Akron Teachers to Strike – Half of UK Railroads Shut Down – 12,000 NY Nurses to Strike

Folks,

Greetings from the Burgh, where #27 Pitt is taking on #11 Virginia in basketball tonite. Donate to help a broke labor reporter buy a few beers at the game.

Akron Teachers to Strike over Safety Issues

Teachers plan to go on strike on Monday an hour and a half up the road in Akron. After more than a year of working without a contract, teachers there say they are frustrated by the administration’s failure to address critical issues around safety, wages, and cuts to health care benefits.

“What we are mostly concerned with and overwhelmingly need addressed is what’s happening inside our buildings… issues of teacher assault, weapons in the buildings, with assaults happening on teachers almost on a daily basis,” Akron Education Association President Pat Shipe told WJM.

For more, check out WJM.

Help Us Travel to Cover Akron & Other Strikes

Akron, where teachers plan to strike next Monday, is just an hour and a half up the road from Pittsburgh. If they do strike, Payday would like to be there to cover it.

Donate to help us pay for gas to cover the Akron strike (if it doesn’t happen, we will use the money to cover other strikes). Please, sign up as one of our 735 recurring donors today.

12,000 New York Nurses Set to Strike Next Monday

Next Monday, 12,000 nurses and seven hospitals in New York City also plan to go out on strike. The nurses say that they are frustrated by high patient-to-staff ratios and understaffing caused by low pay.

“I don’t think people know what it’s like to work in an emergency room and walk in and lose a baby or a 19- or 20-year-old. We don’t even have a minute to take a deep breath, we cannot even grieve the loss because we just have to go wipe our eyes with a tissue, wash our hands and go back to receive another trauma, and we can’t even take a day off,” Nancy Hagans, a nurse at Maimonides medical center, told the Guardian.

For more, check out the Guardian.

Half of UK Railways Shut Down by Strikes

Over in the UK, the strike wave known as “the Winter of Discontent” continues to roll on. Today, more than half of all commuter trains in the UK have shut down as 40,000 rail workers are on strike for five days this week.

With inflation at 11% in Great Britain, workers say that the wage increase they are being offered won’t keep up with inflation.

“What we keep hearing is the same stuff from the government across the sectors that they want to facilitate an agreement, but they don’t actually do anything,” RMT union Mick Lynch told Sky News.

For more, check out AP.

Farm Labor Trafficker Gets 10 Years in Prison

In Florida, Bladimir Moreno, 55, the owner of Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for trafficking farm labor from Mexico.

“This defendant abused his power as a business owner to capitalize on the victims’ vulnerabilities and immigration status, luring those seeking a better quality of life with false promises of lawful work paying a fair wage,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a news release. “The defendant forced Mexican agricultural workers to labor under inhumane conditions, confiscated their passports, imposed exorbitant fees and debts, and threatened them with deportation or false arrest.”

For more on the case, check out the Ledger.

Strikes & News Happening Elsewhere

Alright, folks, that’s all for today. Donate to help us cover the Akron teacher’s strike. And please, sign up as one of our 735 recurring donors today.

Keep sending story ideas, tips, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. Thanks again for all the support & suggestions.

Love & Solidarity,

Melk