TCWC in the News

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to an Ithaca Journal story about a Workers Center project underway. Long ago we started working on a manual for restaurant owners on Department of Labor regulations. We hit some bumps in the road and the booklet remains unprinted to this day. Our intern Jessica Yoon [...]

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Our Friends here at 115 The Commons

The Worker’s Center is located above Autumn Leaves Used Bookstore on The Commons in downtown Ithaca. Books inhabit the main floor, Angry Mom Records — also home to League of Women Rollers merch — is downstairs, The Owl Cafe and the Comics Inferno hold court on the mezzanine and a crew of nonprofits are nestled [...]

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Yo, Dude: Where’s the Tip?

Call me naive. Call me optimistic. Call me dumb. But a couple of weeks ago, I would have thought that every adult in the country knew that waitstaff need to be tipped. Ah, live and learn. There’s a gaggle of people from the building who meet for a local restaurant’s weekly special. Sometimes a friend [...]

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Unemployed or underemployed?

With the US unemployment rate at 9.9% in April (reportedly 8.8% in NY and 5.3% in Tompkins County), there are many workers facing long term financial and emotional insecurity. With the clock ticking on their unemployment benefits, many workers either scramble to take low-paying, unsatisfying jobs, work less than the hours necessary to support themselves [...]

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Ah, we’ve been too serious around here…

And so we’ll talk about more films, the AFL-CIO’s Working Class Heroes recommendations. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976, Barbara Kopple) Winner of the 1976 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, this film follows a UMWA strike against a Duke Power Company subsidiary. Kopple filmed on the picket lines, in the miners’ homes, the union hall and [...]

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Bullying in the Workplace

One of the most difficult worker complaints that I experience is bullying. The Workplace Bullying Institute defines bullying as “…The repeated mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse or,     threatening, humiliating or offensive behavior/actions (verbal and nonverbal forms) or,  [...]

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Ithaca Coffee Company and the Tompkins County Coffee Workers Union: Fair Trade, from Bean to the Cup: An Update

[Editors Note: On February 21, 2010, a majority, 8 of 11 at the time, nonmanagerial workers at the Ithaca Coffee Company signed a petition indicating interest in starting a union at their workplace. In late March, the union submitted this petition to the National Labor Relations Board to trigger an election. In mid-April, the organizing [...]

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Changes in the Air

You can tell by the recent lack of new posts that the Workers Center has been caught in a windstorm of activity lately. Not only have we spent the weekend at a work ‘retreat’ (the quotation marks denote my own opinion that the word ‘retreat’ hints at spa treatments and naps while actually a work [...]

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[VIDEO] Over 50 People Gather on Bank Alley in Ithaca for Rally on May 7th: Make Wall Street Pay/Close Corporate Tax Loopholes

On Friday, May 7, Ithacans gathered outside Bank of America on the Commons for the Make Wall Street Pay Up Rally, an event that featured community organizers as well as ordinary citizens deeply upset with the current financial crisis ailing the nation. by Peter Blanchard http://ithbusters.wordpress.com The rally was led by the Tompkins County Workers’ [...]

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Wall Street: Time to Pay Up!

Make Wall Street Pay! Close corporate tax loopholes! The Tompkins County Workers’ Center and the Midstate Labor Council, AFL-CIO are co-sponsoring a rally at Bank Alley (the corner of Seneca and Tioga Streets, Ithaca) this Friday, May 7, 3:30 pm. Please join us if you can. It seems that every other day, a front page [...]

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