fight, but a different way to fight.” — Labor activist Jerry Tucker

Is work-to-rule the same as ​“quiet quitting”?

Yes and no. Quiet quitting entered the discourse this year as a successor to the Great Resignation, and both phrases respond to a deep anxiety that a strong labor market is actually allowing workers to — gasp — get paid more and refuse uncompensated work. 

But work-to-rule is a deliberate strategy unions have employed for decades to draw attention to grievances from protesting workers. Where strikes and walkouts can be risky (or unlawful), work-to-rule is theoretically unpunishable — because workers simply do exactly what they’re paid for.

+ How can I work-to-rule at my job?

Much like declaring bankruptcy, it doesn’t work if you just shout out your intentions.

It’s best undertaken as part of an organizing campaign to increase leverage against your boss. Are you expected to show up 20 minutes early to do unpaid prep? Your mornings are now for coffee and contemplation. Have unfinished work you usually take home? Get ready for an evening of Netflix and chill. Pesky paperwork getting you down? Start dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s.

+ Is it effective?

Like any job action, there’s no guarantee. But work-to-rule has been deployed successfully across industries throughout the decades, especially when traditional strikes aren’t an option.

In 1938, French railway workers barred from striking instead seized on a law requiring train engineers to consult crew members if there was any doubt about a bridge’s safety. Crew members began scrutinizing every bridge, incurring massive train delays and therefore gaining negotiating power.
In the 1980s, when United Auto Workers realized during contract negotiations that manufacturers were trying to provoke workers into striking — to permanently replace them with scabs — the union turned to work-to-rule, throwing production into chaos and winning a 36% wage bump over three years at one plant.

Teachers, including in Oakland, Calif., have repeatedly used work-to-rule to shine a light on the amount of unpaid labor required to keep schools running in an era of privatization and disinvestment.

There’s nothing wrong with setting better boundaries at work and maybe even making a TikTok about it. But if you really want to change your workplace (to paraphrase an old labor adage): Don’t quiet quit — organize.

[Source]

Where Are All the “Pro-Worker” Republicans Now?

While employees at Amazon and Starbucks win historic unionization campaigns, the “populist” wing of the GOP has been noticeably silent.

By NICK VACHON 

Amazon workers are taking on the corporate elite. Republican officials are nowhere to be found. ELLIOT LEWIS 

Over the past few years, a small but highly-visible band of Republicans have publicly declared their intention to transform the GOP into a ​“worker’s party.” Sens. Marco Rubio (R‑Fla.), Josh Hawley (R‑MO), Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) and Tom Cotton (R‑AR) have all embraced versions of this vision, part of a high-brow attempt to divorce the party from its sole adherence to pro-business conservatism.

On election night 2020, Hawley — who was elected to the Senate in 2018 after running a relatively conventional Republican campaign—declared that the GOP was ​“a working class party now. That’s the future.” Cruz and Cotton have since echoed Hawley’s populist rhetoric, the former blasting Democrats as ​“the party of the rich” while claiming for Republicans the mantle of ​“the party of the working class.” 

There has been some movement on the legislative side, too. Early last year, Cotton and Sen. Mitt Romney (R‑UT) introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10 an hour. Hawley’s personal crusade against Big Tech — which attracted bipartisan support before he refused to certify the 2020 presidential election and supported the insurrectionist crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — is, on its face, anti-monopolistic.

But in reality, a few policy gestures aside, their rhetoric hasn’t lived up to the hype. In recent weeks, as American workers have won a string of significant victories — organizing Starbucks coffee shops across the country and unionizing an Amazon warehouse for the first time in the company’s history — this group of supposedly ​“pro-worker” Republicans have been handed a prime opportunity to speak out in support of these organizing efforts. Instead, they’ve been silent. 

This reticence is particularly notable from Rubio, who already supported one Amazon union drive. Last year, when workers and organizers in Bessemer, Alabama, tried unsuccessfully to form a union at a local facility, Rubio penned an op-ed in USA Today effectively endorsing the efforts, writing that Amazon’s corporate behavior was ​“uniquely malicious” — a notable stand for someone who once warned that unions threatened to ​“destroy industries their workers are in.” But when it comes to the successful campaign at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse in New York, Rubio has kept mum.

[Read on]

1 in 4 Temp Workers Reports Wage Theft, New Survey Finds

In an industry plagued with poverty pay, job insecurity and deceptive recruitment practices, temp workers have scant protections.

