Immigrant "carwasheros," who often earn below minimum wage with no benefits, scored an historic victory this week by unionizing two Los Angeles car washes, Vermont Car Wash and Nava’s Car Wash. They were the first in the city limits to unionize. The workers are now members of the United Steelworkers, with the move likely gaining them significantly improved wages, protections and benefits while also scoring a symbolic and tactical win for organized labor as a whole.

Last summer, three car washes in Santa Monica recognized unions and then in October Bonus Car Wash in Santa Monica became the first in the country to sign a union contract, as Akito Yoshikane and Michelle Chen reported for Working In These Times.

The California car wash campaign begun in 2008 has been a major focus of the national labor movement, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka joining L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in person to cheer the achievement on Tuesday. The Carwash Organizing Campaign, affiliated with the United Steelworkers, has rallied much community support and called for boycotts of local car washes, formerly including Vermont, and also including ones with the names Celebrity, Hollywood, Five Star and Magic Wand.

In January, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced a settlement for more than $1 million among eight northern and southern California car wash owners that "underpaid workers, denied rest and meal breaks, and created false records of time worked," according to a press release. The office had filed a lawsuit against the car washes in 2010. In December 2010, workers from Marina Car Wash who lost their jobs right before Christmas performed a play about their plight at a celebrity-heavy restaurant whose owners have family ties to the car wash owners.

The $25.6 billion settlement on home foreclosures reached between five mega-banks—Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo—and 49 states, along with the federal government, is not an It's a Wonderful Life triumph of "organized people over organized money."

But neither is it just another one-sided swindle perpetrated by the "the banksters," as the 1930's "Hellhound of Wall Street" prosecutor Ferdinand Pecora called them. That's the story suggested by respected progressive Wall Street observers Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Pam Martens of Counterpunch.

Instead, the deal puts the foreclosure-fraud struggle on a new level, demanding continued struggle in the spirit and through strategies exemplified by the Occupy movement. It's a partial setback for the banks, forcing them to cough up a sizable (but still inadequate) chunk of money while shamefully shielding them legally on some key issues. But at the same time, it creates a federal task force, headed by the aggressive New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and  more clear-cut options for victimized families and housing advocates to pursue.

Let's begin with an overview of the foreclosure-fraud crisis as neatly summarized by Zach Carter:

NEW YORK—Jazz is both America's classical art form and the classic music of struggle. You can hear that duality, and see it, every night on the dimly lit bandstands of New York City. But for the musicians, the toughest part often comes after the gig, when they realize the cash they took home isn’t enough to make rent. Or maybe 30 years down the line, at the age when other workers retire, but they have to keep playing shows to keep eating.

But now the unrest over inequity on Wall Street is starting to resonate in the heady air of Manhattan jazz clubs. The Justice for Jazz Artists campaign, run by the New York musicians’ union Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, is rallying for decent wages and pensions for artists, along with a greater voice in how their music is heard and sold.

Many jazz artists, both bandleaders and side musicians, hustle from gig to gig, often at the mercy of club owners who have little or no obligation to provide basic benefits like medical or unemployment insurance. With New York's exorbitant cost of living, a single bout of illness or rent hike could tip musicians and their families into poverty.

Hoping to make it easier for the city’s hardest-working musicians to make a real living, Justice for Jazz Artists (a coalition of musicians and activists with Local 802) has worked to pressure some of the city's major clubs, like the Village Vanguard and the Iridium, to provide musicians with access to pensions later in life. 

The Komen controversy showed the brilliance of 'secondary boycotts'—and the injustice of punishing unions for using the same tactics

When news broke that the Susan G. Komen Foundation would cease funding Planned Parenthood, the backlash was fast, furious, and gratifying.  Within days, Komen apologized and promised that Planned Parenthood could receive future funds. But some commentators were angry at Komen for all the wrong reasons: for “politicizing” women’s health, for failing to distinguish vanilla health services from the abortion "controversy," or for dragging an avowedly apolitical organization into the muck of politics.

Contrary to those critics’ claims, women’s health is political, as the past weeks’ contraception conflicts have reminded us.  As Amy Schiller wrote in The Nation, one of the virtues of the Komen controversy was the way it brought those politics—and Komen’s contradictions—to the surface. As Barbara Ehrenreich has written, Komen’s role in America’s breast cancer discourse has gotten worse as the culture around it has gotten better: When breast cancer was shrouded by silence, open, unapologetic conversation was a feminist feat. Now Komen hurts that conversation, contributing to a culture of cute and optimistic cancer that silences many women while letting corporations brand themselves conscientious on the cheap.

All of this is political. Progressives should be defending women’s right to choose, rather than Komen’s right not to.  And anger at the Right's attempted Komen coup should focus on the ends it sought—the denial of women’s autonomy—not the means it employed: attacking an opponent by squeezing its funders. Applied toward just ends, that tactic—what in labor law is called a secondary boycott—is a virtuous one. But while anti-choice activists have the right to use it without restriction, unions don’t.

Thousands have been laid-off, while other UFCW members face wage cuts, contract givebacks

A trip through the federal bankruptcy court has been an agonizing experience for some 40,000 union workers at the A&P grocery chain, but a plan for financial renewal is holding out hope that the worst is finally over.

Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain is inching toward approval of a reorganization plan for the historic food retailer—known officially as the The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.—after 14 months of store closings, mass firings, tense court proceedings and tortured labor negotiations. Scheduled for final action at the end of February, the renewal plan aims to revive the company’s fortunes under new ownership. But union members took a beating in the process.

Taking the worst of the legal beating were the members of United Food & Commercial Workers union. Spread out across six mid-Atlantic states, about a dozen different UFCW locals represent check-out clerks, butchers, bakers, and other store workers at A&P and subsidiary chains Pathmark, Waldbaum’s, Super Fresh and others. At least 5,000 UFCW members have lost their jobs—some estimates place the total closer to 8,000—and many more have endured wage cuts and other financial shocks.

“We had to make some adjustments, there’s no question about that,” UFCW National Communications Director Jill Cashen said. It was a bad situation, she said, and local union leaders deserve credit for a “strong collective effort through a very challenging bankruptcy process.”

"John," 67, has been a librarian since 1973, much of that time spent in Chicago’s currently embattled library system. Working in a branch in a low-income neighborhood, John—who asked his real name not be used since he’s not authorized to speak to reporters—sees firsthand the important role the city’s libraries play and how library workers and residents have been affected by more than recent 100 layoffs and cuts in service hours.

As I wrote previously, the libraries have become one of several high-profile battlegrounds between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and public-sector unions, including AFSCME Council 31, which represents library workers. Although past retirement age, John keeps working in part because he loves the job and the interaction with local residents. He especially enjoys working with youth—"they keep me feeling younger than my actual years," he says. But he’s frustrated that the city’s administration doesn’t seem to respect the importance of libraries today, or the needs and well-being of library workers and patrons. I recently talked with him about the issues:

How have the layoffs and cuts affected librarians who are still working?

Almost all the library staff at all levels feel somewhat demoralized. There’s seeming indifference, and a lack of appreciation of the important role libraries have in the city and their communities.

Election excitement today could lead to workers' anger tomorrow

MILWAUKEE—President Obama's appearance last Wednesday at the Master Lock plant here—during which he repeatedly highlighted the company's decision to bring back about 100 jobs from Mexico and China and called for the restoration of America's manufacturing sector—uncorked a lot of hope among local workers.

A crowd of about 1,000 Master Lock workers (the plant employs 412 members of UAW Local 469) and guests roared in approval as the president described the fundamental changes needed in the American economy. He thundered:

Milwaukee, we are not going back to an economy that's weakened by outsourcing and bad debt and phony financial profits. We need an economy that is built to last, that is built on American manufacturing, and American know-how, and American-made energy, and skills for American workers, and the renewal of American values of hard work and fair play and shared responsibility.

But if Obama does win a second term, it will be fascinating to see how working-class Americans respond when the president's soaring rhetoric, which is rekindling dreams of a manufacturing renaissance, collide with the cold reality of Obama's timid progam.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The AFL-CIO continues to mull over endorsing President Obama for re-election. But a recent deal that congressional Democrats made to increase pension contributions by federal employees might cause the labor federation to think again about officially falling into line behind the president.

Seeking to find a way to pay for an extension of unemployment pay benefits and a continuation of the payroll tax cut holiday, House Republicans proposed extending a pay freeze on federal employees that President Obama imposed on workers last year. Democrats rejected extending the pay freeze or increasing pension contributions on federal employees.

But it appears that on Thursday, a deal was cut between Democrats and Republicans wherein newly hired and rehired federal employees would have to pay 3.1 percent of each of their paychecks to the federal retirement system—a 2.3 increase over the .8 percent pension contribution that federal employees currently pay. Unlike the federal pay freeze, which would be a temporary measure, the increased federal pension contribution for newly hired and rehired federal employees would be a permanent increase.  

Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) said the president's 2013 budget proposal to force current federal employees to pay 1.2 percent more toward retirement over a period of three years made it “challenging” to resist pension changes. “He made it more challenging for us to be able to keep the federal contribution from workers out of the package...,” Cardin told the Washington Post.

BERKELEY, CALIF.—More than 200 workers fired after a Department of Homeland Security's I-9 audit at Pacific Steel Casting plant in Berkeley, Calif., marched Friday to protest the “silent raids” they say are devastating to their families and livelihood. A statement from the Committee of Fired Workers From Pacific Steel Casting, which is organizing the march, read: “We will march with our heads held high, undocumented and unashamed.”

In These Times reported in December about the federal government's audit of Pacific Steel and subsequent firing of 200 workers, which was implemented in successive waves between October and January.

In a federal workplace audit, the government checks the validity of Social Security numbers and demands the firing of any worker who is undocumented and cannot provide a  valid number. Tens of thousands of audits, done through no-match letters, I-9 audits and the "E-Verify" program, have led to massive firings across the nation.

Many of the fired Pacific Steel workers had been at the company for years, including Adrian Pacheco, who worked at the plant for seven years. The father of five including a 4-month-old, told In These Times that since his release, he’s been working “here and there. It’s hard. We are accustomed to a work routine and then it’s snatched away. It’s sad ... we were working not robbing.”