Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

#Oil and #gas firms ‘have had far worse climate impact than thought’ | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/oil-gas-industry-far-worse-climate-impact-than-thought-fossil-fuels-methane

#FossilFuels #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

The Next Big Grocery Strike Is Knocking on Safeway and Giant’s Door

Last April, more than 30,000 Stop & Shop grocery workers across the Northeast won a raucous 11-day strike against the company, beating back health care and pension cuts. Now, another major grocery strike has become a serious possibility, this time in and around the nation’s capital.

On Wednesday, UFCW Local 400 announced that it will be holding a strike vote early next month for more than 25,000 workers at hundreds of Giant Foods and Safeway stores across DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The union has separate contracts with Giant and Safeway, but both of those contracts have been expired since last October. Negotiations in the ensuing months proved fruitless, and now the union is preparing for what could become the first large strike of 2020. 

Giant is owned by Ahold Delhaize, the same European conglomerate that owns Stop & Shop. Safeway is owned by Albertsons, the national grocery holding company controlled by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. As is common in private equity deals, Cerberus is reportedly eyeing an IPO for Albertsons—placing great pressure on the company to spiff up its balance sheet, including labor and pension costs. Not coincidentally, those issues are now fueling the contract dispute that has brought these UFCW members to the point of a strike vote. In addition to pension cuts, the union says that the companies are pursuing cuts to health care funding, tight restrictions on benefit access for part time employees, and a plan to keep many new hires locked in a minimum wage salary for years.

First JumpShot and now Hitwise. GDPR is starting to change the marketing world.

"Our primary partner is no longer in a position to provide us with data"

Hitwise used to "help companies track every stage of the consumer’s journey, from search to purchase down to the hour"

Wanted by the DNC: Someone, Anyone to Stop Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is now the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But the DNC is still trying to recruit someone to stop him. First it was Kamala Harris. Then it was Joe Biden. Now it’s Mike Bloomberg.

Wall Street investors react to climate change

Institutional investors are factoring climate risks into their investment decisions.

#Chinese people in #UK targeted with abuse over #coronavirus | World news | The Guardian

More evidence of disgraceful #racist behaviour.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/18/chinese-people-uk-targeted-racist-abuse-over-coronavirus-southampton

#Racism

“I Would Love Medicare for All”: A Nevada Culinary Union Member on Why She Supports Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is leading in the Nevada polls, but he faces a major obstacle: One of the most powerful actors in state politics has come out swinging against his signature proposal—Medicare for All. 

The 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union announced last Thursday that it will remain neutral in the Democratic primary this year. But in the past week, the union has sent out a series of communications to members warning, both directly and indirectly, that Sanders’ plan threatens its hard-won healthcare benefits. 

One flyer circulated by the union read, “Some politicians promise . . . ‘You will get more money for wages from the company if you give up Culinary Health Insurance.’ These politicians have never sat at our bargaining table ... We will not hand over our healthcare for promises.”

Sanders’ opponents have seized on the opening to double down on arguments for preserving private health insurance—a position the union shares. 

“There are 14 million union workers in America who have fought hard for strong, employer-provided health benefits,” tweeted former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. “Medicare for All Who Want It protects their plans and union members' freedom to choose the coverage that's best for them.”

Billionaire Tom Steyer, meanwhile, has started airing an ad in Nevada telling voters that “unions don’t like” Sanders’ healthcare plan. 

Known nationally as a standard-bearer for militant workplace organizing, the Culinary Union hasn’t just won healthcare benefits—it runs its own 24-hour healthcare center and pharmacy, exclusively for members.

But some members are disillusioned that the union is flexing its muscle against a healthcare policy they believe could deliver a windfall to unions by freeing them to focus on other issues at the bargaining table. 

In These Times spoke to Marcie Wells, a shop steward with Culinary Workers 226 who has worked at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville inside the Flamingo Hotel and Casino for 16 years. Wells discussed Medicare for All, the union’s endorsement decision and her support for Bernie Sanders. 

There was a lot of speculation as to whether the union might still endorse Joe Biden. What was your reaction to the decision not to endorse anyone in the primary? 

[Union leaders] said early on that they were not sure if they were going to endorse. When they called this press conference, everyone expected that they were going to go ahead and endorse Biden, because they already said they weren’t endorsing. So why would you put together all that just to repeat yourself? 

