People Before Profit blog

High pesticide exposure found among migrant workers

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:08:00 +0000

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — It could be a father hugging his children after a day’s work in the tobacco field, or pesticide residue on his clothing washed with family laundry. Maybe it was children playing in farming fields outside their homes.

A new study suggests all could be factors in high levels of pesticide exposure detected in children of migrant workers in eastern North Carolina, where an estimated 21,000 people in the heart of the state’s agriculture industry work in vast fields of tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce.

Educating workers and pushing for more enforcement of safety laws are central to protecting workers and their children from chemicals, experts say.

“We know that exposure to these pesticides creates all kinds of problems, we just don’t know exactly how much,” said Thomas A. Arcury, lead researcher for a study conducted by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

The study analyzed urine samples from 60 children between the ages of 1 and 6 who lived with migrant farm workers in six North Carolina counties in 2004. The study looked for specific metabolites the body produces after being exposed to pesticides.

The study found the metabolite level in the North Carolina children was generally higher than the national averages of slightly older children, the only comparison data available, and either the same as or higher than levels found in similar studies in Washington state, California, Texas and Oregon.

Scientists weren’t sure if the levels were high enough to cause harm, the study said. Researchers concluded the results “are of concern,” because exposure to pesticides has been linked to health issues ranging from nausea to cancer, problems in lung and brain development, and even death.

“This information is helpful, but it’s only a snapshot at a particular time,” said Allan Noe, spokesman for CropLife America, a trade group of pesticide manufacturers.

But advocates said the study would be helpful in pressuring officials to focus on enforcement of safety rules.

With the recent surge in immigration — North Carolina saw its undocumented immigrant population grow 43 percent to 300,000 from 2000 to 2004, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — advocates say the need to educate workers has increased.

“Most of them come from Mexico, but little groups of them come from all over the world, and a lot of them travel with their families,” said Omar Lainez, community education coordinator with Legal Aid North Carolina’s Farm Unit.

The nonprofit group visits migrant and seasonal farmworkers at camps, sometimes set up near crop fields, to teach them about pesticide safety and the legal remedies available, such as the right to ask employers for proper safety equipment and what pesticides are used, Lainez said.

“The workers normally don’t say anything, because they’re afraid,” he said, adding that he has seen empty pesticide containers near or inside homes.

Concern has heightened since three workers for Ag-Mart, which grows tomatoes in eastern North Carolina, had babies with serious birth defects. A state report released in May said pesticide exposure may have caused the defects, but stopped short of making a conclusive link.

Faulty seals a factor in Sago mine blast

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 05:09:00 +0000

BUCKHANNON, W. Va. (PAI) - Faulty seals in an abandoned part of the Sago, W. Va., coal mine were one factor in the lethal Jan. 2 blast that killed 12 miners and injured a 13th, a new West Virginia state report says.

The report, commissioned by Gov. Joe Manchin (D) after the fatal explosion, says all causes of the blast have not been pinned down, but the seals were a problem.

Some Sago equipment in the mine is still being tested, chief report author J. Davitt McAteer, federal Mine Safety and Health Administrator under President Clinton, told a July 19 press conference in Buckhannon, W. Va.

The explosion was the first of a series of mine accidents that have killed 33 mine workers so far this year, the United Mine Workers report. The Sago mine was non-unionized, but the families of the victims asked UMW to represent them in probes. The union had no comment on McAteer’s report because it is doing its own investigation and its findings will be ready in several weeks, a spokesman said.

A summary of the report quoted McAteer as saying “We cannot ignore the fact there were lightning strikes in the area, at the time of the blast, but it is still not clear how that charge could have reached the sealed area of the Sago mine.”

The report also “put blame on the seals around an abandoned part of the mine where it’s believed the blast originated.” McAteer said, “The law requires those seals to be blast-proof, and his findings show they were not.”

The Sago blast and subsequent problems it exposed at Sago and with the Bush administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration forced a new federal mine safety law that the West Virginia delegation drafted, the GOP-run Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed all within six weeks.

The legislation mandates safety measures including better rescue procedures and stocking of more portable safety ventilators for miners. The Sago miners lacked enough ventilators and rescue communications were poor.

Giant tollway to bisect Texas

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 05:01:00 +0000

DALLAS — Although a conspiratorial secrecy shrouds much of the plan, Texans are beginning to find out that tens of thousands of acres will be taken from them to create an incredibly wide transportation corridor running the length of the state from north to south. The “Trans-Texas Corridor,” or “TTC” is reputed to be the brainchild of Gov. Rick Perry, but Texans suspect that someone else — someone smarter, higher in the ranks of the right-wing government, and even lower in ethics — is actually pulling the strings.

A broad outline of the project is beginning to emerge. The TTC would be up to a quarter-mile wide, enough to include a 10-lane superhighway, a railroad right-of-way and an optic fiber network. It would span Texas approximately on the same course as the present “NAFTA Highway,” IH 35, from Laredo to the Red River. After the Texas section is under way, the corridor would continue to bisect the nation into Canada just beyond Duluth, Minn.

