If a business has a problem paying overtime to salaried employees, donât ask them to work overtime. Itâs not fucking rocket science.
Will the Clean Energy Auto Economy Be Built on Factory Floors Riddled With Toxic Chemicals and Safety Hazards?
The contracts for some 150,000 workers across the Big Three automakers â GM, Ford and Stellantis â are expiring September 14. And the safety standards and wages of these electric vehicle workers loom large over the UAWâs ongoing negotiations. The UAW is demanding that workers at electric vehicle battery plants receive the same pay, benefits and safety standards as UAW members at other auto factories. Whatâs at stake is no less than the future of American car manufacturing, and all eyes are watching how these negotiations will play out.
UAW President Shawn Fain, elected in March as part of a reform slate backed by the rank-and-file movement Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), has pledged to lead a strike if necessary to accomplish the unionâs ambitious goalsâchief among them, ending tiers on wages and benefits in which long-term workers enjoy better wages and benefits than new hires doing the same work. A two-week strike could cost GM $1.3 billion in profits, according to one Citi analystâs estimate.
âUltium Cells shows us that we are in danger of replacing oil barons with battery barons who are happy to take billions in taxpayer handouts while offering jobs that are dangerous and pay poverty wages,â Fain tells In These Times. ââWe are going to see this pattern play out in communities across the country, from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico, unless unions fight for a just transition that doesnât leave workers and working class communities behind.â
Guess whoâs at it again?
Right on time for the Biden Administrations new rules from the NLRB:
Dr. Culber! 
After describing the empty desks that met those who returned to the office as a âghost townâ in March, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had to optimize its use of what expensive real estate remained, and that coming into the office once or twice a week was not efficient. âWe should be good stewards of financial resources. We have expensive real estate. And if theyâre only utilized 30 percent of the time, we have to be careful in how we think about it.â The search giant recently sent workers missives threatening to take ânext stepsâ if they donât come in three days a week.
âDammiit, we made a bad investment, and weâll be damned if we donât milk it for all itâs worth!â
How to say âI skipped class on the day they covered sunk cost in business schoolâ without saying it.
This is the part of the whole âreal estate costs return to office OMGZâ business media panic that I donât understand. The money on leases and construction is already spent (or committed). It does not get reduced, and revenue is not gained, by forcing people to come back to the office. Itâs 100% keeping up appearances, at the cost of antagonizing your entire employee population.
But selling in the current market is also a losing proposition, especially for large corporate office buildings. So they have to maintain the building, but it isnât being used, which is all that justifies having the building in the first place.
Itâs management via the âlook busyâ principle.
The board is angry if it sees empty space.
Kinda weird they havenât noticed the huge void where the upper managementâs empathy, humanity or long term thinking should beâŚ
They see themselves and are pleased.
Reminders that weekends came from workers:
A report about exploitation of workers hired for cleanup after natural disasters 
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