People Before Profit blog

Telephone employees stand strong in Texas

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 05:01:00 +0000

DALLAS – Communications Workers of America members are waiting out big contract deadlines, but they aren’t sitting still. They are holding marches and rallies, and they are signing up supporters to switch telephone companies if the corporation big shots will not yield to the legitimate demands of their employees.

CWA 6215 in Dallas and CWA 6201 in Fort Worth held multiple pickets and rallies – at least five in one day on April 23 – to demand fair contracts, health care benefits, and an end to outsourcing telecommunications jobs. At the downtown SBC Communications offices in Dallas, a purple 1928 Dodge automobile with a loud siren added to the general enthusiasm.

Even more public actions have already been scheduled.

Participants are asked to wear red at these events to attract maximum attention. In addition to an increasing number of public events, the union also has a program asking people to pledge to take their business away from SBC if the workers cannot get decent treatment. Check www.fairnessatsbc.com for a form and more information.

The author can be reached at flittle7@yahoo.com.

Getting paid for overtime

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:50:00 +0000

After 30 years, I still remember my rage and frustration. I was cleaning up after a hot, hard eight-hour shift at Oregon Steel, when the foreman came into the locker room. “Put your work clothes back on and go back to work,” he told me. “We need another man on number two furnace.” I had no choice, if I wanted to keep my job.

Today, it is not only industrial workers. Increasingly, from the executive suites to the custodial crew, we are on call 24/7/365. The corporate machine comes first, our families a distant second. And many are not even getting paid for the extra time on the job!

On April 20, Bush’s Department of Labor issued a press release with the headlines: “Workers Win with Labor Department’s New Overtime Rules – Fair Pay Initiative Guarantees Overtime Rights for Millions of Workers.” Let’s see what who really won what, and when.

In 1938, workers really did win, when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This established the 40-hour week, with time-and-a-half for overtime.

The FSLA was a big victory, but it left professionals, executives and some other salaried workers “exempt” – not protected by the overtime provisions. This might not have been much of a problem in 1938. But today, there are tens of millions of workers who get a fixed monthly salary and are expected to work as many hours as necessary to get the job done without additional pay.

For example, a programmer at IBM told me that he regularly works 50 hours a week, and the other people in his office work even longer hours. They don’t get extra pay, but they hope to keep their jobs! Many – perhaps the majority – of computer professionals work under similar conditions.

Enter the Bush administration. Under new Department of Labor (DOL) rules, workers earning less than $23,660 per year will now get overtime pay, even if they are managers, professionals or other “exempt” workers. The DOL press release boasts, “This strengthens overtime protection for 6.7 million low-wage salaried workers, including 1.3 million salaried white-collar workers who were not entitled to overtime pay under the existing regulations.”

As usual with the Bush administration, while they give us crumbs with one hand, they are stealing big slices of the cake with the other. When the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) investigated these claims, they found that “The total number of salaried, white-collar employees earning less than $22,100 a year and working more than 40 hours per week is only 737,000,” not the 1.3 million claimed by the DOL. And the EPI estimated that more than 8 million workers would lose overtime protection. This is not surprising – the DOL invited top employer groups to help write the new rules, which now make it easier to classify salaried workers as professionals, administrators, or executives in order to deny them overtime pay.

According to the AFL-CIO, over 1.5 million workers have sent protests to Bush, and the Senate voted to block the overtime changes, but Republican maneuvers allowed the DOL to issue the new regulations without congressional approval.

The April 20 announcement did contain a number of changes from the DOL’s original proposal, including raising the minimum for exemption from $22,100 to $23,660 and protecting some workers who earn between $65,000 and $100,000 per year.

Issuing the new rules practically on the eve of May Day is an added affront to workers. May Day, celebrated around the world as the International Workers’ Day, grew out of the nationwide strike for an eight-hour day, held in the United States on May 1, 1886. It took decades to win the FLSA in 1938, and employers have been undermining it every since. Already, U.S. workers put in more hours on the job each year than those in any other developed country.

One of the reasons we are in a job-loss recovery is that employers are increasing production by making their remaining employees work harder and longer. The new Bush administration regulations make it even easier for companies to do this.

On this May Day, a holiday commemorating those who fought and died for the eight-hour day, we should commit ourselves to stopping and rolling back all the damage being done by the Bush administration. And remember the words of folksinger Charlie King: “Our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job.”

The author can be reached at economics@cpusa.org.

Cintas workers seek safety and justice

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 04:46:00 +0000

News analysis

Just hearing Cintas workers tell their stories about sorting out wormy, moldy and flammable shop towels without proper ventilation is nauseating. Area clergy took these concerns about intolerable and dangerous health hazards straight to the source last month, presenting themselves at the Cintas factory in Branford, Conn., and requesting a fact-finding tour. As moral leaders, they said, we cannot sit back when members of our congregations report such horror stories.

After the plant manager called on police to evict the clergy into the rain, the religious delegation formed a prayer circle and refused to leave until speaking via telephone with the company’s national headquarters in Cincinnati. The delegation, part of a fact-finding tour by the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, eventually procured agreement for a meeting in Ohio to discuss workers’ rights issues.

When Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) met with her constituents who work in the Branford plant, she was shocked to hear of conditions that rival those of the sweatshop her mother labored in many decades ago. Soon, shop rags were being debated in the House of Representatives.

At issue is the attempt by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to exempt lease-and-laundered rags from hazardous waste status, rolling back regulations that protect workers and communities against toxic waste. Cintas, which prides itself on being George W. Bush’s largest contributor, is counting on government to look the other way, and even to change regulations in the company’s favor.

Workers explain that in the past, when Cintas has been found guilty of illegal practices, the company has simply paid the fines and then continued on with business as usual.

Residents of Branford, a shoreline community bordering the Long Island Sound, have expressed great concern about wastewater from the Cintas plant. In April 2001, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection sued Cintas for 250 violations of the Clean Water Act including excessive emissions of lead and perc (short for perchloroethylene, an organic solvent).

Also at issue is the right of workers to form a union when a majority have signed union cards, avoiding the NLRB election process which is weighted in favor of companies. In Branford, as elsewhere, workers who are subjected to captive audience meetings and anti-union propaganda, as well as firings, are learning what their rights are and how to fight for them.

The experiences of Cintas workers has helped to shape the debate in Congress that led to the introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 3619 and S 1925) by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The results of November’s election are critical for the low-wage workers, largely new immigrants from Latin America, at Cintas. Their courage in taking on this giant corporation shows that the right to organize and the right to a clean and healthy work environment can and must be fought for and won.

The author can be reached at joelle.fishman@pobox.com.

When it comes to jobs, shoot for the moon

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 03:39:00 +0000

The name is the Apollo Project. And no, it’s not about Bush’s trip to Mars. It’s about jobs and cleaner energy.

The name takes its inspiration from President John F. Kennedy’s Apollo space program, though. That’s because, according to the Apollo Alliance – a coalition of trade unions, environmental and business groups, urban and faith-based communities – Kennedy’s plan was “big, bold and fast,” which is what’s needed for the creation of U.S. jobs and renewable energy.

