Tag: anti union
Union-Hating Fox News Backs Wildcat Action By Fringe Truckers

Union-Hating Fox News Backs Wildcat Action By Fringe Truckers

Fox News’ vocal support for the far-right trucker convoys in Canada, which began in opposition to vaccine mandates for operators crossing the U.S.-Canada border but has since expanded to oppose all public health measures, has revealed Fox’s hypocritical stances on vaccine and testing policies, as well as protesters who block roads.

But now another key angle has been exposed: While, in the past, Fox opposed advances by organized labor, demeaned unions, insulted striking workers, supported companies over unions, opposed higher wages for workers, and falsely blamed unions for supply chain troubles during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is now egging on this labor shutdown — which not only sabotages other workers, but was not authorized by any union or democratic process in the first place.

A key point here is that Fox has falsely represented the truck convoys as representing the wider views of truckers in Canada, as the network has tried to incite similar actions in the United States. In fact, a reported 90 percent of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, and since the beginning of convoy protest many spoken out against it and noted that it is not addressing “critically important” issues affecting the industry’s workers. Teamsters Canada has also opposed the convoys, leaving the minority of truckers to represent themselves. And since blockades began at sites such as the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, the truckers who are still doing their jobs have been faced with arduous traffic at other routes.

Stephen Laskowski, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, told CTV News about the toll that the blockades have taken on the truckers who are actually working. “They have no access to food for six to eight hours other than what's in their truck, [no] washrooms, they’re losing shifts, the mental stress,” Laskowski explained, further adding: “Most importantly … drivers are telling us their reputation as truck drivers are being hurt by these people who have nothing to do with our industry that are involved in this.”

Furthermore, the Ambassador Bridge blockade has led to shutdowns at auto plants, as assembly components have been stuck across the border. This event seemingly triggered an immediate reversal in Canada of conservative support of the convoys, with the federal Conservative Party leadership calling for all protesters in Ottawa to go home. Previously, the party’s federal caucus members had openly courted the Ottawa convoy’s support.

Doug Ford, the conservative premier of Ontario (an office similar to a U.S. governor), announced Friday that the province was declaring a state of emergency and imposing stiff penalties on blockade participants. These include up to $100,000 Canadian dollars (approximately $78,500 USD) in fines, prison sentences of up to one year, and possible revocation of personal and commercial driver’s licenses. [Editor's Note: The Ambassador Bridge was cleared by police over the weekend.]

But on Fox News, which has engaged in absurd and disproven demagoguery on supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this new supply chain crisis caused by anti-vaccine saboteurs is a cause for celebration.

Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson claimed last Thursday night that the blockade was “the single most successful human rights protest in a generation” — while at the same time boasting of the economic damage that the blockade has caused to other workers, forcing a shutdown of Ford and Toyota plants, and noting that “General Motors has canceled multiple shifts.”

Carlson then condemned the Biden administration for coordinating with the Canadian government on providing alternative traffic routes: “That's Scranton Joe, the pro-union guy, shutting down a labor action” — thus falsely equating the wildcat disruption with a real strike that would have been brought about by a democratically representative decision.

Later in the monologue, Carlson accused liberals of committing a betrayal of their usual support for “organized labor,” again falsely describing those truckers committing the blockades as “striking workers,” and claiming that liberals would soon “be demanding scabs” — disregarding the fact that other truckers have still been working and facing sabotage this whole time. Adding insult to injury, Carlson would seemingly brand them as “scabs,” despite the fact that they never had any chance to vote on any real labor action, and for which all evidence indicates it would have failed under a democratic procedure.

Then, promoting a further truck convoy in this country, Carlson said: “How does the supposedly pro-union White House feel about this? They're completely panicked.” (As for what any actual unions might think, the Teamsters in the U.S. had already put out a statement on Thursday condemning the blockades up north.)

On Friday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Will Cain offered this praise of the blockades: “I think this is the working class versus the elites. This is the common man versus the authoritarian. This is people standing up for individual freedom — not necessarily or specifically or exclusively against a vaccine or even a vaccine mandate. This is people tired of being lorded over. And what starts in Canada may soon make its way here to the United States.”