The governor says that Texans will benefit from trucks and locomotives pulling “free trade” cargo from Mexican seaports through Texas and into the nation’s midsection. Teamsters and longshore workers don’t like having union labor excluded from the transportation process; construction workers don’t like being left out; farmers don’t want to lose their land; construction companies don’t like having all the work done by foreign contractors; workers on both sides of the border don’t like NAFTA and the other so-called “free trade agreements;” and almost nobody likes being left in the dark while plans and commitments have apparently already been made in secret!

“Public” hearings opened July 10 and are supposed to continue for a month. Early participants complain that the arrangements have already been made and they have little or no chance for input. The main contract has been allotted to a Spanish company, Cintra-Zachry. The Texas attorney general ruled the terms had to be made public, but Gov. Perry has gone to court to prevent disclosure — this according to http://prisonplanet.com, writing about the new Blackland Coalition of anti-corridor farmers who do not want to see their farms ruined by eminent domain.

Even Perry’s own Republican Party convention, in June, opposed the TTC on grounds that Texans should not have to pay tolls for passage that was formerly free. Perry’s three gubernatorial opponents — a renegade Republican, a renegade Democrat and the Democratic Party nominee — are having a field day with the issue!

Chicago City Council passes Big Box wage law

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:39:00 +0000

CHICAGO — In a 35-14 vote the Chicago City Council passed a wage ordinance, requiring “big box” retailers to pay their workers a living wage.

The ordinance will require mega-retailers like Wal-Mart to pay their workers at least $10 an hour in wages plus $3 in benefits by July 1, 2010. The Illinois minimum wage is $6.50 an hour.

Earlier, observers said the vote would be too close to call. But after an intensive two days of protests and vigils, and a bruising debate in the council meeting, the measure passed by a substantial 21-vote margin. Supporters of the wage ordinance included unions, churches and community groups who said Chicago should be a leader in setting standards for worker pay and benefits.

Wal-Mart won infamy in many states by paying so little without benefits that workers were forced to apply for government-subsidized health insurance.

Jobs: now you see them, now you dont

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 07:17:00 +0000

Workers and taxpayers often lose twice when states and cities give out huge corporate tax breaks in the name of “economic development.”

Consider Raytheon Corp. In a 1995 “job blackmail” episode, it threatened to move jobs from Massachusetts unless the state rewrote its corporate income tax code for defense contractors, to save the company an estimated three-fourths of its tax bill. Then the state’s manufacturers association demanded “me too” for all manufacturers. Then Fidelity Investments demanded the same giveaway for mutual fund companies. A decade later, the state was losing factory jobs faster than the national average, the state treasury had lost $1.5 billion in revenue, and Massachusetts was cutting aid to public schools faster than any other state.

Episodes like this are prompting activists and journalists to investigate subsidized companies. Nearly every big company gets them, since the average state now has more than 30 subsidies: property tax abatements, income tax credits, sales tax exemptions, tax increment financing, low-interest loans, free land, training grants, infrastructure aid — and just plain cash.

Over and over again, investigators find many companies falling short on job creation or retention pledges. Companies paying poverty wages or failing to provide health care. Companies abandoning our cities and sprawling onto farmland. Companies outsourcing jobs offshore. Companies not creating any new jobs, even some that are actually laying people off. Others that just move jobs from one place to another, where they are proclaimed to be “new.”

How can they get away with this? Because the system is rigged. Corporations have it down to a science. They have learned how to chant “jobs, jobs, jobs,” win huge corporate tax breaks — and still do what they wanted to do all along.

That’s the Great American Jobs Scam: enabling corporations to exact huge taxpayer subsidies by promising quality jobs — and then letting them fail to deliver. The other commonly promised benefit — higher tax revenues — often proves false or exaggerated as well.

The taxpayer tab? More than $50 billion a year — much of which would be better spent on America’s looming skills crisis (thanks to baby boomer retirements) and our massive infrastructure deficit.

Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, recently authored “The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation.”

This article is reprinted from the AFL-CIO’s Point of View, www.aflcio.org.

No fun, but shell keep marching

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:40:00 +0000

Carina, 9, and her mother Gloria Herrera have been walking the picket line at Book Covers Inc. in Chicago since early June. The workers, members of United Steelworkers Local 1216, were forced out by company demands for outrageous retirement and health care cuts in bargaining for a new contract. This picture was taken during a support picket at the plant by Steelworkers, retirees, Teamsters, Jobs with Justice and others, July 14. Asked if being on the picket line was “kinda fun,” Carina replied, “No.” But she said she would hold out with her mother on the line one day longer than the company. — Scott Marshall

Photo by Scott Marshall/PWW

Security officers pick up the pace

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:32:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — Taking a break from leading chants in front of Oakland’s landmark Tribune Tower July 13, Pamela Frazier recalled her experiences working at an unorganized jobsite.

“Before I became active in the union,” said Frazier, a 15-year security officer, “I was struck by a car one day right in front of the San Francisco building where I worked. I didn’t have any benefits or sick leave. Since I was raising three kids as a single parent, I couldn’t afford to take time off. So I came to work the next day on crutches.

“Then when the union rep came around,” she added, “I was ready to get involved.”

Now Frazier, a member of SEIU Local 24/7, is letting non-union security workers know they, too, can win living wages and decent benefits.

