People Before Profit blog

Immigrant rights, anti-police brutality groups unite for May 1

Mon, 04 May 2015 15:58:00 +0000

DALLAS - The progressive movement here broke new ground on May 1. I was at City Hall with the immigrants rights group organized by Texas Organizing Project and several boosters, including the Dallas AFL-CIO. At the other end of downtown, Mothers Against Police Brutality and their supporters began with a rally at the Lew Sterrett jail. Several important developments had converged on that day:

1) The Texas Legislature is considering all manner of anti-immigrant maneuvers even while the federal government is trying to honor President Obama's order to ease off on deportations.

2) Police brutality has been a big issue here for several years, and the local group has established ties far and wide as the anti-brutality movement grows in the nation.

3) International Workers Day is finally gaining some traction in its home country.

4) May 5/Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday celebrating the fight against European imperialism.

Our rally lasted about an hour and a half, so we were relieved when we finally stepped off, about 200 strong, to march further into the center of town. It was a good rally and a good march, but it suddenly got a whole lot better when we marched into a centrally located park and found the anti-police brutality marchers, a group of 300 or so, had just arrived ahead of us. The organizers were apparently aware of the good old American slogan, "Black, Brown, and White, Unite and Fight!" They had set up a rendezvous and a joint march under the combined slogan of "March for Justice!"

Instead of being atomized the way we usually are in my town, we were solidly united together! One of the speakers in the park called it "Capitalism's worst nightmare!"

Photo: Jim Lane/PW

Port drivers out on strike, demand companies follow law

Mon, 04 May 2015 14:46:00 +0000

Port truck drivers gathered before sunrise on Apr. 27, carrying signs and wearing reflective safety vests as they began picketing company trucks at marine terminals, rail yards, warehouses and targets as far away as San Diego.

Since drivers last struck in November 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has joined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), California courts, the California Division Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), Employment Development Department (EDD), and Disability Insurance (SDI), in ruling that drivers are misclassified as "independent contractors." As a result of the U.S. DOL ruling, major drayage company Shippers Transport Express (STE) reclassified its "independent contractors" as employees. But not all have complied.

Hector Flores, of Intermodal Bridge Transport, (IBT) in Wilmington, California stated that "the company claims that we are independent contractors, yet we are not allowed to take our trucks home, we are charged $60 per day use and $60 per night use. In addition drivers are charged the cost of insurance payments, the cost of the fuel used, any fees required to maintain the truck such as new tires etc." All of which is deducted from the driver's paycheck leaving them with less than minimum wage in most cases and or owing the company money.

"Biggest issue is that we don't have a voice on the job. It is important to me that I practice what I am trying t teach my children and that is to stand up for what is right, maintain your respect and your dignity." This was the message Hector Flores was sending as he walked out on strike on May 27 from his job at IBT.

According to the Port of Los Angeles web site, "The Port of Los Angeles' Clean Truck Program is a central element of the Clean Air Action Plan, which targets major sources of air emissions at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach -By 2010 all trucks that did not fit the standards were banned. Through the Concessions Program companies were able to apply for grants and funding which were used to purchase trucks that met these standards."

IBT obtained a fleet of trucks under this act, which they then leased to the port drivers, but according to Hector they are not allowed to take them home, they are charged for the fuel they use and the cost of the insurance which clearly indicates that the company does not recognize them as employees. Hector also states that workers do not have a say as to how much they will get paid for the load they are to deliver, which if they were "independent contractors" they should be able to determine. Another issue is that port drivers do not have a say if they want to work or not, "sometimes I see workers hiding from the manager so they can go home early and spend time with their families" Flores said. "Once again if they were truly "independent contractors" as the company claims, then they should have the right to chose their own jobs", continued Flores.

This is why truck drivers are targeting several companies in a massive action against wage theft.

The companies being struck are Pac 9 Transportation, Pacer Cartage, Harbor Rail Transport and Intermodal Bridge Transport. Another company, Green Fleet Systems (GFS), avoided the strike with an announcement that it reached a labor peace agreement with the Teamsters that recognizes its drivers' union rights. Reported on the Teamsters web page.

Hector states that products such as Haines, Sony, General Electric, Michael Kors, may not be getting to stores like Target and its consumers due to the strike

"Officials know this injustice is going on and we have been waiting for them to do something about it. We can't wait any longer. We are tired of our paychecks being short knowing full well how much work we have put in." said Flores

Port drivers are calling on elected officials, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti & Long Beach Mayor Garcia to put rules in place that end law-breaking for profit in the form of misclassification, which effectively allows companies to take the costs of doing business out of workers' pockets (i.e. stealing their wages). They ask for the publics support by signing their petition. Click here to sign the petition.

New AFL-CIO report shows weaknesses in safety, health enforcement

Mon, 04 May 2015 13:45:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Though the number of U.S. workers and workplaces has virtually doubled since Congress enacted the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, the number of inspectors and enforcement officials has fallen far behind, a new report from the AFL-CIO says.

As a result, it would take 140 years for federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors to visit every workplace in the U.S., seeking safety violations, Death on the Job:The Toll of Neglect adds. That's up from 91 years for all workplaces in 1970.

The report, the 24^th in the federation's series, says that lack of enforcement is just one job safety problem. Another is the workers OSHA doesn't cover. Millions of government workers are not covered by the act, nor are the self-employed. And its low fines and lack of jail terms for corporate executives whose firms disobey or disregard safety and health mandates provide little incentive for companies to obey the law.

Meanwhile, Congress has virtually frozen OSHA's funding for the last several years, with the prospect of another cut this coming fiscal year, adds veteran AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario.

Organized labor will fight those budget caps, she adds, along with fighting for strengthening the federal job safety law. "But resources for OSHA haven't kept up with (growth in) employment. It's a zero-sum game," she says.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., and Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn., introduced the federation's proposed stronger law, the Protect America's Workers Act s.1112, on Workers Memorial Day, April 28. It has no chance in the GOP-run 114^th Congress.

The federation released the report as part of its observance of the day, the annual event honoring dead, injured and ill workers. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka asked for a moment of silence in their memory before a major address on April 28. Obama Administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez sponsored a memorial ceremony at his agency.

The report says that in calendar 2013, the latest year for which data are available, 4,585 workers died on the job and another 3.8 million-at least-were injured. An estimated 50,000 former workers died from illnesses such as emphysema, cancer and black lung disease, contracted during prior employment.

The 2013 fatality rate was 3.3 dead workers per 100,000 workers, down from 3.4/100,000 the year before. Those are accurate but the injury numbers are low. Seminario said figures gathered from several states, using workers comp data, hospital admissions and other measures, show approximately half of job-related injuries are not reported that way.

"Federally, we don't see a lot of enforcement," Seminario says. With job-related deaths being classified only as misdemeanors-and with maximum 6-month jail terms for perpetrators-"there have been only 88 prosecutions since 1970, while there have been 390,000 deaths on the job," she adds.

And the number of federal OSHA inspections dropped by 3,011 in fiscal 2014, which ended Sept. 30 of that year, to 36,167, compared to the year before. State OSHA inspections declined by 3,407, to 47,217.

Other key points in the report include:

While the overall death rate on the job has been declining, the death rate for Latino workers is rising, as are the numbers. Some 748 Hispanic-named workers died on the job in 2012 (3.7/100,000) and 817 died in 2013 (3.9/100,000). The 194 dead Latino workers in California were 48 percent of that state's on-the-job deaths. Two-thirds of all dead Latino workers were born outside of the U.S. "It's quite disturbing," Seminario said.

Latino workers have additional reasons not to report on-the-job injuries: Fear of deportation. Employers often intimidate all workers into failing to report injuries, since doing so brings both OSHA attention and higher workers' comp premiums. But the added fear that employers will call immigration agents hits Latinos, the report says.

Deaths are particularly high for Latinos in oil and gas extraction in Texas and North Dakota, which has the highest death rate among the states (14.9/100,000). Among North Dakota oil workers, the fatality rate was 84.7/100,000. That's seven times the national death rate for oil workers.

Deaths are also high in construction in Texas, North Dakota and California. Deaths in construction rose to 806, but the fatality rate declined as more construction workers reclaimed jobs due to the economic recovery. The construction death rate dropped from 3.9/100,000 in 2012 to 3.7/100,000 in 2013.

The changing nature of the workplace, with more workers being hired as "contractors," is an increasing enforcement problem.

"Contractors accounted for 16 percent of all worker fatalities in 2013, or 749 deaths," the report says. "Construction and extraction workers accounted for half of these deaths. Thirty-five percent of contract workers who died in the construction industry were actually contracted to another industry when they died. Temporary workers and other contract workers often work in dangerous jobs, with no safety and health protections or training."

