Bernie Sanders Campaign Staffers Did Not Join Him Again in 2019
(CNN)Sen. Bernie Sanders is a staple on the front lines of the labor fight, leading the accuse in Washington and around the land to enhance the minimum wage for workers to $15 an hour. But inside his own entrada, which unionized earlier this year, tense discussions over pay have spilled out into public view.
The dispute threatens to undermine Sanders' political message and, if it were to escalate, his power to credibly advocate for workers around the country currently engaged in their own struggles to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions.
Give-and-take of the discontent first emerged publicly on Th nighttime in a Washington Post study detailing campaign field staff's frustration that their base pay, in some instances, does non match the $fifteen-an-hour mandate that Sanders, equally a legislator and candidate, has pressed for equally the base minimum wage beyond the state. Equally the campaign ramps upward, field staff are often required to piece of work ten-hour, half-dozen-day weeks, driving down their boilerplate hourly compensation.
In a statement to the Post, Sanders on Friday defended his entrada salaries and said he was "very proud" his presidential campaign was the start to unionize workers.
"We have a historic contract agreement that provides unprecedented protections and benefits," he said in the statement provided to the Postal service. "Through that framework, we are committed to addressing concerns in good religion through the bargaining process."
Earlier Friday, Sanders expressed frustration in an interview with the Des Moines Register that staffers were airing their complaints publicly.
"It does carp me that people are going outside of the process and going to the media," he told the Iowa newspaper. "That is really not adequate. It is actually not what labor negotiations are about, and information technology's improper."
He added, "We are disappointed that some individuals have decided to harm the integrity of these efforts. We are involved in negotiations. And some are individuals that accept decided to damage the integrity of that process before they were concluded."
A source told CNN that campaign officials were in a room with representatives from the union, discussing the topic, when the campaign was first fabricated aware of the Post's story.
In a statement to CNN, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said that the campaign offered the field staff a heave in pay that would guarantee a $15 an hour salary commensurate with a lx-hour work week. That proposal, according to Shakir, was rejected by the membership.
"Every bit strong supporters of organized labor, this formal process is the sole process for making changes to the collective bargaining agreement. It would be anti-matrimony, and likely illegal, for the entrada to negotiate exterior this process," Shakir said. "We await forward to continuing those discussions and obviously are disappointed that some individuals decided to damage the integrity of these efforts before they were concluded."
As the negotiations keep, Shakir said he would be limiting the work calendar week for field staff to only 40 hours a week.
Jonathan Williams, a spokesperson for the UFCW Local 400 would non comment on the specifics of the negotiations, but in a argument the union said it would continue working with the campaign to sort out the ongoing concerns.
"First and foremost, our union is a democratic system. We cannot comment on specific, ongoing internal processes betwixt our members and their employer, particularly without the consent of our members," the union said. "Nosotros can say that our union is proud to advocate for every member in every workplace we stand for to earn a better life -- both during contract negotiations and beyond."
The leaked details from the negotiations and internal messaging inside the campaign came at a specially uncomfortable time for Sanders, who had only hours earlier praised the Business firm Democrats for their historic vote to pass of the Heighten the Wage Human activity of 2019, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
"Iv years ago, when I first introduced legislation to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, information technology was considered an impossible dream," Sanders said in a statement on Thursday. "Today, I am proud to say that a $xv minimum wage has gone from laughable to inevitable."
Its fate within his own entrada, though, remains unresolved. Entrada work hours are notoriously hard to program out and predict, which is one of the reasons three current presidential hopefuls' staffs -- including Sen. Elizabeth Warren's and quondam Housing and Urban Evolution secretary Julián Castro'south -- have unionized and others down the ballot have done the aforementioned.
A source direct connected to the ongoing negotiations betwixt the Sanders campaign and the wedlock representing his field staff, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, confirmed to CNN on Friday that the two sides are actively negotiating staffers' pay scale within the confines of the commonage bargaining agreement agreed to in early May.
"Political campaigns are cause-driven and because there is ever more than piece of work that can be done, staffers are typically worked to the bone," Local 400 President Marker P. Federici said back on May 8, after their contract was ratified. "But it doesn't have to be this way. Even political work must be field of study to minimum standards. I congratulate our members on the Bernie Sanders campaign for making their own revolution."
But the details revealed on Th dark underscore the difficulties that have made the unionization of political campaigns so difficult, and unusual, for then many years.
Withal, Sanders has been supportive of the effort and the entrada voluntarily recognized staffers' bargaining unit.
"Nosotros cannot just support unions with words, nosotros must back it up with actions," he tweeted back in March. "On this campaign and when we are in the White House, we are going to make it easier for people to join unions, non harder."
Sources from both the campaign and the union confirmed that the commonage bargaining agreement, ratified in May, ready a base pay charge per unit for field staff at $36,000 a year. That bacon works out to under $15 and hour based on the 60-hour work week. But in addition to the pay scale, the CBA also provides full health insurance without a premium, mental health benefits, parental go out options, a gas carte for utilise while on the job and other options non traditionally available to low-level campaign staff.
Additionally, the CBA also has a provision within the union construct called "Labor Committees," which allows for rank-and-file members to serve as role of a democratic process assuasive them to raise concerns about various issues. That includes pay, but could also be housing options, workplace environment and benefits.
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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/19/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-union-clash/index.html
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