As Cain said that, however, the b-roll video playing was not one of the blockades, but of a traffic jam on the Blue Water Bridge, connecting Ontario to Port Huron, Michigan, which has been one of those alternate routes since the Ambassador Bridge was blocked off. The video did not show the truckers Fox has praised, but instead a great mass of trucks moving very slowly, and extending back as far as a helicopter camera could see — perhaps representing the true “working class” still struggling to make it through this manufactured crisis.

Then, in a truly comical moment later in the segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade declared that “it's time to sit down, Justin Trudeau, with the truckers, if you want to get your bridges back” — before immediately segueing to another edition of the network’s exaggerated narratives about crime: “Meanwhile, New York City business owners begging for help as the crime hits a decade high.”


And even Fox’s business side got in on the soft-on-crime, pro-sabotage line. Fox Business reporter Lauren Simonetti told host Stuart Varney that between the choice of all mandates ending, or all the trucks being removed so that trade could resume, “I don't see either one of those things happening, because they’re too extreme. Someone — both sides need to save face here.”

Maybe what is really “extreme” here is Fox News promoting an illegal, international economic disruption that has harmed workers across multiple industries, and which had no democratic mandate in the first place — and then for the network’s hosts to falsely claim that this represents an authentic expression by labor against oppressive forces.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters




Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Amazon logo.

Amazon Mounts Intense Union-Busting Campaign At Alabama Warehouse

Reprinted with permission from Independent Media Institute

Thousands of warehouse workers at an Amazon plant in Bessemer, Alabama, are at the center of a potentially game-changing union vote taking place right now. On February 8, the warehouse workers were sent ballots by mail to decide over the next seven weeks if they want to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Just getting to this point was a major victory considering the aggressive union busting by the world's largest retailer and the fact that employees are working during a pandemic. If workers vote affirmatively, they would have the first unionized Amazon workplace in the United States.

Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the RWDSU, described to me in an interview the shocking details of what he calls "the most aggressive anti-union effort I've ever seen," aimed at the 5,800-strong workforce. "They are doing everything they possibly can," he said. The company has been "bombarding people with propaganda throughout the warehouse. There are signs and banners and posters everywhere, even in the bathroom stalls."

According to Appelbaum, the company is also texting its workers throughout the course of the day urging a "no" vote and pulling people into "captive-audience" meetings. Unsurprisingly, Amazon is resorting to the most commonly told lie about unions: that it will cost workers more money to be in a union than not. One poster pasted on the wall of the warehouse claims, "you already know the union would charge you almost $500 a year in dues." But Alabama is a "right-to-work" state where workers cannot be compelled to join a union if they are hired into a union shop, nor can they be required to pay dues.

Complementing its heavy-handed in-person union-busting efforts is a slick website that the company created, DoItWithoutDues.com, where photos of happy workers giving thumbs-up signs create a veneer of contentment at the company. On its site, Amazon innocently offers its version of "facts" about a union that include scare-mongering reminders of how joining a union would give no guarantee of job security or better wages and benefits—with no mention of how Amazon certainly does not guarantee those things either.

On the company's own list of "Global Human Rights Principles," Amazon states, "We respect freedom of association and our employees' right to join, form, or not to join a labor union or other lawful organization of their own selection, without fear of reprisal, intimidation, or harassment."

But in a page out of Donald Trump and the Republicans' playbook, the company tried to insist that even in the middle of a deadly pandemic, the union vote must be "conducted manually, in-person, making it easy for associates to verify and cast their vote in close proximity to their workplace." The National Labor Relations Board rejected Amazon's appeal for a one-day physical election.

Ballots were mailed out to workers on February 8, and the union and its advocates are shrewdly using the seven-week-long voting period to campaign and encourage workers to vote "yes." But Amazon is also continuing its efforts at countering the RWDSU. Organizers in Bessemer had taken to engaging the workers while they stopped at a red light upon leaving the Amazon warehouse. But the company, according to Appelbaum, "had the city change the traffic light so our organizers wouldn't be able to speak to them." (A statement from Bessemer city denies the claim.)

So aggressive are Amazon's anti-union tactics that 50 members of Congress sent the company a warning letter saying, "We ask that you stop these strong-arm tactics immediately and allow your employees freely to exercise their right to organize a union." Even the company's own investors are so shocked by the tactics that more than 70 of them signed on to a letter urging Amazon to remain "neutral" in the vote.

