Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Category: Labor

  • Philly’s school bus drivers and maintenance workers want higher pay

    Philly’s school bus drivers and maintenance workers want higher pay

    Philadelphia School District bus drivers, maintenance workers, cleaners, and tradespeople are entering contract season.

    Leaders of 32BJ SEIU District 1201, which represents 2,000 workers, are scheduled to begin talks with Philadelphia School District officials Thursday. Their current contract expires Aug. 31.

    The bottom line for members of 32BJ SEIU District 1201 is higher pay, officials said.

    Members’ current pay scale varies, from bus attendants, who are paid $30,762 annually, to building engineers, whose pay rate starts out at $51,155 and tops out at $77,832. The union’s highest-paid workers are its building construction workers, whose salary maxes out at $77,832.

    Tradespeople — bricklayers, HVAC mechanics, electrical mechanics, plumbers, and roofers — are paid $62,899 at the top of the pay scale.

    “We are the foundation of this district, and we’re not asking for the world here. We’re asking to not live in poverty, and we’re asking to help maintain our health insurance,” said Tim Finucan, 32BJ’s Pennsylvania state director.

    Wages are not the only issue. Union leaders are also fighting for “a more clear ladder of opportunity for our membership to advance within the school district,” Finucan said. 32BJ also wants to codify ways it can work with the district to fill vacant jobs in a system that struggles to find qualified engineers and trades workers, including partnering with community organizations, clergy, and others to spread the word about open jobs.

    “We want people to know if you can get into the school district, you know you’re going to have a good check, you know you’re going to have access to good health insurance, we know you’re going to have access to a pension,” Finucan said.

    Naima DeBrest, a district spokesperson, said in a statement that officials “deeply value” 32BJ members and “will diligently engage in good faith negotiations with the hope of securing a new contract as soon as possible.”

    ‘We got there’

    If you want to know what 32BJ workers mean to the district, think back to February, when a major winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on Philadelphia, said Ronald Smith, a longtime district building engineer and member of the union’s bargaining committee.

    “The whole city was encased in snow and ice, and the engineers still had to be there, and we got there,” Smith said.

    Building engineers — who are in charge of the operations of district facilities, with responsibilities from keeping up with schools’ heating and cooling systems to making sure schoolyards are maintained — are still waiting for the extra pay they are contractually owed for working in those conditions, Smith said.

    “It was a slap in the face when we had to fight to get paid for that,” Smith said. “A lot of engineers are leaving the district — they feel disrespected. Some of the fights that we have to fight, we shouldn’t have to.”

    A too-small workforce affects the district and its workers in myriad ways, Smith said.

    “We’re bringing in new guys without the trainees having enough time to really learn the basics of the trade,” Smith said. “It’s not really fair to the trainee, it’s not fair to the schools. A lot of these buildings don’t have adequate staffing.”

    Despite friction in some areas, union officials are approaching talks with the district as partners, Smith and Finucan said. Officials are well aware of the district’s looming $300 million deficit, they said; 32BJ members have advocated for more funding for Philadelphia schools in City Hall and Harrisburg, and will continue to do so.

    But union member Sherrie Gordan said it is tougher and tougher to feed and house her three kids on what she earns as a cleaner in the district.

    “Even when I work overtime, so much gets taken out for taxes that it’s still not enough,“ Gordan said in a statement. ”Grocery prices keep going up, and my kids eat more every week. I spend $500 on groceries, but it’s gone in just a week. It’s not like it used to be when you could actually afford it.”

  • QVC’s on-air hosts aim to unionize as bankruptcy case continues

    QVC’s on-air hosts aim to unionize as bankruptcy case continues

    QVC hosts are moving to unionize as the West Chester-based home shopping network reorganizes in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

    A supermajority of the network’s 32 on-air hosts presented a petition to company management last week, announcing their desire to unionize and asking for voluntary recognition of the union, according to a statement from SAG-AFTRA, which the hosts intend to join.

    QVC management is reviewing the petition, spokesperson Matthew Goldstein said in a statement: “We respect the legal rights of all team members and are committed to following the appropriate process thoughtfully and responsibly.”

    On Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA — which represents 160,000 media professionals nationwide — filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on the QVC hosts’ behalf, according to the federal agency’s website. If the employer does not voluntarily recognize the union, the petition can trigger an NLRB election and lead to a union’s formal certification.

    The hosts are taking steps to unionize as company higher-ups try to expedite the bankruptcy process, with the hope of emerging this summer.

    QVC pioneered home shopping 40 years ago and developed a loyal following of fans, mostly women, who bought clothes, home goods, kitchen appliances, tech products, and other wares at all hours.

    Meet the QVC fans who have kept the shopping network alive

    From its West Chester studios, the network and its smaller counterpart, HSN, still broadcast live, and customers can still call in to order merchandise. But the company has also expanded into online, social-media, and livestream shopping — with mixed results. They are up against stiff competition from the likes of Amazon and other ecommerce giants.

    After years of declining revenue and months of speculation, QVC Group filed for Chapter 11 protection in April, and submitted a reorganization plan that would slash its debt from about $6.6 billion to $1.3 billion within 90 days.

