1,650th Strike Recorded by Payday in Richmond – NoLa Garbage Workers Strike – Rural NC Bojangle Workers Strike

Payday Report' Strike Tracker has tracked more than 2,000 strikes since March of 2020 (Payday Report)

Greetings from the Burgh, 

Payday has just returned to Pittsburgh from Huntington, West Virginia. We’ll be here for a few days while we work on more stories about our Huntington trip and take care of some business. 

With your donations, we hope to get back on the road soon. Thank you to everyone who has chipped in. 

Payday Records Its 1,650th Retail Worker Walkout in Richmond 

Today, Payday Report recorded its 1,650th walkout since the beginning of the pandemic: Retail workers at the non-profit Diversity Thrift store in Richmond, Virginia, went on strike. 

With pay of $11 an hour, the workers demanded a raise to $16 an hour. The workers also demanded the store improve its sexual harassment policy after a manager was rehired at the facility, even after sexual harassment allegations were made against him. 

“We’re all terrified that this is going to result in us losing our job,” Diversity Thrift employee Aurora Higgs told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “A lot of us are paycheck-to-paycheck.”

For more, check out the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

Suburban New Orleans Garbage Workers Strike

In the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, sanitation workers, members of the Teamsters, and employed by Republic Services went on strike last Friday over low pay and unsafe working conditions. 

“Man, we got some of these guys out here pulling asbestos cans, with dust masks and that’s not good,” veteran garbage worker Ron Martinez told WGNO. “Our trucks are always breaking down, leaking oil. It’s just a bad situation.” 

For more, check out WGNO. 

350 Sutter Healthcare Workers Walkout in California 

In Antioch, California, more than 350 healthcare workers, members of SEIU, have gone on strike today over the company’s unfair labor practices and chronic understaffing. 

“We voted to strike because we want to put a stop to Sutter’s unfair labor practices and because we care about patient safety, and we want safe staffing levels,” Stefanye Sartain, a respiratory therapist at Sutter Delta Medical Center, said in a statement released by the union. “Our hospital has multiple job openings that haven’t been posted because management feels they don’t need the positions filled. But we are so short-staffed, it’s hard to provide adequate care. Sutter is eroding the staff and it’s not safe for patients or workers.”

For more, check out the statement released by SEIU. 

Burnsville, North Carolina Bojangle Workers Strike 

In rural northeast North East Carolina, workers at Bojangle in Burnsville, North Carolina, went on strike Saturday over unsafe conditions. 

“After workers at @Bojangles in Burnsville, NC notified management that they had been exposed to COVID, we were pressured to still come to work. We’re striking to demand COVID protections, PAID sick days & a $15 min wage,” the North Carolina Fight for $15 said in a statement on Twitter, released on behalf of the workers. 

For more, check out the Fight for $15 North Carolina’s Twitter feed. 

Strikes & News Happening Elsewhere

Alright, folks, that’s all for today. Donate to our travel fund to cover the Huntington, West Virginia strikes. 

Also, please consider signing up as one of our 631 recurring donors. 

Hear about walkout? Email me [email protected] to let us know. 

Love & Solidarity,

Melk

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. In addition to filing nearly 2,000 stories from 46 states, Elk traveled with Lula from Sáo Bernando do Campos all the way to the Oval Office in the White House. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and works frequently in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended college at PUC-Rio. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburghese fluently. His email is [email protected]

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