People Before Profit blog

Outrage over plea bargain in burning death of lab worker

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:33:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (PAI) - A plea-bargained small settlement in the six-year-old case of a worker - a Communications Workers member - who burned to death in an unsafe college chemical laboratory has outraged both her family and her union.

But the 2008 death of 23-year-old Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji, a research assistant and CWA Local 9119 member, has had one positive development: It led the federal National Research Council, which awards grants to many U.S. colleges and universities, to warn them last month that they must obey job safety and health laws and protect their workers.

While working in the UCLA chemical lab in December 2008, Sangji was transferring t-butyl lithium - a solution that catches on fire on contact with air - from one container to another, when her plastic syringe came apart, Local 9119 reported. It spilled onto Sangji and instantly set her afire. She wasn't wearing a lab coat because no one - including lab supervisor Dr. Patrick Harran - instructed her to do so. Her rubber gloves didn't protect her, either. Sangji suffered severe burns and died 18 days later.

Los Angeles officials sued UCLA on three felony counts and indicted Harran on four criminal counts of breaking state job safety and health laws. UCLA settled in 2012 by agreeing to fix the lab and establishing a $500,000 Sangji memorial scholarship.

On August 21, Harran accepted a "deferred prosecution" plea bargain of three months of community service and a $5,000 fine, sent to the burn center that treated Sangji. The local judge was upset enough with what he heard in court to double both penalties.

So were the union and Sangji's family. Local 9119 said the L.A. District Attorney should have taken the case against Harran to trial, as a deterrent to other erring labs. Naveen Sangji, Sheri Sangji's sister, called Harran's plea bargain "barely a slap on the wrist.

"Harran has been completely unrepentant about ordering Sheri to perform an extremely dangerous experiment without providing her with training or supervision as he is required by law," Naveen Sangji said. And UCLA, "perhaps because of its culpability, and perhaps because of grant monies Harran brings in, also refused to hold him accountable. We do not understand how this man is allowed to continue running a laboratory, and supervising students and researchers. We can only hope other young individuals are protected in the future."

Photo: Sheri Sangji. CWA

The Democracy Initiative: A national campaign caught fire

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - At first, it was a one-union crusade, but in the first example of what labor's legions, with a huge amount of added allies, can do, the Communications Workers' Democracy Initiative caught fire.

And it's not stopping after its first big win, forcing the U.S. Senate to change part of one of its most undemocratic requirements, the filibuster rule.

CWA President Larry Cohen and the union's team created the Democracy Initiative after seeing how a combination of political factors - Republican filibusters, anti-Hispanic venom, voter suppression and U.S. Supreme Court rulings - combined to thwart pro-democracy/pro-worker legislation and initiatives.

Prime among the victims of the obstructionism and right wing: The Employee Free Choice Act, the labor-backed bill designed to help level the playing field between workers and bosses in union organizing campaigns and in negotiating first contracts.

Other groups and unions had campaigned for comprehensive immigration reform, for voting rights, against the Radical Right and for workers' rights for years. CWA's drive went two steps beyond: It linked all the factors together, and it consciously set out to round up a huge group of allies.

"Ultimately these factors - outsized political spending, voter suppression and obstruction of legislative debate and action - diminish the fairness and effectiveness of the political process and discourage robust civic participation essential to the American democratic ideal. Consequently, our democracy is in distress," the campaign's statement says.

"This intentional suppression of the voices of the many is affecting every element of our democracy. Corporate influence is at an all-time high and citizen belief and engagement in the system is at an all-time low."

Their solution was to get voting rights and civil rights groups, unions, environmental groups, citizens groups, pro-worker faith groups and other pro-democracy organizations out of their individual "silos" and work together. Before that, each group would give the others' causes lip service, but nothing more.

By uniting them against a common foe - corporate corruption and control of the political system and the awful results that produces - CWA convinced more than 51 other groups to work together.

"We seek a vibrant democracy, free of the corrupting influence of corporate money, where everyone can participate fully and freely in our democratic process, where every voter has a voice, and where our policymakers are accountable to the people and the public interest. Achieving success in civil rights, climate change, women's rights and worker's rights, is inextricably linked to the victories on these core issues of our democracy," their statement said.

But first they had to convince their allies that an "inside baseball" issue - the Senate's filibuster rules - matter. Because those rules block everything else.

"Everything" included a full and functioning National Labor Relations Board. GOP filibusters, sustained by business backing and an absolute minority of at least 41 votes - the minimum needed - blocked President Obama from filling all five seats on the board, hamstringing it.

The filibusters also blocked Obama nominees for other key posts, including the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as dozens of federal judges.

The several hundred GOP filibusters - an all-time record - helped. The Republicans, scheming to destroy the president, blocked virtually everything, giving each group in the coalition a cause to push through overturning the Republican talkathons. But the NLRB, the EPA and the consumer bureau led the list.

And finally, the pressure worked. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., fed up himself with the filibusters, and under - he admitted constant pressure from Cohen and CWA's allies - changed the rules to allow a simple majority vote to end filibusters on nominations of executive branch officials and lower-court judges.

But the Democracy Initiative has no intention of resting on its laurels. That win still leaves the filibusters alive against legislation and against Supreme Court justices. There are other snags in the rules that still lie in ambush. And once the rules change, there's the substantive legislation and change the Democracy Initiative is campaigning for: Workers' rights, restoration of voting rights, curbing the Supreme Court/GOP-caused influence of right-wing and business cash on elections, and comprehensive immigration reform. It's a tall order.

But they think they can win. They just racked up another small victory - which, due to the rules, won't last: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a proposed constitutional amendment again allowing Congress to regulate federal campaign financing.

"We will build this democracy through long term and short term goals aimed at opening democracy and shifting the center of political engagement from moneyed interest to the people," the creators of the Democracy Initiative say.

"We will build a power network aimed at achieving universal access to the ballot box, shifting the burden of voter registration to states, passing Senate rules reform, and curbing the influence of money in our electoral system.

"Believing the fight for democracy must be a 50-state strategy, we ultimately seek to build a 50-state strategy for democracy fueled by grassroots communities. This vision will require a long-term sustained effort, fueled by a movement broad enough and powerful enough to overcome the barriers that have kept us from achieving and maintaining victories over the last few decades."

Photo: Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is a leading member of the Democracy Initiative. CWA

Ohio's GOP governor ignores pleas of 3,000 fired Ormet workers

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:55:00 +0000

HANNIBAL, Ohio - The tattered sign standing at the entrance of Ormet's North Gate pretty much says it all. It pleads to Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, for "some help" to save Ohio jobs.

We reported earlier this month (Aug. 5) that on July 31, Niagara World Wide fired the last twenty workers, formerly employed by Ormet Primary Aluminum Corporation. With those firings, Niagara also announced that the facility in Hannibal, Ohio, would close for good.

Two questions must have been on many minds that day: How did this happen? And what can anyone do about it?

The first question is perhaps easier to answer because the events leading to Ormet's final doom had been a long time coming. The aluminum industry as a whole was faced for some years with falling prices on the world market. That factor, coupled with American Electric Power's (AEP) price of $16 million per month to operate, may have eventually doomed the Hannibal plant anyway. We don't know that for certain because there was a proposal in the works to bridge the electrical power usage with a less expensive gasification process. In order for that promising solution to be put in place, the Hannibal plant needed time, and that could only happen with relief from AEP and/or a mandate from the Public Utilities Commission (PUCO).

To gain that additional time and a price-relief from AEP, Ohio's leading government officials, particularly Gov. Kasich, needed to intervene and put pressure on AEP and PUCO, stressing Ormet's importance to the state's economy. The workers and their union believed this might happen because the previous governor, Ted Strickland, a Democrat, was able to accomplish just that. He brought the parties together and worked out the deal that did indeed save the Hannibal plant. This time, however, the political conditions were different.

Ohio's present governor, John Kasich, ignored the looming crisis - the man famous for his attempt to bust Ohio's public employee unions, with help from the now Republican- dominated legislature. Throughout Ormet's final agony, Gov. Kasich, along with Rep. Bill Johnson, Republican from Ohio's 6th Congressional District, and U.S. Senator from Ohio Rob Portman, R, failed to do anything to save Ormet. They were all noticeably absent throughout the sinking of Ormet and her jobs.

The labor movement has selected seven states where it says workers have a high interest in the outcome of the gubernatorial elections this fall. Ohio is one of the states in which unions are putting on a major effort to defeat an incumbent GOP governor.

Tom Byers (President, LU 5427, USWA) reported that not every politician deserted the Ormet workers. State Senator Lou Gentile and State Representative Jack Cera, both Democrats, worked diligently with the union to save Ormet-even U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D, did all he could. But to no avail. Without intervention by Gov. Kasich or Rep. Johnson, whatever pressure that could be applied to AEP or PUCO was simply too little. Even the petition bearing over 1,000 signatures failed to move either Gov. Kasich or PUCO to action.

As reported previously, Kasich offhandedly took the position that the proposed plan wouldn't work, and proceeded to ignore repeated pleas to even meet with the union or visit the Ormet site. Kasich's contempt for Ohio's workers and for the welfare of its communities has never been so obvious as in Ormet's closure.