OSHA has concentrated its enforcement efforts on construction-considered one of the most-dangerous occupations-manufacturing and, lately, oil and gas refining. But Seminario said given the high rate of injuries, especially ergonomic (musculoskeletal) injuries in health care, notably among nurses, it ought to step up enforcement there, too. To do so, however, it would have to reduce enforcement elsewhere. Half of OSHA's inspections were in construction and 22 percent were in factories, with only 4 percent in health care. But health care accounted for one-fifth of on-the-job injuries.

"The leading industries for injuries and illnesses among women were nursing and residential care facilities, hospitals, and food services and drinking places. Nursing, psychiatric and home health aides experienced the greatest number of injuries. Overexertion was the major cause of these injuries, and the major injury type was sprains, strains and tears. All of these characteristics of lost-time injuries among women workers have been consistent over the past several years," the report says. And 35 percent of them are ergonomic injuries.

States vary wildly in their on-the-job death rates. North Dakota is the most-dangerous state, with 14.9 deaths per 100,000 workers. Hawaii (1.6/100,000) had the lowest death rate, followed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.

Fines are small and Seminario says the law requires OSHA to negotiate them down to fit a firm's size. The median penalty a firm faces after a worker dies on the job is $5,050 if a federal OSHA probe finds the firm guilty of the causes of the fatality, and $4,438 if a state OSHA finds the firm guilty.

"The White House needs to actively support needed safety and health rules and prevent the Office of Management and Budget from blocking or stalling these measures. OSHA needs to move to finalize the silica dust standard and to develop and issue proposed rules on combustible dust, infectious diseases, beryllium and chemical process safety," the report says.

"Enforcement must be ramped up, particularly for employers who repeatedly violate the law. Funding and staffing at the agencies should be increased to provide for enhanced oversight of worksites and timely and effective enforcement.

"Efforts to strengthen OSHA's whistleblower protection program must continue. The widespread problem of injury underreporting must be addressed, and employer policies and practices that discourage the reporting of injuries through discipline or other means must be prohibited. OSHA needs to keep up with new hazards that face workers as workplace, the nature of work, and employment relationships change."

OSHA should give extra attention to the "serious safety and health problems and increased risk of fatalities and injuries faced by Latino and immigrant workers" and in oil and gas extraction, the report says. Continuing safety issues in refineries forced the Steelworkers, who represent two-thirds of all U.S. oil refinery workers, into a strike earlier this year. Workers at some refineries are still out due to management intransigence.

"Without action, the workplace fatality crisis in this industry only will get worse as production intensifies and expands," the AFL-CIO report says.

Photo: AFL-CIO Facebook.

May Day solidarity marches bring thousands to LA streets

Mon, 04 May 2015 13:38:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Solidarity marches were held throughout the Los Angeles area in support of worker rights, immigration reform, lives matter, police transparency, economic rights, and civil rights. Thousands gathered in the Los Angeles Chinatown area just south of Los Angeles City Hall to listen to speakers give testimony on issues such as the Fight for $15, Justice for Drivers (Port drivers strike), Black and Brown Lives Matter, immigration reform, and keeping families together. The march ended with a rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall.

The Rev. James Lawson, a long time civil rights activist spoke about the need for the community to act together because "we can't count on the business sector or the politicians to move our agenda. Our success has come about because labor, community, and families have pushed for social justice."

A clear message was presented in speeches, signs, and chants that black and brown working together is the only way to ensure any movement toward social justice. Many speakers stressed the need to learn from each other, to organize with each other along with labor and community as allies. Only with this type of solidarity will we see a type of society want. The main emphases for the solidarity march were the fight for minimum wage, immigration reform and black-brown unity.

One student participating in the march carried a sign that read 'End the war on immigrants. We are worth more;' another sign read, 'Justice for Drivers - we bring you the world;' and many carried signs reading, 'Lives matter.'

On the opposite side of downtown LA, another march was held, where hundreds of marchers gathered to head down Broadway, a major street in the downtown Business district and just north of Los Angeles City Hall. The marchers held a rally on Broadway and 2nd Street next to the LA Times building to protest the current immigration policies. The main march was gathering not far away on the steps of City Hall.

A smaller march was held in East Los Angeles, where community people marched down First Street to Mariachi Plaza in support of immigration rights. Other actions took place throughout the greater Los Angeles area.

Photo: An assortment of flags at a May Day march in LA, demonstrating the level of solidarity present. | Reed Saxon/AP

May Day 2015: an international affair

Mon, 04 May 2015 12:48:00 +0000

CHICAGO - May 1, 1886 was the day that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions set as the day the eight-hour workday would become standard; this, after years of agitating and organization, after years of pain and thankless toil. It set into motion a series of actions and strikes nationwide that would culminate with a bombing and the subsequent dubious trial and execution of seven labor radicals in Chicago, today referred to as the Haymarket Martyrs.

On May 1, 2015 in Chicago, the community gathered around the memorial placed at the location of that explosion, on the exact spot from where speakers addressed the crowds from a wagon. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor has since matured into the AFL-CIO, whose constituent unions helped organize the event.

In attendance are large contingences from Laborers International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Fight for $15 campaign. The crowd numbers in the hundreds, not unlike the crowd on that fateful day. Their leaders took to the stage one-by-one to pump up the crowd, and plenty of union songs were sung.

What was especially heartening was the heavy international contingent that was also on hand to commemorate those bold workers whose sacrifice would come to mean so much across the world after, in 1889, the Second International declared May 1st International Workers Day (to the chagrin and continuous rejection of the U.S. government).

One of the guests from abroad is Tobias Bhudin, first vice president from the Swedish Trade Union Federation who was in attendance to unveil and present a plaque for the martyrs monument. On the plaque is their trade union vow which new members of the Swedish unions recite.

"It comes from the childhood of our labor union when we promised each other not to work under worse conditions, not for a low salary, and not work more than eight hours per day. Its what we talk about every day in Swedish labor unions."

The plaque itself says as much, translated into English and also includes a cornerstone of class struggle logic: "We make this vow in the secure knowledge that if we all are true to our pledge, the employer will be forced to meet our demands."

When asked what issues unions in Sweden are organizing around, Bhudin answers with a familiar list including the right to organize and more job security.

Perhaps the most conspicuous group on hand was the delegation from Zenroren, the National Confederation of Trade Unions in Japan. They carried several elaborate banners calling for nuclear disarmament. They were also collecting signatures for the effort.

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki was something that happened years ago, but workers in Japan are aware that if there is another use of nuclear weapons, there can be no good working conditions so that is why working for nuclear abolition is also fighting for workers rights", said Noriko Yamamoto.

The rally was held on Desplaines Street below an imposing advertisement for the Disney film, Tomorrowland. I can't speak for the movie, but the Tomorrowland section of Disney World puts forth an idealized image of social progress and projects that idealism far into the future. The dubious values of Disney executives aside, you can't help but think about what the future has in store for our planet.

As long as the workers uphold the solidarity I saw on May Day, then I remain hopeful.

Photo: At Chicago's May Day Rally, Japanese carry banner for a nuclear free world. | Teresa Albano/PW

LA, Long Beach port drivers forced to strike again

Fri, 01 May 2015 13:49:00 +0000

Wage theft, lousy working conditions and continued company misclassification of port truckers as "independent contractors" not covered by labor law all combined to again force the hundreds of port truck drivers in Los Angeles-Long Beach to strike.

The top demand of the drivers, who voted overwhelmingly on April 25 to walk out, is that the trucking firms recognize them as employees, covered by labor law, and thus bargain with them if and when they select the Teamsters - who are backing their campaign - to officially represent them.

The forced strike began on April 27. It is the second at the port, the nation's largest, and over the same issues, since November 2014. A string of federal and state court and state agency rulings have found that port drivers are misclassified as "independent contractors." So far, 56 have won their cases, and the firms owe them $5.5 million in back pay and damages.

The trucking firms misclassify the drivers, who move goods from the two ports to inland warehouses for Walmart, Home Depot, Target and other major retailers, as "independent contractors." That means labor laws - including the National Labor Relations Act, minimum wage and overtime laws, and workers comp - don't cover the drivers.

Misclassification also means the drivers must foot their own bills for everything from gasoline to insurance to repairs, even though the trucking firms, called drayage companies, control their schedules, workload and more. Drivers say that as a result they often make less than minimum wage or even end up owing the companies money.

With one exception -- announced just before the walkout began: the firms still refuse to recognize the drivers as "employees" under labor law, with the rights to organize and bargain.