The literature they put out the night before was not so subtle. It had the words “one, two, three,” and three candidates in order [Editor’s note: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are listed first on the flyer]. Everyone knows in the caucus, you rank your top three choices. But they’re not officially endorsing. 

I think it sends mixed signals, and it’s disappointing that they’re not being straightforward. 

Did the union poll members about the endorsement?

No, they didn’t. Typically, I get called for those types of things, because I’m a shop steward. 

Talking one-on-one, a lot of members want Bernie. But when we’re in the setting of citywide meetings or things that are exclusive to shop stewards, there’s a clear message that, “the person who wants Medicare for All wants to take away our hard work.” 

It’s disappointing as a progressive.

At a town hall the union held with Sanders in December, some members heckled over the issue of healthcare. Can you describe what you saw happen?

At this type of event, all the questions are planned. When Bernie started talking about healthcare, almost on cue, a group started chanting, “Union healthcare! Union healthcare!” 

When a speaker said, “I don’t want to give up my insurance,” I yelled back, “I do!” 

But aside from what felt like a staged protest, Bernie got a great reception, people were cheering. I mean, he’s the frickin’ union guy. 

The culinary union has the reputation of having some of the best healthcare in Las Vegas. How well does it work for you?

Relatively speaking, it is some of the best. But it doesn’t work well for me, because I have chronic illness. I have ankylosing spondylitis and bilateral uveitis that’s recurring. I’ve had this condition since high school, and I’ve been misdiagnosed, delayed diagnosed, not believed as a Black woman, told that I was exaggerating my symptoms. 

Most recently, my eyes were so inflamed that my eye doctor called a rheumatologist in the Culinary network, and she wasn’t going to be able to see me for 7 months. I had to do a GoFundMe to pay for a doctor outside of my network so I could not go blind. 

I don’t think the private insurance market is good for people with chronic illnesses, and I think it’s pretty ableist to pretend that it is. If I’m waiting 8 months to see a specialist but I’m having symptoms throughout that time, nine times out of 10 I’m going to get fired for missing work. And to even start getting that insurance in the first place, you have to work 360 hours within a certain time frame. 

There’s also a copay every time I go to a specialist. More likely than not, I’ll skip something most months. I would love Medicare for All right about now. 

Why do you think the union has come out so strongly against Medicare for All?

I think there’s a conflict of interest there. We have a labor union, and a political lobby with a PAC, and a healthcare business, all wrapped up in one. 

They built the Culinary Health Center, so that’s theirs. Word on the street is they’ve already paid for the parcel of land to build the next one. So they’re in the business now—they’re the establishment to an extent. So I think capitalism is the reason that they’re coming out against Medicare for All, and it’s just really troubling. 

Nevada’s uninsured rate is 14%, and there are big racial disparities in who doesn’t have insurance—in Nevada it’s indigenous people, Black people, Latino people. Medicare for All is a racial justice issue. For the union to have an 80% demographic of [people of color] and be pulling this, it’s just unbelievable. I’m disgusted. 

Do you think the messaging against Medicare for All will impact how members vote in the primary?

That’s what’s shitty about this whole thing. Some of these people are going to vote against their best interest because they trusted the Culinary Union.

But a lot of members do want Bernie. The younger members, the members whose young kids are getting them involved. I think I flipped a dishwasher the other day. So we’re all doing our best, but it’s just disheartening that we’re fighting against both the GOP and the union.

Oversight of fishing vessels lacking, new analysis shows

Policies regulating fishing in international waters do not sufficiently protect officials who monitor illegal fishing, the prohibited dumping of equipment, or human trafficking or other human rights abuses, finds a new analysis by a team of environmental researchers.

Warming oceans are getting louder

One of the ocean's loudest creatures is smaller than you'd expect -- and will get even louder and more troublesome to humans and sea life as the ocean warms, according to new research.

"[F]ace recognition doesn’t just mean there’s a small possibility that you could be mistaken for a suspect....it also means that your government doesn’t trust you."

EFF policy analyst @mguariglia on the ethical arguments for banning face recognition:
https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/rogues-gallery-facial-recognition-technology-history.html

South American volcano showing early warning signs of 'potential collapse'

One of South America's most prominent volcanoes is producing early warning signals of a potential collapse, new research has shown.