Apollo’s 10-point program for “goodjobs and energy independence” is like a breath of fresh, clean air in an age fraught with the destruction of millions of manufacturing jobs, wars for oil, and environmental degradation.

Seventeen international unions, representing 10 million workers, have endorsed the project. It calls on the government to invest $300 billion over 10 years in renewable energy development and the “greening” of factories, buildings, cars and transportation with higher energy efficiency. Through this massive public works initiative, the Alliance says over 3 million jobs will be created.

According to a new report by the University of California at Berkeley, investing in renewable energy sources creates more jobs than spending on coal, gas and petroleum exploration. It also helps to stem the alarming changes in our environment, including global warming.

Report co-author Daniel Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, said “three to 10 times the number of jobs” could be created by investing in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, instead of fossil fuels.

Writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Machinist Union president Tom Buffenbarger said, “For workers in states like Ohio [which has lost over 150,000 manufacturing jobs] the Alliance’s plan holds special promise.”

For example, he wrote, most workers who had been employed at GE’s Evendale plant have skills and training that could easily be adapted to producing high-performance wind turbines, fuel cells and other advanced energy technologies.”

With unemployment skyrocketing, jobs creation is a major presidential campaign issue that cuts across many lines – race, gender, blue, white and pink collars.

“People are working three jobs to make ends meet,” Larry Fauver, Youngstown AFL-CIO president, told the World. “Minimum wage jobs are what’s created. Nothing is being done to stop the job loss and create good-paying jobs here.”

Fauver told the story of a federal building built in downtown Youngstown with imported steel. Youngstown and the surrounding area were legendary for steelmaking until the devastating plant closings in the ’70s and ’80s and the present-day steel company bankruptcies. “A federal building! They slapped a tariff on, but that didn’t create any jobs,” Fauver said.

The Republican’s recent energy bill and Vice President Cheney’s intimate links to the energy industry more than suggest this administration is not interested in “clean” energy. The GOP’s energy bill gives more than two-thirds of its $23 billion in tax breaks to the coal, oil and gas industries. The Apollo Alliance calls for investment that will provide clean energy jobs for workers in the coal and oil industries.

Jobs and the environment are major presidential election issues. The Apollo Project brings the two together. Currently, Sen. John Kerry is campaigning on ending tax subsidies for corporations that send jobs to lower-wage countries. Fauver said Kerry was just in town campaigning for jobs and the all-important Ohio vote. Ohio is a “battleground” state, narrowly going to Bush in the 2000 election.

“The mood was upbeat. Kerry said things can’t turn around in one day. But with a change in the administration he can close tax subsidies for corporations that take jobs overseas,” he said.

Bush is campaigning on his tax cuts to the rich, falsely claiming they will create millions of jobs. What Bush’s tax cuts have done is balloon the deficit without creating the good-paying jobs that are needed.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the nation’s infrastructure, which includes energy grids and public schools, rates a D+ and will need over $1 trillion dollars in investment over the next 10 years to be brought up to an “adequate” level. The Apollo Project seems like a good start.

Terrie Albano is editor of the People’s Weekly World. She can be reached at talbano@pww.org.

China-bashing: an election-year mistake

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 03:06:00 +0000

George W. Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a U.S. economy that lost jobs. Over 2 million manufacturing jobs are gone since Bush took office. How to fight this wholesale destruction of manufacturing, and the pro-corporate, pro-finance capital policies that accelerate the process, are critical election year issues. Attacking China, Chinese unions and Chinese workers will not solve the problem. Indeed, it might play right into the hands of the ultra-right and the Bush administration.

There is little doubt that manufacturing job loss is a direct result of capitalist globalization and the trade policies that support it – what the AFL-CIO calls the race to the bottom. At the heart of these policies are trade agreements that promote the free flow of capital around the globe. In addition, global capitalist institutions like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank develop and push policies that advance this capital free-for-all.

While much of the debate on so-called free trade is couched in terms of jobs, import quotas and tariffs, in the end the core issues are investments and profits. Jobs are lost in the U.S. because American capitalists and bankers decide to invest money in cheaper labor markets like Mexico, Haiti, India, or China.

In the last 50 years we’ve watched this process play out in many forms. Northern factories shut down and moved to the South. Then factories were moved to Mexico. Now they are moved all over the world. In all of this labor and working people have learned a lot.

When factories moved south it was to get away from unions and the higher standards of living that unions won. Labor and the working class realized that breaking down the barriers of racism and regionalism and organizing Southern workers was the key to protecting everybody’s jobs. Today we all understand that unity and solidarity, civil rights, women’s rights and full equality are cornerstones of progress for labor in the U.S.

When giant U.S. corporations first began to invest in Mexico and shut down plants at home, many reacted by attacking Mexican workers – they were “stealing our jobs.” Immigrant-bashing also found support in labor. But we quickly learned that when U.S. corporations shut down factories here to invest in Mexico, conditions for Mexican workers got worse. And desperate Mexican workers came north looking for any work to support their families. Now we all realize that building ties with Mexican workers and uniting with immigrants and bringing them into the unions is the best way to fight.

Conversely, labor also sees how ultra-right, mostly Republican, politicians use immigrant-bashing and Mexico-bashing. They use it to divide people and as a wedge to attack social programs. They use it to divert us from seeing the real culprits, corporate greed and profiteering.

China-bashing is a continuation of these same old divide-and-conquer tactics. Like Mexico- and immigrant-bashing, China-bashing is fertile ground for racism and division. Throw in more than a pinch of anti-communism, and you have a heady ultra-right brew.

China-bashing won’t stop U.S. investment in China. Filing trade complaints against China will not stop U.S. investment there. The real problem is that forcing U.S. capital to re-invest in America is a much tougher fight. Capitalists can make a higher return elsewhere. So it means controls on capital. It means accepting that capital is not “free” to move around at will. It means enforcing social and financial responsibility on capital, which means cutting into their bloated profits.

In an election year, joining in with the ultra-right in China-bashing and blaming foreign workers, or even foreign governments, for job loss is a losing tactic. It’s the kind of simplistic diversion that lets corporate America and the Bush administration off the hook.

In a global economy, that fight can’t effectively begin with the world’s working class divided. It’s the same lesson, on a global scale, that we learned in the South and with Mexico.

A major obstacle is U.S. labor’s general attitude towards the Chinese unions. For most, the line is “they’re not real unions, they are not independent of the government.” As a result, unlike many European and Asian labor organizations, American unions refuse to have any contact with Chinese unions.

How can talking hurt? Chinese unions are undergoing profound changes in light of foreign investment and a market economy. According to a recent study by a University of Michigan professor, labor disputes and legal challenges by China’s unions against corporations have exploded in the last few years. Wouldn’t it be important to discuss mutual problems with Chinese unions – for example, trying to deal with Wal-Mart? Shouldn’t UAW members and Chinese union members who both work for General Motors compare notes and raise common concerns?

American unions don’t have to agree with the Chinese unions’ relationship to their government in order to talk and begin to build some common, self-interested ties – just as Chinese unions don’t have to agree with the AFL-CIO’s work with the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy on influencing foreign trade unions.