The Justice for Port Drivers campaign said the drivers struck Pac 9 Transportation, Pacer Cartage, Harbor Rail Transport and Intermodal Bridge Transport. Green Fleet Systems (GFS) settled on the eve of the strike by announcing it recognizes the drivers as employees.

Hector Flores, a driver at Intermodal, told the union while walking the line that he's striking to end wage theft and to ensure a better life for this daughters. "We are here to make sure that these companies stop their lawless behavior. They cannot keep engaging in wage theft. We demand re-classification to employees. We know what we are doing is right, and we are not going to stop striking until these companies stop breaking the law," he said.

Drivers and their supporters, including top officials of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, picketed company trucks that entered marine terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, rail yards throughout the region, and customer warehouses as far east as Mira Loma and as far south as the U.S. Mexico border, the Teamsters said.

"We had no choice but to go on strike again because my company is continuing to violate the law," Pacer Cartage driver Humberto Canales told the union. "The courts have ruled that I am an employee and that their illegal deductions from my paycheck must stop. But they keep fighting me, so I am fighting back."

Meanwhile, one drayage/port trucking firm, Green Fleet Systems, signed what GFS and the Teamsters called "a comprehensive labor peace agreement designed to ensure Green Fleet's drivers have an opportunity to exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act and, if they choose, to select an exclusive representative for purpose of collective bargaining."

The truckers are also taking their campaign to the Internet, posting a petition for backers to sign demanding Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and San Diego Mayor Robert Garcia ban company profit-making from labor law violations at the two ports on April 28.

Photo: Justice for Port Drivers Facebook page

Today in labor history: “The Song of the Wage-Slave” for May Day

Fri, 01 May 2015 11:38:00 +0000

The land is the landlord's,

The trader's is the sea,

The ore the usurer's coffer fills -

But what remains for me?

The engine whirls for master's craft;

The steel shines to defend,

With labor's arms, what labor raised,

For labor's foe to spend.

The camp, the pulpit, and the law

For rich men's sons are free;

Theirs, theirs the learning, art, and arms -

But what remains for me?

The coming hope, the future day,

When wrong to right shall bow,

And hearts that have the courage, man,

To make that future now.

I pay for all their learning,

I toil for all their ease;

They render back, in coin for coin,

Want, ignorance, disease:

Toil, toil - and then a cheerless home,

Where hungry passions cross;

Eternal gain to them that give

To me eternal loss!

The hour of leisured happiness

The rich alone may see;

The playful child, the smiling wife -

But what remains for me?

They render back, those rich men,

A pauper's paltry fee,

Mayhap a prison - then a grave,

And think they are quits with me;

But not a fond wife's heart that breaks,

A poor man's child that dies,

We score not on our hollow cheeks

And in our sunken eyes;

We read it there, where'er we meet,

And as the sun we see,

Each asks, "The rich have got the earth,

And what remains for me?"

We bear the wrong in silence,

We store it in our brain;

They think us dull, they think us dead,

But we shall rise again:

A trumpet through the lands will ring;

A heaving through the mass;

A trampling through their palaces

Until they break like glass:

We'll cease to weep by cherished graves,

From lonely homes we'll flee;

And still, as rolls our million march,

Its watchword brave shall be -

The coming hope, the future day,

When wrong to right shall bow,

And hearts that have the courage, man,

To make that future now.

From An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry, compiled and edited by Marcus Graham, 1929

On Workers Memorial Day: The words of the dead

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 13:41:00 +0000

TEXAS CITY, Texas (PAI) - To give voice to 35 workers killed on the job over the past 35 years at a massive refinery in Texas City, Texas, hundreds of surviving family members, co-workers and friends gathered there last month to erect white crosses marked with their names.

They conducted the ceremony on the 10^th anniversary of an explosion there that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170, including townspeople.

Marathon Petroleum Corp., which bought the refinery from BP two years ago, did its best to shut the mourners up. Marathon uprooted the crosses and tossed them in a box like trash within hours of the commemoration.

For years during contract negotiations, the United Steelworkers (USW) union has pressed ungodly profitable oil companies to improve safety. This fell mostly on deaf ears. On Feb. 1, USW refinery workers began loudly voicing this demand by striking over unfair labor practices (ULP). Ultimately 7,000 workers struck 15 refineries.

Within six weeks, all but five oil corporations settled. Marathon is a holdout. It wants to cut safety personnel. It does not want to hear about dead workers.

Yet the ULP strike is about dead workers. Over the past five years, at refineries nationwide that employ USW members, 27 workers have died - incinerated, gassed or crushed to death.

And the peril of refineries spills into communities. In Texas City at the refinery owned by BP in 2005, flying glass from windows shattered in the explosion injured townspeople. In the first six weeks of this year, explosions occurred at three refineries, closing streets, raining eye-irritating white ash on neighborhoods and forcing residents to shelter indoors for hours.

As the USW strike over unfair labor practices drags on in Texas City at what is now called the Marathon Petroleum Corp. Galveston Bay Refinery, USW members feel Marathon's demands for reduced safety measures indicate the corporation refuses to hear the cautionary tales of the facility's deadly past.

Brandi Sanders, treasurer for the local union there and a 10-year veteran maintenance worker, told me that it is as if Marathon believes the 2005 explosion and the 20 other deaths since 1980 don't exist because they didn't occur on Marathon's watch.

"But the union does not want to go back. We lived through those experiences. And we learned from that history. And we should not be forced to repeat it," Sanders said.

That was the reason for the candlelight ceremony on March 23. To make those deaths real for Marathon managers who did not experience them in the visceral way that co-workers and families and neighbors did.

The mourners marked each of the 35 crosses with the name of a worker killed at the nation's fifth largest refinery since 1980, which is the year of the last nationwide strike at refineries. A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" as the participants, holding candles aloft in the dark, marched two blocks from the local union hall to the refinery. They wanted to place the crosses on the site where the workers had lost their lives.

But police officers blocked their path. Marathon had called the cops. Marathon refused to acknowledge the tragic anniversary, even with a moment of silence at the refinery as BP did annually. And it wouldn't allow a commemoration by anyone else on its property either.

The officers permitted the mourners to erect the white markers in a median strip along the highway, as often is done by family and friends of car crash victims. The ceremony participants called out each name, tolled a bell and placed the marker. Tears flowed.

Just a few hours later, picketers saw managers leave the plant, descend on the memorial in the darkness and rip each of the 35 crosses out of the ground.

Larry Burchfield, a member of the USW's National Oil Bargaining Policy Committee and a machinist at the refinery for 20 years while it was owned first by Amoco, then BP and now Marathon, told me that disrespect Marathon showed for the dead is the same disregard Marathon shows for the living.

If Marathon valued the lives of workers, the corporation wouldn't try to save a couple of bucks by eliminating the safety measures put in place to preserve workers' lives after the 2005 explosion, Burchfield said. "Marathon's safety policies are called life-critical policies," he told me, "But your life is not so critical when it is going to affect Marathon's bottom line."

Marathon's "It wasn't me; it was BP" reasoning for downgrading safety just doesn't cut it. Don Holmstrom, director of the Western Regional Office of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), explained why in an interview with the Galveston County Daily News for a story on the anniversary of the 2005 blast.

"I think it is sad to report that not enough appears to have been learned, and the problem persists. It is not a BP problem. Although the incident occurred at (BP's) Texas City refinery, there is an industry problem," said Holmstrom, who was the CSB's lead investigator into the 2005 blast.

Occupational Health and Safety Administration Assistant Administrator Jordan Barab said of recent refinery explosions that "each repeated a lesson that the industry should have already learned."

Marathon is no outlier, operating in perfect safety. Numerous problems have occurred at the plant since Marathon took over. An explosion and fire at the refinery on Feb. 21 last year critically injured Oscar Garcia, who was employed by a company Marathon contracted to perform work on the site. Garcia has sued Marathon for negligence.

The refinery released more than 128,000 pounds of silica and alumina oxide into surrounding communities in two incidents this year. Several fires have occurred since the strike began, including two within 24 hours witnessed by picketing workers.

After the 2005 BP explosion, the CSB and others recommended refineries refrain from placing personnel in temporary facilities near volatile units, especially during shutdowns and startups. Many of those killed in the BP explosion were in temporary trailers during a unit start-up. Despite that, within the past year, Marathon erected three lunch tents during a repair cycle on the same ground where bodies and debris had been hauled away after the 2005 blast.

Not one of the 1,100 USW members who work for Marathon has crossed the picket line. They've gone without pay for nearly three months because they know what's at stake: Their lives.

