San Francisco has first worker-owned strip club in US
The women of the Lusty Lady, a San Francisco strip club, are making history again. They were the first strip club in the country to unionize, joining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) several years ago.
Now, they’ve bought the club and have become the first employee-owned strip joint in the nation.
The dancers joined the SEIU in 1995. For the most part, they got along with management. A couple of years ago, management decreased their hourly wages, citing reduced profits, and the dancers agreed. Late last year, as they were renegotiating the contract, they demanded that their pay be restored.
Labor and management reached an agreement on the contract in January. A month later, they received notice that the club would close.
That’s when the dancers started to consider the idea of buying the club, and making it employee-owned.
With the help of Rainbow Grocery, another cooperative business in town, the dancers navigated their way through the murky waters of business and finance.
Along the way, the dancers drew on little bits of expertise and experience they had. One had been a paralegal, another knew about contracts.
The Lusty Lady co-op works like this: Dancers are paid an hourly wage, as always. Those who want to buy into the co-op pay $300 and sign papers. At the end of the year, if there are profits, the money goes to the members of the co- op, pro-rated based on the number of hours worked that year.
About 45 dancers have joined the co-op so far, as well as all 12 of the nondancing, fully clothed, mostly male support staff.
The club will remain union.
(SF Gate)

Privatization of park jobs under fire
This may be the last summer when visitors to national parks and national forests are greeted by public servants rather than low-bid “rent-a-rangers,” environmental groups and top Democrats in Congress claim.
Federal land management agencies are studying converting thousands of positions now held by government workers to private contractors as part of a White House directive to meet quotas for “outsourcing” certain federal jobs.
A leaked copy of an internal Forest Service memo showed the agency is considering replacing its entire law enforcement staff with private security officers, as well as contracting out parts of its fire suppression, environmental monitoring and timber sales work force.
A draft briefing paper to the Forest Service’s National Leadership Team shows the agency is considering replacing 650 law enforcement, 300 natural resource monitoring and data collection positions, and 150 positions at the Boise Interagency Fire Center with private contractors in fiscal 2004.
Outsourcing “competitions” would be held for 2,000 financial management jobs in the Forest Service ranks as well as 900 human resources positions in the agency in fiscal 2005.
In fiscal 2006, the Forest Service would consider replacing between 5,000 and 10,000 government firefighters with private contractors. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Migrant farm workers sue Canadian gov’t. for union rights
A union that wants to represent migrant farm workers in Ontario has filed a court challenge to the repressive farm labor laws in Canada’s largest province.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) is pursuing a court challenge of the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, charging that it violates the constitutional rights of farm workers by forbidding them to join unions and excluding them from wage and safety laws.
Migrant farm workers in this region, mostly from Mexico, are paid about five US dollars an hour for 12- to 15-hour days. Most get only one day per week off and live in barracks-like housing.
The union has filed an application in the Superior Court of Ontario seeking the right of farm workers to unionize and have the same wages and safety rights as other workers.
The mainly male workers described being forced to spray pesticides without safety protection, living in overcrowded buildings with leaking sewage, long work hours without overtime pay, lack of access to medical care, and not being able to recoup government pay deductions. The workers said they feared being sent back to Mexico if they dared to complain about the conditions.
(IPS)

Bush’s economy: unemployment soars
The nation’s unemployment rate shot up to 6.4 percent in June, the highest level in more than nine years, in an economic slump that has added nearly a million people to jobless rolls in the past three months.
Businesses slashed 30,000 jobs in June for the fifth straight month, with cuts heavily concentrated in the nation’s factories, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Since March, unemployment has increased by 913,000. Two million people were unemployed for 27 weeks or more as of last month, an increase of 410,000 since the start of the year.
Manufacturing led in payroll cuts last month, with 56,000 jobs lost. Since July 2000, the nation’s factories have cut 2.6 million jobs. (Associated Press)

Inmate cooks stage strike
About 1,100 medium- and maximum-security prisoners at the Sterling Correctional Facility in Colorado were put in lockdown on July 1 after dozens of inmate cooks refused to work in protest of lower prisoner wages.
It is the first such work stoppage by inmates at a Colorado prison since 1978, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said.
Inmates sent guards anonymous letters explaining why they wouldn’t work Tuesday, the first day of the state’s fiscal year and of the lower pay rates, she said.
The work stoppage is in protest of pay being dropped to 60 cents a day for inmate workers who do everything from custodial work to laundry to cooking, Morgan said. In the past, pay ranged from 40 cents a day to $2.
Inmates who do not work saw their pay drop from 28 cents to 23 cents a day. The money, which is considered a per-diem stipend and not a wage, pays for hygiene items such as shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper and soap.
Twenty percent of inmate pay automatically is deducted to pay child support, victim compensation fees and court fines, said Carla Gerle, who has a son in the Arrowhead Correctional Center in Canon City.
“[Prisoners] feel this sort of protest is the only way to be heard,” Gerle said.
At 3am when the first shift of 15 cooks at Sterling was called to start preparing breakfast, all refused to work. When two more shifts of cooks also refused to work, the west side of the Sterling facility was placed in lockdown. During lockdowns, prisoners receive cold meals in their cells, phones are turned off and visitation rights are stopped. Prisoners are denied recreation privileges and do not get to shower.
(Denver Post)