Warming, acidic oceans may nearly eliminate coral reef habitats by 2100

Rising sea surface temperatures and acidic waters could eliminate nearly all existing coral reef habitats by 2100, suggesting restoration projects in these areas will likely meet serious challenges, according to new research.

#Kickstarter workers have officially unionized!

https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1229798975693299712
ht to @alyaza

New catalyst recycles greenhouse gases into fuel and hydrogen gas

Scientists have taken a major step toward a circular carbon economy by developing a long-lasting, economical catalyst that recycles greenhouse gases into ingredients that can be used in fuel, hydrogen gas, and other chemicals. The results could be revolutionary in the effort to reverse global warming, according to the researchers.

At What Point Does Bloomberg’s Unprecedented Ad Spending Amount to Bribery of the Media?

Reaching staggering heights, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Democratic presidential campaign has exceeded $400 million in spending for television, radio and online advertising. In early February, the campaign announced plans to dramatically increase that number—still a paltry fraction of Bloomberg’s fortune of over $60 billion.

It’s hardly unorthodox for a presidential candidate to devote millions of dollars to advertising. Historically, major candidates have spent roughly comparable amounts—regardless of the sources of their donations—generating a relatively level playing field in financial terms. In 2016, for example, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign spent a reported $73.7 million on TV ads, while Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton spent $62.6 million. Republican candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush spent $72.7 million and $66.9 million respectively.

Yet these numbers are a mere sliver of Bloomberg’s totals. In fact, Bloomberg’s expenditures aren’t just astronomical; they’re unprecedented, amounting to what many critics have called an act of grand-scale bribery in pursuit of the world’s most powerful political position.

Bloomberg formally entered the presidential race comparatively late, in November of 2019. Since then, he has eschewed the traditional campaigning methods used by opponents Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar, such as town halls in the earliest primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, relying instead on a colossal advertising budget. As part of that strategy, Bloomberg reportedly plans to concentrate on highly populous Super Tuesday states like California and Texas; Florida, whose primaries are on March 17; and New York and Pennsylvania, which hold primaries on April 28.

Currently, a hefty portion of Bloomberg’s ad spending is devoted to TV commercials in preparation for Super Tuesday on March 3, when more than one-third of the electorate is expected to vote. According to data from FiveThirtyEight, the campaign has produced at least 39 commercials, costing more than $300 million as of February 14. FiveThirtyEight displays 10 ads, most of which have aired hundreds of times in Texas, California and Florida. For comparison, Tom Steyer, another billionaire in the Democratic race and the second-highest ad buyer, has spent an estimated $133 million on commercials as of February 14.

Additionally, Bloomberg has far outpaced his opponents in digital ad expenditures. The campaign has spent at least $42 million on more than 90,000 ads, according to its latest disclosures. Bloomberg’s Facebook advertising has accelerated precipitously; the campaign’s daily Facebook ad expenses are now over $1.3 million. Bloomberg’s spending reached its greatest heights in the largest states: From November 14 to February 11, the campaign spent north of $4.2 million, $5.5 million and $13.4 million in Texas, California and Florida respectively. Again, Steyer is a distant second, hovering around $100,000 per day. As of February 14, Sanders’ one-day expenditure followed at approximately $70,800; Buttigieg at $42,600; Warren at $26,000; Klobuchar at $13,800 and Biden at $7,600.

Meanwhile, as of mid-February, Bloomberg ranked first among political ad buyers on Google, with a total of 33,869 ads costing nearly $37 million. Similar to his TV and Facebook ads, Bloomberg’s Google ads appear to be courting the Super Tuesday vote. While expenditures peaked in mid-January, ad spends were again on the rise moving into February. This considerably surpasses Steyer’s campaign, the second-highest-spending Democratic campaign on Google, which has bought over $7 million worth of advertising, as well as the campaigns of Buttigieg ($6.36 million), Sanders ($5.3 million), Warren ($4.27 million), Biden ($1.64 million) and Klobuchar ($1.6 million).