The path to this union vote was paved by staggeringly high inequality that worsened during the pandemic as workers were stripped of their insultingly low hazard-bonus of $2 an hour while the company reaped massive gains over the past year. CEO and soon-to-be "Executive Chair" of Amazon, Jeff Bezos is the world's second-richest man. He is now worth a mind-boggling $188 billion and saw his wealth increase by $75 billion, over the past year alone—the same time period that about 20,000 of his workers tested positive for the coronavirus.

Bezos' announcement that he was moving into a new role at the company came on the same day that the Federal Trade Commission announced Amazon had stolen nearly $62 million in tips from drivers working for its "Flex" program. Appelbaum speculated that "what Bezos was trying to do was to create a distraction just like Trump would do," and that "instead of focusing on the $62 million they stole from their drivers, people would talk about the fact that Bezos was getting a new title."

Appelbaum sees the historic union vote in Bessemer as more than just a labor struggle. "Eighty-five percent of the people who work at the facility are African American. We see this being as much a civil rights struggle as a labor struggle," he said. Indeed, conditions at the warehouse are so shocking that they sound like a modern-day, technologically enabled incarnation of slavery. "People were being dehumanized and mistreated by Amazon," said the union president. He explained, "people get their assignments from a robot, they're disciplined by an app on their phone, and they're fired by text message. Every motion they make is being surveilled."

Union advocates are countering Amazon's combative anti-union efforts with their own information war. In addition to organizers talking to the warehouse workers in Bessemer every chance they get, an informational website Bamazonunion.org shares data from various studies about the dangerous working conditions in Amazon facilities. The site reminds workers that unions are able to win contracts where workers can only be fired for "just cause" and not on the whim of managers; that complaints against the company can be filed via formal grievances; and that wages and benefits are negotiated collectively.

As a proud union member of SAG-AFTRA, my colleagues and I at KPFK Pacifica Radio have benefited regularly from such protections even against a small nonprofit public radio station struggling to make ends meet. When faced with a ruthless for-profit corporation that has built its empire on the backs of a nonunionized workforce, Amazon's workers are on the front lines of those who most need the protections a union can provide.

"This election is the most important union election in many, many years because it's not just about this one Amazon facility in Alabama," said Appelbaum. "This election is really about the future of work, what the world is going to look like going forward. Amazon is transforming industry after industry, and they're also transforming the nature of work," he said. Indeed, the level to which Amazon has fought against unionization at just one warehouse in Alabama is an indication of how important it is to the company that its workers remain powerless.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Andy Barr

House Republican Report On Workers Is Bursting With Lies About Labor Unions

Reprinted with permission from DCReport

Ten House Republicans who fashion themselves policy wonks are out with their diagnosis of what ails the American worker. Their proposed cure is a future that would be brutish, nasty and short.

The Hobbesian, dog-eat-dog policies the Republican Study Group proposes would enhance the power of those born to privilege, just so long as nothing knocks them off their comfortable perch.

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How Billionaire ‘Conservatives’ Use Hate To Divide America

How Billionaire ‘Conservatives’ Use Hate To Divide America

The union I lead, the United Steelworkers (USW), believes in unity, that “all working men and women, regardless of creed, color or nationality” are eligible for membership.

That was the guiding principle of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) when it formed in 1937.

I return to that statement in times like these, times when terrorists shoot up mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 worshipers; a synagogue in the USW’s hometown of Pittsburgh, killing 11; an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine; a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, killing six; a nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 mostly young gay people.

The USW membership eligibility statement is an assertion of inclusion. All working men and women qualify. They can all join. They can all attend local union meetings at which members call each other “brother” and “sister.” This practice creates artificial, but crucial, bonds between them. This solidarity gives the group strength when facing off against massive multinational corporations and demanding decent pay and dignified working conditions.

To erode that solidarity, some billionaire hedge fund owners and multinational CEOs work to divide workers. These wealthy .01 percenters separate people by cultivating hate. Some are the same billionaire sugar daddies of alt-right hate sites like Breitbart and more conventional hate media outlets like Fox News. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book about their efforts titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

This hate-mongering sets workaday people against each other. That weakens them politically. And it contributes to false-fear–provoked violence.

