It’s Worker Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024.
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Monday was Labor Day in the US, and Iowa Federation of Labor President Charlie Wishman came out swinging against inequality in his Labor Day message:
“Labor Day is for you, but as we reach the end of the summer of 2024, it feels like the other 364 days of the year are for the wealthy in Iowa,” Wishman wrote.
“In 2023, for example, commodity prices that companies pay fell by 3%, while consumer prices rose by 3%. Where does that ‘extra’ money go? It boosted corporate profits and CEO pay. That’s not conjecture—corporate profits in 2023 rose by 11%, and CEO pay raised by 6%.”
Wishman continued:
“The worst CEO-to-worker pay ratio in Iowa was at none other than Casey’s General Stores, at 641 to 1, an obscene amount.” (Casey’s CEO got $1.2 million in salary in 2023, with total compensation at just over $10.6 million. The average pay for a Casey’s worker is just over $15 an hour, per Indeed.)
“Iowa’s policies in government only make this worse. … Why this state seems intent on weakening consumer buying power while further enriching the wealthy and powerful is beyond us, but it is the wrong path to go down.”
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Casey’s: Famous for paying their CEO too much.
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It may come as no surprise to you in “right to work” Iowa, but Casey’s workers, and indeed, the vast majority of Iowa workers, are not unionized—one of the most effective ways to change that pay disparity.
In fact, Iowa has lost 36,000 unionized workers in the last decade, making us the state with the fifth-largest decrease per capita in the US, according to a study by Plus Docs. (Though, between 2022 and 2023, Iowa did increase its union representation slightly.)
That’s despite unions being more popular than they have been in half a century.
It just so happens that September is Labor Union Appreciation Month, a reminder that every workplace benefit you have—from the eight-hour workday, to child labor laws, to breaks, overtime, paid time off, and more—is the result of working people fighting for them, and sometimes paying with their lives.
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Working class news you can use:
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Rent? You have rights: Find out what they are! The City of Iowa City, Iowa Legal Aid, and Johnson County Affordable Housing Coalition are hosting a Tenants’ Rights Workshop tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library. Learn more here.
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AEA staffing shrinks: Predictably, after the Iowa Legislature voted to gut funding for Iowa’s Area Education Agencies, staff are leaving in droves: 429 have left the state’s nine AEAs since the start of the last school year.
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Farm income rose, but only for the wealthy: The three years between 2021 and 2023 led to a huge increase in farm income in the last half century; but 85% of that went to the biggest 8% of farms out of 1.9 million farms in the country, according to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. (This year, the USDA is predicting a 25% drop in farm income.)
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No more ‘good’ government jobs? State and local public employees have made less than private sector employees for years, but that pay gap has widened since the pandemic. And it’s even worse in states like Iowa with weak or no bargaining rights.
- No taxes on tips sounds like a good idea in theory. In practice, however, it likely amounts to your boss keeping more of your money. (What might actually help tipped workers? Ending the subminimum wage.)
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Rail workers reach tentative agreement: Unionized workers with BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, and CSX reached agreements on five-year contracts with their companies in late August. If ratified, it would lead to wage increases and improvements in health care and paid time off.
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Union education: The University of Iowa Labor Center is hosting “Safety and Health in the Workplace: Focus on Fatigue” from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at BioVentures Center in Coralville. Participants must register by Sept. 13. Learn more here.
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‘True’ unemployment rates in Iowa: The “true” unemployment rate—which measures the percentage of people looking for full-time work that pays a living wage—is 23% in the Des Moines metro, which mirrors the US as a whole. But that’s the lowest in Iowa: It’s 23.5% in Waterloo/Cedar Falls, 23.9% in Cedar Rapids, 25.2% in Omaha/Council Bluffs, 26.5% in Iowa City, and 31.4% in the Quad-Cities.
- Voting on a union:
– 150 electricians, welders, pipe fitters, and more at Quaker Manufacturing in Cedar Rapids voted last week to jointly be represented by IAM District Lodge 6 and SMART Local 263. A majority—67 workers—voted for the winning option; 145 workers voted for one of three representation options.
– CORRECTION: Last week, I told you about 33 drivers and other workers at Iowa Beverage Systems in Des Moines who voted successfully to unionize with Teamsters Local 90. But I incorrectly told you the vote tally included two not voting counting as “no” votes; such non-voters counting as nos actually only happens with Iowa public employee recertification elections, not National Labor Relations Board ones. (Thanks Peter Hird for the correction!)
- Iowa layoffs coming up this month:
– Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off 24 workers by Sept. 11, 12 workers by Sept. 23, three workers by Oct. 6, and 16 workers by Oct. 20.
– John Deere Waterloo Works is laying off 191 workers at its East Donald Street site, 89 workers at its Commercial Street site, and 65 workers at its West Ridgeway Avenue site, all by Sept. 20.
– Tyson Foods in Perry is still closing up shop: The remaining five workers will be laid off by Sept. 28.
– Wilson Trailer Company in Sioux City is laying off 58 workers by Sept. 28.
– Morning Sun Care Center in Morning Sun is closing and laying off 68 workers by Oct. 2. Read more here.
– Tata Consultancy Services in Hiawatha is closing and laying off 23 workers by Oct. 3. Read more here.
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“The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor” is a book written by Hamilton Nolan, a longtime labor journalist who helped unionize Gawker and has a great, snarky Substack, “How Things Work,” that exists to poke holes in the argument that capitalism will save us all.
In Nolan’s book (which came out in February of this year), he goes around the country talking to labor leaders, union organizers, and workers who were just trying to make their crappy jobs a little less crappy. He also follows Sara Nelson, the head of the flight attendants’ union, who for a time was assumed to be getting ready to mount a real shake-up to the stagnant AFL-CIO leadership (until she didn’t).
In both his book and his Substack, Nolan has one common theme: Labor unions are not only the best way for working people to take back their power—from corporations and politicians alike—they are, in fact, the only way.
“People need to see that democracy is not a bullshit game for suckers,” Nolan writes in “The Hammer.” “People need to see that democracy is not just another scam to rip them off. People need unions. Unions are the proof.”
(Send me your book/movie/article suggestions here.)
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