In another attempt to help Marathon hear that, workers replanted the 35 white crosses in a long line in front of the union hall. They managed to get them back from Marathon through the police department.

On Workers' Memorial Day, which commemorates those who have lost their lives on the job, the USW members placed a solar spotlight in front of each cross, to highlight the lives sacrificed when safety was compromised. Hopefully, that will open the eyes of Marathon managers who deliberately closed their ears to the words of dead workers.

Leo Gerard is president of the United Steelworkers.

Photo: Explosion at the Texas City BP oil refinery, now owned by Marathon. | AP

Trumka: Raising wages is measuring stick for presidential campaign support

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 12:19:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - As the 2016 presidential battle gets underway 18 months before Election Day AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today that "the labor movement's doors are open to any candidate who is serious about transforming our economy with high and rising wages."

In a live-streamed speech this morning from the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., Trumka said,

"We have created an agenda for shared prosperity called raising wages. It will be our inspiration and our measuring stick throughout the presidential campaign. Raising wages is grounded in a fundamental idea-that we can become a high-wage society, a society in which the people who do the work share in the wealth we create."

He also stressed that the labor movement opposes Fast Track, declaring, "We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose Fast Track. There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close."

Trumka pointed to the skepticism and cynicism many voters feel, noting that for generations national leaders have either "taken steps that worsened inequality or fiddled around the edges, trying to raise wages in an economy fundamentally built to lower wages."

"President Obama has spent much of his presidency getting our nation out of a deep economic crisis," Trumka explained. "Now we have an economy where GDP is up, and the stock market is up, but wages remain flat-and this has happened again and again since the 1970s. Once again," he said, "America is emerging from an economic crisis-but those of us who count on paychecks are not.

"And that's not an accident," Trumka declared. "Workers are being held down on purpose."

He said the decline in wages, soaring corporate profits and booming CEO pay are not the result "of the wandering and clumsy hand of capitalism." Instead, he said:

"Since the 1980s, the growing political power of the wealthiest among us has rewritten our labor laws, our trade laws, our tax laws, our monetary policies, our fiscal policies, our financial regulations...all to push wages down and to increase corporate profits, to put speculation over private investment and tax cuts over public investment."

The results, Trumka said, are runaway inequality, unemployment, falling wages, rising economic insecurity, collapsing infrastructure and deteriorating national competitiveness-all driven by gigantic imbalances in economic and political power.

In the 2016 campaign, "there will be no place to hide for those who aspire to lead America," he said.

"The problems of income inequality and stagnant wages are so clear, so abundant, that only direct, sweeping action to change the rules will put our nation on a fresh path of progress. We are hungry for a path to a prosperous 21st century. And America's workers know that the first step on that path is raising wages."

Trumka said that what he was calling for involved a lot more than just higher salaries. He emphasized that a raising wages agenda is a broad vision that includes earned sick leave, full employment and fair overtime rules for workers. "It also includes taxing Wall Street to pay for massive investments in infrastructure and education, so Wall Street serves Main Street, not the other way around," he said "and the ability for workers to bargain collectively with employers for good wages and benefits without the fear of retaliation.

"Any candidate who wants to appeal to workers has to put forth a bold and comprehensive raising wages agenda. They must be committed to investing in a prosperous future for America. They must have an authentic voice and a commitment, from the candidate down through his or her economic team, to see this agenda through to completion."

The above story appeared in the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Photo: Trumka said that labor will not back any candidate in 2016 who doesn't fully support a raising wages agenda. | AFL-CIO Now Blog

Labor camp residents determined to change things

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:28:00 +0000

In 2013, Rosario Ventura and her husband Isidro Silva were strikers at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, Wash. In the course of three months over 250 workers walked out of the fields several times, as their anger grew over the wages and the conditions in the labor camp where they lived.

Every year the company hires 700-800 people to pick strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. During World War Two the Sakumas were interned because of their Japanese ancestry, and would have lost their land, as many Japanese farmers did, had it not been held in trust for them by another local rancher until the war ended. Today the business has grown far beyond its immigrant roots, and is one of the largest berry growers in Washington, where berries are big business. It has annual sales of $6.1 million, and big corporate customers like Haagen Dazs ice cream. It owns a retail outlet, a freezer and processing plant, and a chain of nurseries in California that grow rootstock.

By contrast, Sakuma workers have very few resources. Some are local workers, but over half are migrants from California, like Ventura and her family. Both the local workers and the California migrants are immigrants, coming from indigenous towns in Oaxaca and southern Mexico where people speak languages like Mixteco and Triqui. While all farm workers in the U.S. are poorly paid, these new indigenous arrivals are at the bottom. One recent study in California found that tens of thousands of indigenous farm workers received less than minimum wage.

In 2013 Ventura and other angry workers formed an independent union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia-Families United for Justice. In fitful negotiations with the company, they discovered that Sakuma Farms had been certified to bring in 160 H-2A guest workers. The H2A program was established in 1986 to allow U.S. agricultural employers to hire workers in other countries, and bring them to the U.S. In this program, the company first must certify that it has tried to hire workers locally. If it can't find workers at the wage set by the state employment department, and the department agrees that the company has offered the jobs, the grower can then hire workers outside the country.

The U.S. government provides visas that allow them to work only for this employer, and only for a set period of time, less than a year. Afterwards, they must return to their home country. If they're fired or lose their job before the contract is over, they must leave right away. Growers must apply for the program each year. On hearing about the application, the striking workers felt that the company was trying to find a new workforce to replace them.

When the company was questioned about why it needed guest workers, it said it couldn't find enough workers to pick its berries. But the farm was also unwilling to raise wages to attract more pickers. "If we [do], it unscales it for the other farmers," said owner Ryan Sakuma in an interview. "We're just robbing from the total [number of workers available]. And we couldn't attract them without raising the price hugely to price other growers out. That would just create a price war." He pegged his farm's wages to the H-2A program: "Everyone at the company will get the H-2A wage for this work."

"The H-2A program limits what's possible for all workers," says Rosalinda Guillén, director of Community2Community, an organization that helped the strikers. Community2Community, based in Bellingham, advocates for farm worker rights, especially those of women, in a sustainable food system. The following year Sakuma Farms applied for H-2A work visas for 438 workers, saying that the strikers weren't available to work because they had all been fired. Under worker and community pressure, Sakuma withdrew the application when it seemed probable that the U.S. Department of Labor (USDoL) would not approve it. Sakuma has still not recognized the union, and many workers feel their jobs are still in danger.

A decade ago there were hardly any H-2A workers in Washington State. In 2013, the USDoL certified applications for 6,251 workers, a number that had doubled just since 2011. The irony is that one group of immigrant workers, recruited as guest workers, is being pitted against another group-the migrants who have been coming to work at the company for many years.

As she sat in her home in Madera, Calif., Rosario Ventura described the personal history that led her to migrate yearly from California to Washington, and then become a striker.

Rosario Ventura, in her own words:

I came from Oaxaca in 2001, from San Martín Itunyoso. It is a Triqui town, and that's what I grew up speaking. My mother and father were farmers, and worked on the land that belongs to the town. It was just enough to grow what we ate, but sometimes there was nothing to eat, and no money to buy food.

There wasn't much work in Oaxaca, so my parents would go to Sinaloa [in northern Mexico]. I began to go with them when I was young, I don't remember how old I was. It costs a lot of money to go to school and my parents had no way to get it. In Mexico you have to buy a uniform for every grade. You have to buy the pencils, notebooks, things the children need. My brothers went to school, though. I was the only one that didn't go, because I was a girl.

When I told my dad I wanted to come to the U.S. he tried to convince me not to leave. When you leave, it is forever-that is what he said, because we never return. You won't even call, he said. And it did turn out that way. Now I don't talk with him because I know if I do, it will bring him sadness. He'll ask, when are you coming back? What can I say?

I would like to return to live with him, since he is alone. But I can't get the money to go back. There is no money, there is nothing to eat, in San Martín Itunyoso. I thought that I would save up something here and return. But it is hard here too. It's the same situation here in the U.S. We work to try to get ahead, but we never do. We're always earning just enough to buy food and pay rent. Everything gets used up.

It is easy to leave the U.S., but difficult to come back and cross the border. When I came, it cost two thousand dollars to cross, walking day and night in Arizona. We had to carry our own water and food. Out there in the desert it is life and death if you do not have any. It took a week and a half of pure walking. We would rest a couple of hours and get up to walk again.

Those who bring children suffer the most because they have to carry water and food for them, and sometimes carry the children themselves. Thank God we all crossed and were OK. But now that I'm here I'm always afraid because I don't have papers. I can never relax or be at ease.