The main thing is what we’ve learned from all our past experiences in the struggles against runaway jobs. Unity and solidarity with the workers involved is the critical issue. Let’s talk.

Scott Marshall (scott@rednet.org) is a vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and chair of its Labor Commission.

L.A. hotel workers overworked & underpaid

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 03:30:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES – With a contract that expired April 15, about 4,000 Los Angeles-area hotel workers are gearing up for a struggle focusing on health care, wages and working conditions.

“We are not looking for a fight,” Maria Elena Durazo, president of the 15,000-member Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE), told the Los Angeles Business Journal. “But we are going to be ready if employers want one.”

In October, the local set up a permanent strike fund for the first time in its history. Durazo knows about a fight. Last year she served as national president of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which mobilized thousands of immigrants and their allies to fight for workplace rights and a path to citizenship for the nation’s millions of immigrant workers.

Durazo and other labor leaders shared their strategy for the contract negotiations with community members during a recent Santa Monica meeting called to further the fight for a “living wage” for all workers.

HERE is calling for common expiration dates on hotel contracts across the country. At present, the union’s contracts with hotels in Chicago, Boston, and New York all expire in 2006. With expiration dates lined up, the stage would be set for united collective bargaining and a national contract, giving the workers serious clout. Durazo stated, “We are dealing with multinational corporations, so we must act like a national power to bargain.”

The Los Angeles unions are strongly aware of the difficulties of local unions going up against national chains that can absorb local losses. This is what happened in the recent Southern California grocery strike, where workers were forced to accept two-tier health care benefits after the Safeway-led chains held out – even in the face of a very effective months-long strike and consumer boycott.

Hotel workers from the 13,000-member local spoke at the community meeting about heavy workloads, including impossible-to-meet quotas.

Armando Garcia, a banquet runner at the Westin Bonaventure, said he has too much work to even take his breaks. “I sometimes get 1,000 guests per day. I am on my feet from the minute I clock in until the minute I leave.” Garcia says he works two jobs to support his family. “When I get home, I am always tired,” he adds.

HERE housekeepers and dishwashers make about $11 an hour, cooks about $13 an hour, and tipped employees about $7 an hour, Durazo told the Journal. One of those housekeepers, Refugio Dado, who works at the Holiday Inn, was heartened to see the community support. “When you work in a hotel, sometimes you feel like people don’t see you. But we are real and we work very hard at our jobs. I don’t think we are asking for a lot – only what is just,” Dado explained.

Community and religious organizations planning to contract for hotel space for upcoming events can consult a 13-point bulletin issued by the union for ways to support the workers’ cause. Creative suggestions include “invite the hotel workers who are working that night at the hotel to come on to the stage to be acknowledged by the guests at your event,” have your keynote speaker explain the contract fight, or “if the contract has expired by the time you hold your event, ask your participants to hold a picket line before or at the end of the event.” Suggestion No. 13, as might be expected, reads, “If there is a picket line of workers at the hotel, we ask that you not cross it.”

Seventeen L.A.-area hotels are involved in the current negotiations. The Travel Industry Association predicts hotel industry profits growing by 15 percent to $15.8 billion in 2004.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.

New York farmworkers seek protections

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 02:57:00 +0000

BUFFALO – Estimates put the number of migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States at approximately 3 million. Hand harvesting about 85 percent of fruits and vegetables, migrant farm laborers put food on the table for America’s families.

In New York State there are approximately 80,000 farmworkers. About 47,000 of them are migratory – harvesting fruit in Western New York and along the Great Lakes, planting and harvesting vegetables in Central New York, trimming grapes in the Finger Lakes, working in nurseries on Long Island. Farmworkers live and work in almost every one of New York’s 62 counties.

Despite their vital role, these workers are denied many of the same labor protections other workers receive – a day of rest per week, overtime pay, disability insurance, collective bargaining rights. Farmworkers are specifically excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

They are provided substandard housing and medical care, if any at all. They are often victim to discrimination and violence in the communities in which they live and work.

The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) found that three-quarters of U.S. farmworkers earn less than $10,000 per year, with three out of five farmworker families living below the poverty level.

Farmworkers are often subjected to pesticides, dangerous farm equipment, and lack of drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that pesticides alone poison 300,000 farmworkers every year.

To put an end to these unfair conditions, New York’s farmworkers are organizing to pass the Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act (S 3351) in the state Legislature. The law would establish such rights as collective bargaining, overtime pay, days off and disability insurance, and would close some of the loopholes that allow employers to circumvent safety regulations.

Building momentum for S 3351’s passage, Justice for Farm Workers, the Rural and Migrant Ministry, and farmworkers from across the state are organizing a statewide pilgrimage. On May 1, at the home of Harriet Tubman in Auburn, farmworkers and their allies will begin a 10-day walk to the capitol in Albany. There they will hold a “Harvest of Hope” 24-hour vigil as they wait to see what the Legislature does.

Arturo Rodriguez, leader of the United Farm Workers of America, and Lucas Benitez, leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, will join the march and Albany vigil. Baldemar Valasquez, of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, will speak at the opening rally and dinner in Rochester on April 30.

Organizers are urging that letters be sent to New York legislators demanding passage of S 3351. To participate in the pilgrimage, contact Jim Schmidt at (585) 325-3053 (jschmidt@wnylc.com) or Bill Abom at (585) 637-8360 (rmmwestny@yahoo.com). Visit www.ruralmigrantministry.org for more information, including a list of towns the pilgrimage will pass through.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Hire the best, say Ohio trade unionists

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 04:58:00 +0000

CLEVELAND – Hundreds of members of Ohio’s building trades unions will be telling the Ohio School Facilities Commission in Columbus April 22 to “Hire the Best!” by not taking the lowest and worst contract bids.

At issue is which companies the school commission will hire to do $23 billion worth of school construction. Ohio’s public school buildings, rated the fourth worst in the nation, are due to be rebuilt over the next 10 years, financed by a state school levy passed four years ago.

The building trades, along with the rest of Ohio’s trade unions, worked hard for passage of the levy. The unions met with school boards all over the state and received promises that construction contracts would include standards requiring reputable contractors to do the work.

Imagine the shock among Cleveland trades workers when one of the first contracts went to an out-of-state company with an extremely disreputable work history. The contractor, Dore & Associates, was barred from doing work in Minnesota and fined by the EPA for various violations of the law, including hiring workers with fraudulent asbestos-training certificates.

John Hays High School, an older building filled with asbestos, is being partially demolished. Asbestos is a hazardous material that must be removed under strict federal guidelines by certified personnel.

When Dore & Associates, a Michigan-based company, showed up at the Cleveland high school and started working, hundreds of Laborers Local 310 members picketed with signs saying, “Barred from Minnesota, Fine for Cleveland children!” and “Need work, apply in Michigan!”

“While we have Clevelanders with proper training in the unemployment line,” Laborers Local 310 Business Manager James Deane said, “a company that was fined by EPA and restricted from doing work in another state for violations is doing the work in our city.”

