People Before Profit blog

Union discord is exception rather than rule

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:51:00 +0000

Some good news came recently under the category of labor unity.

The Service Employees and the California Nurses Association have ended a yearlong jurisdictional dispute, agreeing to work together to unionize hospital workers and push for universal health coverage.

Their agreement, announced March 19, calls for coordination in contract talks and in fighting for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that makes it easier to unionize, and for single-payer health care legislation.

The agreement between SEIU and the nurses reflects a larger, more pronounced overall trend toward unity in the labor movement, apparent even during the 2005 split-off of several unions from the AFL-CIO.

At that time, several unions affiliated with the then-63-member AFL-CIO pulled out over issues related to structure, governance, finance and programs. They formed the Change to Win federation.

During those days, numerous media outlets that had never covered labor meetings before flocked to national labor events hoping to show some political blood and gore.

The same thing may happen today.

For example, delegates claiming to represent 150,000 members of Unite Here voted March 21 in Philadelphia to secede from that union and affiliate with, though not actually join, SEIU. They set up a new organization called Workers United.

The Unite Here board, meanwhile, voted to withdraw from Change to Win, of which SEIU is the largest member, and has opened talks on rejoining the AFL-CIO.

Unite merged with Here in 2004. Reflecting on the current strife, some union leaders have noted that sometimes mergers don’t work.

However, a number of published reports focus on the splits without looking at the longer-term trend towards unity in the labor movement.

“Now is the time to bring the union movement back together,” the AFL-CIO declared in a March 4 statement authorizing discussions aimed at reuniting its 56 unions with those of Change to Win. The AFL-CIO Executive Council voted, at its March meeting in Miami, to authorize unity discussions that had already begun.

“The economic crisis facing American workers provides us with clear authorization to act for labor unity,” the Miami resolution noted.

In January, the presidents of 12 of the country’s largest unions called for reuniting the labor movement. Participating in their unity meeting were the presidents of five of the Change to Win’s seven unions and six AFL-CIO unions, and National Education Association President Dennis Van Roeckel. His 3.2-million-member union is the nation’s largest and has always remained outside any labor federation.

Leaders of several Change to Win unions have said for quite a while now that they see little advantage in maintaining a separate labor federation.

The call for reunification also came after clear signals from the Obama administration that it agreed with unions that labor’s interests would be best served in the coming period if there was a united movement.

This unity effort is “welcomed by local labor movements and stands to benefit all working people in this country,” Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said Jan. 8. “With a united labor movement, we will be in a better position to make real differences for working families across this great country.”

The 12 union presidents at the January meeting said: “The goal of the meeting is to create a unified labor movement that can speak and act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans. While we represent the largest labor unions, we recognize that unity requires broad participation.”

Member unions of both federations have drawn closer together in the past few years as they have worked in common on organizing, for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and for national health care.

And almost every union in the country, including the few that have been involved in disputes with other unions, mounted what was perhaps the biggest, most united effort ever in labor history to elect Barack Obama in 2008.

Labor joined with civil and immigrant rights groups, women’s organizations, religious leaders and many others in that historic election. The success of that effort has increased momentum for unity of action on a wide range of issues throughout the labor movement and with allies.

While the road to labor unity has obstacles, the force of necessity is more powerful.

jwojcik @ pww.org

Millions of auto jobs hang on governments GM, Chrysler decision

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:11:00 +0000

Reposted from www.laborradio.org As millions of workers whose jobs depend on them anxiously await government action this week on more loans for GM and Chrysler, President Obama is expected to announce that more money will flow to the U.S. automakers.

But Obama says the companies have work to do on their cost-cutting restructuring to be sustainable for the future. That will mean more painful sacrifice from a unionized workforce that has already given huge wage and benefits concessions.

A painful sacrifice not demanded of the fat-cat employees of AIG and other financial institutions. The federal government announcement expected Monday will demand more concessions from union workers, bondholders and others in the auto industry in order to get more federal loans.

The threat of possible bankruptcy still hangs over both U.S. auto companies. GM and Chrysler have gotten over $17 billion in government loans. GM says it needs another $16.6 billion, Chrysler another $5 billion to get them through this recession. The UAW is still negotiating with GM and Chrysler over funding for retiree health care.

Late-breaking details on Obama's auto industry plan: The Obama administration auto task force has rejected the viability of plas of both GM and Chrysler and is threatening 'structured bankruptcy' for both companies unless they can reach deals to become viable entities. GM is reportedly being loaned 'adequate capital' from the government for 60 days to come up with more cost-cutting and to re-work a viability plan.

Chrysler, the President is expected to announce, is not viable as a stand-alone company and has until April 30 to cut a deal to merge with Fiat. If that deal fails , the government will not loan Chrysler any more money. The Obama administration says a 'structured bankruptcy' is still possible for one or both companies so they can 'get rid of old liabilities' - meaning pensions and health care for retirees are at serious risk. GM CEO Rick Waqoner is also being forced out.

Iraqi teachers union under attack

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:09:00 +0000

(UnionBook) The Iraqi Teachers Union is facing extreme attack from the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has appointed an official body and granted it the authority to take over the union. This government body demanded that the leadership of the union must hand over the keys to its headquarters along with membership and other records.

The government claims it wants the union to hold national elections and that the current leadership are not allowed to stand for re-election.

It is worth noting that the ITU has already held two national conferences since 2003 with a third emergency conference in late 2007 to elect a new president, brother Jasim Al Lami.

This [government action] is a clear violation and interference in the internal democratic affairs of the union by the current Iraqi government. The ITU leadership has refused to hand over the union and is ready to struggle to preserve the independence of the ITU. The leadership of the union said they will hand over the union only to a newly elected leadership at in open national conference organized by the ITU. The ITU leadership, because of its firm but principled position, is under the threat of prison sentence.

The Iraqi government has continued to be hostile to free trade unionism, despite the huge support it received from the unions in Iraq ever since 2003. The Iraqi government not only refused to abolish Saddam’s Hussein restrictive anti-union law but in fact it has used it against the Iraqi nascent democratic unions, and has been reluctant to enact an internationally recognized labor code, but further it issued in 2005 another restrictive order that took over the assets and monies of the unions.

The Iraqi trade union movement (the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, GFIW) has submitted a complaint against the Iraqi government to the International Labor Organization (ILO) and I believe the ILO has censured the Iraqi government over its violation of trade unions rights in Iraq and called on the government to back off and hence allow the unions in Iraq to organize openly and freely.

The current attempts by the Iraqi government to take over the union are not just illegitimate and unacceptable but blatant interference and are a clear violation of the Iraqi Constitution that guarantees workers the right to organize.

The ITU will resort to all means and activities guaranteed by the Iraqi Constitution to defend its right to organize teachers openly and freely.

The ITU will organize protests, strikes and file lawsuits against all these undemocratic procedures that are dictatorial-inspired culture.

The ITU held a national protest in central Baghdad on March 21, 2009, to highlight the issues it is facing but has unfortunately been subjected to abuses by the Iraqi security forces. The ITU, while it deplores and condemns the practice of the security forces, is adamant to carry on with struggle and hence is organizing another national protest with a major demonstration in central Baghdad on March 28. The ITU is calling on trade unions supporters across the globe to raise their voices against these undemocratic practices by the elected government of Iraq.

----- Abdullah Muhsin is a spokesperson for the General Federation of Iraqi Workers, and the British representative of the Iraqi Teachers Union. This article was originally posted at www.unionbook.org.

Cintas: Trying to have its cake and eat it too

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:12:00 +0000

Eleazar Torres-Gomez is dead. On March 6, 2007, working alone in an industrial laundry facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma owned by major uniform and laundry service corporation, Cintas, Torres-Gomez was caught in a massive industrial laundry machine and killed.

'Eleazar Torres-Gomez didn't have to die,' says a new video produced by BraveNewFilms for a coalition of labor unions in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, a law that would remove barriers to unionization.

