The following campaign involved members of the IWW and Earth First!

By Xian Chiang-Waren - Mother Jones June 22, 2012

When the 32 families of the Riverdale Mobile Home Park in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, found out that they were losing their homes to the state's latest fracking operation, the news didn't come from their landlord, or an eviction notice in the mail—they read about it in their morning paper.

The February 18 article, published in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, nonchalantly detailed the approval of three natural gas projects in Lycoming County, PA, including a water withdrawal station that would pipe millions of gallons of water from the Susquehanna River to fracking stations in the mountains further north. The article noted that an "added benefit" of the plans was "the removal of mobile homes," which were located in a potential flood plain.

Later that afternoon, Riverdale's landlord came by and confirmed what residents had already read in the paper: The property had been sold to Aqua America, a water company dedicated to fracking. The full magnitude of the blow came days later, when the eviction notices arrived, informing the residents that they had until May 1 to relocate so that work on the site could begin in June. Each family was offered $2,500 if they got off the property by April 1; $1,500 if they moved by May 1; and zero compensation after that. It wasn't nearly enough; lawyers for Riverdale residents later estimated that the cost of moving each trailer was, on average, between $8,000 to $10,000.

For communities on the Rust Belt, it's one of the oldest stories in the book: A new industry comes in and needs to build roadways or pipelines, and poor communities have to get out of its way. "This happens all the time in Pennsylvania," said Alex Lotorto, a Pennsylvania activist and delegate for the union group Industrial Workers of the World. "Industry comes in and uses our skilled labor. Then both government and industry end up abusing us because honestly, nobody even thinks about the people north of I-80."

But in Riverdale, something unexpected happened: People decided they weren't going to go quietly.

Headlines:

• Federal Judge Finds Jimmy John’s Guilty Of Illegal Firings
• Huge Victory For Immigrant Wobblies At Brooklyn Hummus Producer
• Palestinian Prisoners Join Mass Hunger Strike

Features:

• A Report From The Women With Initiative Meeting In Warsaw
• Phoenix Cab Drivers: “We’re 21st Century Slaves”
• May Day News & Photos From Around The Globe

Download a Free PDF of this issue.

By Daniel Gross - May 7, 2012

We are overjoyed to announce the biggest victory yet from Focus on the Food Chain!  Workers at Flaum Appetizing, with your unwavering support, have won their campaign with an exemplary global agreement.  Our members have recovered $577,000 in unpaid wages and compensation for retaliation along with a binding code of conduct ensuring Flaum comports with all workplace rights going forward including anti-discrimination and health & safety protections.

You can check out some of the press coverage on today's victory:

New York Times: Kosher-Food Manufacturer to Pay $577,000 in Settlement

Crain's New York: Settlement paves way for end of hummus boycott

Jewish Daily Forward: Uri L'Tzedek Celebrates Flaums Victory

For over a decade, workers at Flaum Appetizing worked grueling sixty to eighty hour work weeks without overtime pay and sometimes not even the minimum wage.  Latino workers were subjected to constant verbal harassment and forced to work at unsafe speeds.  Focus on the Food Chain, a joint project of Brandworkers and the NYC IWW, helped the workers launch a powerful campaign that persuaded over 120 grocery store locations to remove Flaum products from their shelves and convinced the world's largest kosher cheese company to stop using Flaum as a distributor until workers' rights were respected. In the process, Flaum workers won a precedent-setting victory at the Labor Board in D.C. helping workers nationwide fend off unfounded allegations into their immigration status.

By John Reimann

The boss was sweating bullets. The IWW was in the house, his workers were about to stop work for May Day, and he wasn’t happy about it at all. But there was nothing he could do about it since all his workers were IWW members and they support the union. This was at Buy Back recycling in Berkeley, which functions under an IWW contract as does Curbside Pickups, the work place next door, whose workers were also about to stop work for May Day, 2012.

IWW organizers and union members on the job had been organizing a stop-work rally for the previous two weeks and here it was.

Workers from both work places stopped work for about an hour to celebrate International Workers Day in a work place rally. Most of those who spoke were the Curbside and Buy Back workers themselves, and they spoke about the conditions of their jobs and the attacks on their health benefits and other such concerns. A worker at Curbside had recently had a very serious injury (which resulted in having to have a foot amputated). Several Curbside workers commented on this and the belief that the long hours of overtime may well have been related to this, because when workers are tired accidents are more likely to happen. There were several speakers from outside the work place including Boots Riley, the revolutionary Oakland rap artist, who spoke among other things about his experiences with workers in Italy. Other fellow workers spoke on a number of issues including the history of May Day, issues for grocery workers, and on privatization and the union busting in the Oakland public school system. One noteworthy message of greeting was read from a representative of the Pakistan Labor Party. The message referred to some of the strikes in Pakistan recently and concluded by calling for the workers of the world to unite. The rally concluded with a speech from a fellow worker who called for revolution (and got a good hand of applause for that).

We all gathered round for a group photo taken by one of our members. The executive director of the Curbside operation just “happened” to be on hand and came running over, a big s___t-eating grin spread over his face. He offered to take the photo for us so that we could all be in the photo at once. We sent him packing.

It was the perfect end to a great event. We started the event by making one boss sweat. We ended it by telling another to get lost. What better way to celebrate International Workers Day?