Why 2021 may yet be a “renaissance” for US unions despite falling membership Job losses during the pandemic have increased the unionised percentage of the overall workforce.
A teachers strike in California in 2019 The percentage of the overall US workforce belonging to unions has risen for the first time in more than a decade in the wake of Covid-19. Data on union membership, released today by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that 10.8 per cent of the workforce were members of a union in 2020, up from 10.3 per cent in 2019. Yet the rise has been caused not by an increase in the total number of unionised staff, but rather by high job losses among non-unionised staff and vulnerable part-time workers during the pandemic. Union membership had a decrease, in absolute numbers, of 2.2 per cent in 2020. The decline in total employment was 9.6 million – or 6.7 per cent of the workforce (almost twice the number of people in 2009 after the banking crash).
Deaths in truck crashes keep rising as your government ignores safety solutions
Updated Jan 29, 2021;
Posted Jan 24, 2021
Truckers gas up at Love s truck stop in Bordentown in March 3, 2019, as snow begins to fall.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Med
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WASHINGTON Whenever she talks about her mother, Renee Langiotti keeps tissues close by.
Her mother, Susan Bartholomay, was killed on a Florida interstate highway in May 2015 after the car she was riding in swerved to avoid a large truck that was drifting over. Her car collided with another vehicle and wound up wedged underneath the truck trailer.
Langiotti’s mother was one of 4,095 people who died in crashes involving large trucks in 2015 a number that swelled by 22% over the next four years.
/PRNewswire/ The following is a statement from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa on President Biden s decision to invoke the Defense Production Act.
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Jan 21 (Reuters) - Nearly 200 refinery workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in St. Paul Park, Minnesota, walked out on strike Thursday evening after failing to agree on a new contract with Marathon Petroleum by the end of 2020, the union said on Thursday.
The union voted to authorize a strike at Marathon’s 102,000-barrel-per-day refinery in St. Paul Park in December of 2020.
“At this time, we have safely assumed operation of the refinery with trained and qualified personnel,” a company spokesman said. (Reporting by Laura Sanicola; editing by Richard Pullin)
A vintage Cole s Express truck. (Photo: Robert Gabrick)
The story of Cole’s Express is a classic American “rags to riches” tale.
Allie Cole struck out on his own at the age of 10 when he was old enough to understand that his widowed mother could not support him and several sisters and brothers on what she earned as a washer-woman. After leaving Lowell, Maine, Cole supported himself through a series of jobs, including farm and stable work. In 1910, at the age of 17, he was working as a baggage and freight handler at the Enfield, Maine, railroad station.
He decided to go into business for himself, rather than work dead-end jobs that did not value good customer service. He landed a contract to deliver mail between the Enfield railroad station and the nearby towns of Burlington, Grand Falls, Lowell and Saponac. Using a horse and wagon, this first contract became the foundation of Cole’s business, which he named Cole’s Express in 1917.