The ad blitz appears to have been chillingly effective, throwing into sharp relief the immense influence the super-wealthy wield in U.S. politics. Since the ads began, Bloomberg’s poll numbers have soared. According to RealClearPolitics, Bloomberg’s polling average was 4.9% as of December 24; as of January 23, it had climbed to 7.7%. In a February 10 Quinnipiac national poll of Democratic candidates, Bloomberg placed third, at 15%. A day later, a Morning Consult poll showed the candidate had risen to 17%.

Bloomberg’s ad flurry has also been a boon to the broadcast industry. CNBC reported that Bloomberg’s spending “has created a windfall for local TV broadcasters.” The report elaborated: “Shares of publicly traded companies that own local broadcasters have also risen a welcome surprise for an industry that’s being eroded by digital media. Shares of Nexstar Media Group, the largest of the local broadcasting companies, are up over 20% since news of Bloomberg’s run broke in late November. Shares of Gray Television are up about 10%.”

Other broadcast corporations have confirmed Bloomberg’s effect on their profits. According to The Intercept, Christopher Ripley, president and CEO of Sinclair Media Group, which owns over 190 television stations throughout the United States, said the "amount of fundraising that’s happened through this year has broken all records." He added that Sinclair is “already benefiting tremendously from that and the entrance of players like Bloomberg.” In addition, Patrick McCreery, an executive of media firm Meredith Corporation, said, “Bloomberg is certainly having an impact across most of our footprint.” This means that media channels—in addition to Bloomberg L.P., the mass media company Bloomberg owns—have an incentive to prolong Bloomberg’s candidacy in a blatant conflict of interest.

Bloomberg’s ability to spend with such abandon stems from his personal wealth, which is the sole source of his campaign funding. The billionaire—a former Republican whose ideology has manifested in rank racism, transphobia, misogyny and animus toward the poor—touts this donor-free model as proof of his financial and ideological independence from “special interests.” But his strategy to fund his own candidacy is no sign of virtue; Bloomberg has a record of leveraging his monstrous wealth into political viability.

On account of his self-funding, Bloomberg didn’t qualify for the Democratic presidential debates in November, December, January and early February, which required participants to reach a certain threshold of donations. Yet, last January, the Democratic National Committee suspiciously eliminated the fundraising criteria for the next debate on February 19, replacing it with a minimum polling requirement of 10 percent in four polls released from January 15 to February 18, or 12 percent in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina—a benchmark Bloomberg may meet, thanks entirely to his plutocratic status. 

This dovetails with Bloomberg’s history of purchasing political alliances. Through a series of so-called philanthropic municipal initiatives, including grants and other monetary “support packages,” Bloomberg has ingratiated himself with current and former mayors throughout the country, garnering endorsements from at least two dozen officials, including Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; San Francisco Mayor London Breed; and former Flint, Michigan Mayor Karen Weaver. According to the New YorkTimes, at least four of his endorsers received funding from Bloomberg “worth a total of nearly $10 million.” Accompanying the endorsements, appropriately enough, is an outpour of uncriticalmediacoverage. 

It’s far from hyperbolic to suggest that Bloomberg is attempting to buy the presidency from an all-too-eager political media apparatus. If recent developments are any indication, it’s likely that Bloomberg’s visibility will only grow for the foreseeable future. As that happens—if indeed it does—it will be imperative to question why it was ever allowed.

More Than 1,200 IBEW Members Call on Union Leadership to Retract Biden Endorsement

On February 5, the 775,000-member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers announced that it was endorsing Joe Biden for president. It was Biden’s biggest union endorsement campaign so far in his presidential campaign. This week, nearly 1,300 IBEW members who support Bernie Sanders sent a letter to union membership asking them to retract that decision.

The Oreo Workers Trump Betrayed

CHICAGO—Some labor struggles can feel like long, dramatic sagas: unexpected twists, broken hopes, valiant attempts to overcome unyielding giants. Michael Smith knows this tale well as a member of the small, beleaguered Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, BCTGM.

Smith lost his delivery job of 15 years in the massive 2008 DHL Express layoff, then fell into debt, lost his house, and skimped by on unemployment checks and any work he could find. He finally landed a $25-an-hour job on Chicago’s South Side in 2010, with pension and healthcare benefits, on a factory line at snack-foods company Mondelēz International (known at the time as Kraft Foods). The job was a union one, with BCTGM.