AMY QIN 

Close up of a group of workers working in a warehouse. PHOTO BY MARKO GEBER VIA GETTY IMAGES

A stunning 24% of workers in the temp industry say they have had their wages stolen from them by their employers, according to a survey, released Feb. 3, that examines cycles of poverty and precarity for the industry’s disproportionately Black and Brown workers. 

The findings are based on surveys carried out by seven worker advocacy groups, including the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and Temp Worker Justice, across the country. In the study, 1,337 temp workers in 47 states answered questions about pay, safety, job mobility, workplace discrimination and employer retaliation. 

Temporary staff, or temp workers, are hired by staffing agencies to work at a worksite run by a host employer. They typically do the same jobs as their direct-hire counterparts, but often receive less pay and few to none of the same benefits, according to the report. 

Today, temp workers in the United States are some of the least protected in the world, even with record-high staffing agency profits and an accelerating demand from companies for temp workers during the pandemic. From April 2020 to November 2021, the volume of temp jobs grew at 2.5 times the rate of jobs in all other private sector industries, according to the report. 

Despite already low wages, 24% of workers surveyed reported their wages were stolen either through an employer that paid less than minimum wage, failed to pay overtime, or didn’t pay employees for all hours worked. Wage theft is so common in temp work that it is consistently categorized as one of fifteen industries on the Department of Labor’s list of ​“Low Wage, High Violation” industries.

While wage theft in temp work is rampant, it’s not limited to this industry. A 2017 study found that, in the 10 most populous states in the country, 17% of low-wage workers say they were paid below minimum wage. And a September 2021 study from One Fair Wage, a workers’ rights group, found that 35% of tipped workers had suffered wage theft over the last year.

[Read on]

A Landmark Bill Would Outlaw Bosses Cutting off Healthcare to Striking Workers

Employers regularly eliminate healthcare benefits as a strike-breaking tactic. A bill just introduced in Congress seeks to finally end this practice.

INDIGO OLIVIER 

(PHOTO BY TY O’NEIL/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES)

On Wednesday, House Democrats introduced a landmark bill that would make it illegal for employers to cut off healthcare benefits to striking workers. The Striking Workers Healthcare Protection Act would subject employers to a fine of up to $50,000, which could be doubled by the National Labor Relations Board for employers who have been in violation of the policy within the past five years. 

Rep. Cindy Axne (D‑Iowa) says she was inspired to introduce the legislation after John Deere threatened to take away healthcare policies from workers who were on strike in her district last fall. Several of the bill’s co-sponsors represent districts where cutting healthcare has been used by companies as a strike-breaking tactic, including Rep. Steven Cohen (D‑Tenn.) whose constituents were among the 1,400 striking workers at Kelloggs’ cereal plants in four states. Other co-sponsors include Reps. Brian Higgins (D‑N.Y.), Andy Levin (D‑Mich.), Jim McGovern (D‑Mass.), Bill Pascrell (D‑N.J.), Linda Sánchez (D‑Calif.) and Nikema Williams (D‑Ga.).

If passed, the legislation could better position workers to negotiate with their employers for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

“The threat itself is used to break strikes and force workers to accept contracts that don’t meet their needs. That’s why I wrote the bill,” Rep. Axne tells In These Times. ​“I heard about children who need their parents’ health insurance because they have asthma or needed glasses, or workers who need access to medication. I was appalled, and soon after I learned from other colleagues in D.C. that this had also been happening to their workers in recent years.”

In October 2021, 10,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike at John Deere for the first time in 35 years, demanding better salaries and overtime pay while opposing proposed increased healthcare premiums and a two-tiered wage system. The company responded by threatening to eliminate healthcare benefits for workers and their families over the duration of the strike, before ultimately reversing course. 

“Unfortunately, employers use this threat to discourage workers from going on strike or to push workers to end a strike before an adequate contract agreement has been reached,” says Laurel Lucia, the Health Care Program Director at the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. ​“With this threat looming, workers aren’t fully able to exercise their rights to a fight for a strong collective bargaining agreement.”

[Read on]

No, Striketober Is Not About Vaccine Mandates

The recent wave of militant labor action has been over workers demanding better pay and working conditions—not opposing Covid vaccine requirements.