What can the Ormet workers and their community do about it now?

The former Ormet employees are still in shock at the news that their jobs are gone for good. Their greatest concern now has to be how to provide for themselves and their families. When asked how his members felt about Kasich, Brother Byers replied that they were disappointed by his failure to even lift a finger to save Ormet

When the shock wears off, the obvious first step for them and for all workers in Ohio's 6th Congressional District is to work on defeating Kasich, Johnson, Portman, and the GOP ticket in November. Many union members will be doing just that through the Ohio AFL-CIO and the Monroe County Democratic Party. The wise organizer V. I. Lenin once said, "It is at moments of need that one learns who one's friends are." If we in eastern Ohio didn't know who our friends were before, we know now and we will remember in November!

Photo: John Milam/PW

Catholic bishops back unions in Labor Day message

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:39:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Repeatedly using the word "solidarity," and extending it to all, not just to workers, the nation's Catholic bishops strongly backed unions and their role in their annual Labor Day message.

The message draws both on Catholic social thought, which has endorsed unions and their role in protecting and advancing workers for 125 years, and the more-recent strongly pro-worker statements of new Pope Francis I. The bishops' message does not, however, repeat Francis' frequent denunciations of the excesses of unbridled capitalism.

And whether prominent lay Catholics, such as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, or even other churchmen - such as the St. Louis prelate who opposes unionizing his diocese's parochial school teachers - will pay heed to the bishops is open to question.

"At their best, labor unions and institutions like them embody solidarity and subsidiarity while advancing the common good," said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on domestic justice and human development.

Unions "help workers "not only have more, but above all be more...and realize their humanity more fully in every respect. Yes, unions and worker associations are imperfect, as are all human institutions. But the right of workers to freely associate is supported by Church teaching in order to protect workers and move them - especially younger ones, through mentoring and apprenticeships - into decent jobs with just wages." Overall, the state of the economy is not as good as it first appears, Wenski added, especially for young adults. "Pope Francis has reserved some of his strongest language for speaking about young adult unemployment, calling it 'evil,' an 'atrocity,' and emblematic of the 'throwaway culture,'" Wenski said.

"Labor Day gives us the chance to see how work in America matches up to the lofty ideals of our Catholic tradition," his statement says. "This year, some Americans who have found stability and security are breathing a sigh of relief. Sporadic economic growth, a falling unemployment rate, and more consistent job creation suggest that the country may finally be healing economically after years of suffering and pain. For those men and women, and their children, this is good news.

"Digging a little deeper, however, reveals enduring hardship for millions of workers and their families. The poverty rate remains high, as 46 million Americans struggle to make ends meet. The economy continues to fail in producing enough decent jobs for everyone who is able to work, despite the increasing numbers of retiring baby boomers. There are twice as many unemployed job seekers as there are available jobs, and that does not include the seven million part-time workers who want to work full-time. Millions more, especially the long-term unemployed, are discouraged and dejected."

The bishops offered several solutions for stagnation, including "supporting policies and institutions that create decent jobs, pay just wages, and support family formation and stability."

"Raising the minimum wage, more and better workforce training, and smarter regulations that minimize negative unintended consequences would be good places to start," he said. "In doing this we follow the lead of Pope Francis in rejecting an economy of exclusion."

And Wenski renewed the Church's demand for comprehensive immigration reform. Approving it, he said, would "recognize that a vibrant and just economy requires the contributions of everyone."

The bishops again rejected nativists' claims that the undocumented displace U.S. workers. And, again quoting the Pope, Wenski reiterated that comprehensive reform "would also level the playing field among workers, provide more opportunity for all who can work, and bring about a needed change of attitude toward migrants and refugees."

Photo: Archbishop Thomas Wenski. Miamiarch.org

Today in labor history: 1934 Filipino lettuce cutters strike

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:10:00 +0000

On August 27, 1934, Filipino lettuce cutters and mainly white packing shed workers struck the powerful Salinas Valley, California, growers and shippers, demanding union recognition and improved working conditions. But the growers used divisive tactics and scab labor to cause setbacks to the workers' struggles.

White workers who were refugees from the depression and the dustbowl came to Salinas for work in its thriving lettuce fields. Workers were housed in roadside camps with poor sanitation.

After World War I, California growers began importing farmworkers from the Philippines, which the U.S. had taken control of after a war with Spain in 1898.

Laws were passed forbidding Filipino women from entering the U.S. In many rural towns it was a crime for Filipino men to associate with non-Filipino women. The growers hoped to keep their expenses down by employing a work force of single men, with disastrous social consequences. But in the early 1930s, the Filipino workers responded by organizing into associations that led some powerful strikes.

Collective bargaining rights for most hourly workers in the United States were first given legal protection in 1933 by Section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Although NIRA did not specifically exempt agricultural laborers from the protection of the Act, the Roosevelt administration, eager to win the political support of farm-state members of Congress, argued that farm workers were excluded.

When the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was enacted in 1935, it specifically exempted agricultural workers due to pressure from the "farm bloc" in Congress. Although a number of attempts were made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to organize farm laborers, these efforts were unsuccessful.

In 1934, when the Filipino lettuce cutters and mainly white packing shed workers struck demanding union recognition and improved conditions, they made an agreement between them, neither group would bargain without the other.

After several weeks of an effective strike, the grower-shippers agreed to bargain. The agreement was made on a Saturday night. "Send your workers back to work immediately," said the bosses, "and we'll negotiate on Monday." Sunday is not a workday and no one returned to work until Monday.

When Monday came the growers sat and negotiated with the packing shed representatives, but they refused to even talk with Filipino representatives because they had "violated the agreement to return to work immediately."

While the packers union was negotiating its contract, organized vigilante gangs were burning down Filipino labor camps, driving Filipino organizers from the valley and bringing in scabs to break the field strike.

For more information, read 1934-36 Salinas Strikes - Divide and Conquer on the website http://www.farmworkers.org/strugcal.html, an initiative of Sin Fronteras Organizing Project.

To this day, farmworkers struggle for better wages and working conditions, and fight the lengths the growers will go to suppress worker unity.

Filipino American labor marks 45th anniversary of grape strike

The farm workers' Filipino-American champion

What I learned from the Immokalee workers

Photo: Filipinos cutting lettuce. Salinas, California, June 1935. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

NLRB: Labor law protects worker recruiting others to sign sexual harassment complaint

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:07:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Federal labor law protects a worker who recruits her colleagues to sign her complaint about sexual harassment on the job, even if they later say they were signing just to ratify her findings and not because of harassment they suffered themselves, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled.

In a 3-1 decision in mid-August involving workers at a Phoenix, Ariz., grocery store, the board said the sexual harassment complaint, even if it just involves the complaining worker, is "protected and concerted activity" the National Labor Relations Act covers.

That's because sexual harassment can be pervasive in the workplace, even if there's only one complaint, the board majority added. The board's ruling this year also reversed a decade-old NLRB ruling - by a GOP-majority board - saying you need more than one worker for "protected and concerted activity" to merit a complaint.

And the new ruling emphasizes that you need only one worker for a complaint of any kind, not just sexual harassment on the job.

The case started on Aug. 24, 2011 at the Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Market in Phoenix, when worker Margaret Elias signed up on a store whiteboard for training in a company "tips" training program on alcohol sales. A male employee altered "tips" to "tits" and added an offensive drawing pointing at her name.

Elias copied down the offending word and drawing and got two other workers to sign at the bottom of her drawing, then complained to management. The two signed, but filed no complaints themselves. The company probed, found the guilty worker, and disciplined him.

In his ruling in the case, the NLRB's administrative law judge in Phoenix said Elias - and, implicitly, any worker - who brings a complaint that basically is on her own behalf is acting on her own, not in "protected and concerted activity" that labor law covers. The board majority, led by Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce, used the case to say that's not so.

"It is well established that the activity of a single employee in enlisting the support of his fellow employees for their mutual aid and protection is as much 'concerted activity' as is ordinary group activity," Pearce and the board majority added.

"Elias was engaged in concerted activity," the board said. Over the decades, the NLRB "defined concerted activity as that which is 'engaged in with or on the authority of other employees, and not solely by and on behalf of the employee himself,'" the majority said. The case decided by the GOP-named board majority in 2004 overturned those precedents.

"Inasmuch as almost any concerted activity for mutual aid or protection has to start with some kind of communication between individuals, it would come very near to nullifying the rights of organization and collective bargaining guaranteed by" labor law's key section 7, "if such communications are denied protection," Pearce and the current majority concluded.

Photo: Mark Gaston Pearce, chair of the NLRB

Judges’ rulings take away workers’ rights

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 13:10:00 +0000

If there ever is a year that proves the importance of judges' rulings to workers' rights, 2014 is it. That's because the jurists in black robes spent much of the year taking rights away.

From the U.S. Supreme Court down to the Los Angeles Superior Court, judges issued rulings that stripped workers of what they had won over the years through collective bargaining, lobbying, or both.

And those two courts' rulings are actually part of a larger Right Wing campaign to destroy workers' rights by killing or crippling unions - something the judges involved didn't say.