Hiring reputable contractors with good work histories gives an edge to union contractors. But school boards that are honest are pressured by disreputable nonunion contractors who come in with low-ball bids and then threaten to sue if the contract goes to a higher bidder.

Penetration by disreputable nonunion contractors would be far less of a problem in Ohio if the state Legislature, dominated by ultra-conservative, right-wing Republicans, had not removed Ohio’s Prevailing Wage Requirement from school construction. School boards and skilled union workers are now reaping the bitter fruit of that move.

The Federal Prevailing Wage Law was passed in 1931 with the purpose, in part, of making it easier to put qualified workers on New Deal construction projects. The Ohio law is based on the federal law.

Several Ohio public officials, including Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, are scheduled to speak at the April 22 rally in Columbus. If the unions and supporting public officials are unable to turn around the present poor performance of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, the real losers will be millions of taxpayers – who rightfully expect the best possible school construction for their tax dollars – and the children who attend the schools.

The author can be reached at wallyk@ncweb.com.

Home health care workers seek justice

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 04:36:00 +0000

NEW YORK – Though they care for the sick, injured and elderly, thousands of home health aides here don’t have any health insurance themselves. They are among the almost 2 million New Yorkers who are uninsured. If they get sick, they have few choices: Ignore it, go to the emergency room, or fork out their own hard-earned money.

That last choice is a rough one for people who earn between $5.50 and $7 an hour (most closer to the lower figure), and who receive no sick pay.

A small example of just how miserly the industry is: one agency, Partners in Care, gave annual wage increases of a whopping 8 cents an hour over a 10-year period.

It is not uncommon to find salary caps at $7.50 an hour – which takes years on the job to reach. A few agencies do provide some health benefits, but there are minimum monthly hour requirements, and workers are rarely given enough cases to reach the minimum.

How can such a situation exist? Not surprisingly, it relates to the fundamental problem of health care in the U.S. It’s a money-making, profit-driven industry.

The way the home health aide system works is that Medicare funds are distributed to hospitals, nursing homes and companies like VNS Homecare. These companies, in turn, contract with local agencies. It is to their advantage to use as little of that money as possible on wages and benefits – because whatever is left they keep as profit.

Who are these home health workers? The vast majority are women, immigrants for the most part, from every corner of the globe, especially Latin America and the Caribbean, and with growing numbers of Asians and Eastern Europeans.

They leave their own families every day to care for others in their homes, a practice which, according to union officials, has been shown to be both better for the patient as well as less expensive than hospital or nursing home care.

Home health aides do everything from taking vital signs, giving medication, performing finger sticks, testing blood pressure, and bathing their “clients,” to cooking and cleaning for them – our parents and grandparents, neighbors, the city’s ill and elderly.

What can be done?

“We want to put pressure on the agencies to pay their fair share. We want to educate the public, and force some changes, including that there must be regulations and standards,” said 1199 SEIU Home Care Division Vice President Keith Joseph. “We are demanding a $10 an hour minimum by 2006, and we are demanding medical benefits. We want seven paid holidays, at time-and-a-half.”

In addition, the union is demanding bereavement days, sick time, and vacation time. And they want the agencies to pay into the jointly administered education fund so that members who want to go to school, improve their skills, or learn English, for example, can do so.

“The campaign is to bring every home health aide under one umbrella, and eliminate the employers’ ability to pit the workers against one another,” said Joseph. “We won’t accept the conditions these workers are working under any longer.”

The author can be reached at emora@cpusa.org.click here for Spanish text

As useful as teats on a boar

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 04:33:00 +0000

Opinion

Recently The New York Times reported a dispute at a meeting in France of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The disagreement between France and the U.S. “centers on whether the organization will endorse giving workers a role in corporate management, as they have by law in some European countries but do not have in the United States.”

Here in the U.S. there are several examples of what the OECD calls “corporate governance.” The ones that come to mind are the Auto Workers union, which negotiated a union-designated board member at some companies, and my own Steelworkers union.

Personally, I think this is promoting and perpetuating an illusion for workers that there is something democratic about the corporate structure or that it can be addressed at the board level through benevolence or an uprising of stockholders.

The USWA negotiated concession contracts with several steel companies in the late 1980s and got a member on several corporate executive boards. Our own past International Union President Lynn Williams was on the board of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel. At Bethlehem Steel, where I worked, there was also a union-designated board member. Along with the stock we got for our concessions, this was supposed to be the example of workers’ involvement with owning and running the company. At the OECD they would call that corporate governance.

Well, when times got tough at Wheeling-Pitt the first person who got fired was Williams. Before Bethlehem went bankrupt and was bought by International Steel Group (ISG), we had accumulated two members on the board and thousands of dollars of phony stock through more concession bargaining. We were supposed to get the full value of the stock upon retirement. The union board members proved to be as useful as teats on a boar and after the bankruptcy our stock was almost worthless.

I saw a bulletin board where workers posted their stock checks that the bankruptcy court sent them. One check was for $0.01. That’s right, a check for a penny.

Then there’s Weirton Steel. It has an independent union that negotiated a landmark Employee Stock Option Plan in the early 1980s. The ESOP was held up to the rest of us as the example of the future – employees owning the plant. In reality, the workers floated loans through concessions to the same bosses that ran the company before, all of which was negotiated by the banks. Eventually the whole scheme fell apart, and just before it was sold to ISG the workers’ stake in the plant had dwindled to around 11 percent.

What is truly amazing is that the argument in France over the language is happening at all. It is some of the most milquetoast-like language that one has ever seen. The existing principles state: “Performance-enhancing mechanisms for employee participation should be permitted.” The compromise proposal is to change “permitted” to “encouraged.” Yet to have any statement is impermissible to the Bush administration and that is why they are opposing it.

It was also reported that the approach that some labor unions in Europe were taking was trying to discredit managers in hopes of gaining an advantage. John G. Evans, the general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, told a conference on corporate governance at the French-American Foundation, “You almost need a new slogan, Capitalists and workers unite in the struggle against managers.”

The problem is that the corporate managers are doing the bidding of the capitalists. Workers’ interests aren’t the same as the capitalists’ and the only real control workers will have in running any steel or auto company will be when they are owned by the people and run for the benefit of the people. Profits will be used to build new schools and roads and hospitals. The name for that is not corporate governance; it’s socialism.

Paul Kaczocha is a steelworker in Indiana. He can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Nightmare on April 15

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:40:00 +0000

Many years ago I heard the theory expressed that taxation was a new form of exploitation of the working class that had reached confiscatory levels. I never imagined that one day this would be the horrific reality facing my own daughter.

Our family has a joke that my middle daughter, Karen, is the black sheep of the family because she was so financially successful. Now her American dream had been transformed into a nightmare.

Bright, beautiful and generous, in 1985 she became an electronics engineer and soared in the world of high tech. Working as an account manager in Silicon Valley, she earned in the range of $75,000 to $100,000. In 1998, she accepted an offer at a startup company with a lower salary, but with stock options as part of the compensation. Dreaming of rescuing all her impoverished relatives and funding various justice campaigns, in 2000 she exercised her stock options. On paper, she was a millionaire. Almost immediately, the stock began to slide, and before she could sell, it was almost worthless.