JEFF SCHUHRKE 

UAW / FACEBOOK

This month, the United States has seen a noticeable uptick in the number of strikes by fed-up workers at companies like Kellogg’s and John Deere—a phenomenon many are calling ​“Striketober.” As a result, the U.S. labor movement is getting an unusual amount of attention. 

But because of the corporate media’s often spotty or ideologically slanted coverage of workers’ struggles, combined with the fact that only a small minority of Americans have any personal experience with unions, there appears to be some confusion among the general public over what Striketober is really about. 

A troubling number of Americans seem to have the false impression that tens of thousands of underpaid and overworked employees are going on strike in order to resist Covid-19 vaccine mandates — when they are actually walking off the job to win decent raises, equitable pay structures and relief from mandatory overtime.

Some of this confusion was on display last week as HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson appeared on C‑SPAN to discuss the current wave of strikes. When host John McArdle opened the phone lines for viewers to call up, the vaccine-specific questions started to roll in.

“I wanted to know how much the vaccine mandates are playing in these strikes? What is the role of the vaccine mandate?” asked the first caller, a woman from South Carolina. 

About fifteen minutes later, another caller from Kentucky asked, ​“Do you think this vaccine is causing most of the strikes?” 

In response, Jamieson patiently explained that, ​“the vaccine is essentially a non-issue in these strikes we are seeing.”

“As someone who’s been following these strikes closely, I was a little surprised by the assumption that vaccines might be at the center of this,” Jamieson told In These Times. ​“But I probably shouldn’t have been. There’s been outsized media coverage of workers defying vaccine requirements, even though they seem to be quite a small share of the workforce.”

[Read On]

For the $10 Billion It Gave Shareholders, John Deere Could Have Given Each Worker $142,000

Workers made a fortune for shareholders over the last six-year contract. They should demand that they get paid their true worth before shareholders get a penny.

COLLEEN BOYLE 

Striking workers picket outside of the John Deere Davenport Works facility on October 15, 2021 in Davenport, Iowa.PHOTO BY SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

On October 14, 10,000 John Deere workers in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia went on strike after overwhelmingly rejecting the new contract negotiated between John Deere and their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). ​“When you factor in the pandemic, being deemed essential workers, and in our case, having a company turning a record profit, the CEO giving himself a 160 percent raise, and giving a 17 percent dividend raise, we kinda feel like we’re left to kick rocks,” a striking UAW member and worker at Iowa’s Davenport Works (who requested anonymity) recently told Labor Notes.

John Deere’s profits and CEO pay are, indeed, worth pointing out. But it also is worth taking a look at where John Deere has spent the bulk of its profits since the last contract with the UAW was signed in 2015.

From fiscal year 2016 through the first nine months of fiscal year 2021, John Deere earned more than $16 billion in profits. The company spent roughly $5 billion on dividends and $4.95 billion on share repurchases; nearly $10 billion in total was given to shareholders during the six years of the previous contract.

What does this mean for the workers at John Deere? With the money John Deere gave to shareholders, it could have paid each of its 69,600 worldwide employees an additional $142,000 over the past six years.

It’s difficult to come up with a typical yearly salary for a UAW member at John Deere because of multiple pay rates (12 pay levels, each with six steps), and because some workers are subject to Deere’s ​“continuous improvement pay plan” with lower hourly base pay but the potential for productivity-based bonuses. The contract that striking John Deere workers rejected stipulated, in the first year, hourly wage rates that range from $20.01 to $31.84 depending on position and seniority. For the sake of argument, if we assume someone is paid for 2,080 hours during a full year (8 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 52 weeks), the highest guaranteed annual salary under the proposed contract was $66,227, up from $62,483 in the final year of the last contract.

Over the course of the last six-year contract, workers with the highest hourly wage received cumulative wage increases of $13,488. John Deere could have increased workers’ wages 10 times that amount instead of giving handouts to shareholders. And the proposed contract would have, similarly, shorted workers, as the following graphic shows.

[Read On]

In the Coal Mines, Workers Are Dying to Make a Living

Mining companies increasingly rely on cheaper contractors who face longer hours and higher risk of accidents.

By KARI LYDERSEN 

Trebr Lenich’s friends pay tribute at his grave. Exhausted after weeklong overnight shifts, Lenich died in a car accident in 2017. PHOTO COURTESY OF TERESA LENICH

Trebr Lenich always called his mother before his drive home from overnight shifts at Mine No. 1, operated by Hamilton County Coal in Hamilton County, Ill. The call she answered the morning of Aug. 14, 2017, worried her. 