The High Court opened the door to thousands of "free riders," and possibly tens of thousands of union defections, in its Harris vs. Quinn decision. There the justices said that home health care providers paid by the state, whose salaries and benefits were set by the state and whose contract was negotiated by the state with the union a majority of the providers selected, were not really public workers.

That's because the providers actually worked for a second "employer" - the elderly or disabled individuals they care for. Because of that, they're only "partially public" workers, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 5-man GOP-nominated court majority, and thus "free rider" workers who didn't want to join the union, but who still get benefits of its contract and its protection in their grievances, didn't have to pay one red cent for the services.

Alito's ruling prompted Justice Elena Kagan, leading the dissenters, to forecast a mass exodus, on economic grounds, of workers from public employee unions. Why, she reasoned, should they pay for union services when, under Alito's dictum, they can get them for free?

In Los Angeles, teachers' tenure, at least in California, fell victim to Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu. He ruled the state's teacher tenure laws violated the California constitution's requirement of equal protection of the law - in this case the law mandating a quality education to all students.

The case was ostensibly brought by a small group of middle-school students who said the tenure laws saddled them with incompetent and unqualified teachers and violated their rights. But if was funded by Right Wing anti-union lawyers and groups. Treu sided with the Right Wingers. Their allies promptly launched a second such case, in New York, and a ballot initiative in Missouri.

Treu's ruling "stoops to pitting students against their teachers. The other side wanted a headline that reads: 'Students win, teachers lose.' This is a sad day for public education," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. Treu is right that poor and minority students often fall behind others, added Weingarten, a New York City teacher whose union represents mostly teachers and staff in major cities. But Treu's ruling didn't explain why, she added.

Treu "argues, as we do, that no one should tolerate bad teachers in the classroom. He is right on that. In focusing on these teachers who make up a fraction of the workforce, he strips the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job of any right to a voice."

The two decisions were among a raft of key rulings on workers' rights. Others included:

Whistleblower protection. The justices ruled 9-0 in late June that a public worker cannot be fired for whistleblowing by testifying - truthfully - about fraud before a grand jury and in a trial. In Lane vs. Franks, an Alabama community college president had fired the whistleblower, Edward Lane. The National Education Association helped Lane's case. The High Court backed Lane, but said employers still retained some residual rights to fire whistleblowers in order to maintain discipline and order in the workplace.

The win in Lawson vs. FMR was the second pro-whistleblower ruling by the justices. On March 27, in a 6-3 vote, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled that firms - and specifically mutual funds and the subcontractors, such as lawyers, that serve them - could not retaliate against workers who report fraud.

"The mischief to which Congress was responding" is the Sarbanes-Oxley law curbing mutual funds' abuses "shelters employees of private contractors and subcontractors, just as it shelters employees of the public company served by the contractors and subcontractors," Ginsburg said. "The mutual funds themselves are public companies that have no employees. Hence, if the whistle is to be blown on fraud detrimental to mutual fund investors, the whistleblowing employee must be on another company's payroll, most likely, the payroll of the mutual fund's investment adviser or manager."

Ruled Obama exceeded his authority

NLRB hamstrung? The justices ruled that President Obama exceeded his powers when made three "recess appointments" to the NLRB in 2012. The Senate was in pro-forma sessions at the time - one senator would come in every three days, gavel a session to order and then adjourn it, usually within seconds - to prevent Obama from naming appointees to key jobs in the interim. The justices said the Senate was right, not Obama. That left 120 NLRB cases where the "recess appointees" voted up for grabs. Left unsaid by the justices: Obama had to make the recess appointments because Senate Republican filibusters had blocked all his regular NLRB nominees, as the GOP wants to bring the NLRB - and labor law enforcement - to a dead halt.

ESOP trustees must be prudent - and held responsible - when they invest workers' money in company stock. That's what the Supreme Court ruled in late June in Fifth Third Bancorp vs. Dudenhoeffer. The Labor Department went to bat for workers in the ESOPs. Until the ruling, DOL said, ESOP trustees could act under a presumption that investing in their own firm's stock was OK, regardless of the risks involved. But Fifth Third invested workers' ESOP money in its own stock even though the trustees knew the bank had millions of dollars tied up in subprime mortgages. When they collapsed, so did the stock, and so did the ESOP's assets.

"When the savings and assets of hardworking Americans are at stake, trustees need to be able to demonstrate that they've acted responsibly. Getting rid of the presumption will put an end to shielding trustees from liability in companies like Lehman Brothers, where the ESOP lost all its value when the company collapsed; and in Fifth Third, where the trustees purchased company stock despite knowing the risk associated with the company's exposure to subprime mortgages," DOL said.

There's a similar case making its way through the California courts. The California Court of Appeals sent the case involving CalPERS and stock and bond rating agencies back down for a new trial. It said the lower courts erred by throwing CalPERS' suit out the first time.

"Quite simply, CalPERS provided sufficient evidence to make a prima facie showing that the representations embodied in the ratings reflect not just professional opinions regarding an event in the future such as the likelihood of default, but also regarding a past or existing fact-namely, the then-current composition and quality of the product," the California judges wrote.

"The rating agencies were deeply involved in the very creation of the product," special investment vehicles (SIVs) that "by nature, are 'perpetual financing vehicles' designed to 'continuously roll paper.' " The bond rating agencies, such as Moody's, must "continuously monitor" the SIVs - and anything else they invest CalPERS' pensioners money in. They did, but didn't tell CalPERS that the SIVs were about to flop - or get out of them. That means CalPERS can sue to hold the rating agencies responsible, the judges said.

If you're going to bring a racketeering case against your boss, you'd better show you got hurt, not an economic theory saying you could get hurt. That's what the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta decided on March 14 in a case pitting Melissa Simpson and Sabrina Roberts against their employer, the Sanderson Farms poultry processing company in Georgia. The two workers alleged Sanderson violated federal racketeering laws by driving wages of all workers at the plant - which is non-union - down by hiring 300 undocumented workers through falsely concocting legal papers for them. The total workforce is 1,500.

The Sanderson case is the second anti-racketeering case out of Georgia alleging an employer broke the law by importing undocumented workers and falsifying their papers. The catch in this one, the judges said, was that Simpson and Roberts had to prove their wages suffered because of the hiring of the undocumented workers - and they didn't. Simpson got a 34 percent raise over two years, and Roberts got 36 percent after one. The two said their wages, and the wage of Sanderson workers as a class, would have risen even more if the firm hadn't conspired to hire the undocumented. The judges said they didn't prove it.

Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

Oregon anti-labor groups try to kill paid sick leave

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:53:00 +0000

EUGENE, Oregon (PAI) - What seemed to be a win for the growing national campaign for local paid sick leave laws, a new ordinance in Eugene, Oregon, has turned into a battle royal between the city and Lake County. And the whole mess is headed for court.

There, the proponents of paid sick leave are confident they will win, the Northwest Labor Press reports.

The Eugene City Council voted 5-3 for the ordinance, which is scheduled to take effect next July 1. It gives almost all workers in the city up to 40 hours of paid sick leave yearly. The exceptions are federal, state, county and school district workers - because a city ordinance can't cover them - and construction workers under union contracts. It covers all other workers in Eugene, including workers in businesses whose headquarters are elsewhere.

The Eugene ordinance is part of a nationwide movement for paid sick and family leave, city-by-city and state-by-state. Advocates, led by women's' groups and unions, campaign for paid sick and family leave that way since the dysfunctional GOP-hamstrung U.S. Congress shows no sign of approving a national paid leave law.

Strong backing from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, other unions and sympathetic businesses helped prod the council to act. The unions and businesses aided the non-profit Family Forward Oregon, and all the groups mobilized campaigners and canvassers to knock on more than 10,000 doors and develop a several-thousand-name supporter list in the 158,000-person city, the Northwest Labor Press added.

"Sick leave was the hot topic in Eugene for the last seven months," Family Forward Oregon organizer Lori Trieger told the paper. Her group estimates the ordinance would help 25,000 workers. But faced with defeat in the city council, foes, led by the Chamber of Commerce, launched a sneak attack - through the county commission.

County Commissioner Jay Bozievich pushed through three ordinances to negate Eugene's law. The first two passed 4-0, with one pro-sick leave commissioner absent out of town. One exempts other public employers from Eugene's ordinance, just as the Eugene measure itself does. The second says a city's employment conditions don't apply to employers with addresses outside city limits.

And the third, passed 3-1 and dubbed "the nuclear option," declares any local ordinance that regulates employment conditions "to be without legal force and effect." And to make sure its anti-paid leave measures overrode Eugene, the county declared all three were "emergency measures" that would take effect immediately.

Paid sick leave backers are girding for the court case, which they expect to win. They also vow to remember the paid leave rollback votes when the county commissioners seek re-election. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," Local 555 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Anderson told the Labor Press. "In 2016, the county commissioners will see theirs."

Photo: Think Progress

Governor and Senate races top labor’s political agenda

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 11:34:00 +0000

Rick Scott of Florida. Paul LePage of Maine. Rick Snyder of Michigan. John Kasich of Ohio. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania. And, above all, Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

As the 2014 campaign passes Labor Day, those governors - all anti-worker and anti-union, all right-wing and all elected in the 2010 GOP sweep - are top targets this fall.