Enter the IRS, and something called the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The AMT was designed to make rich people pay taxes, no matter how many loopholes they use. But for Karen, this means she owes taxes on all the paper profits she made with her tax options. Her wealth evaporated before she could touch a dime of it, but the taxes stayed very solid. In April 2001, she found that she owed over a million dollars in taxes on stock that was only worth a few thousand. The IRS turned down an offer to compromise, saying they would take everything she owns, and for the next four years she and her husband will pay all their earnings to the IRS except for a $1,200 per month living allowance for a family of three.

She is not alone in this nightmare. Thousands of other high-tech workers are in similar dire straights. Some have complained of indentured servitude.

In addition to high-tech workers and some others who are being taxed way more than their income, by 2010, 33 million families, 96 percent of them middle class, will be paying higher tax rates due to the AMT. That’s because the income level that triggers that AMT hasn’t been adjusted for inflation since the law was passed in 1970.

You might think that this is all some ghastly mistake. But there is method in this madness, as summed up in the title to the new book by New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston: “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich and Cheat Everyone Else.”

“Most Americans depend on wages for their incomes,” Johnston writes, “wages that are tracked closely by the government and leave little opportunity to escape taxes. The super rich are different. They largely control what the government knows about their income – and there lies the real issue about our tax system. The rich have myriad ways to avoid recognizing income for tax purposes, most of them perfectly legal.” (See related story, page 15.)

It is not only professionals like Karen who are singled out by the IRS. Under pressure by the Republican congress in the 1990s, the IRS stepped up harassment of low-income workers claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Taxation has not been effectively addressed by many on the left except to beat the drums for passage of measures to support basic services that are needed by everybody. Unfortunately, the resentment felt by working people has mainly fueled reactionary, right-wing programs. They have used anti-tax sentiment to justify draconian cuts in education, health care and other basic services, while justifying tax cuts that primarily benefit the very rich.

Many economists and politicians think the AMT is sure to be changed in the near future. We should all support reforms that eliminate its burden on middle-income workers and professionals, and end the persecution visited on families like Karen’s. But this shouldn’t be an excuse for eliminating the AMT on the really wealthy. On the contrary. The only way to really ease the burden of taxes on working Americans is to restore a real progressive system that taxes the rich and the big corporations.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Weirton steelworkers accept new contract

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 03:24:00 +0000

Union workers at the bankrupt Weirton Steel Corporation in Weirton, W.Va., voted 2,104-231 in favor of accepting a labor contract offered by the mill’s prospective buyer, ISG, according to a report from Associated Press.

The five-year agreement offers no relief for the 10,000 retirees whose health care and pension benefits have been stripped by the bankruptcy. But the workers accepted the pact to ensure the survival of steelmaking in the region, said Independent Steelworkers Union President Mark Glyptis.

If the acquisition of Weirton Steel goes through, ISG will become the nation’s largest steel producer, surpassing U.S. Steel. Under the new contract, the number of job categories would shrink from 32 to five, and compensation would be closely tied to increased productivity. The current hourly wage is about $19. The contract also provides vacation, sick leave, health coverage and a 401(k) plan, but no defined payment pension plan.

The agreement is modeled after contracts that ISG has signed with the United Steelworkers of America at its other mills.

One rank-and-file activist told the World it is a good sign for steelworkers everywhere that the workers at Weirton have approved their contract with ISG pending the sale. The consolidation of steel companies has resulted in bringing the Independent Steelworkers Union closer to the USWA, which represents almost all the other union steel plants, he said.

As ISG, U.S. Steel and Nucor attempt to be the Big Three in steel, the union gains more strength, said the activist, who also works at an ISG facility. “It will be a matter of time before that small union either merges with the USWA or works so close it will be just like a merger. The workers at Weirton have been getting squeezed one way or another for a long time and this move has the potential of giving them more strength in the next negotiations,” he concluded.

SBC workers in contract fight

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:54:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. – Once again, health care is the burning issue as bargaining continues between SBC, the telecommunications giant, and the Communications Workers of America. Contracts affecting over 100,000 workers in 13 states expired between April 1 and April 3.

SBC workers from CWA Local 9415 and several sister locals staged a spirited rally April 1 in front of SBC’s Oakland office. Many wore colorful T-shirts depicting a cobra with the legend, “Will strike if provoked,” and carried signs proclaiming, “Cutting health care is a sick idea!”

SBC “made $8.5 billion in profits last year and they want us to pay hundreds of millions in health care, “CWA Local 9415 Steward Randy Christensen told the crowd of over 200. “Everything we fought for in earlier years, they are trying to take away,” said the local’s Executive Vice President Sally Venable. Steward Bradley Dean warned, “If we allow them to make us pay more for health care, our kids will end up without any benefits.”

Oakland City Councilmember Jane Brunner and California State Assemblymember Loni Hancock expressed their solidarity. Every worker should have the same “Cadillac health care” that executives enjoy, said Brunner. Hancock told the workers, “You are fighting for workers in your industry all over the world, for health care, job security, a living wage, decent pensions.”

Before the rally, the workers marched through downtown Oakland to City Hall, their chants mingling with a rousing chorus of car, truck and bus horns.

Under SBC’s proposal, family coverage would cost workers at least $2,400 in yearly premiums, plus higher co-pays and deductibles. CWA insists that with the company garnering $8.5 billion in profits last year, and CEO Ed Whitacre receiving compensation of $19.2 million in 2003, SBC must share with the workers the wealth they produce. In a memo on the bargaining, the union pointed out that each SBC employee “generated an average of $250,000 in revenue and $42,000 in profits for the company over the past year.”

Instead, says CWA, the company is investing large sums to eliminate jobs by exporting them to nonunion worksites in other countries, with some 7,000 jobs already shifted out of the U.S.

SBC “won’t even talk about wages, job security, pensions or other issues until the union gives in to the company’s demands on health care,” Local 9415 organizer Yonah Diamond told the World. At press time no strike vote had been taken, and Diamond said a 30-day notice would be given before any strike.

Union demands also include an end to contracting out and replacement of permanent workers with temps, better pensions and health benefits for retirees, better working conditions to eliminate mandatory overtime and speedup, and improved voluntary transfer rights.

The author can be reached at mbechtel@pww.org.

Texans celebrate memory of Cesar Chavez

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:52:00 +0000

A chorus of “Si, se puede!” (Yes, it can be done!), “Abajo con la migra” (Down with the INS!), “Abajo con Bush” (Down with Bush!), and “Cesar Chavez, presente!” rang across the streets of San Juan, Texas, deep in the Rio Grand Valley on March 27, as over 500 community activists marched in an emotional celebration of the life and work of Cesar Chavez, the great labor and civil rights leader. The march proceeded to the historic San Juan United Farm Workers hall, which has been the epicenter of the Texas farm worker and Chicano struggle for many years, including while Chavez was alive.

“The struggle continues,” proclaimed Hortencia Armendariz, “and we must continue the work of our great leader.” Armendariz, a key organizer for the event, is active in the community group La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE).

The festive event included games for the children, music by a local mariachi and a free meal for all who attended.