Union contracts typically require companies like Cintas to enforce federal safety and health regulations and follow basic safety procedures that could have prevented Torres-Gomez's death. For instance, union contracts covering industrial facilities like Cintas' Tulsa plant might have required another person to have worked with Torres-Gomez who could have shut down the equipment before it killed or injured him.

The union video reported that more than two dozen similar incidents that led to Torres-Gomez's death occurred in the weeks prior to the accident.

Despite these dangerous conditions, Cintas has vigorously opposed the right of its employees to join or organize a union. It has also joined a national campaign led and funded by such corporations as Citigroup, a recipient of taxpayer funds in the Wall Street bailout, and Wal-Mart to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.

On its website, Cintas has posted a misleading page that asks readers to 'support Cintas employee-partners' against the Employee Free Choice Act. The action page claims that the Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate a 'secret ballot' process for certifying a union.

At least one Cintas employee, who for obvious reasons preferred to remain anonymous, stated that she believed the company had suggested that employees use the company's website to express opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. Such an action, if true, may be a violation of federal electioneering laws that prohibit employers from pressuring workers to vote or do other political work.

Last year, Wal-Mart employees similarly complained had urged employees to vote for John McCain and to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act.

In addition to possible illegal electioneering, the Cintas website's claim about the Employee Free Choice Act is a blatant misrepresentation of the bill. According to the authors of the bill, the law would allow workers to use one of two existing methods for certifying the union: a secret ballot or a so-called card check procedure, which allows workers to certify a union simply by having a majority of the people in a workplace sign membership cards.

Aramark, a Cintas competitor, agreed to the card check method to recognize a union in its laundry facilities in 2008.

Cinats has opposed unionization at its plants since the late 1990s. It has racked up a , safety and health charges, and environmental pollution fines, as well.

Other connections

Cintas' misleading campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act has angered postal workers. Cintas owns Brookfield Uniforms, the unionized uniform company that exclusively sells uniforms to postal workers. (Other Cintas uniform subsidiaries do robust business with police, fire fighters and nurses.)

Although it isn't the only company that sells uniforms to postal workers, Brookfield Uniforms sales agents have direct access to postal workers to sell their products. This has been a lucrative business for Brookfield.

But when National Association of Letters Carriers (NALC) President William H. Young found out about Cintas' opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, he fired off a sharp letter of rebuke to the Cintas subsidiary in February and followed that with an article on the subject in NALC's national publication.

In his article, Young pointed out the lies on the Cintas webpage and said, 'apparently Cintas sees nothing wrong with both lying to its 'employee-partners' and trashing its customers and their unions.'

'Perhaps letter carriers and other uniformed workers should think twice about rewarding such chutzpah the next time they decide which uniform manufacturers to patronize,' Young added.

In reply, Brookfield Uniforms General Manager John Jared tried to assuage Young's anger. Seeking to distinguish his company's views about unions and those of Brookfield's parent company, Jared wrote, 'Brookfield Uniforms supports the labor movement's continued efforts to ensure that hard-working men and women achieve the pay, healthcare and retirement they deserve.'

Jared's letter went on to express support for the Employee Free Choice Act, 'which would make union membership more readily accessible to millions of individuals.' He made no mention of Cintas' misleading claims about the bill or its role in opposing it.

Since Brookfield's response supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, the NALC has since withdrawn its suggestion to letter carriers to purchase their uniforms elsewhere. In a telephone interview with the World, NALC spokesperson Drew Von Bergen said, 'While we still think the stance of the parent company (Cintas) is abhorrent, we don't want to hurt the unionized employees at Brookfield since that company has withdrawn its opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.'

Unions save lives

According to US government data, more than 5,500 workers were killed in industrial accidents in 2008.

If the provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act had already been the law, Cintas workers would have long ago formed a union in their workplace. In addition to better compensation, a union contract probably would have guaranteed improved safety conditions in Cintas facilities.

With better safety training and a contractual obligation to keep additional workers on the shop floor at all times, Eleazar Torres-Gomez might not be dead today.

See a video about Cintas and the Employee Free Choice Act here:

Unions to G20: Half measures wont fix broken global economy

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:39:00 +0000

BRUSSELS, Belgium — In a worldwide push for action by G20 governments to pull the global economy out of recession and chart a new course for job creation, financial regulation and global governance, trade unions across the world delivered a common set of demands to their national governments this week. The five-point union plan sets out the actions needed to tackle the crisis and build a fairer and more sustainable world economy for the future.

It calls for:

* a coordinated international recovery and sustainable growth plan to create jobs and ensure public investment;

* nationalization of insolvent banks and new financial regulations;

* action to combat the risk of wage deflation and reverse decades of increasing inequality;

* far-reaching action on climate change;

* a new international legal framework to regulate the global economy along with reform of the global financial and economic institutions (IMF, World Bank, OECD, WTO).

The “Global Unions G20 London Declaration,” developed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), sets out the steps which need to be taken by the G20 in cooperation with other governments.

It was presented by national trade union movements to their governments March 23, and will be formally submitted to the G20 Leaders’ Summit in London on 2 April.

Trade unions from around the world will be joining their colleagues from the British Trades Union Congress in a huge civil society mobilization planned for London on March 28, to press home the need for coordinated global action by governments.

“If the G20 governments in London are only able to agree on half-measures, they will have failed to meet their responsibilities. As the world’s largest economies, they have the responsibility and the possibility to replace the failed neo-liberalism of the past with a whole new direction for globalization,” said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.

Focus on job creation, public investment

Recovery and sustainable growth can be achieved, according to the global unions’ declaration, but only if the focus is on job creation and public investment, active labor market policies, extending social safety nets and special measures for developing and emerging economies. The trade unions also put forward an eight-point specific action plan for global financial regulation, with immediate action to nationalize insolvent banks.

“Weak or non-existent regulation of banking and financial activity turned the world economy into an anything-goes casino, plunging the world into deep recession and causing the loss of tens of millions of jobs. This needs to be fixed urgently. Another main pillar of recovery and reform, creating decent, sustainable jobs and boosting purchasing power, must also be given priority attention at the G20,” said John Evans, general secretary of the TUAC.

The London Declaration points to the real risk of wage deflation, and highlights the fact that growing income inequality across the world has been a major contributor to the current recession, as workers’ purchasing power has been insufficient to help maintain demand for goods and services. Ensuring that all workers have the right to collective bargaining, and strengthening wage-setting institutions, will establish a decent floor in labor markets and feed economic stimulus through more household buying power. This is closely linked to the broader requirement for reform of the IMF, World Bank, WTO and OECD, with the inclusion of the International Labor Organization at the center of an effective and accountable system of global governance.

‘Discredited system’ needs ‘complete overhaul’

“Financial regulation is essential, but it is not enough,” said Ryder. “The new global governance must be based on a strong pillar of social rights, including crucially the ILO’s core labor standards. The real economy, decent work and poverty reduction can no longer be left at the fringe of global policy. The G20 should not limit its horizons by simply making marginal changes to a discredited system. It needs to lead a complete overhaul in the way the world economy is run. Those who think that we can return to business as usual are seriously mistaken.”

The union proposals also focus on the urgent need for impetus to tackle climate change, given the enormous environmental, social and economic costs of inaction. Already, governments should be using coordinated global fiscal response to the economic crisis to set the world on a “green economy” path. Creation of green jobs, and action to ensure “just transition” in communities and sectors affected by the move to environmentally-friendly production, are central to achieving the levels of greenhouse gas reduction needed, and will contribute to pulling the world out of recession.

“Governments have the levers available now to turn the world towards a green growth path. Failure to take this opportunity would be a tragedy for humankind, and for the future of the planet,” said Evans.

The ITUC represents 170 million workers in 312 affiliated national organizations from 157 countries.

UPDATE GAO: Labor Department failed miserably in enforcing wage laws

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:45:00 +0000

Original source:

UPDATE: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced the department’s Wage and Hour Division will add 250 new investigators, a staff increase of more than a third. The agency already has begun the process of adding 150 new investigators to its field offices. In addition, another 100 investigators will be hired to ensure that contractors on economic recovery projects comply with the applicable laws. This is a big step in the right direction to rebuild the agency, which lost more than 200 investigators during the Bush administration.

