People Before Profit blog

THIS WEEK IN LABOR

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:39:00 +0000

Human Rights Day: Dec. 10

Workers from around the world are coming to the U.S. to join tens of thousands of workers in 68 cities on International Human Rights Day. During the week of Dec. 5-10, they will be taking the fight to restore workers’ freedom to form unions to the White House, statehouses and front doors of employers that deny workers’ rights.

In the U.S., 23,000 people are fired or illegally discriminated against each year for trying to organize. “These ongoing workplace human rights violations are the major reasons why so many workers are denied good jobs, good wages and good health care benefits,” said Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the NAACP.

Much of the focus of the week’s activities will be on passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which would allow workers to avoid what Voice at Work calls the National Labor Relations Board election “deathtrap” by forming unions based on a majority of signed authorization cards and increasing penalties for illegal employer anti-union actions.

The EFCA has now garnered its 205th sponsor in the House of Representatives, Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.), making it only 13 sponsors away from a majority in that body. In the Senate, with 41 sponsors, it is only 10 votes shy of a majority.

A calendar of Dec. 10 events is available at .

Mr. Grinch, you’re a mean one

Jobs with Justice is giving labor activists some hard choices this holiday season. The question? Who is the greediest, meanest Grinch, that does the most harm to working families? Go to www.jwj.org to vote for your favorite greedy Grinch by Dec. 20 and look for the announcement of the 2005 Grinch of the Year in the following days.

Wal-Mart employees association

Speaking of grinches, Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest employer, is being taken on by a new association founded for its present and former workers. The Wal-Mart Workers of America (WWOA) is not a union, but it has union backing.

WWOA offers a toll-free hotline about workplace issues and will disseminate information about class-action suit from female workers and provide them a confidential way to be a whistleblower. WWOA will also give information about state and federal labor rights, said Paul Blank, Wal-Mart campaign director for the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Solidarity with Australia

Union and community activists rallied outside the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, protesting that government’s newly proposed industrial relations legislation. The legislation, introduced by Prime Minister John Howard, will dramatically reduce the rights of workers to union representation, collective bargaining, minimum employment standards and protection from unfair dismissal, according to the AFL-CIO. The solidarity demonstration, one of many held around the world, was called to show support for the hundreds of thousands in Australia who took to the streets in a Day of Protest in Australia.

Hold the tomato

McDonald’s bears responsibility for the meager wages and abysmal conditions of the farm workers who pick its tomatoes, says the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). So far, McDonald’s is refusing to follow the precedent set by Taco Bell and its parent company, Yum Brands. After an intense nationwide campaign led by CIW, Yum Brands agreed to pay a penny more per pound for the tomatoes it buys from Florida growers. The extra penny, which growers must pass on to field workers, has nearly doubled those farm workers’ sub-poverty wages.

Movement grows to de-privatize health care

The Building and Construction Trades Council of St. Louis has become the first Building Trades Council in the country to endorse HR 676, a bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers to establish a single-payer universal health care program in the United States. The resolution was introduced by Sheet Metal Workers Local 36, representing workers in Missouri and Arkansas.

The movement for universal single-payer healthcare is growing, announced Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare. Six new co-sponsors have added their names to HR 676: Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Michael Capuana (D-Mass.). The total number of co-sponsors is now 57.

This Week in Labor is compiled by Roberta Wood (rwood at pww.org). Readers are invited to submit news of their struggles.

AFL-CIO clears way for solidarity charters

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:11:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Some details remain to be settled, but the AFL-CIO announced Nov. 16 that it will begin issuing “solidarity charters” to locals whose international unions recently disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO and joined the Change to Win Federation.

Locals that apply for and receive a solidarity charter will be able to participate fully in those state and local labor movements, including holding office, voting, and having full rights in state and local AFL-CIO organizations. The charters set up the expectation that Change to Win and AFL-CIO unions will work side-by-side on workplace organizing and on legislative and electoral campaigns, including being able to contact each other’s members for political mobilization.

The charters, which will be issued directly by the AFL-CIO in Washington, will be valid until Dec. 31, 2006, raising the prospect that unions will be able to work together much more effectively in statewide and congressional elections next November.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney released a “protocol” governing the charters, which he said covers all areas of agreement with the Change to Win Federation except a fee payment at the national level.

Among expectations, the protocol requires participating locals not to raid or support raiding on other locals, and to pay local affiliation dues, based on their membership size, that are at least what they paid to the state or local organization before their international disaffiliated.

Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said the agreement represents “a step forward for workers. Change to Win has always encouraged our local affiliates to participate in state and local bodies.”

This article excerpted from workdayMinnesota. Michael Kuchta (advocate at stpaulunions.org) edits the Union Advocate, the official publication of the St. Paul Trades & Labor Assembly.

Auto workers hit with one-two punch

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:00:00 +0000

Delphi wage-cut scheme, GM plan to cut 30,000

DETROIT (PAI) — United Auto Workers members were hit with a one-two punch in late November as bankrupt Delphi Auto Parts disclosed its latest wage proposals — which would put its lowest-paid workers’ wages slightly above Wal-Mart’s average — while GM proposed shutting plants and cutting 30,000 jobs by 2007-2008.

On Nov. 21, GM said it wants to lay off 30,000 workers, close six assembly line plants and cut back work at six parts plants, all by 2008. UAW spokesman Paul Krell said total layoffs would be 5,000, with the other 25,000 let go through retirement and attrition.

UAW responded by pointing out that “GM cannot shrink itself into prosperity,” and promised to protect its members. UAW put the onus on GM execs to design and retool vehicles quickly to meet changing market conditions, which it has not.

Delphi, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 8, wants to fire 18,000 of its 28,000 U.S. workers and cut wages of the rest to between $10.50 and $12.50, less than half of a Delphi worker’s present average pay.

UAW called that offer “insulting and ridiculous.” Union Vice President Richard Shoemaker told a press conference in Detroit that he wouldn’t even send it out for a vote among the Delphi workers and that “it doesn’t merit a serious response.”

United Food and Commercial Workers data shows an average worker at virulently anti-union Wal-Mart makes $9.68 an hour. Wal-Mart is now the nation’s single largest private employer — a spot GM once held, before auto firms slumped and before it spun off Delphi.

The Delphi case gives the UAW its first chance to respond in court. Krell explained Delphi must ask a federal bankruptcy judge in New York City to approve another part of its plan: $87 million in bonuses and 10 percent of its stock, all to be distributed to top “key executives” to convince them to stay on. The hearing on that scheme, which the UAW opposes, will be on Nov. 29.

“We intend to do various protest activities in Delphi communities” the day of the court hearing, Krell said. All six Delphi unions — UAW, IUE-CWA, the Steelworkers, the Electrical Workers, the Machinists and the Operating Engineers — are in a coalition battling the firm in court, negotiating and planning the protests.

If the UAW and Delphi can’t settle, the bankruptcy judge “can only say ‘yes’ or ‘no’” to the parts maker’s demand to void its contracts, said Krell. A “yes” would let Delphi “do whatever it wants, including imposing wages even below the levels of its latest offer,” he explained.

GM’s “wish list of shutdowns,” as Krell put it, includes one of its oldest plants, in Doraville, Ga., and one of its newest: Saturn Plant/Line No. 1, in Spring Hill, Tenn. Other closures would be in Oklahoma City, the Lansing (Mich.) Craft Center, which has 400 workers, the Lansing Metal Fabrication Plant, which has several thousand, and the IUE-represented third shift at its plant in Lorain, Ohio.