But Smith again found himself in the crosshairs of a massive layoff six years later, as Mondelēz announced it was shifting 600 jobs to a new factory, with far lower wages, in Mexico. At 58, Smith had four children, bills for prostate cancer treatments, and slim prospects for finding another decent factory job in Chicago. So when BCTGM launched a public campaign to pressure Mondelēz into bringing the jobs back, Smith agreed to become a spokesperson, and the union offered him a modest stipend. Smith could have signed up for federally funded job training instead, but he wanted to fight the union fight.

Smith and BCTGM have now been battling the $26 billion global behemoth for nearly four years. Back in 2016, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both briefly took up the cause. Meanwhile, Mondelēz has sent hundreds of union bakery jobs to Mexico and dealt a blow to the union’s remaining 2,000 members by ending their guaranteed pension plan. 

BCTGM has suffered for years: Factory workers in Billings, Mont., joined a nationwide BCTGM strike in November 2012 in response to unilateral contract concessions imposed by Hostess in bankruptcy court. In response to the strike, Hostess shut down all its plants and laid off 18,500 workers. (Photo courtesy of BCTGM)

As a union, BCTGM has suffered. Automation, non-union shops, plant closures and offshoring in the bakery and confectionery industries have shrunk the union’s ranks from 115,000 members in 2002 to 66,000 in 2018.

Mondelēz, for its part, has been doing just fine. Most consumers know the company for its Nabisco products: Oreos, Ritz, Triscuits and more. After the snack giant spun off from Kraft Foods in 2012, it turned steady profits, returning $2.9 billion to its shareholders in 2014 as then-CEO Irene Rosenfeld took a 50% pay increase, to $21 million. To meet shareholder demand for continuing profits, Rosenfeld then embarked on an “aggressive cost-cutting plan.” Since 2015, the company has been shuttering plants and trimming labor costs.

In May 2015, BCTGM received a jolting offer from the company: Mondelēz would consider $130 million in equipment upgrades at the 62-year-old Chicago plant if the union accepted $46 million in annual wage and benefit cuts—a 60% cut in pay and benefits, the union calculated. If the union refused, the investment and jobs would go to a new multi-million-dollar plant in Mexico.

The union refused, hoping to deal with the issue when company-wide contract talks began in February 2016. Then, Mondelēz “stonewalled” on providing “cost comparisons” and information about the Mexico plant, says BCTGM International Strategic Campaign Coordinator Ron Baker. “There was no negotiation,” Baker recalls. (Mondelēz spokesperson Laurie Guzzinati says that all “valid requests for information” received a response “within a reasonable timeframe.”)

Mondelēz began layoffs in March 2016, saying the union hadn’t offered a proposal.

A veteran of United Mine Workers of America’s long battles with coal behemoths, Baker doubted that negotiations could convince Mondelēz to stay in Chicago—but he believed public pressure could draw sympathy over the loss suffered by workers at a plant that makes the Oreo, a truly iconic American snack.

Indeed, Trump had repeatedly brought up the Oreo saga as part of his campaign rhetoric about offshoring jobs. “I’m not eating Oreos anymore,” Trump said in New Hampshire in September 2015. “Nabisco is closing their plant, a big plant in Chicago, and they’re moving it to Mexico.” The plant remains open (it had never planned to close), but about half of its jobs were moved.

Donald Trump swears off Oreos at a presidential campaign event in Rochester, N.H., Sept. 17, 2015. (Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

When Mondelēz began its first round of 277 layoffs in March 2016, BCTGM stepped up its boycott campaign against Mexican-made Mondelēz products, begun months earlier, and opened a makeshift office across from the factory. The union was counting on publicity from the 2016 presidential campaigns.

Clinton visited the union’s campaign office that March, meeting with Michael Smith and other workers, then with Rosenfeld, reportedly to urge a halt to the move. Nothing changed.

The union sent Smith and others across the United States to meetings, public rallies and media interviews to talk about the harm done by prosperous companies seeking cheaper labor overseas. At a June 2016 Democratic Party platform committee meeting in Washington, D.C., Smith appealed: “I am not a number, nor [is] my family, nor my neighbors, nor my coworkers … We are, however, victims of [the] global snatch-and-grab that has gutted our community.”