Frazier was participating in an informational picket sponsored by Jobs with Justice — part of a nationwide drive by the Service Employees to win union recognition for security officers. SEIU calls the campaign the largest-ever drive to organize a predominantly Black workforce. It is backed by a wide range of faith, community and labor organizations, including union janitors, among them many Latinos.

Besides providing security for the Tribune Tower, ABC Security Services, a nonunion firm, also holds contracts with the city and Port of Oakland.

SEIU organizer Eric Lerner said the union is calling on the city of Oakland to include in its competitive bidding guidelines language to assure that any firm selected is in compliance with local and federal laws.

While living wage laws cover its workers at public sites, ABC pays many workers at private sites less than $10 an hour, Lerner said, adding that ABC “threatens union standards with its low wages and inadequate health coverage that most workers can’t afford.”

Organizers say ABC is a holdout among major security companies operating in the Bay Area. Local 24/7’s master contract covers some 5,000 members working for 10 private security firms in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Los Angeles security officers have been fighting for a union for more than four years, said L.A.-based SEIU spokesperson Gina Bowers. A turning point was reached last spring, when Rob Maguire of Maguire Partners, the largest building owner in downtown L.A., responded to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s call to improve security and working conditions for security officers, by saying he supported his security personnel joining the union.

The Stand for Security Coalition of clergy and community groups backing the organizing efforts says nearly 70 percent of L.A. county security officers are Black and most must work two full-time jobs because of poverty conditions in their industry.

Following a meeting with the Rev. Eric Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Bowers said, contractors agreed to issue a letter telling security officers of their rights to join a union, and the letter has already been circulated in some buildings.

In New York City, 27 Guardsmark security officers were set to strike July 19 — the first such action by private security officers at a commercial office building there. The officers are protesting Guardsmark’s retaliation against two security officers at another building who delivered a union-sponsored petition regarding working conditions to a Guardsmark client. The National Labor Relations Board last year ordered Guardsmark to rescind its rule barring security officers from telling clients of their concerns about working conditions. SEIU Local 32BJ has filed an unfair labor practices against Guardsmark for enforcing the illegal rule.

The city’s Empire State Building has been the focus of protests by elected officials, religious and community leaders demanding decent wages, affordable health care and state-of-the-art security training for security officers there.

N.Y. teachers mull no contract, no work strategy

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:27:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence It is about 15 months until the current contract between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the city of New York expires, in October 2007. Already, the union is planning its strategy for the next round of negotiations, with many of its ideas deriving from the results of the last round.

The contract agreement that was reached last fall (covering the period from June 1, 2003, to Oct. 12, 2007) included a number of givebacks, most notably the loss of the right to grieve negative letters-in-the-file, or unsatisfactory observations; an additional 10 minutes added to the workday; and the loss of the seniority transfer plan. Nearly 40 percent of the membership voted “no.” Since the votes are not counted separately by school or division, I can only guess, but I am certain that the contract was defeated in the high schools.

In New York City, the mayor controls the school system; there is no elected school board anymore. Michael Bloomberg, our mayor (and billionaire who runs a nonunion shop in his communications business), and Joel Klein, his hand-picked chancellor, are trying to impose a corporate-model, top-down, bureaucratic system on the school staff. During the last negotiations, the city proposed to tear up our contract and replace it with an eight-page set of rules that would have gutted all workers’ rights. The UFT was able to stand up to the mayor and the proposal was withdrawn. There is every reason to expect the city to make similar proposals in the next round.

The only way for the UFT to defeat this juggernaut is through unity and strength. UFT President Randi Weingarten has established a 350-member negotiating committee that includes members from all the various caucuses within the union. From this group will come a 20-30 member “executive committee” that will meet with the city. The negotiating committee will work in the schools to organize the membership around our demands. Currently, the membership is discussing the idea of adopting a policy of “no contract, no work.”

In June, the UFT was instrumental in organizing a bargaining coalition with most of the other municipal unions, all of which will be negotiating new contracts in the next year or so. In the past, the city has used a method of “pattern bargaining” to win contract concessions from the workers. What the mayor would do is pick on the weakest union that is about to sit down to bargain and force on it an agreement with low pay raises and numerous givebacks. The other unions would then be presented with similar demands. The unions in the bargaining coalition feel that if there is to be a pattern to contract settlements, then let the workers set the pattern. The united front will negotiate mostly on economic issues. The combined power of these unions will be used to force the city to face a new reality — the workers are sick and tired of being pushed around.

It is in this context that the UFT will negotiate its next collective bargaining agreement. There is room for optimism. There is much work still to be done.

— David Cavendish, a N.Y. teacher

Working day and night in North Carolina

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:19:00 +0000

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — Jaison Sheppard clocks out from unloading trucks for Frito-Lay at 7 a.m., but he’s not off work. His second job awaits in the parking lot outside. Having put on different work clothes, he’s off to change oil, check spark plugs and fix tires for co-workers and other customers for the rest of the day.

Sheppard wants a good life for his family. But he can’t do it on one job alone. And neither can as many as 35,000 other people in the Piedmont Triad who work more than one job. Piedmont Triad is an area covered by seven counties in the north central part of North Carolina.

The number of people with two or more jobs is growing in North Carolina. Only Oklahoma added more workers with two or more jobs in 2004, according to the most recent estimate by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Why are more people punching two clocks? Sometimes it’s about making ends meet, paying down debt, building a business or pursuing a dream. And sometimes it’s just to make extra spending money.