The federal agency that is supposed to protect workers and enforce minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws is failing miserably, leaving low-income workers vulnerable to wage theft. In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division “has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn.”

GAO investigators posing as fictitious complainants filed 10 common complaints with Wage and Hour district offices across the country. In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that underage children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery.

In another case, a Labor Department investigator lied about looking into the case at all. And when a GAO investigator posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the Miami field office failed to return his calls for four months. When it did, the report said, an official told him it would take eight to 10 months before they would even begin investigating his case.

The GAO also identified 20 cases affecting at least 1,160 real employees whose employers were inadequately investigated. For example, GAO found cases where it took more than a year for the Wage and Hour Division to respond to a complaint, cases closed based on unverified information provided by the employer, and cases dropped when the employer did not return phone calls.

At a hearing today on the GAO report, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said there is a pattern of inaction in properly addressing thousands of cases involving overtime, minimum wage and child labor violations. According to Miller:

These violations of the law are not trivial. Those most vulnerable to wage theft are likely bearing the brunt of our nation’s economic crisis. Families where a breadwinner has his or her wages stolen still have rent to pay, mouths to feed, children to clothe and medicine to buy. They can’t afford to be paid less than what the law says.

Simply put, when a business pockets wages due to its workers, it is theft. And it is illegal.

Such wage theft is an epidemic in the country, says Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and author of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It.

If the question is whether the Wage and Hour Division is doing important work, the answer is “yes.” If the question is if the Department of Labor is effectively enforcing the wage and hour laws, the answer must be a resounding “no.”

There are several ways to solve the problem, Bobo says, but the first priority has to be getting more wage and hour investigators.

There are less than 750 wage and hour investigators for 130 million workers. It’s just not enough. They can’t possibly do the job.

Last year, the GAO reported that under the Bush administration, the number of wage and hour inspectors dropped from 942 to 732. At the same time, the number of investigations into employers’ refusal to pay minimum wage, overtime or even any wages at all has dropped from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 last year.

In a statement, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis says she is boosting the Wage and Hour Division investigative staff by more than one-third.

I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid at least the minimum wage, that those who work overtime are properly compensated, that child labor laws are strictly enforced and that every worker is provided a safe and healthful environment.

Labor to Big Biz: You wont derail employee free choice!

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:55:00 +0000

The labor movement remains undaunted in its push for the Employee Free Choice Act despite the defection of Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, the only Republican member of the Senate who had supported the measure. Specter announced March 24 that he will now oppose the legislation.

Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, described the defection as a result of “corporate America’s increasingly desperate efforts to maintain their destructive stranglehold on our economy and on our lives. They have lied over and over ad nauseam about the Employee Free Choice Act and they have tried to bully U.S. Senators just as they do workers who try to form unions. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to obfuscate, distract, and confuse the public and lawmakers.”

The right wing drive has reached into the Republican primary elections in Pennsylvania where the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows that Specter may have difficulty keeping his seat in 2010. He’s trailing former Congressman Pat Toomey 41 to 27 percent in the Republican primary.

Sources in the labor movement say that union leaders had met with the senator to assure him that, had he remained a supporter of employee free choice, labor would have worked to get union members to cross over from the Democratic Party to vote for him in the Republican primary.

Union leaders believe that, despite the setback with the loss of Specter, who was a cosponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act two years ago, labor has what it takes to win passage of the measure.

“What grassroots American movement can, in the span of one week, run 57 letters to the editor in newspapers across America, send 14,000 handwritten letters to 10 U.S. senators, and simultaneously plan 35 grassroots advocacy events with workers in 10 states? America’s labor movement can,” Acuff said.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said that while Specter’s cave-in to corporate lobbyists is disappointing, it won’t blunt the momentum behind the fight to protect the right of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.

“The fact is the Employee Free Choice Act has more support than ever,” Sweeney said, “with large majorities in both houses of Congress, the president and vice president, and 73 percent of the public. We do not plan to let a hardball campaign from big business derail the Employee Free Choice Act or the dreams of workers.”

Specter’s main excuse for backing down was that “it is not best to consider measures that would increase unionization during a recession.” The labor movement’s position is that, historically, the nation’s most important labor law reforms have been made during tough economic times. The National Labor Relations Act, which made encouragement of collective bargaining rights the official policy of the government, was enacted during the Great Depression. Labor’s position is that the higher wages and better benefits that would result from greater union density would provide the economy with the boost that it needs.

There is evidence that this point of view is taking hold well beyond the ranks of the labor movement.

The Wall Street Journal admitted on its editorial page recently that the Employee Free Choice Act would not destroy secret ballot elections.

The Economic Policy Institute recently released a study by John DiNardo, professor of Economics and Policy at the University of Michigan, that says unions do not harm businesses and do not destroy jobs.

CNBC’s strongly pro-business host, Erin Burnett, said on Meet the Press, recently, that the “populist rage” sweeping America results from 30 years of stagnant and declining wages, anger over CEOs making 400 times what the average worker earns, and from a recession created, at least in part, by a lack of demand and buying power.”

Growing support for the Employee Free Choice Act has forced even sections of big business to put forward what they describe as “compromise measures.”

Starbucks, Costco and Whole Foods have endorsed their own version of labor law reform which leaves in place the company-dominated elections and includes no requirements for companies to negotiate once a union is formed.

“Though their so called compromise is totally inadequate,” Acuff said, “it does signal that the ranks of corporate America have broken down as the passage of employee free choice becomes more inevitable.

“It is a rare, beautiful thing when we see the class solidarity of the upper classes break down. Sometimes it mistakenly seems that the class solidarity of the upper classes is the most powerful thing in our political economy. Of course, it isn’t as we learned in November of 2008 and are learning again today.”

In tiny RI, jewelry workers fight mighty battle

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:55:00 +0000

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Jobs with Justice has launched a national campaign for justice for 280 workers here who found their workplace padlocked with no warning two months ago.

Thirteen of the workers were arrested March 19 as they protested the auctioning off of their plant’s assets.

As bidders drove into the company parking lot in Mercedes and BMWs, about 200 picketing workers and supporters greeted them chanting, “Pay us what you owe us. We’ll go away when we get our pay.”

In waves, workers sat down in the road before they were handcuffed and taken away in police vans. Among those arrested was Shirley Samayoa, a silver-haired grandmother who had worked at the plant for 27 years.

After being held in cells for several hours, the 13 were charged with disorderly conduct and released. Greg Pehrson, an organizer with Fuerza Laboral, a local worker rights group, said the workers would plead “not guilty” at their March 26 court date, “as we believe Founders Equity are the only ones guilty of a crime here.”

The non-union Colibri Group factory was shut down by Founders Equity, a New York private equity firm that acquired control of the company a few years ago. The workers at Colibri, a manufacturer of jewelry, cigarette lighters and clocks, received no advance notice, and were paid only through Jan. 14, the day of the closing. They and their supporters say this is a clear violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, passed in 1988 and known as the WARN Act, which requires 60 days’ notice for layoffs involving 100 workers or more.

A court-appointed receiver conducted the auction of the company’s assets, and will use the proceeds to pay off the firm’s debts.

The Colibri workers say they should be first on the list to be paid.

Organized as Colibri Workers for Rights and Justice, they have won the backing of the Providence City Council and the Rhode Island General Assembly, which this month passed resolutions supporting their struggle.

At a rally here two days before the auction, some workers wore homemade headbands declaring, “Founders Equity broke the law.”

“They wiped their feet on us and told us to go away,” said 33-year Colibri worker Evelyn Rozzero. “We’re not going away.” Founders Equity “robbed this company, destroyed it,” she said angrily. “They took the money and ran.”

Her coworker Joyce Burnham described the “terrible” feeling when she received a phone call telling her the company would close the next day. “I’m going to be 62,” she said. “Who’s going to hire me?”

“So many times we went to work when we were sick, to help them get rich,” Yannery Sarit told the crowd, speaking in Spanish. “They have no respect for our dignity as workers.”