In visits to 25 college campuses, BCTGM reps urged students to boycott Mexican-made Mondelēz products and have their schools do the same (though the union is not sure whether any schools did). More than 280 U.S. religious leaders signed a letter asking Mondelēz to stop shipping jobs outside the United States. The boycott made headlines and the rounds on social media, though some critics pointed to the limited success of such efforts and the xenophobic potential of “buy American” rhetoric.

After Trump became president, the union was optimistic he would take up the fight from the White House. In 2017, BCTGM reached out to Trump directly but received no reply, not even a tweet. Ron Baker says Trump has done nothing to help the union since 2016.

The 2016 job loss landed like a hammer. By summer, 600 Mondelēz workers had been laid off—half the plant—though the company did begin callbacks to fill openings created by retirements, per the union contract, and kept the process in place after the contract expired, according to a company spokesperson.

According to the union, the majority of workers at the plant were over 40, and many came from families that had worked for generations at the massive Southwest Side Chicago factory, which was built in the 1950s and employed up to 4,000 workers in its heyday. In job-hungry Chicago neighborhoods, the union plant, with an average $27 wage, had been an oasis. Manufacturing, once a driver of Chicago’s economy, accounted for about 18% of the city’s jobs in 1994 and only 10% in 2017. Chicago’s Black communities were hit especially hard: The percentage of workers in factory jobs dropped from almost 30% in 1960 to 6.5% in 2017, while unemployment more than doubled, to 20%. Two-thirds of the laid-off Mondelēz workers were people of color.

Lisa Peatry landed a job at Mondelēz in 2013, after four different layoffs and closings, including the Kool-Aid plant that sent some work to Mexico in 2002. She was 50, living on her own after raising three children. She liked her job on the production lines because they were fast and she appreciated her coworkers. “There was a diversity of races and everyone got along,” she says. Peatry was laid off in March 2016. Unable to keep up with rent, she lost her home and has been staying with a relative.

Eventually, Peatry found a factory job at $14 an hour—a job that often left her crying nightly from its difficulty and the treatment she received from bosses—and then a better job at $18. She still wanted to return to her $25.43-an-hour job at Mondelēz, but the company stopped its recalls, stranding Peatry and about 100 others on the recall list.

After being laid off, former Mondelēz worker Salvador Ortiz, 49, signed up for English classes and hoped to do better than friends, who were finding $11-an-hour jobs. Talking about his future one day in May 2016, in the living room of a comfortable bungalow not far from the plant, his wife cried, saying their middle-class dream was over. Ortiz feared losing his house and car. More than a year later, Ortiz was recalled back to the plant, but had suffered financially, getting by on unemployment checks and $14-an-hour jobs.

When Michael Smith was called back to Mondelēz in March 2018, he found the working conditions had changed for the worse. Smith was on mandatory overtime almost daily, sometimes working a double shift, getting only four or five hours of sleep and never knowing when he could make a doctor’s appointment. Smith felt the company was in disarray. He was now running an oven, a new job for him that was uncomfortable because of the high temperatures. “It’s 120 degrees and it’s like I’m sitting in the oven,” he tells In These Times. (Guzzinati says mandatory overtime may be required more than once weekly, to accommodate workload.)

Lisa Peatry enjoyed working on the production lines at Mondelēz—for the pay, but also the diverse community. After Mondelēz offshored her job in March 2016, she was unable to pay rent, and lost her home. (Photo by Meredith Goldberg)

In May 2018, just over two years after the union contract expired, Mondelēz imposed part of its benefits cuts, switching Smith and his coworkers’ retirement benefits from a guaranteed pension to a 401(k) account. Mondelēz honored existing pensions but pulled its 2,000 remaining union bakery workers out of BCTGM’s multiemployer pension fund, committing to instead pay an early withdrawal fee of $560 million over 20 years. Mondelēz told workers it was thinking about their future: The multiemployer plan could collapse by 2030, the company warned.

But the union sees it as just another blow to one of the most troubled multiemployer pension plans, which has suffered since the 2008 recession. When Hostess Brands, once the fund’s largest contributor, closed and filed bankruptcy in 2012, the company left a $2 billion pension liability. By 2018, the fund had $7.9 billion in liabilities and only $4.1 billion in assets.

In 2018, Mondelēz CEO Dirk Van de Put earned $15 million. The median Mondelēz worker worldwide, meanwhile, is a part-time hourly employee earning $30,639, an income ratio of 489 to 1.