Look, the labor movement is far from perfect. A couple of decades ago, African-American USW members had to sue steel corporations and the union to secure equal opportunity. Clearly, we haven’t always lived up to our principles. But the goal of brotherhood and sisterhood among all workers is a noble one that must be strived for. We all sweat together to support ourselves and our families. We all come to each other’s aid when a fellow worker’s home burns down or child falls ill. We stand shoulder to shoulder to demand a just portion of the profits created by our labor.

Exclusion is self-defeating, whether workers belong to a labor union or not. Because every man and woman is needed on deck, we can’t let billionaire hate purveyors like the Mercers and Murdochs split us, in our workplaces or in our communities.

Robert Mercer, 72, who made his billions as a hedge fund manager, is a major funder—more than $10 million—of Breitbart, the website once run by former White House aide Stephen Bannon. This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to monitoring and exposing domestic hate groups and extremists, wrote about the site:

“In April of 2016, the SPLC documented Breitbart’s embrace of extremist ideas and racist tropes such as black-on-white crime and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Further analyses showed how under executive chair Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s comment section became a safe space for anti-Semitic language.”

Bannon specifically told Mother Jones magazine that Breitbart was the platform for the alt-right, which has lifted anti-Semitic and white supremacist voices.

At the same time, the Mercers, Robert and his daughter Rebekah, were giving millions to right-wing anti-union groups through the Mercer Family Foundation. These include the virulent anti-union Heartland Institute ($6.68 million), Heritage Foundation ($2 million), CATO Institute ($1.2 million) and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research ($2.18 million).

It includes the Center for Union Facts ($900,000), a secretive group for corporations and wealthy individuals who oppose unions and who are willing to fund its lies about labor organizations, and the Freedom Partners Action Fund ($2.5 million), which, in turn, has given millions to anti-union groups like the National Right to Work Committee. And the Mercer Foundation gave $100,000 to the State Policy Network, the umbrella group for 100 state-level organizations devoted to destroying labor organizations.

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 88, is a slightly older version of Robert Mercer. He made his feelings about labor unions clear 30 years ago when he moved his London newspaper operations overnight to a barbed-wire–enclosed bunker in the neighborhood of Wapping and told unions he’d fire all workers who did not immediately transfer to the new building and use its new technology. When the print unions resisted, Murdoch fired 5,500 printers.

He also served on the board of directors of the anti-union CATO Institute. Murdoch, who is worth about $20 billion, is listed as chairman and president of a Murdoch Foundation, but it has no assets and has made no grants in more than a decade.

On Fox News, the television network controlled by Murdoch, numerous commentators, including the currently suspended Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, are openly hostile to labor unions and are viciously anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for advertisers to boycott Fox News unless it fires Carlson and Pirro.

A former senior vice president at Murdoch’s News Corp, Joseph Azam, told National Public Radio this week he left his job in 2017 over the network’s coverage of Muslims, immigrants and race. The NPR story says, “the rhetoric coming from some of his corporate colleagues sickened him: Muslims derided as threats or less than human; immigrants depicted as invaders, dirty or criminal; African-Americans presented as menacing; Jewish figures characterized as playing roles in insidious conspiracies.”

Last weekend, a Muslim news producer, Rashna Farrukh, announced that she quit Fox’s corporate cousin, Sky News Australia, over its coverage of Muslims on the days after the massacre at the two Christchurch mosques. She wrote this in a post for ABC News:

“I compromised my values and beliefs to stand idly by as I watched commentators and pundits instill more and more fear into their viewers. I stood on the other side of the studio doors while they slammed every minority group in the country—mine included—increasing polarization and paranoia among their viewers.”

Billionaires such as Murdoch and Mercer wield immense power. Organizations they stealth-fund are dedicated to dividing and conquering workers. They’re dangerous because they breed, broadcast and promote hate.

The only way to deal with them is with solidarity. Workers must have each other’s backs. They must see each other as brothers and sisters. Their guiding principle must be that all working men and women, regardless of creed, color, nationality or sexual orientation are welcome.

Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

IMAGE: Hedge-fund billionaire, anti-union ideologue, and Breitbart financier Robert Mercer.