The emphasis on governors is part of a tactical shift this year by unions and their allies. With Congress gridlocked and likely to remain so, and with state legislatures gerrymandered to produce GOP majorities from now through 2020, the governors' races are where it's at.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka cautions that just because the top targets in most races - for governorships, Congress or legislatures - are Republicans does not mean organized labor will automatically support Democrats.

"We don't work for any candidate," he told the Unite Here convention in Boston. "We're not building power for any political party. Not the Democratic Party. Not the Republican Party. We're building power for working people, pure and simple. We're looking at the long view.

"Yet I promise nobody will work harder to elect the leaders who make the right commitments, and nobody will work harder to defeat those who don't, regardless of political party. We're not going to hold our nose and endorse Democrats, just because they have a D next to their name. That's not good enough."

One example, from a U.S. Senate race, not a gubernatorial race: In swing-state - but unionist-light - North Carolina, the Fire Fighters are sitting out the race between Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and Right Wing GOP State House Speaker Thom Tillis after Hagan welshed on past promises on key votes.

And Illinois unions are upset with incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on issues ranging from pensions to collective bargaining rights. The question is whether his Republican foe, Bruce Rauner, is so Right Wing that his stands will drive Prairie State unionists out into the streets and to the polls for Quinn again. Unions were responsible for Quinn's narrow 2010 win.

But there is no shortage of targets, or issues, for workers and their allies to run on.

GOVERNORS

Wisconsin's Walker tops the takeout list, again, after a narrow election win in 2010 and a failed recall vote two years later. But in between came Walker's budget shenanigans, the stripping of 200,000 state and local public workers of their collective bargaining rights, a dismal jobs creation record, anti-woman legislation, and an attempted "Voter ID" law.

All of this has led to a statistical tie in the polls between Walker, who thinks he could ride his union hatred and Right Wing schemes to a GOP presidential nomination in two years, and business executive Mary Burke, a former Democratic state cabinet official.

"Walker can't run on a record of attacking worker rights, failing to create jobs, denying justice to veterans who have fallen victim to asbestos disease and lowering wages and living standards for all workers, so he is resorting to gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics in an blatant attempt to rig elections," Wisconsin AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale said earlier this year.

"Burke knows that respecting workers' rights to organize in both the public and private sector is good for the economy and good for workers. We need a governor that will stand with workers and fight to raise wages so we can grow our economy from the bottom-up and middle-out," added state fed President Phil Neuenfeldt when the Wisconsin AFL-CIO endorsed her.

Wisconsin's unions have embraced Burke even though she has not promised to roll back all Walker's union pension cuts if she's elected. His other measures hurt: Estimates say public union membership fell by up to 40 percent in Wisconsin after Walker's law took effect.

Ohio's Kasich also has presidential thoughts, which may be boosted by the GOP's decision to hold its 2016 convention in heavily Democratic Cleveland. But first Kasich, who tried a Walker-like anti-collective bargaining law and a voter ID law, too, has to clear this year's vote against Democratic Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Executive Ed Fitzgerald.

Unionists have some hope of derailing Kasich: They petitioned his anti-collective bargaining law to a referendum and beat it, garnering more than 60 percent of the vote. Ohio's voter ID law was headed for another referendum when courts stepped in to stop the law.

Pennsylvania's Corbett has no presidential ambitions. He's trying not to get swamped. He too, pushed anti-union laws through a GOP-gerrymandered legislature, slashed state funding for public schools and is trying to destroy the Philadelphia school system through a handpicked commission that is recommending all sorts of corporate-backed schemes. State courts have thrown out the GOP's voter ID law in the Keystone State, at least for now.

All this has led to mass protests in Harrisburg, to the arrest of AFT President Randi Weingarten for demonstrating with her Philadelphia teachers - and to "favorable" poll ratings for Corbett of somewhere around 15 percent. The state fed strongly endorsed first-time candidate Tom Wolf, a business executive, after he beat experienced politicians in the Democratic primary and union PACs are spending at least $1 million for him. Wolf promised an end to "business as usual" in Harrisburg.

Maine's LePage is almost as unpopular as Corbett. With moves large and small - he even stooped to ordering removal of a pro-worker mural from the state Labor Department's office - LePage has antagonized Maine workers and unions. The catch is that LePage won a 3-way race in 2010 and may benefit this year from a rerun of that split.

There's a rerun of sorts in Florida, too. Republican incumbent Scott faces his predecessor, Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist. Crist always was non-ideological, embracing Democratic President Barack Obama's health care law vocally, and Obama literally on a presidential visit after a disaster. That's why Crist lost the 2010 U.S. Senate race to Tea Party-backed Republican Marco Rubio. But now Crist is even walking picket lines, and Sunshine State unions are solidly for him.

Michigan's Snyder touted himself as a problem-solver in 2010. But he showed his anti-worker credentials, signing a right-to-work law the Republican state legislative majority passed in a 2012 "lame duck" session. He also pushed through abolition of teacher tenure. The Michigan Building Tradesman counted 37 separate pieces of anti-worker legislation in Lansing.

Most importantly, Snyder jammed through a law to let the state declare a local government has fiscally "failed," and allowing him to appoint an overseer - a czar - with the power to sell assets, rip up union contracts, cut pay and abolish pensions, unilaterally. Not by chance, the czar-takeovers law was used against majority-minority cities and governments, including those that are unionized, such as Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Most other governors of both parties, except Quinn in Illinois, appear, two months out, to be relatively safe. Quinn's foe, Rauner, a businessman with some questionable deals in his background, wants to reduce the state's minimum wage and turn state workers' pensions - a flash point of bitterness between Quinn and unions - into 401(k) accounts, for example.

Several Republican governors, such as Kansan Sam Brownback, had to survive challengers from within their own parties. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who has worked with the Democratic-dominated state legislature to pass a raft of worker-friendly laws, is expected to coast to re-election, as is New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

Pro-worker Connecticut Democrat Dannel Malloy - who gained national notice for marching on a picket line with locked-out nursing home workers - is not personally popular, but will benefit from the tea party vs. others GOP fratricide in the Nutmeg State.

U.S. SENATE

With virtually everyone conceding that redistricting and retirements will keep the U.S. House in Republican hands, the focus is on the Senate, where up to a dozen key races could determine whether pro-worker Democrats keep their current 53-45 majority. Two independents, Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) caucus with the Democrats.

That lead is virtually guaranteed to shrink: Democrats hold 21 of the 35 Senate seats up this year, and at least two - South Dakota's open seat and Montana's with a gubernatorial appointee to replace inconsistent Democrat Max Baucus - have been virtually written off.

Senate control is important. Without it, pro-worker allies would have virtually no chance of either getting legislation they want, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, equal pay for equal work or comprehensive immigration reform. And Democratic President Barack Obama would be unable to get any nominees through - including nominees for the National Labor Relations Board when current members' terms expire.

Among senators seeking re-election, two Democratic women, North Carolina's Kay Hagan and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, are considered the most endangered. Hagan may have the better shot: North Carolina is a swing state and workers and their allies - except for unions she alienated - are energized by the "Moral Monday" movement against the GOP-dominated legislature. Hagan is hanging the legislature's record around Tillis' neck.

"The way GOP hardliners see it, Tillis is the Speaker. He speaks, and everybody else shuts up and listens," says Steel Workers President Leo Gerard. "These lawmakers don't represent constituents in a constitutional democracy. They are overlords. And as rulers over the people, they've awarded themselves the power to muzzle and handcuff anyone who disagrees with them."

Landrieu is in more trouble. The union movement in Louisiana is weakened by the one-third decline in New Orleans' population after Hurricane Katrina and emasculation of the South's largest union local, the New Orleans Teachers, through GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal's dismantling of the city's public school system. Landrieu's GOP foes are also pounding away at her votes for the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which is extremely unpopular in the deep-red state.

Republicans think the health care law is a winner for them in races where Democrats hold U.S. Senate seats in red or swing states: Alaska's Mark Begich, Arkansas' Mark Pryor, Minnesota's Al Franken, New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen, Colorado's Mark Udall and three open Democratic-held seats, in Iowa, West Virginia and Michigan.

Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant is the underdog in now-red West Virginia, while former Rep. Gary Peters (Mich.) and current Rep. Bruce Braley (Iowa) are in toss-up races in the other two states. The Mine Workers are still a hefty electoral presence in West Virginia, union President Cecil Roberts' home state. Begich is helped by Alaska's heavy unionization. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who votes more often with workers than most Republicans, won 2010 re-election as a write-in - after a tea partyite beat her in the primary.

Vote analyses show GOP Rep. Cory Snyder, Udall's foe, is one of the two most ideological Republican representatives challenging Democratic incumbents this fall. The other is Tom Cotton in Arkansas, opposing Pryor. Cotton is slamming Pryor's vote for the ACA, while Pryor - like Landrieu - touts his differences with the Obama administration Unlike Landrieu, Pryor has deep splits with Arkansas unions, on issues such as raising the minimum wage.