When I crossed the border I came alone, and then found my brothers, who were already here in Madera. They took me to Washington State to work at Sakuma Farms. I met Isidro when I was working, and we got married in 2003. He speaks Mixteco and I speak Triqui, but that did not matter to us. In those times I hardly spoke Spanish, but now I know a little more.

When I came here, they were pruning the plants. That is very hard work because you get cut and the branches hit your face. When I was in Oaxaca, thinking of coming, I was expecting a different type of work. But this is all there is. People who know how to read and write or have papers can get easier jobs. The rest of us work in the fields.

At Sakuma Farms the company was always hard on us. They would tell us, "you came to pick, and you have to make weight." If you don't make weight they won't let you work for a few days. If you still can't make weight, they pull you out of the field and fire you. But when you're working, and you take what you've picked to be weighed, they always cheat you of two or three pounds.

I've always lived in the labor camp during the picking season. We decided to continue living in Madera, and never moved to Washington permanently. When it gets really hot in the San Joaquin Valley in the summer we go to Washington, where it's cooler. Then when it gets cold there and the work runs out, we come back to Madera. We go every season.

When we go to Washington we have to rent someplace in Madera to store our belongings, like our clothes. Then when we return we have to search for a new home again. It is a hassle. This year we left the house where we'd been living with my brother instead, because he didn't go to Washington. We all live here-Isidro, my four children, my brothers and sisters, and their children. The family pays two thousand a month for the whole house, and Isidro and I pay three hundred as our share.

When we're in Washington we have to save for the winter season, because there's no work until April. I don't work in Madera because I can't find childcare. The trip to Washington is expensive-about 250 dollars in gas and food. If we don't have enough money, we have to ask for a loan. That's what we normally do, since by then we've used up what we saved from the previous year. There is a food bank in Washington, which helps when we get there.

With the strikes last year in Washington we were out of work for almost two months. We didn't save anything, so it was very hard for us afterwards. We didn't have enough to pay the bills, and we couldn't find work.

The strikes started when the company fired Federico [a coworker]. We wanted Sakuma to raise the [piece rate] price, and the company refused. They told us if we want to work, work. Then they accused Federico of starting a protest. They went to his cabin, to kick him out of the camp. That's when we stopped work, to get his job back.

We were also upset about the conditions in the labor camp. The mattress they gave us was torn and dirty, and the wire was coming out and poked us. We're accustomed to sleeping with the children, but the bed was so small we couldn't even fit on it. There were cockroaches and rats. The roof leaked when it rained. They just put bags in the holes and it still leaked. All my children's clothes were wet.

They told us they would change things, and the county inspector would come check the cabin. But the company man in charge of the camp told me: "If the inspector comes, don't show him your bed. Don't say anything or you will have a lot of problems." So when the inspector came the company man followed him and didn't let me say anything.

They always try to make us afraid to speak up. If you ask for another five cents they fire you. They threatened to remove us from the camp because of the strikes, and said they'd fire us. They are always threatening us. They fired Ramón also [the leader of the strike and union] because he talked back to them. But thank God he had the courage to talk.

I think there will be strikes again this coming year, if the company doesn't come to its senses, and as long as we have support. We can't leave things like this. There is too much abuse. We are making them rich and making ourselves poor. It's not fair. I think these things can change if we all keep at it. We won't let them keep on going like this. We have to change them. It is important that they raise wages, treat us right, and help the farmworkers. All the mistreatment, threats, everything-it isn't fair.

I want to work, to have money, to be in a better place. I want a little house and to stay in one place with my kids. That's all I'm hoping for. I'd like to see my children reach high school and maybe college. If they don't, I want to go back to Mexico, if I can save money. My kids can go to school there too. I want them to continue studying. I don't want my children to work for Sakuma.

Photo: Hard camp conditions. Filemon Pineda, his wife Francisca Mendoza, and their children lived in a cabin in the labor camp at Sakuma Farms during the picking season. | David Bacon

Eleven “must knows” about safety for Workers Memorial Day

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:27:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Every year on Apr. 28, unions observe Workers Memorial Day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew our efforts for safe workplaces. This year, the struggle continues to create good jobs in this country that are safe and healthy and pay fair wages and to ensure the freedom of workers to form unions and, through their unions, to speak out and bargain for respect and a better future.

Here are 11 facts about worker safety and health you should know in honor of Workers Memorial Day:

1. In 2013, more than 4,400 workers were killed on the job and more than 50,000 more died from occupational diseases.Top of Form

2. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nearly four million workplace injuries and illnesses were reported. Research indicates that the numbers may be underestimated and may actually be two or three times greater than what BLS reports.

3. Certain occupations have much greater risk than others. These include agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, transportation, warehousing, mining, and construction.

4. More than eight million state and local public employees lack the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) protections while they face a 58 percent higher injury and illness rate than private-sector workers.

5. Latino workers have a workplace fatality rate 19 percent higher than the national average. The majority of these workers are immigrants.

6. There is no federal workplace standard (and few state standards) for workplace violence. Meanwhile there were more than 26,000 workplace injuries related to violence in 2013, including nearly 400 deaths. Women workers in health care and social assistance are most likely to face workplace violence.

7. Workplace suicides, many related to toxic work environments and bullying, increased by eight percent in 2013.

8. The Occupational Safety and Health Act is more than 40 years old and is out of date. Millions of workers aren't covered, workers' rights are limited and penalties for violating the law are weak.

9. OSHA has fewer than 900 inspectors, meaning they can inspect workplaces, on average, once every 140 years. State OSHA inspectors amount to a little more than 1,000, meaning they can inspect workplaces once every 91 years.

10. Many workers face retaliation at work for raising job safety concerns or reporting injuries.

11. Most workplace chemical hazards are unregulated and the rules in place haven't been updated since 1971.

Find a Workers Memorial Day event near you.

This article first appeared in the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Photo: AFL-CIO Now Blog

Examining courts' impact on workers and their rights

Fri, 24 Apr 2015 12:26:00 +0000

Recent lower court cases involving workers include:

Can a company discipline a worker for making a passing remark about a union organizing drive? ConAgra Foods says "yes," in a case involving Jeannette Haines during a 2011-2012 organizing drive in Troy, Ohio. The National Labor Relations Board says "no."

In a case before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Haines, a sanitation worker at ConAgra's Slim Jim factory, casually asked two colleagues if they would re-sign union election authorization cards for UFCW Local 75 before a rerun election. When they said yes, she promised to leave them in a locker. That's all she did. ConAgra disciplined her.

The NLRB said the discipline is illegal - and that ConAgra's "no solicitation" policy is so broad that it's illegal, too, because it bans workers from talking about the union even outside the bounds of company factories. The board wants the court to overturn both Haines' discipline and ConAgra's solicitation ban.

Nasty comments on a Facebook page are not equal to misconduct on a picket line. When Charles Weigand protested against nasty comments on a local union's Facebook page about people who crossed picket lines, the NLRB's general counsel agreed with him that the union broke labor law - but its administrative law judge, the board itself and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals didn't.

Weigand was upset by the comments during Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433's six-day 2012 strike against a private bus operator, Veolia Transportation, in Phoenix. Unions must regulate conduct on picket lines, but Facebook is another matter.

The board's "administrative law judge held 'The Facebook page is in no way an electronic extension of the union's picket line,'" a 3-judge D.C. Circuit panel ruled on April 17. Agreeing with the NLRB, the judges said Local 1433 "was not responsible for the Facebook comments because the individuals who posted the comments were neither alleged nor found to be agents of the union." And a Facebook page, unlike a picket line, is private, they added.

Yet another union loses another try at pinning securities fraud on a bank that misled investors before the Great Recession. In this case, it was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), one of a large class of investors that sued the Royal Bank of Scotland for misleading statements and outright fraud about its subprime mortgage holdings before the crash. The investors bought RBS shares and when the crash came, those shares crashed, too. The investors cited statements from the bank downplaying its holdings and not disclosing $20 billion in subprime mortgage losses. But the U.S. district court judge tossed out the class action case, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan agreed.

The union and other investors "do not allege the amount of exposure could have been calculated precisely, masks a change in earnings, changes a loss into income or vice versa, or involves an unlawful transaction, or that the misstatements resulted in a significant positive market reaction...Even if the qualitative factors weighed more heavily in favor of plaintiffs, we would still dismiss the misstatements for failure to plead fraud," the appellate judges said.

New York's home care providers wage law is legal. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled several years ago that home health care workers are the equivalent of babysitters and thus do not even have to get paid the minimum wage, New York passed its own law setting a minimum wage and overtime pay for them. A group of home health care agencies sued the state, and lost in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"The law as a whole is not preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, and does not violate plaintiffs' (the home care firms') rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14^th Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, the judges ruled on March 27.