“He said, ​‘Mom, I am just so exhausted, so wore out,’ ” Teresa Lenich says. 

Her son routinely worked long hours on consecutive days. That day, he never made it home.

Coworkers following Trebr said his driving was erratic and suspected he was falling asleep, Teresa says. Heading back to the West Frankfort home he shared with his parents, girlfriend and baby daughter, Trebr drove into a ditch and hit an embankment. According to the sheriff’s report, his engine then caught fire. 

Like many young miners, Trebr was employed through a contracting company that provides temporary workers for mines with no promise that they’ll be hired on permanently.

This staffing structure — and the disappearance of labor unions from Illinois mines — has made work less safe and more grueling for miners, according to advocates and multiple studies. Without job security, temporary workers are reluctant to complain about potentially unsafe conditions (including long work hours) and to report accidents. And because temporary workers may have inadequate experience in a particular mine, they might not understand that mine’s specific risks.

[Read On]

What’s Really Behind the Opposition to a $15 Minimum Wage

Fifty-seven senators from both parties are determined to preserve an economic system that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.

JOEL BLEIFUSS APRIL 5, 2021

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally for a $15 minimum wage and unionization rights on April 26, 2017.ALEX WONG / GETTY IMAGES

Missing from the Congressional debate over raising the $7.25 federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is any acknowledgement that poverty-level wages are integral to a class system that rewards the rich and punishes the poor. 

With few exceptions, where a person ends up in life — in terms of health, wealth and general wellbeing — is determined by the economic class into which they are born. People born poor die poor. People born rich die rich. This basic, intrinsic feature of American political economy is shaded from view by our culture’s celebration of the so-called meritocracy, the myth that if a person works hard enough, they can win at any table, despite the stacked deck. 

Government can intervene to lift people out of poverty. The 1944 GI Bill, for example, enabled the families of millions of World War II vets to enter the middle class. Because of structural racism, however, most of those who benefited were white. The legislation did not guarantee the same housing and educational benefits to 1.2 million Black vets. 

[Keep Reading]

Massive Inequality Is a Feature of Capitalism, Not a Bug (+2 more)

The Biden administration may usher in a new period of reform, but history shows that it’s unlikely to last if our economic system remains intact.

RICHARD D. WOLFF

To grasp the sheer magnitude of U.S. economic inequality in recent years, consider its two major stock market indices: the Standard and Poor (S&P) 500 and Nasdaq. Over the last 10 years, the values of shares listed on them grew spectacularly. The S&P 500 went from roughly 1,300 points to over 3,800 points, almost tripling. The Nasdaq index over the same period went from 2,800 points to 13,000 points, more than quadrupling. Times were good for the 10 percent of Americans who own 80 percent of stocks and bonds. In contrast, the real median weekly wage rose barely over 10 percent across the same 10-year period. The real federal minimum wage fell as inflation diminished its nominal $7.25 per hour, officially fixed and kept at that rate since 2009.

Massive Inequality Is a Feature of Capitalism, Not a Bug – In These Times

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Rev. William Barber: The Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage Is a Fight for Racial Justice

Democrats need to stop playing games and use their majorities to pass a $15 minimum wage right now—we can’t wait any longer.

REV. WILLIAM BARBER

Sixty-two million people in the United States make less than $15 an hour. And here’s the truth: the fight to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 is as important as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For Black people, it’s taken us 400 years to get to $7.25 an hour. We can’t wait any longer. People in Appalachia can’t wait any longer. Poor white people, brown people, we cannot wait any longer. And we won’t be silent anymore. 

Rev. William Barber: The Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage Is a Fight for Racial Justice – In These Times

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Can America’s Soul Be Saved?

You know that your country is caught in an endless loop of repetitive thinking when, almost 20 years after you invaded and occupied a distant land, beginning a war you’ve been incapable of winning despite massive “surges” of troops, contractors, CIA operatives, as well as air power, the Afghanistan Study Group, a congressionally mandated crew led by a retired Marine general who once commanded U.S. forces in that very land, recommends that the official date for the withdrawal of all American troops (but not planes, drones, or contractors), May 21st, be abandoned in the name of peace and the war fought on. (Consider that, by the way, a sentence worthy in length of such a never-ending war.)

Beyond Donald Trump – TomDispatch.com

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~ Steve, editor