While the GOP hopes to gain the Senate by winning Democratic-held seats in red or swing states, Democrats have high hopes for two female U.S. Senate candidates in red states: Michelle Nunn in Georgia and Secretary of State Alison Lundergren Grimes, challenging Senate Minority Leader - and chief obstructionist - Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Neither woman is a guaranteed pro-worker vote, but both would be improvements, unionists in their states know, over McConnell and over retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.).

Photo: The labor movement is putting emphasis on defeating Republican Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor whoe attacks on unions spurred the historic protests in Madison. Andy Manis/AP

Today in labor history: The murder of Fannie Sellins

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:46:00 +0000

On August 26, 1919, Fannie Sellins and Joseph Starzeleski were murdered by coal company guards on a picket line in Brackenridge, Pa. Sellins was a United Mine Workers of America organizer and Starzeleski was a miner. Sellins was 47 years old. No one was ever punished for the crime.

Miners that summer were striking against the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company and there was a showdown on August 26 between company guards and the strikers outside the company's mine in Brackenridge.

The Illinois Labor History Society includes a detailed report, here.

An account in the September 20, 1919, New Majority describes the scene:
The mine official snatched a club and felled the woman to the ground.
This was not on company ground, but just outside the fence of a friend of Mrs. Sellins.
She rose and tried to drag herself toward the gate
[The official] shouted: "Kill that --!
Three shots were fired, each taking effect.
She fell to the ground, and [the official] cried: "Give her another!"

William Z. Foster, leader of the great steel strike of 1919, called Sellins one of the best of a whole corps of organizers, with an exceptional belief in the workers. "She took the initiative and in the midst of terror went out to her work."

Sellins was a contemporary of Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, and like Jones, her work as a female labor organizer was radical, especially for that period of time, according to Anthony Slomkoski, former president of United Steelworkers Local No. 1196, in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania.

Photo: Fannie Sellins. Wikipedia Fair use

Descendants of 1934's Teamster strikers carry proud legacy

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 13:06:00 +0000

ST. PAUL, Minn. (PAI)--The 10 or so people gathering in a home in St. Paul might have been meeting for the first time, but they forged an instant bond. Their parents or grandparents 80 years ago stood together and fought in the streets of Minneapolis for the right to organize a union during 1934's Teamster strikes.

These descendants included the grandchildren of notable strike leaders like Vincent "Ray" Dunne. They also included people who knew little about their parents' or grandparents' involvement - only that daddy or grandpa took part and that it was damned important.

One by one, as they shared their stories, the descendants also expressed a common calling in life: To stand up for what's right and to work to make the world a better place.

Linnea Sommer, Granddaughter of Chester Johnson

"My grandfather, Chester Johnson, was in the Socialist Workers Party and was involved in the strike," said Linnea Sommer of St. Louis Park. "All I know is that it happened and my grandfather was in it. I know it broke the back of the Citizens Alliance and made Minneapolis a union town." (The "Citizens Alliance" was a business-backed anti-union group of firms.)

Her grandfather died before she was born, but she heard stories about him and about the strike from her grandmother.

"I was raised in a family that really values social justice," Sommer said. "There have always been renegades and protesters in my family. I'm very proud to be from that kind of lineage."

"I've been part of organizing a couple of unions myself," she related, and until a couple of years ago she was an active member of SEIU Local 26.

Rosemary Knutson, Daughter of Christ Knutson

"My dad was one of the original coal truck drivers that went out on strike in February 1934," said Rosemary Knutson of Minneapolis. She shared photos of her dad, Christ Knutson. In one photo he is in his World War I uniform. (He fought in the trenches in France under General John J. Pershing). In another photo, Christ Knutson is posing with a group of coal truck drivers and company owners.

She said her father told stories about "bodies stacked like cordwood" in France. On July 20, 1934 he was present for "Bloody Friday," she said, when police shot and killed two strikers and wounded 60 - but he didn't talk about it.

"He was out there fighting the good fight," Knutson said. "I'm so happy to be able to share his story. His entire character and being was about helping people and making the world a better place."

"We have an obligation to do the same thing - to show up and make the world a better place. It's a wonderful legacy," Knutson said. "Who we are is we work hard, we help those who can't help themselves, and we like to help others succeed. That was the ethic I got from him."

Knutson lives that ethic and has been a very active neighborhood volunteer and leader in the Cedar-Riverside area.

Shelly Zien, Granddaughter of Mo and Rose Hork

"My grandfather and grandmother were involved," said Shelly Zien of Minneapolis. Her grandparents, Mo and Rose Hork, were interviewed and featured prominently in a 1981 documentary film about the 1934 strike, Labor's Turning Point.

"My grandfather was one of the Committee of 100," Zien said. "I know he was very proud of it." (The Committee of 100 was the chief decision-making body elected by the striking workers). "He felt it was very important that people should get a living wage."

"He was kind of a gentle, soft-spoken guy," Zien said. "It's hard to believe he was so involved."

At the time of the strike, her grandparents had two children. While Mo Hork served on the Committee of 100, Rose Hork helped with organizing food and medical care for strikers and their families.

Zien heard stories about the danger her grandparents faced for being involved in the strike. "They lived in a tremendous amount of fear," Zien related. "They did talk about the fact that people were killed, shot in the back." She said her grandfather "feared for his life," adding "he was shot at."

"My grandmother used to send a lunchbox with him when he went to union activities," Zien said. "It wasn't a lunchbox. It was a gun."

"He was afraid for his family," Zien said. "He knew they were sitting outside watching. He assumed they were armed and he felt very threatened...They knew he was one of the organizers and he was in jeopardy."

"It is part of my family history and I want our kids to know it. We've been doing some research into...old newspapers and so forth. It's fun to see my grandfather's name.

"I spent lots of time with my grandmother and grandfather when I was little," Zien said. "We've all learned from their example...I'm on the board of the synagogue like my grandparents had been in the past."

"It was part of my family legacy," Zien said. "If it was important... you stepped forward, you stepped up to the plate and you did your part."

Colleen Casey, Granddaughter of Edward "Al" Nass

"I know through family stories times were hard, people were desperate...people were hungry, people needed work," said Colleen Casey, talking about the 1930s. "There was help to get them through. Everybody pitched in and helped each other out." Her maternal grandfather was Edward "Al" Nass, a truck driver involved in the 1934 strike.

"He was a truck driver into his 60s when he retired," she said. "He was always a strong advocate of the unions and collective power...He had this sense of fairness."

Casey said her grandfather was "a farm boy" from Illinois who followed his sister to the Twin Cities, in part to escape anti-German prejudice. "He and my grandma met at a dance hall." Grandma was a Dakota. Both were outsiders, outliers, Casey said. "In a way it made sense they found each other."

Casey's mother was born June 8, 1934, in the middle of the tumult of the Teamsters strikes. As a child, Casey said, her grandparents took her to all parks in Minneapolis, in order to play with kids from different backgrounds. "They wanted us to have their ideals," she said.

"They were builders, builders of community, builders of relationships with their neighbors. It was always community-building. They lived those kinds of lives. I give them credit for the way they shaped me."

Casey is developing her skills as a writer. "I want to tell stories and make a difference. I've been thinking about labor stories...Learning from our history helps us not repeat the same things that happened in the past...We need to come out of ourselves to tell the stories that need to be told."

Tim Ahern: Grandson of Walter Ahern

"What I know is kind of limited," said Tim Ahern. His grandfather, Walter Ahern, and Walter's brother Arthur Ahern both worked for the Glendenning trucking company and were involved in the 1934 strike. Walter Ahern was a warehouse worker. "It's nice to know grandpa was there," Ahern said.

Ahern said his grandfather, who was born in 1908, was 26 at the time of the strike and was married. "I wish we knew more but we don't. It would have been nice to talk to grandpa - but that's the way life works." Ahern said, "he gave me colorful stories" but not stories about the 1934 strike. Walter Ahern died in 1992.

"I've read bits and pieces" about the 1934 strike, Tim Ahern said. He added, "I usually get mad" at the working conditions and injustice faced by the strikers. "I'm a Teamster myself," Ahern noted. "I'm proud of the union back at that time...It was men and women standing up for their rights."

"People made a sacrifice for justice and it's benefited a lot of people over the years," Ahern said. "There are groups emerging today that can catch that spark."

Linda Leighton: Granddaughter of V.R. Dunne

"My grandfather was Vincent Raymond Dunne," said Linda Leighton of Hopkins. V.R.

Dunne, with brothers Grant Dunne and Miles Dunne, was one of the leaders of the 1934 strike. "He died in 1973 when I was 23," Leighton said. "My grandfather was a big part of my life. We saw him regularly.

"I was always aware of what my grandfather had done and stood for," Leighton said, although she doesn't remember her grandfather talking about the 1934 strike.

Over the years, she has learned more about his role in the strike and his continuing activism as a leader of the Socialist Workers Party. "I recently was given a transcript of his trial in 1940," she said (V.R. Dunne was sentenced to 16 months in Sandstone prison for his radical political views). "I can just see him saying the things that were said in the trial. He really cared about people. He wanted everybody to have a break.