Samayoa told how the workers came together to fight for what they are owed. She compared it to “the story we tell our children of the tortoise and the hare.” The tortoise “took little steps that get us to the finish line,” she declared. “That’s what the Colibri workers have to do.”

“We have to band together,” she said.

They were joined by AFL-CIO and SEIU leaders, legislators and other supporters. Mark Mancinho of the state AFL-CIO announced the federation was donating $1,000 to the workers’ campaign and said it was “prepared to stand, sit with you until economic justice is achieved.”

Last month, a judge confirmed two big banks, HSBC and Sovereign, as “secured creditors,” putting them first in line to be paid from Colibri’s assets.

HSBC received more than $3 billion in taxpayer money from the federal bailout of insurance giant AIG last fall, according to documents released this month by AIG.

“The courts are auctioning off Colibri’s assets — equipment, goods, and licenses — to pay back the banks, HSBC and Sovereign, while Colibri workers have been promised nothing,” Jobs with Justice notes.

“It’s the same story everywhere today. The banks get bailed out and paid off, while the people who made the products that built the Colibri Group’s internationally known name, people who dedicated decades of their lives in service to Colibri, are left with nothing.”

The Colibri workers are a diverse group, including Latinos, whites, Haitians, Southeast Asians, East Asians and Portuguese people.

They are filing claims collectively with the receiver through a pro-bono attorney, said Pehrson. The lawyer is also preparing a federal WARN Act violation lawsuit against Founders Equity.

At Providence City Hall earlier this month, Councilman Luis Aponte thanked the workers for taking a stand.

“There is a belief by those in power that workers are a resource that can be done away with — a disposable and dispensable part of the global economy,” Aponte said. “The fact that you are standing up and saying … that workers are the ones who make the wealth and cannot be tossed away like a used up resource — thank you. I am in awe of you and impressed by your willingness to fight for the justice you deserve.”

The Jobs with Justice campaign supporting the Colibri workers is available at www.unionvoice.org/jobswithjustice.

suewebb @ pww.org

Fight for Employee Free Choice continues despite Specters flip

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Even though he was a sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act in 2003, supported the bill again in 2005 and voted against a Republican filibuster of it in 2007, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) announced today that he would support a filibuster this year in an attempt to block the legislation from coming to a Senate floor vote.

Specter made a statement today about the failures of America’s labor laws—failures that make the Employee Free Choice Act necessary—but he also advanced falsehoods spread by corporate front groups. The statement shows that he’s listening not to his constituents, but to the big-money interests who are hoping to prevent workers from exercising their basic freedom to form unions and bargain.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says that while Specter’s cave-in to corporate lobbyists is disappointing, it won’t blunt the momentum behind this critical bill to protect worker’s freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

Today’s announcement by Sen. Specter—a sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act who voted for cloture in 2007—is frankly a disappointment and a rebuke to working people, to his own constituents in Pennsylvania and working families around the country.

The fact is the Employee Free Choice Act has more support than ever—large majorities in both houses of Congress, the president and vice president, 73 percent of the public. We will continue to work with Democrats and a number of Republicans to create common-sense solutions to the decades of corporate power.

We do not plan to let a hardball campaign from Big Business derail the Employee Free Choice Act or the dreams of workers.

There are deep flaws in our labor laws, as Sen. Specter acknowledged today. The freedom to join together and bargain with employers for fair wages and better benefits is critical to rebuilding our middle class—and now is exactly the time to do it, as we begin to revive our economy in a way that works for everyone. In the coming weeks, we will be escalating our campaign and finding the best ways forward to a balanced, strong economy.

Auto task force should worry about workers shrinking wallets

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:42:00 +0000

DETROIT — As U.S. auto companies work to meet the government’s March 31 deadline for showing progress in their restructuring and turnaround plans, the pressure on workers and their union to accept concessions has been intense.

More grim news came last month when General Motors announced it was shedding another 47,000 workers worldwide, one-half expected to be in the U.S. An additional five U.S. plants (on top of the nine it announced last year) are set to close. Michigan’s 11.6 percent unemployment rate will undoubtedly go higher.

While President Obama’s auto task force continues to examine the companies’ restructuring plans and works to pressure those who hold GM debt to accept alternatives, the task force and the country as a whole must also be concerned with the shrinking income and growing debt of the autoworkers.

Under the terms of contract concessions the United Auto Workers earlier felt forced to agree to, many new workers will be hired at $14 an hour. With their drastically reduced purchasing power, how will they stimulate the economy, let alone buy new cars?

For example in 2006, the cost of paying for, maintaining and insuring a midsize car came to $12,600 a year here in Detroit — far beyond the budget of someone making $14 an hour.

When I asked one UAW “insider” what the employee car lots of the future would look like he replied, “There will be a lot of used cars.”

Missing from the White House auto task force, he said, is a look at the “bigger pie — what we want transportation to look like in 10 years.” That would involve a combination of mass transit, cars powered by solar, hybrid and electric power, and space for bicycle riders and pedestrians. He said that, while there are some good people on the task force, it should have had union representation and included mayors, people from the community, those who ride mass transit, even bicycle riders.

Meanwhile, future retiree health care benefits may be in jeopardy.

Though Ford has not received federal loans and is not under government mandate to lower its debt, it used the threat of more job losses to win union approval to reopen its 2007 labor contract. Almost 60 percent of the production and skilled trades workers voted to accept a deal which eliminates bonuses and cost-of-living adjustments, ends the jobs bank program, and changes work rules.

Most alarming, it allows Ford to pay up to half of what it owes to the union-run retiree health care trust, VEBA, in stock instead of cash. Beginning next year, that trust will assume responsibility for billions of dollars in annual medical bills for UAW retirees and their dependents.

At the time the VEBA was negotiated, many feared that the projected costs of health care would rise beyond the fund’s capacity to pay. Now that danger is more real as stock is substituted for cash.

At GM the UAW has agreed to similar concessions except for one very large item. GM owes more than $20 billion to the VEBA, and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has vowed not to make a stock-for-cash deal like the one at Ford until GM’s bondholders also accept a stock-for-cash agreement.

But bondholders, who include such large institutional investors as Franklin Resources and Fidelity Investments, hold $27 billion of GM’s debt and have been resisting the auto task force’s mandate to accept $9 billion in cash and the rest in stock equity.

As reported in the Detroit Free Press last week, Steven Rattner, who heads the auto task force, and three other advisers traveled to Detroit to meet with UAW officials, drive an electric Chevrolet Volt prototype and tour Chrysler's Warren, Mich., truck plant. Rattner said the plant tour drove home what was at stake. 'As we went through that assembly plant, you saw real people doing real jobs that are now at significant risk,' he said. 'It reinforced for all of us the importance of doing everything we can to save those jobs.”

Many are asking how we are going to have a sustained recovery when those doing “real jobs” are counted on to purchase new goods but are finding their wallets thinner and thinner.

John Rummel (jrummel @ pww.org) writes for the People’s Weekly World from Michigan.

Small business owners: Employee free choice good for our workers and us

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:15:00 +0000

Corporate leaders are making a lot of unfounded claims that the Employee Free Choice Act would be bad for small businesses. But when you ask many small business owners and entrepreneurs across the country, you’ll hear a different story. They understand the Employee Free Choice Act will help create a stronger economy, with a better-trained workforce and a more economically stable customer base.

During a conference call today hosted by the worker advocacy group American Rights at Work, some of these small business owners spoke up to explain why they support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Ruth Schepp is a business owner in West Fargo, N.D., who employs six people and sees their membership in the Machinists (IAM) union as a way to cooperate with them to build a stronger firm.

Says Schepp: I want my employees to be a part of this company as it grows. I want them to feel that they have a good job, a secure job. Good jobs support families; they support our community.

I want workers to be able to form a union and to have a choice in our economy. They deserve to have the fair chance to form a union without fear.

In Pennsylvania, Jim O’Malley, who owns and runs the Print and Copy Center of Pittsburgh, says he appreciates the training and apprenticeship programs through his employees’ union, which help ensure he has great employees who can contribute to the company’s overall functioning.