The enthusiasm was typical of the many celebrations throughout Texas.

San Antonio had a large march on March 27. The march was preceded by a March 23 dinner/dance at La Villita Assembly hall honoring Chavez and “La Causa,” at which tribute was paid to the contributions of Judge Albert Peña, Willie Velasquez, Emma Tenayuca, and Manuela Soliz Sager.

Union activists from nearby autoworkers’ locals joined in the annual parade in Fort Worth on the 27th. The parade ended with a fiesta on city property in the downtown area. Although many activists helped, the central organizer this year was the League of United Latin American Citizens. County workers in Fort Worth get a paid holiday for the birthday.

In Dallas on March 31, the Oak Cliff Coalition for the Arts presented a special tribute in the Cesar Chavez Plaza, which occupies a spot on the grounds of the city’s Farmer’s Market. Speakers included State Rep. Roberto Alonzo (D-Dallas) and the Mexican Consul.

Emcee Diana Flores, a trustee of the Dallas Community College District, asked for a show of hands from union members present. Many hands shot up, followed by a round of applause. Although another speaker had mentioned the trouble in California between Chavez’s farm worker union and a local of the Teamsters in the 1970s, Flores pointed out that other unions consistently supported Chavez’ UFW. She was especially proud of Dallas native Pancho Medrano, who represented the United Auto Workers and built solidarity with the UFW throughout the period of Cesar Chavez’ greatest accomplishments.

Uniform Justice reaches out to public

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:48:00 +0000

CHICAGO – The giant Cintas Corp., which provides and launders industrial uniforms for some of the largest enterprises in the United States, is becoming to industrial laundries and uniform services what Wal-Mart is to retail trade.

Cintas has been expanding like a cancerous tumor by squeezing every last drop of profit out of its mostly nonunion employees, and then buying up competitors, decertifying unions where these previously existed. Cintas workers complain of brutal, sweatshop working conditions, and the labor movement sees the company as dragging down wages, benefits and working conditions in the entire industry. Cintas and its subcontractors are credibly accused of discriminating against women and minority workers, and of exploiting the vulnerability of immigrant workers.

Last year Cintas racked up total business of more than $2.3 billion, with net profits of $234 million. Yet many of Cintas’ 27,000 employees are paid less that $8 an hour without adequate health insurance. In Chicago, many Cintas employees are paid as little as $6.15 an hour for dangerous, exhausting work.

For a year, UNITE, jointly with the Teamsters, has been conducting a many-faceted “Uniform Justice” campaign to organize the more than 300 Cintas operations nationwide. Initially, UNITE proposed that instead of going for an National Labor Relations Board election, Cintas agree to neutrality on a card check campaign, a much simpler and quicker operation. Cintas contemptuously brushed that offer aside, bringing in anti-labor consultants and throwing every union-busting mechanism into the fray.

UNITE knows that the organization of Cintas at a national level will require massive public support. It is therefore reaching out to other unions, and to churches, community groups and the general public, to ask them to help put pressure on Cintas to agree to good faith bargaining.

For example, UNITE and its allies are reaching out to the Chicago area commuters for solidarity with the Cintas workers – a campaign they call “No Fares for Sweatshop Wear.” Metra is the Chicago area’s commuter railway, transporting tens of thousands of suburbanites to their jobs and back every day. Metra is also one of Cintas’ largest customers for the provision of industrial uniforms.

At a Jan. 14 Metra board meeting, UNITE and its allies, including Chicago Jobs with Justice, plus Cintas employees, showed up in force to ask the board to cancel its contract with Cintas, which is up for renewal this spring. A partial victory was won: Though the contract was not dropped, the Metra board did agree to open up bidding, i.e., not to automatically renew.

Now Metra commuters are being asked to sign petitions in support of the unionization drive. The petition reads, “I urge Metra to sever its relationship with Cintas. Ticket fares and taxpayer dollars should not support companies that violate federal health and safety law, discriminate against women and minority employees, subcontract with sweatshop labor, and deny employees their rights under federal labor law.”

To help build solidarity for the UNITE organizing campaign visit UNITE’s web site: www.uniteunion.org/cintas.

The author can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Protests shake up Chicago Fire Dept.

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:37:00 +0000

CHICAGO – The city’s first African American fire commissioner in the 150-year history of the Chicago Fire Department (CFD) was appointed April 1 after weeks of mounting protest against a series of racist slurs on the CFD’s radio frequency.

“We’re entering a new era,” said Cortez Trotter, who assumes office May 1 and who pledged to increase efforts to diversify the work force. Presently, 68 percent of firefighters are white in a city that is 63 percent African American and Latino.

Mayor Richard Daley and outgoing CFD Commissioner James Joyce were facing increasing public criticism for allowing the situation to fester. In addition, over 200 people, including firefighters, clergy and elected officials rallied March 23 at the Chicago Fire Fighters Union offices to denounce union President James McNally, who blamed African American firefighters for the use of the racist slurs.

“McNally is unable to represent all firefighters and should resign,” said Father Michael Pfleger from St. Sabina’s Church.

McNally has a history of making such comments. Pfleger urged white firefighters to step forward and denounce the racism. Many believe a majority of white firefighters are also embarrassed by the remarks.

The multiracial crowd carried signs that read “We condemn all forms of racism,” “We are united in love not hate,” “Extinguish the racial slurs,” and “McNally, stop blaming the victims.”

“We are working on a petition asking the 5,000 union members for a vote of ‘no confidence,’” Battalion Chief Nicholas Russell, representing the African American Fire Fighters Association, told the World. Russell has been the object of death threats in the past few weeks. He concluded the best way to unite the firefighters is for McNally to resign.

Disunity in the union, an early endorser of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, only hurts the effort to defeat Bush. Registered nurse Elissa Curry told the World “when Bush opposes affirmative action he is encouraging those who feel that they can openly express their racist views.” She said Bush must be defeated in November.

Alderman Rey Colon of the city’s 35th Ward connected the war in Iraq and racism when he said, “We are looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But, the WMDs (racism) are right here at home. This problem has to be resolved.”

Affordable Power to the People (APP), a group fighting gas shutoffs, was present. Maria Majic vowed to fight the transfer of one firefighter caught using racial slurs to her Bridgeport neighborhood after he completes a 30-day suspension. “This is disrespectful to the people in our neighborhood. We won’t tolerate it,” she said.

APP is part of a coalition, Bridgeport Against Racism, that wrote a letter to Daley demanding the dismissal of Joyce and asking that the suspended firefighter not be reassigned to a Bridgeport fire station. Bridgeport is a predominantly white community with a history of racist assaults and the home of the Daley machine. The group held a press conference at the site where Lenard Clark, a 12-year-old African American, was savagely beaten in 1997.

The authors can be reached at pww@pww.org.

Twin Cities bus drivers fight to save health care

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:30:00 +0000

A flurry of strike support activities marked the fifth week of the strike of 2,200 Minneapolis and St. Paul bus drivers, mechanics, and clerical workers. The members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 walked off the job March 4 after refusing to accept a contract offered by the Twin Cities’ Metro Transit that would phase out health care coverage for retirees and increase premiums for active workers to nearly $5,000 per year for family coverage.