“We do see a lot of people who have a permanent job and they come to us because they need extra income,” said Pam Medlin, the president of Key Resources, one of the Triad’s largest employee placement services.

Many workers in the Piedmont Triad are like Jaison Sheppard, working extra jobs because they have to, not because they want to, local employment experts say.

Since 2000, Piedmont Triad workers with limited education have found it hard to get by after the loss of thousands of textile and apparel jobs.

The era of getting a good-paying job with just a high school diploma is over. Many workers who could support a family on one textile job now find it hard to get by even with multiple jobs in fast food or retail.

“The $15 (an hour) jobs they had with the skill sets they possess are no longer available, so relatively speaking, they’re working two $7 jobs for 15 to 16 hours a day,” said Mark Harris, branch manager of the Guilford County office of Manpower staffing services.

The future for those with limited education will only get bleaker. Through 2014, of the fastest-declining jobs, textile jobs make up the top three, the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina said.

The fastest-growing jobs? Low-wage positions such as in retail sales, cashiers and waiters.

But while working extra hours can help the budget, it can also hurt the body, said industrial psychologist Mike Zickar, an associate professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Some with multiple jobs don’t ever spend time to recover from work. And Americans, in general, are bad at doing that, he said. “It’s like being hung over at work all the time,” Zickar said. “It has long-term effects. If somebody is going nonstop at work, they’re always in a bad mood, they’re agitated, their attention span is low.”

“You can think of the consequences on family life, attention to kids,” Zickar continued. “Part of the success of being a good parent is just spending time with kids.”

Plumbers put health care in the pipeline

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:18:00 +0000

Plumbers local unions in Memphis, Tenn., and Northwood, Ohio, have endorsed HR 676, legislation introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) that would implement a single-payer health care system in the U.S. The locals are affiliated with the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada (UA).

Local 17 in Memphis represents workers in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. Local 50, based near Toledo, recently hosted activists with the Single-Payer Action Network who are walking across Ohio to promote a state referendum that would guarantee health care for everyone in Ohio.

Frank Rodgers, business manager of Local 17, said that the health care costs for members have escalated rapidly in the last few years. When another 60 cents per hour is added this coming November, the cost of health care per member will total $4.80 per hour.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Rodgers, referring to the Conyers legislation. Five local UA unions and the California Pipe Trades Council have endorsed HR 676. Jack Love, business manager of Local 188 in Savannah, Ga., is leading an effort within the UA to have the international convention endorse HR 676 when it meets this August.

Supporters say HR 676 would save billions annually by eliminating high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

— Carolyn Taylor

Locomotive engineers cite safety concerns

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:16:00 +0000

Safety concerns on the trains they run dominated the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’s conference in Las Vegas in late June. Topping the list were railroads’ plans to cut the crew members per train down to one and the issue of transportation of nuclear waste.

BLE&T delegates, whose union is now part of the Teamsters Rail Conference, took the rail safety issues to the following IBT convention in Las Vegas. Oregon BLE&T Legislative Chairman Scott Palmer told delegates “a serious threat” looms to both workers and communities from transportation of spent nuclear fuel from U.S. reactors to the Energy Department’s deep underground storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Virtually all of that spent fuel will come by rail.

Palmer said rail workers do not receive proper training to handle spent fuel and do not receive the same protections given to other nuclear industry workers. And DOE has no program to track rail workers’ exposure to potential radiation from the shipments. The federal agency contends the reinforced cement containers carrying the spent fuel will protect the workers and the public from radiation releases.

“It’s our goal to not only track but to lower exposure levels and keep them as low as possible,” Palmer said. “Right now, no (rail) carrier even has a program that will protect pregnant workers from radiation. If you show up to work, you cannot turn down a train of radioactive material. Rail is the way they’re going to move it. It’s going to be dedicated trains, and it’s going to be 210 feet behind you.”

BLE&T is also leading a crusade against railroads’ schemes for engineerless freight locomotives in train yards — especially since the carriers, with Bush Federal Railroad Administration approval, liberally interpret the word “yard.” Thirty years ago, there were five crew members on a freight train. Now, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe is experimenting with running freight trains out of Galesburg, Ill., with just the engineer. Much of the actual operation will be turned over to remote computer control. Dozens of cities, counties, towns and labor bodies have protested this practice, citing fatal accidents and safety threats.

The engineer-only freight trains were thrown into current bargaining between the nation’s freight railroads, which want them, and the Teamster-led union coalition representing rail workers. Chicago is the nation’s largest freight rail hub, followed by Kansas City.

Rockford UAW activists get political

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:59:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

Jobs Campaign activists met with UAW-endorsed congressional candidate Richard Auman at our weekly meeting June 5. The Jobs Campaign began 16 months ago when still-working, laid-off and retired UAW rank-and-filers first gathered at our union hall to combat what we call “plant closing by the installment plan.”

Since United Technologies Corp. purchased the old Sundstrand Corp. in 1999, hundreds of union jobs have been moved from its Rockford plant sites. Although Jobs Campaigners are facing an uphill battle, we have managed to capture newspaper headlines, and television and radio time, including a 25-minute TV spot produced by a local church. The spot aired on the congregation’s regular Sunday morning program.

