Category: Labor

United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 135 just announced that they have successfully completed union bargaining agreements for workers at cannabis retail outlets owned by March and Ash.

Cannabis workers at March and Ash locations in San Diego and Imperial Counties voted on May 12, 2021 to ratify their first ever union contract. It’s also the very first cannabis industry union contract originating in San Diego and Imperial Counties.

The outlets are in the City Heights community of San Diego, the City of Vista, and the City of Imperial. The City Heights and City of Imperial locations offer recreational cannabis products, while the Vista location is medicinal only.

Union officials believe this contract will set “the gold standard in the unionized cannabis industry,”
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By Colleen O’Connor

Sometimes, I am happy to be wrong. And this is one of those times.

In my article, “Save the Libraries: Throw Books at the Mayor: Part II,” I implied that the Municipal Employees Association supported the Mayor’s cuts to the libraries.

Specifically, I asked:

“Is it the Municipal Employees Union that is blocking the Library funding? Surely, their membership includes families and friends who use the libraries. Or people who want jobs. Or just rational individuals who understand that depriving library users in every neighborhood free access to knowledge is just plain stupid.”

The MEA’s, General Manager, Mike Zucchet, was kind enough to respond and correct that impression.

It’s really no surprise that a study recently released by a business institute at Point Loma Nazarene has come out strongly opposed to the City of San Diego creating its own utility company, which would be then publicly-owned.

The study by Nazarene’s Fermanian Business & Economic Institute claims it would cost the city nearly $9 billion in taking over SDG&E’s assets – way too costly – and there would be no benefits to the process called “municipalization.” At a recent press conference, Nazarene chief economist Lynn Reaser and primary author of the study, stood outside a SDG&E substation. Reaser was joined by all the usual suspects:

By Colleen E. Putzel / Times of San Diego / Feb. 16, 2021

Like most tragedies, the onset of the pandemic produced a call for unity with sentiments ensuring “we’re all in this together.”

Every outlet, from the daily news to hand-made window signs, offered appreciation for those on the front line: health care workers, grocery store clerks, public transportation workers, and truck drivers. My father, a truck driver, and my mother, a seamstress, suddenly became heroes.

My father goes to work every day delivering construction materials and my mother paused her Etsy sales to make masks for her local hospital. I feared, especially early on, that my father’s company would begin laying off workers. As that threat seemed less imminent, it was replaced by the fear that he would be exposed to the virus.

By Jim Miller

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day, but how many of us have any idea where the holiday came from or what it celebrates?

The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City and was proposed by the Central Labor Union (CLU) at a time when American workers were struggling for basic rights such as the eight-hour day. The CLU moved the “workingman’s holiday” to the first Monday in September in 1883 and urged other unions to celebrate the date as well. The movement grew throughout the 1880s, along with the American labor movement itself with 23 states passing legislation recognizing Labor Day as a holiday. By 1894 Congress followed suit and Labor Day became a national holiday.

Editordude: Michael Zucchet – a resident of Point Loma – who used to represent Ocean Beach and most of Point Loma in District 2 on the San Diego City Council, and who now is the general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Association, has stepped into the debate about the troubled City-owned building at 101 Ash Street, and has made a startling claim. He says compared to the work offices and buildings his union members work in, 101 Ash Street is the “Taj Mahal” of the city’s buildings. Here is his Op-Ed piece from today’s U-T.

By Michael Zucchet / San Diego Union-Tribune / Aug. 17, 2020

These days the most famous address of a city building is 101 Ash Street. Based on all the publicity, you might think it is the crummiest building the city owns or leases — riddled with asbestos and saddled with plumbing, electrical and air systems that are past their useful life. In fact, 101 Ash is the nicest, most modern, functional office space the city controls.

That’s right. Warts and all, 101 Ash is the Taj Mahal compared with the current work environs of city workers.

The American Federation of Teachers Lays Out a Bold Vision of a Just Recovery as San Diego Green New Deal Alliance Launches

By Jim Miller

This summer I was proud to see that my national union, the American Federation of Teachers, was thinking big at its biennial convention in late July. Clearly, the activist spirit sweeping the country was in the (virtual) air.

Building on some of the work my brothers and sisters and I did here in San Diego along with others in our statewide union, the national AFT followed the lead of California and passed both a resolution endorsing the Green New Deal and a wide ranging call to move beyond the necessary but narrow bread and butter response we have seen from the national and local AFL-CIO to thinking comprehensively about how we should pivot and seize the opportunity that this crisis presents to build a better future.

The resolution in support of a Green New Deal calls on the 1.7 million members of the AFT

Originally posted April 29, 2019

By Jim Miller

The majority of Americans don’t know much about May Day or they simply associate it with the state sponsored holiday in the former Soviet Union. For the most part, it’s lost down the memory hole. But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover a whole forgotten history of American workers and their struggle for basic dignity and rights in the workplace and in society.

The truth of the matter is that May Day has deep American roots. It started in 1866 as part of the movement pushing for the 8-hour day.

Monday morning, April 13, nurses and other medical staff staged a work action to protest the layoffs of nurses by Palomar Medical Center.

At least 83 registered nurses and 63 health care workers were given temporary layoffs by the Palomar Health management. This seems like such an outrageous act by Palomar in the middle of this public health crisis.

The action was sponsored by Palomar Health registered nurses and health care workers and members of California Nurses Association and Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union. The protest was at Palomar Medical Center in Poway, at 15615 Pomerado Road.

The protesting medical workers also spoke of the lack of PPE and other protections for frontline health care workers.

A big surge in orders isn’t the only reason Amazon is struggling to keep up

By Casey Newton / The Verge / April 1, 2020

It’s been clear for weeks that Amazon faces an unprecedented challenge in coping with the fallout from COVID-19. With tens of millions of Americans now dependent on online delivery for their food, medicine, and other essential items, the nation’s No. 1 e-commerce company is buckling under increased demand.

And as fulfillment center employees are diagnosed with the virus across the country, Amazon’s already-restive workforce has escalated its efforts to win better pay and safer working conditions. Among other things, employees at affected locations have simply walked off the job.

UFCW Local 135 demands that their essential members be designated as emergency frontline personnel in the state of California

Working long hours and exposed to large volumes of customers and patients, essential retail store workers, and pharmacy and other healthcare professionals are unsung heroes on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, leadership from the state, county, and cities in San Diego, must do everything in their power to support and protect them.

UFCW Local 135 calls on the state of California to designate their essential members as emergency frontline personnel. This must include, at a minimum:

By Jim Miller

If you’ve been paying attention to the news about labor over the last year or so, you’d think we were in an era of a resurgent union movement. We’ve seen a wave of inspiring, militant teachers’ strikes from West Virginia to Los Angeles along with a successful autoworkers’ strike against General Motors and lots of other signs of life from grocery workers’ actions to pushes for minimum wage increases across America. Unfortunately, the latest numbers on union membership paint a more disappointing picture.

As the Washington Post reported last week:

Union membership in the American workforce was down to 10.3 percent from 10.5 percent in 2018, according to statistics released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The continued slide shows how energy and momentum around the labor movement is not translating into equivalent growth for unions, whose memberships have fallen sharply as a percentage of the U.S. workforce over the past roughly 40 years. In 1983, unions represented about 1 out of 5 workers; now it’s 1 in 10 workers.