"My family talked about class and workers and what was going on in the world," said Leighton. "It was like giant discussions bordering on arguments."

During the 1934 strike, Leighton related, her mother was in her senior year at Minneapolis South High School. "She was elected as homecoming queen." Leighton recalled her mother saying, "Because of the strike, everybody voted for me."

Leighton is a member of Service Employees International Union Local 284 and union steward. She works as a media paraprofessional for the Hopkins school district.

"I'm proud in a little way to continue the struggle my grandfather fought," Leighton said. "I'm a member of the Twin Cities International Workers of the World...I think it reflects what he thought, too."

David Sundeen: Grandson of V.R. Dunne

David Sundeen, three years younger than his sister Linda Leighton, also described a close connection with their grandfather, 1934 strike leader V.R. Dunne.

"I can see and hear grandpa as I read quotes from him and descriptions of his actions," Sundeen said.

Sundeen attended the old West High School in Minneapolis for the 1968-69 school year and after school he would go to visit his grandfather, who lived a few blocks away. "That's when I really got to spend more one-on-one time with him," Sundeen related. "I wish he had told me more about the strike. It was his interest to talk with me about the issues of the day...I heard more from him about issues of the day than his history.

"He was a real gentleman," Sundeen said, adding "he also could be very strong in expressing his views."

Sundeen recalled his grandfather debating issues with his father. "They had some real discussions - they remind me about a lot of the discussions today," he says.

Sundeen and Leighton remembered their grandfather's dining room serving as his office, maps on the walls, grandfather writing articles. "He was always doing work with piles of paper," Sundeen said. "He was in it for the long haul."

Sundeen, like his sister, is a member of SEIU Local 284 and works for the Hopkins School District. He also is a member of the Twin Cities IWW. Both Sundeen and Leighton have been involved in planning events for this year's 80^th anniversary of the 1934 Teamsters strikes.

Sundeen sees similarities between today's economic conditions and the 1920s and 1930s. "It's clear the stress level has been rising," he said. People are getting scared. "They can despair. They can give in. They can cut corners. They can do without."

But, he continued, "at some point, enough of them can stop being scared and get angry and be determined to do something and make a difference."

That's what happened in 1934, Sundeen said, and "it can happen again."

Steve Share is Minneapolis Labor Review editor

Photo: On August 1, 1934, the National Guard raided strike headquarters and arrested Vincent Dunne and others, but backed down and reversed the actions soon afterwards. Photo from Minnesota Historical Society.

1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, one key precursor to Wagner Act

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 12:39:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI) -- The tensions had been simmering for months in Minneapolis.

The Teamsters, trying to organize the city's truckers - who were key to transportation of food and industrial goods all over the Upper Midwest - had been browbeaten by their bosses.

The so-called Citizens Alliance, a secret cabal of leading businessmen, was confident it could beat the Teamsters - particularly Local 574 - again. After all, the alliance's virulent and sometimes violent anti-unionism had ruled labor relations in Minneapolis since the early 1900s.

This time, in 1934, it didn't turn out that way.

Instead, the Citizens Alliance forced truckers to strike twice in 1934. The second, an 11-day strike starting on July 16, 1934, saw police to open fire on unarmed strikers - truckers who had brought 95 percent of Minneapolis' freight shipments to a halt. Two strikers died from the police shotgun blasts and 65-67 more were wounded.

More importantly, the Minneapolis strike and a similarly violent business reaction to longshore workers' demands in San Francisco woke the country up. Both struggles spread citywide. Some 35,000 Minneapolis building trades workers walked out, demanding recognition of their unions. Even the city's taxi drivers joined in.

And those two general strikes in turn put pressure on what had been a reluctant Roosevelt administration to enact the National Labor Relations Act the following year.

The first break for the Teamsters, led by Vincent "Ray" Dunne, Ferrell Dobbs, Meridel Le Sueur and other "radicals," was when coal company workers unexpectedly shut down 65 of the city's 67 coal yards in February. The yard owners surrendered in three days and recognized the union, which is now Local 120. Membership zoomed from 100 to more than 5,000 in what was a general industrial union, most of them truckers and warehouse workers, according to a strike history on the Teamsters international union's website.

Local 5474 then sought voluntary recognition from trucking firms, who refused. So the Minneapolis truckers called the first strike in May. They demanded recognition, wage hikes, shorter hours and the right to represent the warehouse and loading bay workers, too.

"The strike brought all trucking inside the city to a standstill. It also used some techniques that were not normally used in labor actions. Flying pickets were established and deployed from the union headquarters. They patrolled the streets in a vast fleet of cars and trucks to ensure that no scab trucks were on the move. They displayed a special union sign so as to prevent confusion," the Teamsters website says.

One hundred strikers established a coordinating committee to handle strike action, arrange relief for families and even publish a newspaper, The Organizer, to get their message out citywide. The committee also reached out to the jobless who, in the Great Depression, comprised one-third of all Minneapolis workers.

The Minneapolis mayor was pro-business and did nothing to stop the first police violence against the workers, on May 19. Six days later, the employers said they would accept the truckers' demands and the workers returned to their jobs. But by July, the trucking firms were obviously violating the agreement: They had fired 700 workers and refused to agree to recognize the union, which had signed up an overwhelming majority of the truckers.

So the truckers had to strike again, on July 17. And the police really got violent. They opened fire with shotguns on unarmed strikers on July 20. Strikers John Belor and Henry Ness were killed and 65-67 others were injured. Most were shot in the back. Ness' funeral, days later, brought Minneapolis to a complete halt: 100,000 people jammed the streets.

"A public commission set up after the strike later reported that 'Police took direct aim at the pickets and fired to kill. Physical safety of the police was at no time endangered. No weapons were in possession of the pickets,'" the history says.

Reluctantly, pro-worker Gov. Floyd Olson declared martial law, and ordered the National Guard to patrol Minneapolis, and let trucks bearing military permits through. "The union, seeing this as an attempt to break the strike, demanded all permits be revoked and in defiance of the martial law, the workers vowed again to return to the picket lines on Aug. 1.

"On the night of July 31, the union headquarters was surrounded and raided by the National Guard troops, who arrested many strike leaders. The union rank and file called a mass rally demanding release of the arrested leaders. Nearly 40,000 people marched on the stockade. The leaders were released and the captured union headquarters was surrendered."

Three weeks later, the Citizens Alliance threw in the towel, after mediation prompted by closed-door briefings of both President Roosevelt and his top aides by union leaders, including the editor of the Minneapolis Labor Review. Teamsters Local 574 won, the alliance crashed, recognition elections were held at workplaces citywide, and the strike ended when the union won its major demands, such as raises through arbitration.

Much the same scenario occurred in San Francisco, where the longshore workers, under the leadership of Harry Bridges, saw two workers killed and dozens injured, the National Guard was called in and a general strike shut down the city. All this, plus worker action elsewhere, moved Sen. Robert Wagner, Sr., D-N.Y., to act. He believed and said, that giving workers the guaranteed right to organize and bargain collectively would lead to industrial peace - a justification for the law that still exists.

Wagner wrote the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the nation's basic labor law, in early 1935, then convinced a reluctant Roosevelt to support it. The Senate passed the NLRA 63-12, the House approved it by voice vote, and Roosevelt signed it on July 5, 1935.

In the 1970s, KTCA Minneapolis produced a documentary on the strike. It can be viewed in two parts on YouTube.

Photo: Battle, strike 1934. Wikipedia, Public Domain

Today in labor history: The strange case of Allan Pinkerton

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 17:27:00 +0000

On August 25, 1819, Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland. As a young man he was active in the Chartist Movement, considered a mass working-class movement. He left Scotland in 1842 and emigrated to the United States.

A cooper by trade he moved to Dundee, Illinois, and started a cooperage there. Two years later in 1844 he worked for Chicago Abolitionist leaders and his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In 1849 Pinkerton was appointed as the first detective in Chicago. In 1850, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency that later became Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

As the United States continued to colonize the west, Pinkerton's agency became involved in solving train robberies in the 1850s. This is where Pinkerton came in contact with Abraham Lincoln who was the lawyer for Illinois Central Railroad. Pinkerton when on to serve as the head of the Union Intelligence Service during the civil war.

After the war had ended he continue to investigate and pursue train robbers. The last train robber his agency tried to track down was Jesse James, which was unsuccessful and cost him his contract with the rail company.

But despite his earlier involvement in the progressive movements, Allan Pinkerton was strongly opposed to labor unions.

After his death in 1884, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became notorious for its activities against the labor movement. They were involved in suppressing historic strikes such as the Homestead Strike and Pullman Strike. Pinkerton became a slang term for private eye. It would also become a term used in the labor movement for people that sided with management.

On August 1, 1917, Frank Little, one of the greatest figures in American labor history, was dragged by six masked men from his Butte, Montana, hotel room and hung from the Milwaukee Railroad trestle. It was after organizing a strike of metal miners against the Anaconda Company (Anaconda Copper Mining Company was one of the largest trusts of the early 20^th century.)