Auman is running against the incumbent Republican Don Manzullo in Illinois’ 16th Congressional District. Campaigners say they are fed up with Manzullo’s enthusiastic support for so-called free trade deals, such as the job-killing U.S. agreement with Singapore.

Hamilton Sundstrand workers in Rockford, who machine, assemble and test aerospace products for commercial and military customers, stand to lose about 130 good jobs when the company completes its move of the Plant 1 manufacturing unit and the Plant 6 actuation assembly and test operations to Singapore.

Prior to the Auman endorsement, UAW representatives discussed the dire situation at Hamilton Sundstrand with Congressman Manzullo, but Manzullo remains steadfast in his blind attraction to unfettered corporate power. Since the June 5 get-together, a member of the Auman-for-Congress staff has been attending the regular Jobs Campaign meetings in order to keep abreast of the Campaign’s activities. Both groups say they want to flesh out a common approach to putting a Jobs Campaign candidate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tim Mills (timmillsgp@aol.com) chairs the Jobs Campaign Committee of UAW Local 592 in Rockford, Ill.

Teachers flunk Bush school law

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:55:00 +0000

Saying its members believe George W. Bush’s school-funding legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, gets “a failing grade,” the National Education Association voted July 4 to lobby for a comprehensive rewrite of the statute next year.

At its Orlando, Fla., Representatives Assembly, the nation’s largest union also signaled approval of the universal, single-payer health care bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). Delegates passed a resolution vowing to “inform our members about HR 676 and various states’ plans for establishing universal health care” through the union’s web site and other publications.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation expires in 2007. “We have lived with the negative consequences of a fundamentally flawed law for almost five years and now our members are saying it’s time for a change,” NEA President Reg Weaver declared.

The 9,000 delegates adopted demands for an increase in federal funds promised under the law and a decrease in the number of children per classroom in U.S. schools.

They also called for student performance to be measured by a variety of methods, not just “the sole reliance on standardized testing” that Bush’s law demands.

NEA is the first of the nation’s two big teachers’ unions to take up the NCLB this year. The other, the 1.3-million-member American Federation of Teachers, will have NCLB on the agenda of its convention, July 20-23, in Boston.

Bush pushed his law through Congress with bipartisan support in 2001. It mandated constant testing of all students during their K-12 years and ordered states to set rigid and rising student achievement and teacher and staff qualification standards. It also said the tests would be the sole measure of achievement, and said that schools that fail would have their federal education aid funds yanked — with money promised to private schools and voucher systems. Right-wingers pushing the law openly hoped public schools would flunk. The Act promised more federal funds to help the schools, but Bush has not followed through on that.

“If NCLB was a standardized test, our members would give it a failing grade,” said Weaver, a middle-school teacher.

“A free, quality public education is a fundamental human right for all,” Weaver said. He stressed that the NEA has focused its efforts on several strategic goals: closing the gaps in student achievement between white and minority students; reaching out to ethnic communities; creating a plan for reforming unfunded mandates during the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act; ensuring that teachers have a minimum salary of $40,000 and providing a living wage for education support professionals, like bus drivers and custodians; expanding membership to offer support to more education employees; and working to achieve adequacy and equity in public school funding.

— Press Associates Inc.

Calif. vineyard workers fight back after firings

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:18:00 +0000

Vineyard workers and their union, the United Farm Workers, are upping the ante in their months-long struggle for a new contract with Northern California’s Charles Krug winery.

The winery fired all 36 workers July 7, saying it would contract out their work to a land manager. The firings took place just hours after the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board said it would issue a complaint against the company for unfair labor practices, based on Krug’s failure to negotiate a new contract in good faith.

Saying the labor board’s action was “tantamount to an indictment” of the winery, Marc Grossman, the UFW’s communications director, said in a phone interview that the union has added the illegal terminations to the list of charges against the company. The UFW believes the board will include the issue in a consolidated complaint. The matter will then go before an administrative law judge.

The vineyard workers’ contract expired last Dec. 31. On June 15, the union launched a nationwide boycott of the winery’s Charles Krug and C.K. Mondavi labels. Among early endorsers of the boycott was the Change to Win labor federation, to which the UFW belongs.

Grossman said that besides the union’s legal battle, information and appeals to join the boycott are being circulated on the Internet, while vigils and marches continue at the winery in the Napa County community of St. Helena.

“We hope the combination of legal struggle and the growing boycott will make the company change its mind,” he said, noting that the winery’s reputation would not benefit from being associated with the firing of workers while it is in the midst of a major vineyard upgrade.

The union is talking with major distributors about the boycott, Grossman said. The UFW also plans to appeal to supermarkets and retailers, and will focus on wine-tasting and promotional events featuring Krug-Mondavi wines.

Hundreds of thousands of people joined last year’s boycott of E&J Gallo wines, which led to the signing of a new contract, Grossman said.

The UFW’s web site, www.ufw.org, features a message that can be sent to the winery and circulated to other potential signers.

In 1975, vineyard workers at Charles Krug were among the first in the state to win union representation under California’s newly passed farm labor law, but they were not able to sign a first contract until 1981. The winery, owned by the Peter Mondavi family, is the 15th largest in the country. Founded in 1861, it is Napa County’s oldest major winery.