You've got to make "every reasonable effort" to settle a strike before gaining a court order against it. That's what the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled when Teamsters Local 117 at Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington state challenged the lower court's injunction against its 2012 strike. The Aircraft Service International Group didn't try to settle, and didn't deserve the injunction, the appeals court ruled, 2-1, in March.

"The Norris-LaGuardia Act strips district courts of jurisdiction to enter such an injunction unless the party seeking relief has made 'every reasonable effort to settle such dispute either by negotiation or with the aid of any available governmental machinery of mediation or voluntary arbitration,'" Appellate Judge John Owens wrote. "Because the district court failed to consider whether ASIG satisfied this provision and the record lacks any evidence that ASIG did so, we reverse and vacate" - toss - "the preliminary injunction" against the union.

If you sponsor an initiative in California, you can't hide. That's what 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled on April 3 for the entire court. California and the city of Chula Vista took several corporations to court over a local ballot measure. The state and the city both require an "official proponent" of an initiative be "an elector" of the jurisdiction and that the proponent's name appear on the ballot petitions. The lower courts sided with the state and the city against the so-called "Chula Vista Citizens." So did the appeals court.

"The requirement that the official proponent of a ballot measure be an elector, thereby disqualifying corporations and associations from holding that position" does not violate the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech and association, the judges stated.

Photo: Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, home of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, New York City's Foley Square. | Wikimedia (CC)

OSHA sets high goals for National Safety Stand-Down event

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:58:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - In a follow-up to Workers Memorial Day, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), will stage the largest occupational safety event ever next month.

The agency designated the two-week period from May 4-15 as National Safety Stand-Down To Prevent Falls In Construction Weeks. Its goal is to educate workers and to prevent all types of construction fall hazards.

The agency expects unions, construction companies, contractors, trade associations, industry employers and more to participate.

"Safety Stand-Down is a voluntary event for employers to talk directly to employees about safety," OSHA's website says. "This Stand-Down focuses on 'Fall Hazards' and reinforcing the importance of 'Fall Prevention.'"

OSHA wants companies to conduct their own safety stand-downs by "taking a break to have a toolbox talk or another safety activity such as conducting safety equipment inspections, developing rescue plans, or discussing job specific hazards. Managers are encouraged to plan a stand-down that works best for their workplace anytime during May 4-15, 2015."

During the Cleveland Construction Safety Day program in February, Region V OSHA Deputy Regional Administrator Bill Donovan spoke extensively about fall data. He said that in Ohio, falls cause the largest percentage of workplace deaths (34 percent). That rate is similar to national statistics about deaths and injuries on the job.

While fall fatalities are trending downward, Donovan urged that workers and employers must pay attention to ladders and their stability.

"The most common tool is the ladder. Check ladders. Make sure they're in good working condition, set right, and it is the correct ladder (to use). I can't emphasize enough ladder safety on the jobsite," stressed Donovan.

During the 2014 Safety Stand-Down, more than a million workers across the U.S. took part in fall prevention awareness. This year, OSHA wants that number to triple. More information on the stand-down is at www.osha.gov/StopFallsStandDown/index.html.

Matt Jaworski writes for The Ohio Labor Citizen.

Rail unions back bill mandating two-member crews on freight trains

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 13:39:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Two railroad unions - the Sheet Metal, Air, Transportation and Rail Workers' (Smart) Rail Division and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen/ Teamsters (BLE&T)- are backing new legislation to mandate 2-member crews on all freight trains.

The measure, HR1763, was introduced April 17 by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the House's longest-serving Republican and an influential lawmaker on transportation issues.

Railroad Workers United, a coalition of unions representing passenger and freight rail workers from around the nation, announced Young's bill, the unions' backing and RWU's support. The two unions are headquartered in Cleveland. The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department also backs the 2-person crews legislation.

Rail unions are pushing similar legislation in various states, notably in Minnesota, where a (Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) DFL-run state senate committee held a hearing on mandating 2-member crews there and was expected to pass it. Railroads tried to sidetrack the Minnesota bill by claiming it would conflict with federal law, Smart Minnesota transportation legislative director Philip Qualy said.

"The carriers' practice to remove more and more persons from the right-of-ways of American railroads endangers the general public," Qualy added.

Rail workers and unions contend freight trains need 2-person crews for safety reasons. They cite accidents that could have been prevented had a second crewmember been present to take action. In particular, Smart and the BLE&T cite the 2013 derailment, fire and explosion of an oil train in Lac Megantic, Quebec. That disaster killed 47 people and virtually destroyed the small town. Due to Canadian deregulatory moves, the train had only an engineer.

"BLE&T continues to oppose and condemn single-person freight operations as adverse to worker and public safety," President Dennis Pierce said. "Today, there are only two ways to end 1-person train operations: Federal laws or regulations that outlaw this dangerous practice, or collectively bargained contract language that requires two crew members on every train.

"We will continue to work to protect contractual language to defend 2-person crews, and it also is our goal to protect the safety of railroad workers and the general public by advocating for passage of HR1763."

Smart Transportation Division President John Previsich said, "The safest rail operation is a 2-person crew. With several major derailments in the last few months, most notably the oil train derailment and explosion near Charleston, W.Va., in February, lawmakers and the public must understand multi-person crews are essential to ensuring the safest rail operations possible in their communities." Earlier, his division released a survey of 2,519 adults in six congressional districts, five of them Republican, showing 82 percent support for 2-person crews.

"No one would permit an airliner to fly with just one pilot, even though it can fly itself. Trains, which cannot operate themselves, should be no different."

U.S. railroads have been lobbying the federal government for years to let them run freight trains with only an engineer, eliminating the conductor. They succeeded, in a Republican administration, in getting approval for 1-person crews just in rail yards. The major railroads, led by BNSF, have also tried to convince their unions to agree to 1-person crews in collective bargaining agreements. The unions refuse.

Young's bill, along with the state legislation in Minnesota and elsewhere, would stop that wider railroad campaign. Similar legislation drew 80 cosponsors in the last Congress, but died at the end of 2014.

Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, told lawmakers on April 17 her agency will issue a "notice of proposed rulemaking" - the first step in writing a new federal rule - this year covering the number of members in train crews. She did not say when it would publish the notice, or how many workers FRA thinks a crew needs.

Photo: Rail unions say only having one crew member on a freight train poses a significant safety hazard. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Baltimore unions back Fight for $15

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 15:05:00 +0000

BALTIMORE - One hundred trade unionists, including postal workers who are in contract talks, and others activists rallied in Baltimore's McKeldin Square April 15 as part of the nationwide "Fight for 15" campaign.

Following the rally, the protesters marched several blocks to a local McDonald's and then to the main Post Office, where they greeted last minute tax filers.

Fred Mason, President of the Maryland State and D.C. AFL-CIO, connected the struggle of fast food workers to the fight of postal workers and to the struggle against racism, saying all three were part of the same movement.

"The same forces that want to privatize the postal system and oppose voting rights want to keep the federal sub-minimum wage just like it is," Mason said.

Mason was joined by speakers from the Postal Workers Union, the Young Trade Unionists, the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly and Maryland's CPUSA.

Photo: George Askew, President of APWU Local 181, along with workers at McKeldin Square. | Margaret Baldridge/PW

Los Angeles city workers demand good-faith bargaining

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 14:05:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Matthew, a sanitation worker, arrives at his yard at 4:30 in the morning. He has some coffee, jumps into his truck and drives off the yard to begin his route.

Matthew is just one of 10,000 Los Angeles city workers including clerical, traffic officers and others, represented by the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), Local 721 who have, over the past nine months, been working without a contract.

Local 721 has been asking the city to make good-faith proposals for a new contract. The union wants to protect pensions, keep healthcare costs for workers down, and improve wages and working conditions.

The city has thus far refused to negotiate seriously so SEIU is planning other actions by workers in the days to come.

Last week city workers held a major really in front of Los Angeles City Hall demanding that the city bargain in good faith with the union. The union and the city have been in piece-meal contract negotiations for months with the city offering limited concrete proposals. The city workers declared that they won't back down when it comes to negotiating a fair and decent contract.

The City of Los Angeles has been placed on notice that a possible strike may be necessary in the near future if negotiations continued to be stalled. Pressure has been placed on the city when the union's bargaining team recommended a "yes" vote on strike authorization. The workers authorized a strike with an 86 percent "yes" vote.

In recent days sanitation workers expressed their frustration with the slow pace of negotiations by participating in various actions with other city workers. Matthew who has worked 15 years with the city of Los Angeles, took the day off to participate. He said that he would strike if necessary.