Says O’Malley: My employees offer good, productive ideas, and we all work together. We have common goals we work towards.

I look at my employees as a partner. They understand that if the company is successful, they share in that.

Darren Horndasch, the owner of Wisconsin Vision, echoes that sentiment, saying that having a union—Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)—makes his employees more career-minded and invested in providing excellent service. Horndasch says having a union doesn’t undermine his competitiveness; it gives him a competitive edge.

With our employees, we’ve had an opportunity to develop policies and procedures that benefit the company. It’s been an entirely positive experience.

Horndasch says that without a strong middle class, small businesses like his won’t be able to function—and giving people a good union job makes sure they can be part of a strong middle class.

Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says the theory that union membership is bad for small businesses falls apart in the face of real evidence and empirical research. Economic analysts who have studied these issues in depth, Bivens says, agree with small business owners like Schepp, Horndasch and O’Malley. By allowing workers to bargain for better wages and benefits, unions can help build an economy that works for everyone in the long term.

Union membership directly addresses the single largest problem in our economy, which is the rise economic inequality. The research on this is crystal clear.

The last two recessions have been caused by over-leveraging and consumption that rose ahead of income. The Employee Free Choice Act would point us in the direction of economic expansion fueled by income finance, not debt finance.

When you look at both the economic research and the experiences of small business owners who have worked with unions, it’s clear that the scare tactics of anti-Employee Free Choice Act front groups don’t match up to reality.

COMMENTARY: Whats so sacred about a contract?

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:26:00 +0000

Two of the nation’s “big three” auto companies, General Motors and Chrysler, both on the verge of bankruptcy, are asking the government for loans to keep them afloat.

Unlike the insurance giant AIG and the big banks, they are asking for loans, not direct taxpayer handouts that have amounted, thus far, to hundreds of billions of dollars.

In exchange for the loans, the GM and Chrysler execs have, unlike most of their counterparts in the world of finance capital, agreed to reduce their own salaries to one dollar a year.

It’s there, however, that their self-sacrifice stops. After all, they have contracts to uphold.

The CEO’s at the auto companies have not agreed to give up “bonuses.” Even though bonuses far outpace what normal people would consider a hefty salary, bonuses must be preserved, the CEOs say, because they are part of their contracts.

“Contracts are only sacred, these days, if you’re talking about the contracts that CEOs and corporate executives have,” William Alford, president of UAW Local 235 in Hamtramck, Mich., told the World March 23.

“The government has made one of the conditions of those loans that the companies renegotiate the UAW contracts. This says that contracts with workers are not at all sacred. This says to the companies that they will get their loans as a reward for cutting the pay of the workers and forcing the union to pay the costs of health care coverage.”

“Don’t forget,” Alford said, “that when former President Bush offered the first $17 billion in loans to the auto companies, he demanded that the workers’ pay be cut in half. My workers had already been cut from $28 to $14. If you cut their pay in half again, they’d be making less than the minimum wage.”

UAW members, March 9, ratified a new cost cutting agreement with Ford Motor Company, the only one of the big three that has not yet asked for a government loan.

The big fight in the Ford talks was over how the company would pay the union what it owes so that the union can administer health care. The 2007 contract said the company would pay in cash. Ford wanted to change that to paying with stock. The end result was a 50-50 split.

Ford assembly line workers ratified the new pact by 59-41 percent margin and skilled trades workers voted for it by a 58-42 percent margin.

UAW Ford Vice President Bob King said, “the voting shows our members are prepared to make painful sacrifices in order to be part of the solution to the problems facing Ford and the U.S. auto industry.”

GM CEO Rick Wagoner has rejected that line of reasoning, however, and is saying in interviews with a variety of newspapers and magazines that the Ford deal won’t cut it with his company. He wants deeper cuts, he says, and he insists that the union health care fund be funded entirely with company stock, rather than with cash. GM’s stock, like most other stock, is on a downward spiral.

The auto workers have done more than their part in rescuing the nation’s domestic auto industry.

They signed new contracts in 2007 for lower starting pay and smaller health benefits for new hires.

They agreed that the union would take over responsibility for paying out health care benefits.

“It is a damned disgrace,” Alford said, “that when my members at American Axle gave up half their salaries, Dick Dauch, our CEO, paid himself an $8.5 million bonus. And now they want my members to sacrifice even more.”

The conventional wisdom was that union contracts were unbreakable deals. A union contract was supposed to be as good as gold — something that would withstand anything except, perhaps, bankruptcy.

What we have seen since the 2007 give-back contracts in auto is that, as far as corporate executives are concerned, contracts with workers are made to be broken, disregarded, renegotiated or scrapped altogether. Auto companies, airlines, steel companies and many others want to use the current economic crisis to scrap as many contracts as they can.

“In case after case,” Alford said, “We see corporate executives defending their own contracts and their own bonuses. In case after case we see workers, in order to save their companies and their jobs, stepping forward to renegotiate and to make more sacrifices.” Executive contracts, golden parachutes, and bonuses are rarely re-negotiated or given up.

There is a limit to working-class patience, however. Millions are realizing that many corporate executives are doing a bad job. Many believe that without those executives workers might do as well, or better. In short, many are realizing that capitalism sucks.

Report from the front: Workers arrested as factory assets auctioned off

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 04:33:00 +0000

Reposted from rifuture.org

A dozen workers from the Colibri jewelry plant in East Providence, Rhode Island were arrested today as their plant’s assets were auctioned off by a State appointed receiver.

As bidders drove into the company parking lot in their Mercedes and BMWs, about 200 pickets greeted them with chants of “We’ll go away when we get our pay.” In two separate waves workers sat down in the road blocking access to the cars before they were handcuffed and taken away in police vans. Among those arrested was Shirley Samayoa, a silver haired Grandmother who had worked at the plant for more than 30 years.

For more than two months Colibri workers have been organizing to fight back against what they call the companies refusal to follow the Federal WARN act which is supposed to give workers 60 days notice is a factory is going to shut down. Duane Clinker, a pastor at a local church that has hosted some of the workers' meetings said:

The workers of Colibri lost their jobs without notice in violation of Federal law a few months ago. Against all odds, and with the inspiration of those workers in Chicago who took over their factory to make sure the assets were not given away to tycoons, the Colibri workers have stayed together. They describe their struggle as one that is important to all of us, not just to themselves, and they are right.

As the current AIG bonus case demonstrates, the laws are written in these cases of financial distress primarily to protect people with big money. But the Colibri workers are the people who actually created the products that created the wealth for those who owned from a distance. Their payment must come first, not last.

After the closing, the workers, who did not have union representing them, organized with the help of a local workers rights center named Fuerza Laboral and also with the help of Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, the community labor coalition known for militant direct action. Earlier this month, the Providence City Council and the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed resolutions supporting the efforts of the workers to get the pay and benefits they are entitled to.

Kelley Susaro, a Colibri worker, told a local tv reporter that this isn’t the end of the protest.

“Colibri doesn’t treat us right. Its going to teach companies going forward they can’t pull this on their workers”

Unionists protest big bonuses to bad execs

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:20:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Chanting and waving signs saying that it’s time to “take back our economy” for workers, unionists in Washington and dozens of other cities nationwide spent March 19 protesting big bonuses to lousy executives.

Their ire was specifically focused on the $165 million in bonuses distributed to the sharpies at the insurance giant American International Group, which has received $170 billion in federal bailout funds and which is now 80% government-owned.

In Washington, almost 100 people — members of the Service Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers, the Communications Workers and other unions — picketed in front of the building on the capital’s infamous K Street, where AIG lobbyists and other special pleaders have their offices.

Chants of “Hey! Hey! What’s the fuss? Make the economy work for us!” punctuated demands that the bonuses be returned — and that Congress give more power to workers versus executives by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

“We don’t need just restitution, we need prosecution,” said SEIU President Andrew Stern, leader of the D.C. protest.

