By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal
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Why Wal-Mart Workers Keep Using One-Day Strikes (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Josh Eidelson explains that one-day strikes are on the rise because, while they don't shut down workplaces, they embarrass employers and engage the public just like work-stopping strikes of the past.
Over the past six decades, the overall number of strikes has plummeted. There were 470 major work stoppages in 1952; in 2013, there were just 15. That’s not because industrial harmony has swept the land. It’s because unions have gotten drastically weaker, sapping their ability to put on great shows of force, and because changes in the law and the economy have made strikes less effective.
One-day strikes don’t shut down the workplace like iconic strikes of yore did (and some workers, like Chicago teachers, still can). But if done right, they can accomplish some of what those walkouts did: Embarrass companies, estrange them from their customers, and engage fellow workers and the broader public by disrupting business as usual and creating a public spectacle. Instead of halting production, they anchor broader campaigns of political, media, legal, and consumer pressure aimed at getting management to budge.
Follow below the fold for more.
Exclusive: Kmart Workers Say They Risk Being Fired If They Don’t Come In On Thanksgiving (ThinkProgress)
Bryce Covert reports on the scheduling practices of some major retailers that will open on Thanksgiving. One Kmart employee she spoke to is quitting rather than miss Thanksgiving with her husband, who has cancer.
The Rich Are Getting Richer, But It Has Nothing To Do With Their Paychecks (Vox)
Salaries and wages of the top 400 taxpayers have fallen in recent years, reports Danielle Kurtzleben, but their incomes continue to rise, and their tax rates drop, thanks to capital gains.
San Francisco Passes First-In-Nation Limits on Worker Schedules (Politico)
Marianne Levine writes about the city's new restrictions on how chain stores can alter their employees' schedules. Changes within two weeks will require additional "predictability pay."
Obama Threatens Veto of Emerging Tax-Break Agreement in Congress (Bloomberg)
Richard Rubin reports on the president's opposition to this deal, which extends a set of corporate tax cuts but doesn't extend lapsing expansions of the child tax credit and earned income tax credit.
Why Living-Wage Laws Are Not Enough—and Minimum-Wage Laws Aren’t Either (The Nation)
Jonathan Lange, who led the first living wage campaign in Baltimore, says that without building worker power more generally, these laws fall short.