The director of the Los Angeles City Bureau of Sanitation has said he will hire contractors as replacement workers if there is strike. Los Angeles city officials have complained that some actions by the city workers are disrupting city services.

City workers have made it known that they will not accept the city hiring replacement workers or 'scabs' as they are called. The union position is that workers should not be blamed for inaction by the city. The solution, according to the union, is for the city to come to the bargaining table with realistic and common-sense proposals.

Photo: City janitors demonstrate for good wages and working conditons. | Alan Diaz/AP

The fight for $15: A new labor movement is born

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 13:33:00 +0000

NEW YORK - My first job after graduating West Philadelphia High in January, 1959 paid $1.00 an hour. It had no union, no benefits; no sick leave and no vacation time.

After 40 hours they had to pay me $1.50 an hour. That was the law. I worked six days a week, eight hours a day, Monday to Friday and was paid $1.50 an hour for eight hours on Saturday.

I grossed $52.00 a week. I was 17 and still living at home. After taxes, carfare and lunch I was able to contribute $10 dollars a week at home and have a little left over for a very modest social life. At age 17 a good social life meant everything but six days a week of physical labor for minimum wage didn't give me much energy or money to have a real social life.

I had to have a job. I'd been looking for work for months. High unemployment among black youth was real. I could not afford to turn down a job, not even a minimum wage job.

But the boss had a different class perspective. The most discouraging and insulting thing that was said to me by the owner of the company when he hired me was, "If you work hard and keep your nose clean, this could be a life-time job."

Like all youth, I had hopes and dreams for a better life. I was willing to start there but not be stuck in a dead-end job for the rest of my life.

Fast forward 56 years and I am among the 20,000 in New York City who are marching down Broadway. I am proudly carrying the banner of the New York District of the CPUSA with a group of comrades and friends. I'm part of this historic nationwide march and strike for a $15.00 minimum wage and the right of the working poor to unionize.

While marching I'm thinking about how it was then and how it is now. If the kind of movement I saw on the streets of Mid-town Manhattan had been around in Philadelphia in 1959 I would not have hesitated to join.

I'm surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic, majority black, Latino, and white working- class people. There are huge numbers of young people - young families pushing baby strollers with their kids on their shoulders, waving flags and carrying signs. What a beautiful sight. They are marching, chanting and waving beautiful placards.

There were large contingents from some of the most powerful unions in this country marching side by side with young non-union low-paid workers who understand that their hopes and dreams can be realized by organizing and becoming a part of the trade union movement. The union members understand that in order to fight for their future they need the energy, militancy and fighting spirit of the low wage workers.

This is a sweet coalition that can make great change. That is why there was a spirit of optimism in this march. You could see it in the workers who came out of the hotels, theaters, and retail shops and cheered us on and danced to the beat of the marching band for the Louis Pink Houses (Public Housing Project) where unarmed, 28 year-old, Ikai Gurly was shot down by a nervous NYPD rookie.

Yes there are some signs and shirts with "Black lives Matter" and "All lives Matter." This working class march unites the fight for economic justice with the fight for racial justice.

That is the winning political combination.

As I said, you could feel the optimism in this march. The large numbers, the racial and gender diversity, union and non union, and the winning combination were all there.

You could feel the optimism and confidence too which many of the speakers expressed: "This fight can be won."

Those who marched with our banner were so impressed with how happy and warm people were in the march and on the sidelines.

Mike the retired transit worker talked about his first paycheck and how low the pay was for a young worker even a worker with a union.

Jackie, a woman and a former steelworker, said, "This is so wonderful, marching with the salt of the earth."

We talked we chanted, we waved our banner and signs. We where with Estevan, Emerson, Gabe, Tina, Sara and her student friends. We must have marched 25-30 blocks dodging pot holes and construction barriers but it was so uplifting that most of the time I did not feel my aching feet.

This was the beautiful mosaic of our working class giving leadership and direction to people whose rights have been beaten and battered and suppressed under the heel of the arrogant 1 percent. In 200 cities, 60,000 marched. Quantitatively, this march was not the largest march we have seen, but qualitatively, Apr. 15 was politically a really big deal.

April 15, 2015 was more than the usual day of demonstrations. It was certainly more than tax day.

It was a turning point in the unity, politics and organization of the movement to end inequality. This is the movement that is pushing forward, that is strategically fighting back against the tyranny of the extreme right wing political minority. This march said the $15 minimum wage can be won and more. It said that the U.S. labor movement is still a strategic life force and can and will play its leading role in today's urgent fight for democracy.

This movement is another example of the changing tactics and strategy of organized labor. Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU, as reported in the NY Times, pointed out that supporting unorganized low-paid service workers was a result of a calculation that the 20th Century model of organizing workers was rapidly becoming obsolete for those in a growing sector where employers considered it essentially costless to replace them.

"We can no longer change our lives and our kids lives, without the support of a broader movement of workers," she added.

When seen in relationship to the great movement against climate change, the fight against racism and police murders, all of which had some expression at the march on April 15, this is a very dynamic era of struggle we are living through. Great dangers exist, of course, but there are also great possibilities.

April 15th shows that this nation, politically drawn and quartered by the haters, strapped down and tortured on the wheel of war, corporate greed, racism and inequality not only must, but shall overcome. The multi-racial working class with its organized sector, along with its many willing and active allies, is decisive.

This march, as part of this dynamic era of political upsurge, calls for all of us to step up the fight for a $15 minimum wage - to build a mighty fortress for justice.

Photo: Fightfor15.org

Retirees, allies rally at Cleveland hearing

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:32:00 +0000

The White House Commission on Aging (WHCA) was set up, funded, under the ERISA Act in 1974, part of the Older Americans Act. It meets only once a decade in D.C. to set government policy on seniors/retirement security, and is supposed to be non-partisan in its approach. For 40 years, the WHCA did just that, with both main national political parties generally cooperating in this task. All that has now ended!

The Republican Party has openly declared war on retirees. As soon as they achieved a majority in congress they defunded the WHCA, refused to continue to support the Older Americans Act and every GOP candidate running for top office has announced that they'll support cuts in Social Security. Legislation attacking Social Security and pensions was the first thing passed by that majority. Many Democrats haven't been much better, looking for some type of 'grand bargain' to cut retiree security.

In this difficult situation, the Obama administration is holding hearings of the WHCA at various locations across the nation this year. While receiving little media coverage, regional hearings are being held in Tampa, Phoenix, Seattle, Cleveland & Boston. Three have been held so far, generally dominated by corporate types, testifying against retirement security, and the next one is scheduled for Apr. 27 in Cleveland.

For a wide coalition of retirees, unions and supporters of retiree security, this was just not acceptable and it was felt that there needed to be a public event, alongside the WHCA Cleveland hearing, to assure that those impacted by government/corporate policies are actually held. The United Steelworkers, their retiree organization, SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees), the Ohio AFL-CIO, Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA), the Cleveland Union Retiree Council & Senior Voice, a retiree based coalition in Cleveland), and others came together and have called a rally for 1:00 on 4/27 at the Old Stone Church in that city, on Public Square, just a block from where the WHCA hearings are being held.

"We need to make sure that we are seen, and heard," stated Cleveland SOAR President Jim Reed. "We earned our pensions, they aren't anyone's 'entitlements.' Those pensions, and Social Security, support our families and the communities we live in. They are our lifeline and we intend to stand up and defend them."

Sen. Sherrod Brown, congress reps Marcie Kaptur & Marcia Fudge are scheduled to speak at the rally. The main speaker is to be Fred Redmond, USW Vice President. Todd Smith, local union musician, is providing entertainment and the coalition is videoing stories from retirees and others. Senior Voice is providing speakers on how policies have affect people in that community.

"Ohio ARA has to be part of this coalition, so that we can help raise, to the public's attention, how congress has helped corporations destroy retiree security for people in Ohio and elsewhere. Pensions, Social Security, are the only way retirees can life, pay medical bills, provide for their families and this idea of some that stealing from widows and retirees to enrich the wealthiest in our nation is just plain wrong! We need real retiree security again for all, not tax cuts and bailouts for billionaires!"

Photo: whatdidyousay.org

Workers sue Walmart for retaliatory store closings

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:50:00 +0000

Today Walmart workers with OUR Walmart filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board in response to what they say are Walmart's retaliatory closings of five stores. The workers filing the charges were employed at the now-closed Pico Rivera Walmart store in Los Angeles.

Last week, Walmart abruptly closed five Walmart stores in four states just hours before tens of thousands of low wage workers, including Walmart workers, began the largest one-day strike of low wage workers in American history.