The transit workers and their supporters are directing their fire not only at the Metropolitan Council, which operates Metro Transit, but also at Minnesota’s Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. State funds for transit in the state were cut in the last three state budgets in response to state budget deficits. As a result, Metro Transit has cut service and raised fares for the 75,000 riders who ride the cities’ buses. However, noted Local 1005 President Ron Lloyd, Metro Transit did find money for management raises this year.

Local unions in Minnesota have contributed more than $84,000 to a solidarity fund for striking workers as of April 1, according to Jerry Ewald, financial secretary-treasurer of Local 1005.

Disabled riders, students, and health care workers have joined unionists in actions calling for a quick settlement of the strike. The Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council and other labor groups set April 7 as a one-day phone blitz. They pledged to generate calls to Gov. Pawlenty and tell him to “come to the table and settle this strike.” The governor should not “balance the state budget on the backs of transit workers” and should realize health care is a right and “transit is important to our communities,” their statement said. The phone number for Pawlenty’s office is (800) 657-3717.

The author can be reached at rwood@pww.org.

Teachers and their union fight for public education

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 05:57:00 +0000

CHICAGO – Children’s paintings hang on the walls in the lobby of the Chicago Teachers Union office. It’s comforting for parents to see schoolkids’ artwork framed and on display.

Teachers unions – both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) – are among the largest and most well-organized advocates for keeping the “public” in public education.

The CTU – Local 1 of the AFT – fights for public schools, lower class sizes, more funding, dignity and respect for teachers and building coalitions with parents and community groups. At the helm of this 35,000-plus-member union is Deborah Lynch. Lynch, a special education teacher for 12 years, grew up in Chicago’s southwest side. She was decisively elected to office on a multiracial, reform slate three years ago.

Chicago public schools, like many across the nation, face considerable challenges. There’s the hostile Bush administration, which put the dastardly No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law as their centerpiece for education. There are overcrowded classes, inadequate and inequitable funding, cutbacks, and pressure from vouchers and other privatization scams.

Despite the odds, schoolteachers and paraprofessionals forge ahead every day, working hard to provide a quality education for all children. Over 430,000 children attend public schools here: 51 percent African American, 36 percent Latino, 9 percent white, 3 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, less than 1 percent Native American Indian. Just over 85 percent of the students come from low-income families. Illinois ranks second to last in providing equal funding to poor students and “majority minority” schools.

We interviewed Lynch at her office on Feb. 26.

People’s Weekly World: Tell us about No Child Left Behind.

Deborah Lynch: Last summer something like 350 schools were put on the “needs improvement” list of No Child Left Behind. Seventy-five percent of those schools had made gains on their test scores that year, yet they were labeled failures. Our members see this as another unfunded mandate, one more attack on urban public education, on teachers and their unions for test scores over which they have very little control. The most important thing we can do to reverse NCLB is defeat Bush in November.

Bush has co-opted this bill. Initially it was bipartisan with the support of Sen. [Edward] Kennedy, but it never was fully funded. They are requiring 100 percent accountability from our membership, but they are only funding two-thirds of it. There are some important provisions: having a qualified, certified teacher in every classroom, parental notifications – but NCLB is appearing to be more of an effort to label public education as a failure and give rise to the privatization that is really behind it.

We have to be honest and admit it takes more money to educate a child in poverty. Poverty is not an excuse for low student achievement, but it is a predictor if we are going to continue to put kids in overcrowded schools, large class sizes, labeling and punishing schools. It makes those with other options leave and go to other school systems.

[Chicago Public School (CPS) chief Arne] Duncan closed three schools two years ago. We fought those school closures and came to an agreement that no Chicago schools would be closed for academic reasons until they had a chance to go through our partnership project. It was the first time the union stood up on something like that.

In the end, Mr. Duncan did close the schools.

NCLB also feeds the testing frenzy. I taught eighth grade and an entire fourth quarter was taken up with test preparation. It narrows the curriculum – very little social studies and science going on in the schools, and forget the arts.

PWW: What about the little known piece of NCLB that requires schools to turn over 18-year-olds’ names to the federal government for military recruitment purposes?

Lynch: The House of Delegates passed a resolution calling on the school district to do its job. School districts have to inform students and parents of their right to opt out of giving names to the federal government. We called on CPS to honor its legal obligation.

In December of 2002, the union passed a resolution urging the president to exhaust all diplomatic and international efforts with Iraq and consider war only as a last resort.

PWW: Recently U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige called the NEA a “terrorist organization.” There is widespread concern about the government’s crackdown on dissent. How are your members responding to this atmosphere?

Lynch: Lots of concern about the infringement on civil rights. The Paige attack was reprehensible. It shows how out of control the Bush administration is – that a cabinet member would stoop that low because an organization has a difference of opinion on a [law].

PWW: How is the unity process going between the Illinois Education Association and Illinois Federation of Teachers?

Lynch: Certainly the Bush administration and NCLB have given us a lot more common ground then we had before. NEA has filed a lawsuit against [NCLB]. AFT has attacked elements of the law, but not yet signed on to the suit. On the national level there is interest to merge. Some states have merged already – Florida, Minnesota, Montana. This hasn’t happened in Illinois. There has been no outreach on either side yet.

PWW: Class size is very important for parents and students. How has the union worked to build coalitions around issues of mutual interest?

Lynch: One of our proudest accomplishments is putting class size and staffing levels back in the contract where they belong. Currently the level is 28 in primary grades, 31 for intermediate and upper. It is still too high, but enforceable now.

Class size is vital. We spend time nurturing relationships. We have quarterly breakfasts with community, clergy, parents – at least 30 different local organizations. When we were going through the contract and possible strike it wasn’t, “Oh, we’re in trouble let’s see who we can call in.” We’ve been working together. These organizations were ready to support us. Some held press conferences. We prepared materials in three or four different languages, explaining to parents about the situation. Dialogue is vitally important, even if we don’t agree on everything.

The author can be reached at talbano@pww.org. Lance Cohn contributed to these articles. (see related story below)

* * * * * *

Of bargaining rights and union democracy

The top of CTU President Deborah Lynch’s agenda was to repeal a 1995 law that prohibited city teachers from discussing issues like class size as part of their contract. Their collective bargaining rights, stripped away by the State Legislature and then-school chief Paul Vallas, along with the tacit support of Mayor Daley, was part of the so-called school reform.

Lynch said her slate’s election reflected the anger among the rank and file at this 1995 agreement. “It was a statement of our membership that they were mad as hell and didn’t want to take it anymore. Talk about inequity. Every other teacher in the state of Illinois can discuss class size, staffing and layoffs – these are time-honored, hard-fought union issues – and Chicago teachers can’t?!”

In November 2002 the Republicans were kicked out of office and Democratic leadership was swept in. The political action of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the state AFL-CIO was widely credited for this shift. Bargaining rights for Chicago teachers was a major item in the unions’ agenda.

“Getting our bargaining rights back was a stand-alone victory. That was our campaign promise,” Lynch told the World. “We had been able to make the case that school reform had swung too far in the wrong direction.”