The bonuses were negotiated in the corporate contracts before the government takeover of the giant insurer, which was deemed “too big to fail,” because it would drag down the rest of the world economy if it did, since it was intertwined with other firms and big banks around the globe.

And most of the money went to AIG execs at the financial unit that speculated in sub-prime mortgages and the flimsy securities based on them. When the sub-prime holders defaulted and the securities tanked, the U.S. got dragged into the current crash.

The unionists’ ire matched that of the country, the Obama administration, and Congress. Democratic President Barack Obama ordered his Treasury Department to probe ways to “claw back” the money.

“As workers are losing their jobs, homes and benefits it is unconscionable that AIG executives — who tanked their own company and the economy — are taking millions of dollars in bonuses from those same workers’ tax dollars,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said before the nationwide protests. “We fully support the efforts to take these bonuses back and return the money to America’s taxpayers. “Any argument that these bonuses ‘must be’ paid because of contracts rings hollow with workers who had to re-negotiate their contracts, salaries, and benefits during these tough economic times,” he added.

The day of the protests, the House passed legislation imposing a 90% tax rate on excessive bonuses to executives at “any firm receiving more than $5 billion” in U.S. aid. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, cracked that states and cities “would probably take the other 10%.”

And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and top Republican Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation taxing not only the executives but the companies — and not just AIG — that got the federal aid and paid out the big money, too. The taxes would be 35% for both companies and individuals of all “retention bonuses,” such as those paid to the AIG executives, and 35% of all other bonuses, too.

The Senate measure would also cap how much money executives can defer, to escape taxes, at $1 million. It would also put in place mechanisms to prevent firms from converting honchos’ bonuses to salaries, thus escaping the taxes on bonuses.

The Washington Post reported March 19 that dozens of companies, not just AIG, paid their executives millions in bonuses even as the firms went financially down the tubes, taking their workers with them.

At one politically connected investment house in the D.C. suburbs, two executives took home $675,000 in bonuses even though the company lost $195 million last year. Fannie Mae, also now government-owned — and which also took a bath in the sub-prime market — is distributing $3.5 million in bonuses, on top of their salaries, to four top executives. Fannie Mae got $15 billion in taxpayer money last year and says it will need even more.

CWA members welcome Obamas Middle Class Task Force to St. Cloud plant

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:15:00 +0000

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (PAI) — Members of Communications Workers of America Local 7304 welcomed Vice President Joseph Biden and members of the Obama administration’s Middle Class Task Force” for a town hall meeting March 19 at their workplace — the New Flyer Bus Co. plant — with positive messages.

New Flyer manufactures buses for some of the largest transit agencies and cities in the United States and Canada and is a leader in the production of hybrid and low-emission vehicles.

Encouraging such manufacturing is part of two key goals of the new Democratic pro-labor administration: Rebuilding U.S. manufacturing, and doing so by creating jobs making “green” products. And CWA won representation at the New Flyer through majority sign-up, which Obama vows to sign as the key part of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The town hall meeting was in a section of the plant where buses are inspected before being shipped to cities around the country. Biden and four Cabinet secretaries — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood – sat on chairs surrounded by workers, community members and four large buses, including one bearing the words, “Clean Air Hybrid Bus.”

“This company is an example of the future,” Biden said, praising the firm’s ability to prosper by developing buses using new, energy-efficient technologies. He and other members Task Force members listed several ways the federal Reinvestment and Recovery Act—the stimulus law—will aid families, businesses and communities.

They also answered questions from the audience, with many focusing on education, health care and the economy.

Company President and CEO Paul Soubry introduced Biden and credited the quality of the company’s workforce and management’s partnership with the CWA as major factors behind its success. The firm employs 650 people at its St. Cloud plant, about 70 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, and another 300 people at its Crookston plant – also a unionized operation – in northern Minnesota.

Thanks in part to the federal stimulus package – which provides funds for cities to invest in transit – the company has a two-year, $4.1 billion backlog of orders, Soubry said. “We plan to add more jobs in America,” he declared.

Local 7304 President Dave Rock, who works in the Crookston plant, joined company executives in welcoming Biden before the start of the town hall meeting. He said the workers in St. Cloud were a little stunned by the sudden celebrity, but enjoyed the attention. “We’re very proud to be a leader in the production of fuel-efficient buses,” Rock said.

Workers, who enjoy good wages and benefits through their union contract, also show pride through a large, yellow and purple CWA Local 7304 banner hanging near the shop floor. “We got that in our last contract negotiations,” Rock said. A similar banner hangs in the Crookston plant, he said.

Workers at the firm’s St. Cloud plant chose union representation through majority sign-up – the method that would become an option for all workers if Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act. President Obama said passage of the law, which would make it easier for workers to join unions, is a priority for his presidency.

Over a 2-week period, the CWA collected cards from workers who said they wanted to join the union. When more than 50% of the workforce had signed cards, they were presented to management, which voluntarily recognized the union. CWA would write that process into federal labor law. But the bill must overcome a planned Senate GOP filibuster to be enacted.

While the Middle Class Task Force members said the Reinvestment and Recovery Act is a key to maintaining and creating good jobs, Biden also cited the importance of the labor movement.

History relates how the Industrial Revolution spurred construction of factories and the advent of many kinds of new jobs, he said. “But it wasn’t until we had unions that they became good jobs,” he added.

Wal-Mart forced to bargain, finally, with Texas meat cutters

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:07:00 +0000

JACKSONVILLE, Texas (PAI) — It took almost nine years, a National Labor Relations Board ruling and several court orders, but Wal-Mart was finally forced to bargain with its unionized meat cutters in Texas.

Talks opened in Jacksonville on March 12, the United Food and Commercial Workers report. Now we’ll see if they get anywhere.

The saga began when the meat cutters in the Wal-Mart store in Jacksonville voted to have UFCW Local 540 represent them. They were the first Wal-Mart workers in the U.S. to vote to unionize.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is notorious for its labor law-breaking and vitriolic anti-union attitudes. But to beat the meat cutters in Tyler, it outdid even itself.

To prevent other meat cutters nationwide from thinking that joining UFCW, which represents thousands of unionized meat cutters at other grocery chains, might be a good idea, Wal-Mart not only shut down the Tyler meat cutting department, it closed all its meat-cutting departments across the U.S. It switched to pre-packaged meat.

And of course the closure in Tyler led to a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Wal-Mart illegally retaliated against the workers for joining the union, followed by repeated long trips to court. Those finally ended late last year when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled for the meat cutters, against Wal-Mart, and upheld the NLRB’s order to the firm to bargain with the union.

“In one of the company’s most audacious displays of hubris, Wal-Mart first ignored the workers, refusing to bargain with them or provide information to their union. Only after the NLRB issued a complaint against Wal-Mart did the company try to move the goalposts by claiming workers in the meat department lost their right to representation because the skilled meat-cutting jobs had been replaced by a prepackaged meat program,” UFCW said.

The appellate ruling tossed out all of Wal-Mart’s excuses, UFCW added. But it said the whole saga proves the need for congressional passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill, labor’s #1 legislative priority, would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing by giving workers—the Wal-Mart meat cutters in this case—the automatic right to unionize when a majority of them sign union authorization cards, if that’s the route to unionization they want.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, the meat-cutters, not Wal-Mart, would decide between recognizing the union via that majority sign-up and recognizing it via the NLRB-run election (which UFCW won).

And the Employee Free Choice Act would deprive Wal-Mart and other firms of the chance to run vicious, often illegal anti-union campaigns, because workers can opt for recognition through majority sign-up before the company’s campaign even begins.

“National and international law protect the right of workers to join an union of their choosing. When the outcome of an election is uncertain for this long in other countries, we call it a coup. When it happens here, it’s just another day on the job for the millions of American workers for whom a voice on the job is being unjustly denied. The story in Jacksonville, while particularly alarming, is far from the only one of its kind,” UFCW said.

“A multi-billion dollar war chest and a team of corporate lobbyists shouldn’t be prerequisites to the free exercise of federally protected workplace rights. Without legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act, workers will continue to fight drawn-out, expensive and—all too often—losing battles against multi-national corporate empires that see them as a liability to be minimized.