    In recent weeks, a group of shareholders has challenged the plan, putting the company’s expedited emergence in jeopardy, according to court documents.

    QVC officially filed for bankruptcy. Here’s what to know.

    The QVC hosts, meanwhile, have other issues on their mind: They are concerned about artificial intelligence, and don’t want QVC using AI to imitate their image, voice, and likeness without consent or compensation, according to SAG-AFTRA, citing the hosts’ petition.

    The national union said the hosts are also calling for stronger job security in the face of AI, clearer paths for career advancement, greater say in company decisions, more equitable pay, and transparency around compensation.

    “We believe we should have meaningful input into our role in the network’s future, and that this is best accomplished through a formal collective-bargaining process,” the hosts wrote in the petition, according to SAG-AFTRA.

    QVC Group faces $30 million ‘unjustified termination’ lawsuit after report of potential bankruptcy

    SAG-AFTRA officials said they encouraged QVC management to voluntarily recognize the union and “avoid a costly NLRB process.”

    SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement that he applauded the QVC hosts’ “decision to stand together and seek a collective voice.”

    “These workers are at the heart of QVC’s success, connecting with audiences through creativity, authenticity, and innovation every day,” Crabtree-Ireland said.

    Goldstein, the company spokesperson, said the network’s hosts are “deeply valued team members and an important part of what makes QVC special.”

  • Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia voted to join a union in 2025. They just cleared their latest hurdle.

    Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia voted to join a union in 2025. They just cleared their latest hurdle.

    Philadelphia Whole Foods workers cleared a major hurdle in their unionizing efforts this week, paving the way to negotiating their first union contract.

    Workers at the 2101 Pennsylvania Ave. store voted last year to join UFCW local 1776, becoming the first group within the Amazon-owned Whole Foods chain to unionize. But they have been caught in a procedural standstill for months.

    Whole Foods challenged the union election, citing multiple objections, including allegations that the union promised employees would get a raise if they voted for a union.

    A few months after the election, a regional director at the National Labor Relations Board dismissed Whole Food’s challenge — but the company pushed back, asking for a review by the national board. That brought the case to a standstill because the NLRB was without a quorum after President Donald Trump fired a board member.

    The board has since gained two new members, including one with ties to the Philadelphia area, Scott A. Mayer, a Villanova University graduate who has worked for locally headquartered concessions company Aramark and area law firms.

    This month, the board stood by the regional director’s conclusion upholding the union election, saying Whole Foods’ latest challenge “raises no substantial issues warranting review.”

    Wendell Young IV, president of UFCW local 1776, said Tuesday that the union had been expecting this outcome.

    The NLRB decision “completely vindicates the union and these workers, and there’s no reason at this point Whole Foods/Amazon shouldn’t sit down and begin bargaining right away, although I suspect they won’t,” Young said.

    A Whole Foods Market spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company strongly disagrees with the board’s decision.

    During a hearing on the issue last year, the spokesperson said, Whole Foods argued that “restrictions on free speech and the union’s illegal conduct interfered with our team members’ right to a fair vote at our Philly Center City Store.”

  • Philly women make 89 cents for every dollar men make, new report finds

    Philly women make 89 cents for every dollar men make, new report finds

    Women working in Philadelphia continue to make less than their male counterparts, according to a new report from the Forum of Executive Women.

    While the gender pay gap in the city narrowed between 2015 and 2024, women in the local workforce still earn on average about 89 cents for every dollar men make, according to the organization’s annual report, citing Philly-specific research from the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia.

    And the pay gap is worse for women of color, the report found.

    “Persistent pay gaps do more than reduce annual income,” Meghan Pierce, forum president and CEO, wrote in the report. “They affect lifetime earnings, retirement security, access to capital, business formation, and the generational wealth of women and their families.”

    “Pay gaps impact who leads, who invests, and who builds lasting economic power in our region.”

    Philly has a fairly small gender pay gap. It looks like equity, but it’s really low wages.

    The gender pay gap is narrower in Philadelphia than the national average, which is roughly the same as it was in 2010. Across the country, women earn on average 81 cents for every dollar made by men, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank.

    Because of the gap, working women in the U.S. collectively lose about $1.7 trillion in wages each year, according to the forum report, and each woman loses about $500,000 on average during their career.

    While the gender pay gap is smaller in Philadelphia, racial disparities persist.

    Compared to non-Hispanic white men, white women in Philadelphia earn 94 cents on the dollar, the report found, while Black women earn 64 cents, and Hispanic and Latina women earn 57 cents.

    Women in the city also remain concentrated in lower-earning professions, making up 76% of healthcare workers and 66% of education workers, two sectors where the median annual earnings was below $60,000, according to the report, titled “The Philadelphia Paradox.”

    While a pay gap persists for local women at every education level, some industries have narrowed the gap more than others in recent years, the report found: Finance, retail, and real estate saw their gender pay gaps narrow, while the gap widened in arts, utilities, and construction.

    When it comes to Philadelphia’s gender pay disparity, the report concluded: “Progress is real, but closing the remaining gap requires addressing the structures that determine who enters higher-paying fields, who advances within them, and who benefits from the systems that shape long-term economic security.”