Under the Radar

51.2

Number of minutes that is the median commuting time for New York City health care workers, the highest for any group of private-sector workers in the city (New York Times).

17

Senate Democrats who voted with Republicans for a Trump-supported bill that would further deregulate banks and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, increase the chances of another financial crisis (HuffPost).

5.3 million

Estimated number of women who joined a one-day strike in Spain on International Women’s Day (BBC).

Bus Drivers Refuse Fares, Keep Driving

In the city of Okayama in Japan, bus drivers with the Ryobi Group faced competition from a new, cheaper bus company. The Ryobi drivers, fearing for their jobs, asked management for additional security measures, but were rebuffed, so they went on strike. But instead of halting work, they went on fare strike instead—continuing to drive their routes but refusing to collect fares, draping blankets over the fare machines.

It is not a new tactic—it is one that has been used in other countries, including the United States and, recently, in Australia, to great effect. But it has the value of aligning bus riders with the drivers against the company, whereas a typical strike often winds up with commuters angry at striking drivers who have made their commute harder. The drivers at Ryobi, who kicked off their strike on the competing company’s launch day, managed to ding their bosses’ profits while continuing to assure loyalty to themselves—even if it does mean that they are working while technically on strike.

A Different Beginning to the Strike Wave

Stories about the strike wave among teachers in the United States have focused on the “red-state” nature of the actions, particularly since the first strike this year came in West Virginia, the setting for many “Trump Country” articles. But the wave of rebellion among teachers goes back much further. How would we think differently about the story if the teachers in St. Paul, Minnesota, who won their third progressive contract on the eve of a strike deadline in February, had in fact been on the picket lines as well?

The St. Paul Federation of Teachers (SPFT) used the fact that the Super Bowl was held in the Twin Cities during their contract negotiations to great effect, working with community organizations to hold street protests, show up to challenge local CEOs to contribute to the schools, and release a report comparing corporate spending on the Super Bowl with their spending on public schools. “With our new mayor in town,” SPFT president Nick Faber told me, “we just wanted him to know the context of where we are at here. We will strike, and we can put three hundred to four hundred people on the street in the middle of the night on a Monday night in downtown St. Paul in the middle of the winter when it is really cold.”

With their new contract, the SPFT will expand its groundbreaking restorative practices program that included smaller class sizes, more hiring of teachers for English Language Learners, expanded special education hiring, recruitment of teachers of color, school lunch guarantees, and an agreement with the district to seek additional funding from large corporations and nonprofits in the St. Paul area. “We definitely see what the strength of a longtime, really grassroots union can do in terms of contracts compared to those of our colleagues who don’t have that,” said Beth Swanberg, a music and theater teacher in St. Paul, who noted that some of the St. Paul teachers took their spring break to go to Oklahoma and join the strikes there.

May Day without Immigrants Again

This May Day came and went without much fanfare in the United States, despite the Trump administration’s continuing crackdowns on immigrants—raiding workplaces, eliminating Temporary Protected Status, and continued deportations. But in Waukesha, Wisconsin, immigrants went on strike.

Last May, in Milwaukee, a massive strike helped put the kibosh on the local sheriff’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and, shortly after, drive him from office. And this year, according to organizing group Voces De La Frontera, more than ten thousand marched in Waukesha, population around seventy thousand. Hundreds of local businesses shuttered in solidarity with the strikers. They were there to protest local sheriff Eric Severson’s intent to participate in the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration police. “Since the new administration, a lot of things changed, not for good in Waukesha County,” said Voces member Gabriel Quintero. “They see immigrants as a problem for the community, which is not true. We are here to support not just the City of Waukesha, [but] the whole state.”

Whistleblower Detainee Released after Forcing Investigation

For Laura Monterrosa, being held in the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas was a special kind of hell. The private center, operated by CoreCivic, one of the largest private, for-profit prison companies in the world, holds mainly asylum seekers. Monterrosa, who is from El Salvador, first complained that she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a guard in the facility in a letter that she made public last fall. Other women came forward in the wake of Monterrosa’s allegations, but an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which contracts with CoreCivic to run the facility, at first claimed her complaints were “unsubstantiated.” The guard continued to work at the facility, and Monterrosa said that she was threatened and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for complaining.

Advocates on the outside kept up the pressure, and the FBI took up the investigation. Eventually, more than forty-five Congressional representatives signed a letter to the Department of Homeland Security calling for an investigation into these and other allegations of sexual abuse at detention centers. And in March, Monterrosa was finally released from the detention center, though hundreds of other women remain imprisoned there.