“If ever there was a case that demonstrated how utterly bankrupt the current system is, the Jacksonville Wal-Mart case is it,” the UFCW concluded.

But the saga is not over. The union noted that “even after clearing every hurdle Wal-Mart could throw in their path, these workers are still faced with a company across the table that has little legal incentive to deal with them fairly,” because current labor law does not force companies to bargain in good faith with unions.

If Wal-Mart stalls again in Jacksonville, Local 540 has no choice under current labor law but to go back to the NLRB with another complaint—which Wal-Mart can then appeal in the courts should the agency rule against it.

The Employee Free Choice Act would short-circuit that delay, too. It mandates that when the two sides cannot agree on a contract within 120 days of starting bargaining, the issues would be submitted for binding arbitration.

Obama: We should make it easier for workers to organize

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:31:00 +0000

Original source:

Although the focus on the Employee Free Choice Act is on the U.S. House and the Senate, it’s important to remember the reason we’re closer than ever to passing this critical bill is because working people turned out in huge numbers to elect a president who will sign it into law. We got a fresh reminder of that commitment yesterday when Barack Obama paid a visit to Costa Mesa, Calif., to discuss the economy.

In his comments at the Costa Mesa town hall meeting, Obama pointed out that making it easier for workers to form unions is critical to making the economy work for everyone again.

Robert Balgenorth, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of California, was among the attendees, and in a question and answer session, Balgenorth criticized the Bush administration’s failure to enforce prevailing wage laws and other protections for workers. Obama pointed to these protections as key to strengthening the middle class—and added that workers also must have the freedom to form unions if we’re going to build an economy that’s sustainable in the long term:

We think it is important that unions have the opportunity to organize themselves…the business press says that’s anti-business and whenever I hear that I’m always reminded of what Henry Ford said when he first started building the Model T, and he was paying his workers really well. And somebody asked him, they said, “Why are you paying your workers so well?” He said, “Well, if I don’t pay them well, they won’t be able to buy a car.”

…part of the problem with our economy, and the way it was growing, was that wages and incomes for ordinary working families were flat for the entire decade. Now, I don’t need to tell you this because you’ve experienced it in your own lives. You’ve just barely kept up with inflation while people at the very top…were seeing all the benefits.

When I say that we should make it easier for unions to organize, and observe Davis-Bacon [rules that ensure workers on federally funded building projects are paid a fair wage], all I’m trying to do is to restore some balance to our economy so that middle-class families who are working hard…should be able to save, buy a home, go on a vacation once in a while. They should be able to save for retirement, send their kids to college, that’s not too much to ask for. That’s the American dream, and the only way we get there is if we have bottom-up economic growth instead of top-down economic growth.

It should be no surprise at this point that Obama will work to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain—after all, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have pledged their support over the past month—but it’s a delight every time it’s reaffirmed. When the Employee Free Choice Act passes, we have a president who will sign it into law. It’s what millions of workers fought for last year, and it’s what we need to turn around our economy.

New study shows lack of understanding of meatpacking industry and immigration

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Mark Twain once noted, ‘Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.’ This new report by the Center for Immigration Studies is a case study in the misinterpretation and manipulation of data to reach a totally biased and flawed conclusion.

“The report demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the history of the meatpacking industry. Throughout history, immigrants from across the globe have helped strengthen the U.S. meatpacking industry by organizing around increased wages and improved industry standards.

“During the 1980’s, consolidation, mergers and company induced strikes helped drive down wages. Employers forced workers onto the streets to fight unacceptable concessions.. During the strikes, companies aggressively recruited strike breakers—who were not immigrants but individuals who came from the decimated farm industry—to cross the picket lines. Many of these workers soon realized that the jobs were too difficult, particularly at the wages companies were offering, and they left the industry. But the damage was done. Ever since that time, the UFCW has been fighting to rebuild wages and standards for these jobs.

“In the case of Swift, the UFCW had negotiated wage increases prior to the raid. This fact disproves CIS’central argument that wages and benefits increased as a result of a change in workforce at the plant.

“In addition to these historical inaccuracies, the CIS report fails to address the devastating impact that the Swift raid had on thousands of workers – both immigrant and native born. In the aftermath of the raid, the UFCW documented numerous examples of racial profiling, U.S. citizens harassed and detained by armed agents and a sheer disregard for the constitutional rights of workers.

“The UFCW filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of these raids and formed a commission to examine the ramification of ICE raids, including Swift. A report documenting the commission’s findings will be made public in the next few months.

“The raids at Swift, and across the country, have done nothing to protect workers or to raise standards in our industries. They have done nothing to address our broken immigration system.. They have been a complete travesty of justice.

“If our immigration system is going to work for the benefit and betterment of our nation it is critical that our laws are upheld. That applies to both immigrant workers and government agents. If the last eight years have shown us anything, it is that enforcement-only strategies do not work. Yes, we need enforcement, but to truly reform our immigration system, we need to address trade relationships, workforce needs, family unification, legalization, workers’ rights and living standards, and 12 million undocumented individuals suspended on the edge of hope. And we need to do it in a comprehensive manner.

“The enforcement-only stance routinely endorsed by CIS is a short-sighted view that fails to take into account our larger national interest. It is as if they worked backwards on this report. They started from their rigid immigration stance and tried to make the facts fit their view. The problem is that it doesn’t add up. It is basically 16 pages of unproductive scapegoating, cherry picked quotes, and historical misinterpretations.

“The irony is that if you take an objective look at the data being presented, free of the author’s slanted view, it makes a pretty clear and compelling case for comprehensive immigration reform.

“There is the saying that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Well, you can seek out a respected journalist to write a report for the Center for Immigration Studies, but at the end of the day you end up with the same old, tired, anti-immigrant extremist drivel.”

Americas choice: Union, yes!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:48:00 +0000

Why the Employee Free Choice Act will benefit the economy, democracy

Most Americans are working harder than ever as the “good life” they dream about for themselves and their children slips further and further out of their reach.

The problem affects almost everyone, not just union and non-union workers but small businesses and entrepreneurs of all types.

Median household income in 2008 was $2,000 less than it was in 2000, even though worker productivity was up 20 percent during that same period. If income growth had matched growth in productivity, instead of regressing, the average family would have earned $12,000 more than it had in 2000.

This situation has contributed to the building of majority support for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. This includes support from the labor movement and its allies, majorities in both houses of Congress and President Barack Obama.

Small business boost

When workers can join a union the economy will grow again, the bill’s supporters say.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a recent article “the gains workers made in the last century would never have been possible had union organizers not marched and pushed and gone door to door, shop to shop, to stand up for their fellow workers.”

Answering the concerns he has heard from small business owners about the free choice law, Kerry also pointed out that according to a U.S. Small Business Administration report small business bankruptcy rates are lower in states with high unionization rates and higher where workers don’t have a voice. Plus, he said, the Employee Free Choice Act makes no changes to the small business exemptions under our labor laws.

Many small business owners realize that the biggest threat to their success comes from the very forces opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act – big corporations looking for any way possible to drive the little guys out of business.

So why does joining a union help the entire country?

Union members – women and men, immigrant or native born, white, black, Latino, Asian or Native American — earn 30 percent higher wages, on average, and are 60 percent more likely to have employer-based health insurance. This gives them more money to spend in their communities.

The health of the entire economy, backers of free choice say, depends on ending the growing inequality in earning power – an inequality that got worse as anti-labor policies weakened the unions over the last 30 years or more.

The federal stimulus package is a good way to jump-start the economy, but it is not enough to solve the crisis of inequality that has been growing for decades. Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, said recently “Working families were struggling to survive even before the current recession” and the Employee Free Choice Act is necessary because “policies focused only on job growth will simply put us back on the path toward greater inequality. If we truly want to rebuild a good jobs economy that creates jobs, sustains families and sustains dreams, we have to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.”

Making it easier for workers

Essentially, the Employee Free Choice Act makes it easier for men and women to join a union in their workplace. It allows workers to form unions through majority sign-up, helps them secure a contract in a reasonable amount of time and it stiffens penalties against employers who break the law.