A Navy vet with three children, Anthony Jackson mourned the loss of his job at Mondelēz, his best-paying job ever. Since the layoff in March
2016, when Mondelēz moved hundreds of jobs to a new factory in Mexico, Jackson says he’s only found low-wage work. (Photo by Meredith Goldberg)

Preventing U.S. firms from outsourcing jobs was a drumbeat for the 2016 Trump campaign. “These companies aren’t going to be leaving anymore,” Trump declared in December 2016 in Indianapolis. “They’re not going to be taking people’s hearts out. They’re not going to be announcing, like they did at Carrier, that they’re closing up and they’re moving to Mexico.”

But Rosemary Coates, head of the Reshoring Institute, a California-based nonprofit, says that, rather than bringing jobs back to the United States, companies are increasingly looking for new places to send production. The latest reshoring survey by consulting company A.T. Kearney shows that imports of manufactured items to the United States from 14 low-cost countries have steadily grown for the past five years, indicating that offshoring continues.

The Trump administration has lauded tariffs and trade wars as a way to pressure companies into keeping jobs in the United States. Yet, as Tobita Chow, director of the Justice Is Global project at the People’s Action Institute (and member of In These Times’ board of directors), explains, this strategy has backfired. “Trump’s trade wars have raised costs, reduced demand, killed jobs in the United States and worsened working conditions across much of the Global South,” Chow says.

In Mexico, factory workers earn 40% less than those in China. Mondelēz’s new plant opened in Salinas Victoria, Mexico, in late 2014 and now has 1,800 workers, according to the company. But workers in Mexico have been pinned under a mountain of problems.

Most Mexican unions serve companies under “protection contracts,” in which the company actually picks the union and dictates contract terms, defanging worker movements before they begin. Protection contracts are often signed by unions when a factory has very few workers to actually negotiate. In October 2014, with just 20 workers at the new plant, Mondelēz signed a union contract that capped the top day rate at 200 pesos, about $14.90 per day. BCTGM eventually obtained a copy of the contract, which it called proof that the Mexican workers were victims of a protection contract.

According to an August 2017 ruling from the National Labor Relations Board, a Mondelēz official told an administrative law judge that its Mexican workers earned $7 an hour in wages and benefits. As for the union there, a Mondelēz official told In These Times that the 2014 contract was no longer in effect and disputed the “protection union” moniker.

Meanwhile, BCTGM continued pressuring Mondelēz to reshore its jobs. In May 2017, 17 Democrats in the U.S. Senate called on Mondelēz to hire back workers let go at its plants in Chicago and at its operations in Fairlawn, N.J., Richmond, Va., Portland, Ore., and Atlanta—but nothing happened.

In November 2017, BCTGM partnered with religious and union leaders to arrange a visit with Mexican union activists from different groups in Monterrey, Mexico. The union has since reached out to the independent Mexican Los Mineros union, which separates itself from Mexico’s more corrupt or compromised unions. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pushed through stronger worker protections, but implementing them will be a challenge as longstanding protection unions fear losing control.

Importantly, the new trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada—passed in December 2019 with support from U.S. labor unions—is a blow to the protection contracts signed by corrupt unions, calling for union monitoring and access to bi-national panels for inspections triggered by worker complaints.

Mondelez and BCTGM remain in a stalemate over lost jobs and a lost pension plan. They have not talked in a year, each claiming the other has quit negotiations. Mondelēz’s stock is up more than 30% since May 2015.

BCTGM Strategic Campaign Coordinator Nate Zeff, who picked up the torch when Baker retired in 2018, says a new campaign will launch early this year and will involve mobilizing Mondelēz workers in Mexico.

“We are almost four years into this fight,” Zeff says. “Eventually, we are going to win.”

“The real solution to offshoring is not trade wars—it’s to raise standards for workers across borders,” says Justice Is Global’s Chow. “We can get there through international worker solidarity, not by pitting workers against each other across borders as Trump has done.”

Michael Smith, who now works at the Chicago plant, has his own strategy. Ever an optimist, he is writing to Trump to ask for his help saving pension plans like his.

“It’s an opportunity for him to own up to saying he would never eat Oreos again,” Smith says. “It’s only a hope. He is still my president.”