The UFW seeks wage hikes of 3 percent per year and modest increases in health benefits, while the winery is pressing for mandatory physical exams of all workers and the ability to terminate workers based on the results. A number of the workers have been with the company for many years, and the union says the exams could be used to get rid of older workers.

Connecticut AFL-CIO aims to change America

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:29:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Yes, they’re waging class war and it’s time we wage it back!” declared AFL-CIO Director of Organizing Stewart Acuff to prolonged applause, challenging the Bush administration and corporate interests at the Connecticut AFL-CIO convention here last week.

Calling the midterm elections in November a “referendum on human rights in America,” he urged the delegates to “elect a real pro-working families majority, then take to the streets.”

“Remember and practice the strength of solidarity. Unite with other organizations,” he said, adding, “Turn out on election day as if your kid’s future depends on it.”

The convention accepted the challenge to mobilize in three congressional districts where vulnerable Republicans have progressive Democratic opponents. Defeating Republicans Rob Simmons in the 2nd CD, Chris Shays in the 4th CD and Nancy Johnson in the 5th CD is top priority toward changing 15 seats in the House to win a Democratic majority.

In the nationally watched U.S. Senate race, the convention endorsed incumbent Joseph Lieberman for the Aug. 8 Democrat primary, following a heated debate in which several unions called for no endorsement. The Connecticut American Federation of Teachers, the second largest union in the state, and International Association of Machinists District 25, the largest industrial union, both endorsed challenger Ned Lamont, who is running on a peace platform.

Delegates who spoke in favor of endorsing Lieberman emphasized his 84 percent lifetime labor voting record. In response to several unions who are angry about Lieberman’s support for trade agreements and school vouchers as well as the war, some delegates called on the entire state federation to demand that the senator respond to the issues that every union faces.

“I hope that after this is over, we can get all of us together, even the ones that get along great with Joe, and beat the crap out of him, so he knows we’re not happy,” said Ken Delacruz, president of the Metal Trades Union at Electric Boat, who endorsed Lieberman because he supported their strikes at the boat yard.

In a compromise action, the convention voted endorsement only for the primary.

Lieberman later created a national firestorm within the Democratic Party when he announced that he will run as an independent on the “Connecticut for Lieberman” line in November if he does not win the Aug. 8 primary.

Among its many state election endorsements, the gathering gave the nod to John DeStefano for governor.

Seven resolutions related to health care were adopted by the convention, including three for universal health care, which is expected to be a top issue in the next session of the state Legislature. The convention endorsed HR 676, the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All” bill, introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

In addition, the convention updated its bylaws for the first time in a decade, and by acclamation deleted all anti-Communist clauses left over from the 1950s era of repression.

The fight for workers rights and for unity against the Bush administration anti-worker policies was the overriding theme of the convention.

Tying the rights of immigrant workers with democratic rights for all workers, Acuff explained that since NAFTA was enacted, real wages in Mexico have gone down 10 percent.

He moved the entire convention when he praised the values of an immigrant construction worker in Phoenix, Ariz., making $6.50 an hour with no benefits, who stood up for his family’s future and the future of his co-workers by organizing a union, only to be fired and deported back to Mexico.

“He wanted to lift everyone up collaboratively, not like corporate America, walking over somebody’s back, but by the way the scriptures say, collectively,” said Acuff, calling for the right to organize and to bargain collectively.

Nearly 2 million union members stand to lose their collective bargaining rights if the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board rules unfavorably this summer on three cases, known as the Kentucky River cases, which would reclassify workers who sometimes instruct their co-workers as “supervisors.”

The Connecticut AFL-CIO is joining with unions nationally this week to protest the refusal of the NLRB to hear any worker testimony in this case.

“The crowd that runs the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House are doing everything they can day after day to turn the clock back,” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told the delegates. Lauding the role of the labor movement in American history, he said, “Stand up and fight back.”

Nurses take to streets for union, patient rights

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:53:00 +0000

Bush labor board poised to deny union rights to millions of workers

OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 700 nurses and their supporters gathered in downtown Oakland July 11 to protest a forthcoming National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that could devastate their union rights and their ability to advocate for patients. Potentially affected are hundreds of thousands of nurses and up to 8 million workers overall.

The marchers, clad in bright red T-shirts and carrying signs in English and Spanish, were participating in a national week of action by the California Nurses Association (CNA) and other unions that included rallies in Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Pittsburgh and Bangor, Maine, among other cities. More than a dozen leaders of labor and faith-based organizations were preparing to be arrested in civil disobedience protests during a July 13 mass action at the NLRB’s headquarters in Washington.

At issue is an impending ruling on three related cases collectively called the “Kentucky River” decisions. The AFL-CIO says the NLRB could remove bargaining rights by redefining “supervisor” to include skilled and experienced workers who give instructions to other workers. Since supervisors are not allowed to join unions, employers often try to deny workers their union rights by classifying them as supervisors. While nurses are affected especially severely, building trades workers, media workers, port shipping workers, quality control inspectors, sales personnel and many others could also lose their rights.

In a July 12 memo, the Economic Policy Institute reported that “the broad definition of ‘supervisor’ employers are seeking [from the NLRB] ultimately could take away the right to join a union and bargain collectively from 8 million Americans throughout the labor market.”