Walmart said that at the Los Angeles store and at other stores the reason for the closures was plumbing problems, not retaliation for worker organizing, as workers are claiming.

"They say it is plumbing, that they are having a national plumbing crisis," Denise Barlage, 56, a nine-year veteran worker at the Pico-Rivera store told the People's World last Wednesday. Barlage talked about the closing as she rallied in front of a McDonald's store in LA during the national strikes and protests staged by low-wage workers. "But we know better than what Walmart says is the reason they shut down," she said. "It is no accident that they shut down our store which has been a one of the most successful centers for organizing by OUR Walmart members.

"We are not going to let this go withourt a fight," she added. Barlage is currrently among a group of women staging a 15-day hunger strike at LA's City Hall, demanding a $15 minimum wage.

The Pico Rivera store at which Barlage was employed is highly symbolic to the low-wage worker movement. It was the first Walmart store to go on strike in October, 2012. It was also the location of the first sit-down strike by Walmart workers and many of its employees participated in civil disobedience actions in the weeks prior to the last Black Friday demonstrations.

City officials at all five locations say Walmart has obtained no permits to begin repairs in any of the closed stores. Walmart itself has failed to offer any evidence of a plumbing emergency that would require the immediate closing of five stores just as strikes and protests were getting underway across the nation.

"This is a new low, even for Walmart," said Venanzi Luna, an eight-year Walmart worker and long-time OUR Walmart member. "It's just so heartless to put thousands of your employees out of a job with no clear explanation on just a few hours' notice. We know that Walmart is scared of all we have accomplished as members of OUR Walmart so they're targeting us. Through OUR Walmart, we're going to keep fighting back until the company gives us our jobs back. It's unfortunate that Walmart has chosen to hurt the lives of so many people, just to try to conceal their real motives of silencing workers just like they've always done."

Workers are asking the National Labor Relations Board to seek injunctive relief under section 10j of the National Labor Relations Act. They are calling on the National Labor Relations Board to compel Walmart to rehire all of the workers who were terminated in all five stores and reinstate them to their own stores or transfer them without loss of pay until they can be reinstated to their stores. A 10j injunction is designed to allow the court to act quickly to remedy such extreme violations without the long delay which is anticipated for NLRB proceedings.

As the filing notes, this is not the first time Walmart has taken dramatic action to quell worker action. In June of 2014, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Walmart had violated labor law when it closed the Jonquiére, Quebec Walmart store. The workers in that store had voted to join a union, becoming the first unionized store in North America just before it closed. In 2000, butchers in a Jacksonville, Texas Walmart voted to join UFCW Local 540. Two weeks later, Walmart closed its 180 meat departments in stores nationwide and switched to prepackaged case- eady meat only. More recently, Walmart fired and disciplined more than 70 workers who participated in strikes in June 2013. An Administrative Law Judge of the NLRB has found merit to claims against Walmart and additional claims are currently being prosecuted by the General Counsel of the NLRB against Walmart.

Community members and elected officials have also come out in support of Walmart workers. The El Rancho Unified School District, in which the Pico Rivera store is located, will vote on a resolution in support of the laid off Pico Rivera Walmart workers. The resolution "calls on Walmart to consider the economic hardship their decision has caused for their 530 associates from the Pico Rivera store and their families and commit to transfer all of the Associates to surrounding Walmart stores before new people are hired to fill positions in those stores..."

Other community members are calling attention to the impact of Walmart's actions on their neighborhoods, congregations and communities.

"It is a scandal against all that is righteous, though it is unfortunately not surprising, that Walmart, the economic Pharaoh who cannot see workers as people but only as expense lines, has again decreed unemployment and poverty and suffering on 530 workers here, and similar numbers in four other stores," said local Rabbi Aryeh Cohen. "In November, I joined other clergy and community leaders and workers in an act of civil disobedience to support the brave workers who sat down and struck in order to stand up with dignity. We then demanded $15 an hour and access to full employment. Today our demands have not changed. However, we also demand that Pharaoh rehire all 530 workers, give them priority before hiring other workers for less pay, and support the fired workers beyond the mandated 60 days."

Workers promised that they would continue to fight the company's retaliatory closures with bold action until the company meets their calls for reinstatement, transfer with equal pay and compensation in the interim and finally, the opportunity to return to their stores when they reopen.

"Allowing Walmart to get away with such a blatant attack on the rights of workers' in our community would open the door for any employer to simply develop 'plumbing issues' whenever workers stood up for change in their workplace," said SEIU 721 Chief of Staff Gilda Valdez. "We need to send a message to Walmart and all employers that in our community, the rights of working people must be respected. That's why we'll continue to stand with Walmart workers as they fight to get back to work and for change at the world's largest private employer."

John Wojcik contributed to this story.

Photo: Denise Barlage and others who lost their jobs when Walmart shuttered the Pico Rivera store don't believe company claims that the shut-down was forced by plumbing problems. | Blake Deppe/PW

Media fingerpointing occurs on the docks

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 13:37:00 +0000

Sometimes the conventional narrative the media tell about a news story feels so wrong I can't stand it - but I don't know why until the story's over. The recent coverage of the labor dispute at the West Coast ports - including Los Angeles and Long Beach - is a case in point. News reports focused on the long, drawn-out negotiation process as an economic disaster waiting to happen, and blamed the entire situation on those dastardly workers and their unions.

The narrative included several key arguments: A union slowdown at the ports was causing a backlog of shipping containers carrying everything America buys, putting all importers at risk and causing a plague on American shoppers. There would be long-term economic damage to our region as a consequence. With the eventual opening of the widened Panama Canal, shippers would skip the West Coast and head to other ports. That would hurt Southern California-based shippers, wholesalers, retailers and average citizens looking for their favorite stuff. To avoid all this trouble the president should invoke federal law and speed things up.

The union response was simple: We don't do slowdowns and we negotiate at the bargaining table, not through the media. Talks between the shipping companies and the dockworkers had dragged on for six months - even during a December increase in off-loaded containers - and they only came to a conclusion on February 19 when an agreement was announced.

It took a while, then both the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Business Journal began writing stories from perspectives they had not revealed earlier.

One involved a major logistical snafu that had been building up for several years after shipping lines stopped providing trailers to port truck drivers and, instead, told the drivers to get their trailers (also known as chassis) from third-party companies. With the arrival of larger container ships, though, matching the right truck trailer for the right-sized container, at the right time, became a slow, cumbersome process. The ports are still trying to solve this glitch.

How big of an impact has that glitch caused? Well, big, but not that big. First, the larger ships are larger. Instead of carrying upwards of 5,000 containers, the new mega ships can carry up to 12,000. That's a huge difference, and the ports are still trying to adjust their methods of unloading and distribution. But all the carriers out there waiting to unload are not mega ships, and there are not that many. In a panel discussion for the L.A. Business Journal, Wells Fargo Trade Capital Vice-President Kevin Sullivan gave us the numbers: At the peak of the longshore workers strike in 2002, some 97 ships were backed up. This time the count topped out at 22. Again, that's a huge difference, and the port was a lot smaller in 2002.

In mid-March the L.A Times reported that the problem wasn't the union cutting back on work at all. In January the shipping companies had stopped unloading ships at night and cut work shifts over the President's Day weekend in February. This hurt workers, of course, but it also hurt everyone else - shippers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, shoppers - all those folks the companies claimed the union workers hurt.

Finally, the economists weighed in. Would the bottleneck at the ports hurt long-term prospects for L.A. and other West Coast ports? The answer, apparently, is No. Talking about the potential impact of a widened Panama Canal, Jock O'Connell of Beacon Economics estimated that despite the billions in infrastructure invested by Gulf and Eastern states, no more than five percent of current West Coast business would go there.

For good reason. Importing through Southern California ports is faster. A U.S. Department of Transportation report determined that Asian goods destined for Dallas would arrive four days earlier going through our ports than any on the Gulf of Mexico. Four days amounts to a lot of lost time for the just-in-time economy.

Oh, and all that economic disarray that the labor dispute was supposed to impose on our lives? "We're talking about tenths of a percent - very small stuff," the L.A. Times quoted a University of California, Los Angeles economist who specializes in the California economy.

It makes me wonder whether these dramatically different narratives are intentional or accidental or a failure of awareness or blind bias or simply weak reporting. Whoever is writing them, they are making a story favorable to people with money and power, not the folks doing the work. So I've learned to see the question marks in my mind as red flags. We know who's usually on the short end of this media stick, even though it may take a while to figure out why.

Reprinted by permission of the author and Capital & Main.(Photo courtesy Port of Long Beach)

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.