The Prisoners Forced To Sue for Soap and Toilet Paper

PRAIRIE DU CHIEN, WIS.—Nicasio Cuevas Quiles III, a 46-year-old prisoner at Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution (PDCI) two hours west of Madison, calls In These Times in October 2019 to discuss a civil rights complaint against the facility’s administrators. During the call, Cuevas Quiles rhetorically asks why prisoners are rationed toilet paper and no longer issued bars of soap, when the annual budget of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections exceeds $1 billion.

“If it’s falling on the taxpayers of this billion-dollar juggernaut called the Wisconsin DOC to maintain it running, then—”

He’s cut off by a robot voice: “All calls other than properly placed attorney calls may be monitored and recorded.”

Cuevas Quiles doesn’t miss a beat, waits for the pre-recorded message, then continues: “—why are we dealing with things such as two rolls of toilet paper and no bars of soap?”

The automated disclaimers repeatedly interrupt the paid call from PDCI as if to threaten, We’re listening. But Cuevas Quiles is unshaken.

He is one of 10 incarcerated co-plaintiffs who filed suit in federal court in July 2019, accusing PDCI of “continuous exposure to asbestos and asbestos-related materials, lead, lead filings, radium, gross alpha and rust particles in the drinking water and water supply, the arbitrary denial of acceptable standards of sanitary living conditions, the arbitrary denial of access to sanitary cleaning supplies to prevent the spread of disease and bacteria,” and other violations at the 70-year-old facility, according to a copy of the complaint. 

PDCI, a medium-security prison, houses more than 400 adult male prisoners. “The issues here at Prairie du Chien are not unique,” Cuevas Quiles says. “I had originally pursued this case to bring to light the issues that are pretty much prevalent throughout the entire Wisconsin Department of Corrections.”

The suit also charges that plaintiffs face “the denial of proper medical care and attention to the medical issue by staff,” increasing their risk of “cancer and blindness,” and that unqualified correctional officers are handling medications, in violation of their rights. “The rendering of medical services by unqualified personnel is deliberate indifference,” the suit alleges.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections failed to respond to multiple interview requests from In These Times.

“Currently, the co-plaintiffs and I are unrepresented by counsel,” Cuevas Quiles says—the civil rights complaint was filed with the courts directly. “That’s because not too many attorneys want to take on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.”

One of the few sources of outside support that Cuevas Quiles and his co-plaintiffs have is the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), an international labor union for prisoners. IWOC’s local in Milwaukee connected with Cuevas Quiles in February 2019 through an email newsletter it sends to more than 3,000 prisoners across 31 facilities in Wisconsin. (Corrlinks, a for-profit company, is contracted by prisons to provide prisoners with email access, for a fee.) While Cuevas Quiles found his co-plaintiffs himself, IWOC Milwaukee has helped connect him with other supporters on the inside, as prisoners are not able to email each other.

 “We’ve been using this newsletter to help connect people across institutional boundaries by collecting reports on conditions and updates at various institutions, then organizing, editorializing and sending the messages back out to the whole list,” explains Ethan Simonoff, an organizer with IWOC Milwaukee.

With the help of IWOC Milwaukee and other prisoner organizing groups, like Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing and WISDOM, Cuevas Quiles was also able to connect with local media, drawing the ire of prison administrators. Cuevas Quiles says that, following a radio story, he was forced out of his work assignment in the laundry department, and two of the three computers prisoners use to file legal documents were confiscated. He also says fellow prisoners have been forced to address hazardous conditions without proper training or equipment. IWOC Milwaukee corroborates Cuevas Quiles’ charges with similar claims by other prisoners at PDCI.

Prison administrators are “telling offenders, ‘If you don’t perform these duties, we’re going to throw you in [solitary confinement],’ ” Cuevas Quiles says.

Despite the alleged retaliation, Cuevas Quiles describes his co-plaintiffs and the general prison population as hopeful—pending amendments, he expects the civil rights complaint to move forward. IWOC Milwaukee came to their aid in September 2019 with a call-in campaign to PDCI, asking administrators to cease retaliation.

Back on the call, in the middle of describing how the plaintiffs have been building strong supportive bonds together, the robot interrupts Cuevas Quiles with, “One minute remaining.”

Undeterred: “If the minute goes up, I’ll call you right back.”