The five-member NLRB — all Bush appointees — has refused to hear oral arguments, even rejecting union requests for hearings. A decision may be issued as early as August.

In Oakland, marchers and speakers alike emphasized nurses’ roles as advocates for their patients, and warned of the ruling’s potential impact on patient care. They urged supporters to demand Congress call for public hearings.

CNA Vice President Zenei Cortez, Secretary Malinda Markowitz, and fellow CNA board of directors members Robert Marth Jr. and Trande Phillips — all working nurses — carried a banner proclaiming “RN Rx: Union rights, human rights, patient rights.” They called the potential ruling part of a direct attack on working people throughout the country.

With nurses at the mercy of their employers, they said, they could no longer be able to speak out for patient rights or uphold the improved nurse/patient ratio they recently won in California. “It’s all about corporate power and profits,” said one. “They are trying to take power away because they know we always try to advocate for patients,” added another.

Jerome McCockran, a Kaiser Oakland hospital nurse for 24 years, pointed out that not only “charge nurses” but all bedside nurses would ultimately be affected, since RNs direct the activities of other health care workers. “We want to continue to be union, so we can answer to our patients, not to administrators,” he said.

“We could end up with one nurse to 20 patients,” said Lonnie Kidd, an RN in the behavioral health unit at San Francisco’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. “That could be very dangerous, since we have patients who could hurt themselves or others.”

The nurses were joined at a spirited City Hall rally by Art Pulaski, head of the California Labor Federation, and Sharon Cornu and Shelley Kessler, heads of the Central Labor Councils in Alameda and San Mateo Counties. Oakland Vice Mayor Jean Quan, Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, and Tim Cromartie, district director for Rep. Barbara Lee, joined them in pledging wholehearted support.

“George W. Bush is trying to put all us workers in the same boat — a sinking ship,” said Pulaski. “Imagine George Bush telling employers there’s a way they don’t have to give you health care any more, there’s a way they can cut back your pensions, there’s a way to keep you from collectively negotiating a wage increase any more. That’s what the George W. Bush plan is.”

To Pulaski’s query, “Are you ready to fight back?” the nurses responded with a resounding “Yes!”

No matter what the NLRB decides, employers do not have to enact the rule, said CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “Basically,” she said, “It’s up to the employers to continue to recognize the union.” DeMoro also warned about employer efforts to split workers, and said an ultimate recourse might have to be striking hospitals throughout the country.

Recent NLRB rulings in other cases, including its denial of union rights to graduate research assistants and disabled workers, and restrictions on organizing rights of temp agency employees, have aroused increased concern about the outcome of the “Kentucky River” and other cases still before the board.

en español: Protestan fallo antilaboral

The art of labor

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:13:00 +0000

ART REVIEW

LOS ANGELES — “At Work” is an artistic chronicle of labor in California, not a dead past, but a living history that continues to evolve and grow. To make its point, the exhibit presents a balance of paintings, prints and drawings alongside a number of photographic works, with contemporary artworks shown alongside creations from times past.

A good portion of the exhibit is by Latino artists and focuses on Mexican American workers, who have undeniably played a major role in the saga of California labor. Their contributions as told through the eyes of artists are well represented in the exhibition, from the varied silkscreen prints celebrating the United Farm Workers to the latest installation piece by Ricardo Duffy commemorating L.A.’s million-person march in support of immigrant workers’ rights.

At the opening I had an opportunity to talk with one of the show’s exhibiting photographers, Gil Ortiz. He told me about the photograph he had taken in 1974 of an agricultural worker bent over in backbreaking labor, digging in California’s fields with a short-handled hoe, a tool that caused arthritis of the spine and ruptured spinal disks for those who used it. The New York Times picked up and published Ortiz’s photo for an article about California’s United Farm Workers union. Of his photo, Ortiz said: “In one picture, I sought to capture the inhumanity of ‘el cortito,’ the crippling short-handled hoe that had come to symbolize stoop labor and the cruel exploitation that the farm workers were fighting. My work follows one history in the tradition of documentary photography, that of allowing images to capture the inhumane treatment of human beings, particularly the exploitation of labor for profit.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, Paul Conrad, saw Ortiz’s photo and based a cartoon upon the arresting image, giving the photographer full credit for inspiring the drawing. Conrad’s cartoon depicted a farm worker as the victim of a violent crime, showing the laborer lying face down amid cultivated rows of crops — a hoe brutally stuck into his bloodied back like a spear. Ortiz’s photo and Conrad’s cartoon brought attention to the misery of agricultural workers, and finally in the mid-1970s the California Supreme Court banned the use of the tool.

I’m continually asked if art makes a difference, if it’s a force capable of changing society, and if it has any power at all outside of itself. I can think of no better example of art’s transformative energy than Gil Ortiz’s photograph — and this exhibit is filled with such images.

“At Work” is not just a consideration of Latino workers and the art created about them. It is, after all, dedicated to the entire working class in all of its diversity. Some of the strongest artworks in the exhibit were created by those American artists belonging to the social realist school of the 1930s, when art and social concerns were inextricably linked. There is much to be learned from the social realist artists of the 1930s, and if just a tiny amount of their idealism, commitment and vision were to rub off on us, we’d all be better off.