The corporate bosses claim they are concerned about “democracy” and “preserving the secret ballot.”

The opposite is true. The Employee Free Choice Act would restore democratic rights put in place by the Wagner Act during the Great Depression. It removes from employers — and restores to workers — the choice of whether to form a union by majority sign-up or election.

The stories on this page show the falsehood of the arguments of opponents who say unions are out to take away workers’ rights to a free election or that it is unions who harass and intimidate workers.

Free choice will help pull our economy out of the abyss by strengthening the labor movement and giving workers a bigger, fairer share of the wealth they produce. What could be more democratic than that?

Fired!

When workers try to organize a union at their workplace, they are too often fired. A newly released report by John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy and Research says firings took place in 30 percent of workplaces where there were union organizing campaigns. Businesses are stepping up their attacks on unions, the report shows.

Phillip Jackson, an apprentice welder and member of Local 630 of the Pipefitters’ union in West Palm Beach told how he was fired from his job at Mechanical Industrial Corp.

“I didn’t do anything in public or at the workplace. I spoke privately, and quietly, with individual co-workers at coffee shops, restaurants or other places away from the company. I didn’t pressure anyone, I just talked about some of the benefits of being in a union. Before I knew it I was called into the manger’s office. He told me that they didn’t want any union people at the place and that I was fired.”

What secret ballot?

Sara Steffens thought the hard part of forming a union was the time spent talking to her newspaper co-workers and collecting signed cards from them seeking union representation.

The CWA News reported that her toughest days, however, were facing six weeks of anti-union propaganda and scare tactics before the union election. The bosses told workers they’d have to schedule their bathroom breaks through the union, that there wouldn’t be any more raises, that workers couldn’t have flexible shifts or expect good story assignments, that a contract could take years – or forever – to bargain and layoffs were likely.

Despite all this, the 230 workers at nine MediaNews-owned papers in California voted for the union. Just two weeks after the victory, 29 workers were fired, two thirds of them union supporters. Steffens, an award-winning reporter at the Contra Costa Times, was among them.

The company used its captive audience meetings to identify union activists or people suspected of supporting the union. Lower level editors were questioned about these individuals.

“We had a manager who admitted that he was being asked for daily counts of where everyone he supervised stood. How is that a secret ballot?” Steffens asked.

Locked out after going union

Gail Warner, from southern Illinois, says if free choice was the law she and her 56 co-workers would not have ended up out on the street, without a job for three years.

Warner was employed as an outpatient secretary at Heartland Human Services in Effingham, Ill. when, in October 2005, the company began slashing benefits and forcing workers to work overtime with no extra pay.

“I realized,” she said, “that only with a union could we fight back and we won an election for representation by AFSCME in 2006. Since then, the company has refused to negotiate.”

The Employee Free Choice Act would end the ability of employers to drag their feet in contract negotiations once a union is voted in.

After one full year of trying to get the company to talk, the workers went out on strike for a year. Then Warner and her co-workers voted to go back without a contract. They thought after years of foot dragging, Heartland might be ready to talk.

No such luck. “Heartless (sic) Human Services locked us out and we’ve been on the picket line ever since,” said Warner.

‘Companies hold all the cards’

“The irony of it all – Bush got on TV and said we were in Iraq because we had to get rid of weapons of mass destruction, stop terrorism and spread democracy over there. I served my country honorably over there only to come back home to a place where, as a worker, I don’t even have the right to union representation. The companies hold all the cards. They do us serious hurt if we try to exercise our rights,”

The words were those of U.S. Army Sgt. Jose Hill, 30, a resident of Chicago’s South Side and a Comcast technician who belongs to Local 21 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Comcast is “punishing the union workers at its one union site in Chicago by paying them less” than it pays workers at its two non-union sites.

“They trample on their workers in order to keep the others from invoking their right to join a union,” he said.

Forty percent pay cut

Forty percent pay cuts and rules that allow anyone to be fired at whim motivated Angela Winningham, a Delta airline flight attendant for 21 years, to urge co-workers to support unionization at the newly merged Delta-Northwest Airline.

She said management at the “new” Delta treated itself to huge executive pay hikes as it slashed the wages of its workers. The president who walked away from “old” Delta, Leo Mullen, left with a $90 million golden parachute.

There are 114 labor law violations pending against the airline, all held up by the National Labor Relations Board under the Bush administration.

Winningham was forced to set up a table with union literature far away from where most workers pass, in a “non-work” area at the airport. A ceiling camera appeared soon after she began her solicitations and, whenever she was able to speak to a co-worker, “supervisors appeared out of nowhere.”

Where flight attendants sign up for assignments, she said, the company posted huge signs urging “No” to the union, urging workers throw their ballots away.

A dream come true

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act claim that majority sign up would enable union organizers to force unwilling workers to join against their will.

No one had better say that to Hector Capote, a Cuban immigrant in Miami.

His company, AT&T Wireless, recognized his union, Local 3122 of the Communication Workers of America, as soon as the majority of workers signed union cards.

“The very idea that the union or anyone else was forcing us to sign union cards is completely ridiculous,” he said. “The decision was up to us. It was our choice.”

He described how, after four years of dead end jobs, “many of them off the books, off the clock, and with no pay,” he finally had a “good union job.”

Capote tried, but failed, to hold back tears as he spoke about his father, “who, in his entire life, never made more than $13 an hour, never had a union, never had health care, sacrificed and went without.

“I really thank God that I had a chance, as a union worker, to provide for some of the things he otherwise never would have had. Without the union, I could never have paid him back.”

All interviews by John Wojcik, except for Sara Steffens

Angry about AIG? Here's how you can do something about it

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:37:00 +0000

Original source: By now you heard that AIG is handing out massive bonus checks to some of its employees, the same ones that brought the company to the point of needing a bailout in the first place. Clearly you know that all this money -- the bailout flow -- is coming from us, taxpayer dollars. With that amount of money mismanaged over and over again, folks are outraged. What do they think, money grows on trees?

I went over to Change to Win's website to see how they were handling the story. What I liked about their post on this was not only how they framed the issues but also offered an action that folks can do this week. I thought it was appropriate to share with you here at UnionReview.com, it is below. Over the weekend, the news broke that bailed-out insurance company AIG was becoming the latest in a parade of financial-services firms to enrich its failed executives on the taxpayers’ dime.

The New York Times reports that AIG, recipient of more than $180 billion in bailout money, plans to give $165 million in bonuses to the very executives whose reckless behavior brought the company to ruin — and nearly took the entire global economy with it:

The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. [Treasury Secretary] Geithner last week pressured A.I.G. to cut the $9.6 million going to the top 50 executives in half and tie the rest to performance…

Of all the financial institutions that have been propped up by taxpayer dollars, none has received more money than A.I.G. and none has infuriated lawmakers more with practices that policy makers have called reckless.

The bonuses will be paid to executives at A.I.G.’s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps that protected investors from defaults on bonds backed in many cases by subprime mortgages. The bonus plan covers 400 employees, and the bonuses range from as little as $1,000 to as much as $6.5 million. Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more than $3 million in bonuses.

President Obama calls AIG’s behavior an “outrage”. But this is not the first outrage the nation has suffered at the hands of the very executives who happily used public funds to save their companies from the consequences of their “leadership”. (Read through our archives, you’ll find plenty of others.)

But What Can I Do About It? Lots of folks are angry this morning. But anger, by itself, doesn’t change anything. It’s when we channel anger into action that it can make a difference.

So, if you’re angry, here’s something you can do about it This Thursday, thousands of people will be rallying together in cities across the country to demand that bailed-out corporations be held to account, and that government make the real changes we need to have an economy that works for everyone, not just the top 1% — including passing the A complete list of cities and events can be found on the Day of Action’s Web site, Don’t see your city on there yet? Sign up to organize your own Take Back the Economy rally — all the materials you need are available through the site.

This week, don’t just be angry — join the movement for a sustainable economy that works for everyone and help get this country back on the right track again.