Years later, writer Dashiell Hammett would recall his early days as a Pinkerton detective agency operative and recount how a mine company representative offered him $5,000 to kill Little. Hammett says he quit the business that night.

Photo: Wikipedia, public domain.

Minnesota health care workers beat down right wing court challenge

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:21:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS - Some 26,000 Minnesota home health care workers seeking union representation survived a court challenge from radical right wing opponents and are looking forward to ballots being counted on August 26.

Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minneapolis refused on August 20 a request by the National Right to Work Foundation that he issue an injunction to halt the vote, which is taking place by U.S. mail.

If the Service Employees, who are campaigning to organize the home health care workers, win, it would be the largest union election and organizing victory in Minnesota history and one of the largest by any union in the U.S. in the last several years.

Which is why the venal business-backed anti-worker right to work crowd recruited nine dissident home care workers to challenge the vote. They argued that union representation would violate their 1^st Amendment free speech rights.

In his ruling, Davis called the request "premature." The Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services mailed ballots on August 1 to 26,000 eligible voters. They are defined as "personal care assistants and other home care workers providing direct support services through client-directed Medicaid programs including PCA Choice, Consumer Directed Community Supports (CDCS), and Consumer Support Grants."

If a majority of those voting choose to unionize, they will be represented by SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which currently is the union for more than 15,000 healthcare workers in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes throughout Minnesota. That union, in turn, is part of SEIU, which has 1.2 million members in the health care industry nationwide.

The nine home health care workers backed by the Right to Work Foundation sued on July 28. They wanted Davis to issue an injunction to stop the union vote.

They said their First Amendment rights were being violated. Davis disagreed, saying "Home-care providers have the right to vote in the current election to determine whether a majority desire SEIU to be their exclusive representative."

In the court hearing, the day before his ruling, Davis was even more skeptical of the Right to Work Foundation's arguments. Choosing the SEIU "doesn't block your clients from shouting from the rooftops" about their differences with the union, Davis told the foundation's attorney, William Messenger.

Davis pointed out anti-union workers would not have to pay dues to SEIU. That's thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling the Right to Work crowd won against Illinois' law saying home health care workers represented by SEIU there - or anywhere else - did not have to pay dues, or even "fair share" fees for non-members, to cover costs of negotiations and contract administration. The justices used the same free speech justification to toss the Illinois law.

If SEIU is certified as the workers' representative, the Right to Work Foundation may renew its court challenge, the judge said.

There is some question, however, whether the plaintiffs would have standing to bring a challenge. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Harris v. Quinn ruling, SEIU announced it would not seek to collect dues from home health care workers in Minnesota who choose not to become members.

Absent a requirement to pay dues, it may be difficult for any of the non-member workers to show they have been harmed.

Union supporters are elated the vote is proceeding.

Darleen Henry, a home health care worker in Rosemount, called the ruling "a big win" because the unionization effort will enhance care for people with disabilities by improving pay and working conditions and reducing turnover.

Photo: SEIU Healthcare Minnesota Facebook page.

Trumka: Workers "confused, angry, frustrated, scared"

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 16:34:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS - The stagnation of workers' wages and declining benefits for the last 40 years, and the Great Recession piled on top of that, has left U.S. workers "confused, angry, frustrated and scared," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says.

Speaking to the Steelworkers convention in Las Vegas in mid-August, Trumka added that bleak prospects for the workers' children only add to those woes. But the mass movement of low-wage workers, fighting for better wages and working conditions and the right to organize, is helping show the way out of the morass, he added.

Trumka spoke to what is arguably the most active union in key areas of the Midwest. He praised the Steelworkers' organizing, political activism and campaign for fair trade with enforceable worker rights. But he said there's a lot more to do to pull U.S. workers as a class out of the hole that corporations dug for them and the country.

"A lot of people, especially some with college degrees," who didn't think of themselves in traditional working class terms, "got a hard-won education in real economics" from the Great Recession and the prior stagnation, he added. Now they're changing their minds, he declared.

"A lot of people didn't understand the connections between their neighbors and themselves. They didn't have to, because generations of strong union contracts kept us in pretty good shape. But that's not the case anymore, and so workers, like Rebecca Taksel" - an adjunct community college professor who earns $6,800 yearly - "have begun to say things like this: "We are going to call ourselves workers, because that's what we are, and we're going to change things."

"The biggest story in America is the great wealth divide, and what we're doing to make it right," he continued. "That's the new story in America. People everywhere are starting to understand themselves as workers. People all across this country, and around the world, are beginning to see collective action as a solution to our troubles.

"From fast food to forged steel, and everywhere in between, more and more people talk about economic inequality, people who never spoke the words before. The public is debating big issues, like a living wage and collective bargaining. We're talking about raising wages, and we like the idea," he said. And so do others, including the unorganized, Trumka added.

To marshal those workers, the federation, the Steelworkers and other member unions launched a Common Sense Economics education project, he explained. Its objective is to educate at least 1 million people nationwide about the nature of the economy, how it works - or doesn't - for workers and what they can do to fix it.

"We'll use information to continue to build momentum for working people. We've got other initiatives, too. We're strengthening our state federations of labor and local labor councils. We're joining together with community partners and allies, in ways we never have before. We're a mainstream movement, and we're acting like it," he declared.

Photo: Screenshot from video.

NLRB slams Postal Service for Staples privatization deal

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 15:53:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Providing yet more evidence that U.S. Postal Service management is headed in the wrong direction - at least where its workers are concerned - a National Labor Relatios Board official slammed its scheme to subcontract services to Staples stores. And half the U.S. Senate now opposes management's plan to close 82 more distribution centers.

The two developments, plus previous "no confidence" votes by both big postal unions, the Letter Carriers (NALC) and the Postal Workers (APWU), should be enough to give any managers pause. But the unions are again taking their case public, too, with planned protests.

NLRB Administrative Law Judge Eric Fine dealt the legal blow. He ruled that, since last November, USPS broke labor law in refusing to provide requested materials, e-mails and memos about the Staples deal to APWU. That includes Staples' uncensored contract with the USPS and financial details. The Postal Service called the Staples scheme a "pilot project."

The political slam was the bipartisan letter from 50 senators. They asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to insert language any money bill that affects the Postal Service banning USPS from closing more distribution centers nationwide. They also asked their colleagues to preserve 6-day pickup and delivery.

The center closings would eliminate 15,000 middle-class jobs, the senators, led by Susan Collins, R-Maine, wrote. "At a time when our middle class is disappearing, loss of 15,000 well-paying middle-class jobs would hurt our communities and their economies," their letter said. Five Republicans, both independents and 43 Democrats signed the letter.

And the agency's prior closing of 141 distribution centers has already slowed down first-class mail, making it less reliable for the public and small businesses, they added.

USPS is closing the distribution centers, trying to eliminate Saturday pickup and delivery and imposing the Staples deal as part of Post-master General Patrick Donahoe's scheme to eliminate red ink he says plagues the agency. USPS recently reported a $2 billion net loss for the first nine months of its fiscal year.

Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando promptly reiterated the only reason USPS, on paper, ran in the red, is a congressionally mandated prepayment of $5.6 billion yearly for future retirees' health care costs. Without that, Rolando said, the Postal Service would have turned a billion-dollar profit, he said. A GOP-run Congress forced that prepayment on USPS in 2006.

Rolando added mail revenue is up by $424 million, compared to last year. "As the economy improves, letter mail revenue is growing. And as more people shop online, package revenue is skyrocketing. The Internet is now a net positive for USPS, auguring well for the future as e-commerce grows. In the third quarter, package revenue rose 6.6 percent, standard mail revenue rose 5.1 percent and first-class mail revenue was up 3.2 percent.

"Given the positive mail trends, it would be irresponsible to degrade services to Americans and their businesses, which would drive away mail-and revenue - and stop the postal turnaround in its tracks. Lawmakers need to preserve and strengthen the profitable postal networks-which are the future of the USPS as it increasingly delivers not just six but seven days a week-while fixing the pre-funding fiasco," Rolando added.

USPS is using the Staples deal to subcontract unionized employees' work, Fine ruled.

Even if the union's bargaining unit members don't lose hours or wages as a result, his decision adds, prior NLRB rulings still require any employer to turn over background materials and data concerning the subcontracting. Union bargainers testified the Staples scheme already cuts into bargaining unit work.

The Staples deal, covering 84 Staples stores nationwide, is controversial. The Postmaster General has identified it as one of his cost-cutting moves. He would replace middle-class full-time unionized Postal Workers with minimum-wage, often part-time non-union Staples workers for basic services such as selling stamps and money orders.

His scheme, and other cost-cutting plans - including the center closings - have led the Letter Carriers, the Postal Workers, the Mail Handlers-Laborers and the Rural Letter Carriers into highly visible public protests.

"Because this is a pilot program, the information requested in your letter does not appear to be relevant or simply premature in light of the one-year pilot," Postal Service official Patrick Devine told then-new APWU President Mark Dimondstein in a letter last November. Devine is the agency official directly responsible for dealing with APWU.

Devine also called APWU's request, "unduly broad and overly burdensome" and said obeying it could force the Postal Service to disclose confidential and proprietary information.