Of particular interest to me are the two photographs on display by Dorothea Lange, a personal hero of mine. Her photos are of factory workers leaving their shift, exiting their workplaces en masse, tired looking but also proud, possessing an inner strength that makes them appear implacable. Gazing at the workers in Lange’s photos, looking smart in their work clothes and wearing optimistic faces or grim expressions, I was overwhelmed with empathy, but also struck at how different U.S. workers seem today.

“Solidarity,” my own painting on display in the exhibit, in part addresses that dissimilarity — but globalization, technology and other changes in the work environment not only continue to place great pressures upon labor, they challenge artists to comprehend and help make clear the evolving situation.

For more information on “At Work,” including a full listing of participating artists, a schedule of public events, and maps to the Pico House, please visit www.art-for-a-change.com/exhibits/atwork.htm.

“At Work: The Art of California Labor,” was originated by the California Historical Society and the San Francisco State University and curated by Mark Dean Johnson, director, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University.

The L.A. show was expanded to an additional 30 artists and 40 pieces of art as well as nine archival posters. The exhibit was made possible through the generous support of El Pueblo Park Association and is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, The Historic Italian Hall Foundation and the Echo Park Film Center.

The exhibition tour is coordinated by the California Exhibition Resources Alliance and is funded through the James Irvine Foundation.

At Work: The Art of California Labor

Through Aug. 14

Curated by Mariann Gatto

and Shervin Shahbazi

The Pico House Gallery,

Olvera St., Los Angeles

Open daily, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Houston bakers win union

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:07:00 +0000

Workers’ Correspondence

The labor upsurge sweeping the U.S. and the world has not left Houston behind. On June 30 at about midnight, union representative Cesar Calderon announced that the Fiesta Mart Inc. bakery commissary workers here voted 54-52 to join the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers Local 163. These brave workers faced intimidating and humiliating tactics from the management of Fiesta Mart

The day before the election, their supporters got a taste of that intimidation.

I arrived about 4:45 p.m. for a prayer vigil outside the store on Wirt Road. The diverse group of about 30 women and men included members of the AFL-CIO, UFCW, SEIU, UAW and Justice for Janitors. Participants holding large placards each with a single letter on it, arranged themselves to spell out “Sí se puede.” Sam Dunning, director of the Office of Justice and Peace of the Galveston-Houston Catholic Diocese, led the prayer service before an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe as we held lit candles.

In the middle of the service, John Valentine Jr. arrived and presented his business card, which read “Loss Prevention Property Manager” for Fiesta. Soon after, a security guard arrived in a golf cart. Valentine told us we could not stand on Fiesta’s parking lot and ordered participants onto the sidewalk next to a busy street. As Dunning prayed and cars whizzed by, Valentine threatened to have our cars towed off from the lot and to call the Houston Police Department. Then he got on his cell phone. One of the participants shouted at him, “Sir, I’m a customer.” When the prayer vigil ended at 5:30 p.m. as planned, I noticed that a tow truck was arriving.

The bakers join other grocery workers in Houston who have recently formed unions including thousands of building janitors and workers at the Hiltons America. The United Food and Commercial Workers is actively organizing Fiesta’s grocery.

— Paul Hill

Protesters to Bush, Talent: Show us the raise!

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:57:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS — Over 600 trade unionists, community activists, peace activists and students protested President Bush’s visit here June 28. Bush was in town for a $2,000-a-plate fund-raiser for right-wing Missouri Sen. Jim Talent, who faces strong opposition from Democrat Claire McCaskill, the state auditor.

According to John Antonich from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, Meat Cutters Local 88, “We’re protesting President Bush and Senator Talent because of the wage issue. We need a raise. Working families, here and all over the country, need a raise.”

Bush has repeatedly fought federal minimum wage increases, while Talent has opposed state minimum wage initiatives.

Recently though, the Give Missouri a Raise Coalition led a successful grassroots campaign to put a minimum wage initiative on the ballot. They collected over 210,000 signatures in just over five weeks.

Tony Condra, secretary treasurer of SEIU Local 2000, a member of the coalition, told the World, “We’re just getting started. We want to give Bush and Talent an example of what to expect this November. It’s time for a change. And we’re going to help make it happen.”

Peace was also a major theme of the protest. Recent Missouri polls show Bush losing ground because of his “stay the course” stance on Iraq. In fact, 54 percent of Missouri’s likely voters said they did not think the war in Iraq is worth it. Sixty percent of likely voters are calling for at least some troops to come home. And only 6 percent of Missourians think the war has made America safer.

According to the Rev. Audrey Hollis, the Bush administration has lost whatever legitimacy it once had. “They do not represent the majority of the people, the will of the people,” she told the World. “Real democracy hears the voice of the people.”

Connecting the minimum wage issue and the war in Iraq to the midterm elections, Hollis continued: “We have to use the only tool we have. The elections are a tool that we have to use to our fullest.”

“Our voice is the voice of the American people,” said Antonich. “Not the voice of right-wing extremism.”

The Bush fund-raiser garnered over $1 million for Talent. Across town, in the working-class neighborhood of Overland, McCaskill held a $10 a plate fundraiser for Missouri war veterans.