Bangladeshi police officials stand in a line as striking garment workers throw stones during a protest in Narayanganj on Sept 26, 2013. Most Bangladesh garment factories reopened on Thursday, Sept 26, 2013, after five days of violent protests, following a promise of a wage rise for workers and a warning of a tougher crackdown on unrest. (Photo: AFP)It doesn’t take much digging.
Across the world and within the United States, workers—both in the public and private sectors—are demanding living wages, better working conditions, and above all, dignity. Here’s just a sample.
In Bangladesh, garment factory workers have been striking for nearly a week over the poor working conditions in their country, facing down rubber bullets, tear gas, and violent reprisals as they called for meaningful reforms of their industry.
In Greece, protests by public sector workers and anti-austerity campaigners have been running for nearly years and nationwide strikes across multiple sectors that began last week, continued into this as teachers, medical staff, and other civil servants again refused to back down after new cuts were announced by the government. As Reuters reports:
The workers say the government is firing them indiscriminately at a time when Greece is enduring its worst peace-time crisis and record unemployment.
Blowing whistles and carrying banners reading, “No to human sacrifices”, thousands of workers marched past parliament. “Out with the bailouts and the bosses!” they chanted.
“The government must realise they can’t fire people just like that,” said Yiota Papadopoulou, 51, a state high school teacher who worries about losing her job. “We were hired on merit, we have degrees, we weren’t hired on favours.”
In the U.S., the fast food workers strikes that have caught fire in city after city this summer ahave become the best example of low-wage workers fed up with poverty-level incomes, zero benefits, and poor conditions in an industry they say can easily afford to pay them more and treat them better.
From local channel King 5 News in Seattle, comes this report:
Seattle fast food workers were picketing Subway restaurants Tuesday in protest after a local franchise fired an employee. They claim the firing was in retaliation after the employee led fast food strikes over the summer.
Employees and supporters of Carlos Hernandez claim Subway found an excuse to fire Hernandez when he gave a 66-cent cookie to a 3-year-old.
The group has filed unfair practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The board will review the case to decide if the charge is valid.
Supporters of the protest include Seattle City Council members Nick Licata and Richard Conlin.
The summer food strikes, which happened across the nation, were a call for restaurants to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
In Cincinnati this week, reports local NBC affililiate WLWT TV reports:
Walmart workers protested at a store in Cincinnati Wednesday afternoon after an employee was fired, they say, unfairly.
Lillio Lacomme, an employee of the Evendale location, was let go after talking to a reporter about the working conditions at the store, according to a news release.
In protest, a group of Walmart employees and community supporters collected carts full of letters detailing hard working conditions and low pay.
Many of the letters also supported Lacomme, who says, “All we ask is that they look through this and see that we’re not trying to create any problems. But, we would just like to feel better.”
Chicago city workers were out on the line this week, too, voicing their anger at Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his continued pritvatization of city services and cuts to pensions and public employee benefits. As the Chicago Tribune reports:
Scores of union workers protested outside city buildings during lunch Tuesday, taking aim at Mayor Rahm Emanuel for what they contend is an attempt to retroactively freeze their wages after privatizing hundreds of jobs in the past couple of years.
“We gotta beat back the Rahm attack,” chanted more than 60 workers outside a city building at 30 N. LaSalle St. “What do we want? Fair contract. When do we want it? Now.”
The protesters are members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, which represents about 3,000 workers in six city departments. Their contract expired at the end of June 2012.
“We’re not stupid. We know that the economy is a little shaky right now,” said Nicole Herron, an executive board member of Local 2912 who works as a city payment services representative. “But it wouldn’t be as bad if there wasn’t such a terrible misappropriation of funds. We’re being punished for things that politicians did with our money that have absolutely nothing to do with us, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair for us, and it’s not fair for anyone in private industry either.”
And at the federal level, U.S. government employees in Washington, DC, according to Demos’ Amy Traub, executed their fifth strike in as many months this week, delivering a petition with 250,000 signatures calling on the President Obama to take action and raise their paltry wages. According to Traub:
Fifteen U.S. Senators submitted their own letter, urging President Obama to use his executive authority to “require federal agencies to give major preference in awarding contracts to companies that… pay their workers decent wages and benefits.”
As noted, this is just a sample. And they weren’t hard to find. The question remains: When and where will workers win?
And in a new Guilded Age of corporate globalization and spiking inequality, when will the tide turn?
_____________________________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Copyright: Common Dreams