The CTU then faced another challenge: Getting a decent contract during hard economic times. Contract talks began in May 2003 and went until September before a federal mediator was called in. The Board of Education would not move, Lynch said, and the mediator insisted this was the best the union could expect.

Lynch took the first offer to the membership and they voted it down overwhelmingly, sending the union leadership back to the bargaining table. The recalcitrant Board of Education refused to budge until the CTU’s House of Delegates voted 85 percent in favor of a strike authorization. It wasn’t until we were “armed with that strike vote at our backs” that the board moved, Lynch said.

The union managed to stave off the board-proposed health cost increases, they garnered another 1 percent wage gain (5 percent total) for the paraprofessionals, and two extra sick days for teachers with 18 or more years of service – an equivalent to a 1 percent pay raise.

One of the most contentious contract issues was the board’s proposal to exchange seven fewer days a year for 20-minute-longer days. An even swap would have been 15-minute-longer days, Lynch said, acknowledging that teachers often spend lots of unpaid time at school.

“The anger of the membership against a system that doesn’t appreciate their work – they were like ‘No. An even swap is fine but five extra minutes for this bureaucracy that doesn’t appreciate what I do? No.’” The union got the board to shave off those five minutes.

Lynch and the union leadership also faced organized opposition within the union during the contract negotiations, and faces a number of opponents in her re-election bid next month.

The contract process was an “exciting and challenging time,” Lynch said, adding there was an unprecedented level of union democracy with forums, on-site school visits and numerous materials explaining the contract and negotiations.

“Our leadership can be proud of opening up democracy within our union,” Lynch said. “Democracy is messy. We’re glad we’ve inspired a lot of people to get active and run for union office.”

The Chicago Federation of Labor presented Lynch their 2004 “Woman of the Year” award. “Lynch’s leadership style of placing the interests of her members first and her constant drive to achieve victory has earned her the recognition of the CFL as one of the most outstanding female leaders in the labor movement today,” the CFL statement said.

– Terrie Albano (see related story below)

* * * * * *

Brown v. Board, 50 years later Funding formulas maintain separate and unequal schools

While progress has been made since the Supreme

Court ruled 50 years ago that separate was not equal in its Brown v. Board of Education decision, funding inequities plague state after state and contribute to a process that some call the resegregation of America’s schools.

Today schools with majority Black and Latino student populations, often with high rates of poverty, get less money per pupil then wealthy districts, which often are majority white. Less money and resources mean a school can’t have music and art programs, libraries and books, even paper towels – the list is endless.

The World asked Deborah Lynch her views on desegregation and inequities in public education.

“Our state is not only 48th in terms of the money the state puts into education, but it is the second worst state in the nation in the disparities between money going to affluent districts and the money going to districts serving poor kids,” Lynch said. “Literally we are the second to the last because of our over-reliance on property taxes. The CTU has long held the position that we have to change our basic funding structure.” (New York is last. See related story page 5.)

Lynch is passionate about fighting for funding equity. “The over-reliance on the property tax creates horrendous and unconscionable inequities. We are surrounded by districts that spend two, three, even four times more per child,” she said. The CTU is part of a statewide coalition working to change the unequal funding structure.

Lynch and the CTU may find an ally with public schools chief Arne Duncan, who called the school funding system “morally bankrupt.”

Duncan has remarked, “It is criminal that the funding for a child’s education is based upon his neighborhood or his zip code, and I can’t believe that in the 21st century that we permit that kind of system to exist.”

The Chicago Defender newspaper reported Duncan’s comments made at a Metropolitan Planning Council meeting to discuss Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn’s Taxpayer Action amendment, which would generate $575 million a year of new money by raising taxes on the state’s richest citizens – those making over $250,000 per year. The measure, placed on the March 16 primary ballot as an advisory referendum, passed with 76 percent of the vote. Polls suggest Democrats, Republicans and independents would be for changing the tax structure if more money were to go to education.

But what happened to all that lottery money for education?

“Many citizens still think that the lottery was supposed to go to education,” Lynch said. “It supplanted, not supplemented the education budget. They think they are helping education when they play the lottery. It was a big scam.”

– Terrie Albano

I didnt know I could be sold!

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 05:34:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

I am one of 150 employees of the Home Care Network of Chicago’s Rush Hospital who were literally sold March 23 to Patient Care, a giant for-profit home-care company with 6,000 employees nationwide.

Workers in the homecare network include registered nurses, physical and occupational therapists and home health care aides. We provide the medically necessary follow-up care after someone is hospitalized. The skilled services we provide include physical therapy, chemotherapy or cardiac assessments. The goal of this Medicare certified service is to prevent re-hospitalization.

After the sale of the not-for-profit Rush Hospital’s home care network to the for-profit company was announced, we were shocked to learn that the deal included a provision barring us from transferring to other positions in the hospital’s medical center. The hospital had agreed not to rehire any of us, its soon-to-be-former employees, for two years, and even then only as a new hire.

We had been “sold” to Patient Care!

Rush Hospital nurses have never been unionized, but we are not taking this lying down. Talks are underway with local union representatives and community organizations. Watch this column for updates.

– Elizabeth Peace, R.N. (pww@pww.org)

Students demand justice for immigrant janitors

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 05:29:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS – Students at Washington University here are demanding the return of 36 Nicaraguan custodial and maintenance workers who were forced to leave the country after their contract with G&G Building Services was terminated in October 2003.

The Nicaraguan workers were on a 10-month work visa originally scheduled to end in May.

Outraged students formed the Student Worker Alliance (SWA). They claim that Washington University’s and G&G’s termination of the Nicaraguan employees is unacceptable. And they are building a community, religious and labor coalition intent on directing pressure towards the campus administration and the new building service contractor, Top Care, in hopes of facilitating the workers’ return. Top Care has agreed to hire all the workers and bring them back from Nicaragua, but has yet carry out its promise.

The University administration claims that employment of the Nicaraguans is out of their hands. But Sergio Salmeron, a Washington University student and member of SWA, believes “they are just passing the buck. Washington University is the customer. If they tell Top Care to settle things and bring the workers back they will.” Washington University is one of the wealthiest universities in the country with over $1 billion in annual revenue.

Charlie Hatcher, director of organizing for SEIU Local 1 Missouri Division which represented the G&G employees, said, “If we let Top Care get away with backing down on their commitments, it will send a message to other contractors that it is okay to treat people this way. We can’t let that happen.”

As a result of SWA’s campaign, the campus chancellor has formed a task force to investigate issues of subcontracting. Other service employees received an unscheduled $1 an hour raise on top of their union-negotiated regular wage increase. According to SWA and SEIU, “the infrastructure is in place to raise all kinds of hell. If the campus administration and Top Care don’t fulfill their obligations to these workers we will have to take things to the next level.”

On April 2, during the Student Labor Action Project “Week of Action,” SWA, Jobs with Justice, SEIU, and other coalition partners will hold a rally at Washington University demanding the return of the Nicaraguan service employees and living wages for all campus employees.

The author can be reached at tonypec@cpusa.org.