As a historic vote count gets underway to determine whether Amazon.com Inc. workers in Alabama will form a union, the company is facing increasing resistance from its already unionized employees across Europe.
German service trade union Verdi recently called on Amazon workers at six company sites to launch a four-day strike ahead of the Easter holiday to demand higher wages. The strike is taking place roughly a week after Amazon logistics workers in Italy went on a 24-hour strike called by the FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL and Uiltrasporti unions over issues including delivery workloads. The latest actions add to a growing labor backlash in Europe, including a strike among Amazon workers in France last year related to concerns about worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fishermen s wives: how unsung efforts keep a way of life afloat Emily Cataneo
In spring 2020, the fishing community of Newport, Oregon, shuttered along with the rest of the country. A coronavirus outbreak at a local Pacific Seafood processing plant left fishermen sitting on docks with no buyers for their Dungeness crabs, while restaurants closed and families found themselves housebound.
That’s when Taunette Dixon and her organization, the Newport Fishermen’s Wives, stepped in. This group quickly mobilized to provide food, supplies, infant formula, pet food, fuel cards, masks, gloves and money for past-due utility payments to fishing families who had been hit by the pandemic.
Fishermen s wives: how unsung efforts keep a way of life afloat theguardian.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theguardian.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Ten years ago, the Department of Labor wrapped up a lengthy investigation of Arise Virtual Solutions, a company that recruited customer service agents to work from home fielding calls for big brand names like Disney and AAA. The so-called gig economy was in its infancy, with Uber launching and TaskRabbit starting to go national.
The question for the Obama administration’s Labor Department: Did Arise employ those customer service agents? Arise trained the agents and exercised extraordinary control over their work. But it treated them as independent contractors rather than employees. That meant the agents weren’t entitled to minimum wage, overtime or other employment protections. They paid for their own training and equipment, and even had fees deducted from each paycheck for use of Arise’s technology platform.