The ALJ said that's ridiculous. So did Dimondstein.

"Nowhere does the national agreement" - APWU's contract - "exempt pilot projects" from requirements that USPS turn over requested information, Dimondstein said. Further "It appears Staples employees are doing bargaining unit work and will continue to do so." That could violate the union's contract with the Postal Service, he said.

He also ordered the Postal Service to post a notice about the turnover order at all "bargaining unit locations" - Postal Service facilities - within two miles of each of the 84 Staples stores. And since USPS wants to extend the "pilot project" to 1,300 Staples stores nationwide, Fine told USPS to send the notice of the anti-Staples order nationwide, too.

Photo: NPMHU supports Stop Staples campaign.

Today in Labor History: Wildfire kills 78 firefighters

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:12:00 +0000

On August 20, The Great Fire of 1910, a wildfire that consumed about 3 million acres in northeast Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana, claimed the lives of 78 firefighters over two days. It is believed to be the largest fire in U.S. history and the deadliest until the September 11 attacks in 2001. Some termed the fire "big blowup," or the "big burn," or the "time when the mountains roared."

According to the 1910 Fire website: Snows in the Pacific Northwest in the winter of 1910 resulted in deadly avalanches in the Cascade and Bitterroot Mountains. A dry summer followed, and many (some accounts say thousands) forest fires proved hard to contain in the region between Glacier National Park and the Cascades. Then on August 20 and 21 strong winds arrived in the region and pushed the fires into firestorms that devastated millions of acres of forests and some towns laying in those forested areas, the Big Blowup, known collectively as the 1910 Fire

Among the fatalities, the entire 28-man "Lost Crew" was overcome by flames and perished on Setzer Creek outside of Avery, Idaho.

To read many detailed stories of the people involved in the 1910 fire, click here.

Could this happen again? Recently Blake Deppe reported to Peoplsworld.org:

Wildfires have been blazing on all summer, and the latest of them is occurring in Oregon, near the Columbia River Gorge. Owners of 140 homes have already evacuated, and despite the efforts of 400 firefighters, the flames have continued to spread over five square miles. Meanwhile in northern Idaho, another brushfire has burned across 64 square miles and destroyed five structures. But efforts to combat the blazes may be fruitless, because the money to fight them is running out.

Photo: Wallace Idaho 1910 fire Public Domain. National Photo Company - U.S. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

Today in labor history: 19th amendment, securing right to vote for women, ratified

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 14:43:00 +0000

(History.com) - The 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920 by Tennessee, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land. The amendment was the culmination of more than 70 years of struggle by woman suffragists. Its two sections read simply: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" and "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

America's woman suffrage movement was founded in the mid 19^th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 200 woman suffragists, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss women's rights. Former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass attended.

After approving measures asserting the right of women to educational and employment opportunities, they passed a resolution that declared "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." For proclaiming a woman's right to vote, the Seneca Falls Convention was subjected to public ridicule, and some backers of women's rights withdrew their support. However, the resolution marked the beginning of the woman suffrage movement in America.

The first national women's rights convention was held in 1850 and then repeated annually, providing an important focus for the growing woman suffrage movement. In the Reconstruction era, the 15^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but Congress declined to expand enfranchisement into the sphere of gender. In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to push for a woman suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, was formed in the same year to work through the state legislatures. In 1890, these two groups were united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. That year, Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote.

On August 26, the amendment was formally adopted into the Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

To read the entire article, go to history.com.

Photo: Some 20,000 women, demanding the right to vote, march in New York City, Oct. 23, 1915. (Bain Collection - Library of Congress)

Today in labor history: Workers take part in protest against bank

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:42:00 +0000

On this day in 1963, in East St. Louis, Illinois, 200 people - 170 of them female, and majority African-American - engaged in a sit-in protest against employment discrimination against women by Union National Bank, which was not hiring female workers or black workers. They then proceeded to march outside of City Hall in further protest, calling also for integrated schools and voting rights.

Police arrived quickly, commandeering a passing Bi-State bus in order to round up the protesters and cart them off to jail. Many of the activists laid down and sang "we shall not be removed." This is notable in that it occurred two months after the passing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, legislation that abolished wage disparity based on gender.

Photo: Two hundred workers march outside City Hall in E. St. Louis, Illinois, Aug. 15, 1963. Afroamhistory

USW rolls out platform, denounces greedy forces out to destroy workers

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:41:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS (PAI) -- Steelworkers convention delegates adopted a multi-point action platform for their union for coming years to battle what re-elected President Leo Gerard called "shrewd, greedy and powerful" forces out to destroy workers.

The plan was touchstone of the 4-day convention, in Las Vegas, August 11-15.

The platform calls for the union, which represents workers in steel, oil, rubber and plastics, chemicals and other industries, to fight continually for jobs with family-sustaining wages and to reduce income inequality. Reducing inequality "is at the core of rebuilding our economies." the delegates said.

But the entire action plan, and other gains workers have made, are at risk in U.S. elections this fall, Gerard warned delegates in a hard-hitting keynote address.

"These powerful forces intend to destroy collective bargaining, to pauperize working people and permanently elevate the wealthy," he warned.

"In a few months, there will be a federal election in the U.S. that could result in majorities in both chambers of our legislatures with some of the wackiest, right-wing, anti-worker nut jobs in our histories" in both the U.S. and Canada, he explained. " And if that does not get you fired up, it's hard to know what will."

The political battles will be nationwide, but the union will especially target organizing the anti-union, anti-worker South, Gerard said. Doing so "is crucial because the only way to change people's minds about the value of unions is to share their vision for a better life and offer them a way to achieve it." New ideas for organizing the South - and elsewhere - must come from "the energy" of rank-and-file members, he added.

"We must find new and more powerful ways to get the target off our backs and get new members in to the fight." That will mean heavy involvement not just from union officers, but from all unionists, he warned. "We need you. Our power as a union comes from the activism of our members and our solidarity."

In the action plan, USW delegates decided to work for full employment, against stagnating wages and "work hard for legislation" in both nations "that facilitates organizing so that all workers have the opportunity to bargain collectively.'

On economics, the delegates decided USW will push to rebuild a strong manufacturing base for more economic stimulus programs in both countries. The stimulus programs should concentrate on investing in infrastructure, education and technology. The union will also campaign to repeal former GOP President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and for further re-regulation of the financial sector. The financiers' finagling, aided by Bush's policies, caused the Great Recession, also known as the Bush Crash.

Delegates also decided USW would work for fair trade deals that include enforceable worker rights in the treaty texts, bans on child labor, illegal subsidies, sweatshops and foreign currency manipulation. All are unfair trade practices, USW said.

Better health care and retirement security are also top USW goals. Absent from the overall resolution, however, was USW's - and Gerard's - frequent and strong commitment to government-run single-payer national health care, which Canada now has. Gerard, an Ontario native, has often spoken about how U.S. health care costs force union negotiators to forgo other gains, such as raises.

And the union strongly backed public sector workers, including USW members. Delegates said USW will lobby "to ensure that all levels of government are properly financed and empowered to ensure quality public services and education; provide effective regulation of our workplaces, marketplaces and economies; and protect us from environmental degradation.

"Governments at all levels have important roles to play in providing essential services, defending the vulnerable, encouraging environmental sustainability, facilitating economic growth and ensuring a fair and just society," the union platform said.

But that just and fair society won't occur "as long as our economic policy puts the interests of corporations before the interests of working people," it adds. "Corporate short-term profiteering and financial speculation will jeopardize our economic future," the action plan says. Gerard was even blunter about the 1 percent.

"Victory won't be achieved after one election cycle or one organizing campaign," he said. "But it will come from stopping the 1 percent from turning our children into pawns in a global board game of shameless greed."

USW also laid out an organizing agenda. It features more organizing in "our historical core industries," while "building capacity in the public, education and non-profit sectors. The union pledged to "committing the resources necessary to attract new members, bargain fair and equitable contracts, and support progressive public policies and legislation."

To enhance those drives, the USW plans to "increase our public profile as a growing progressive union" in communities through pro-worker, pro-public activities such as sponsoring food banks and urban gardens, joining public policy campaigns, working with Habitat for Humanity and building a speakers bureau to teach students about the role of unions.

And it decided to undertake an unspecified restructuring of its headquarters staff to better help both locals and regionals in organizing. That includes a Canada-wide organizing drive. USW will also "place enhanced resources" - more money - in organizing drives in larger bargaining units. And it will step up internal organizing in shops it represents, but where not all the workers are union members, notably in "open shop" states.

Besides Gerard, speakers included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Tom Mulcair, leader of Canada's progressive New Democratic Party (NDP). Canada will hold a parliamentary election next year.

"Your resolutions are our party platform," Pelosi told the 3,000 delegates. She added the House GOP "and their special interest backers are pledging to eliminate collective bargaining rights and dismantle the National Labor Relations Board if they win control of the Senate and keep the House."

The GOP holds the U.S. House 234-199, with two vacancies, while Democrats hold the Senate 53-45 with two pro-Democratic independents. But the Democrats are defending 21 of the 35 Senate seats up this fall, putting the pro-worker majority at risk. And other than Pelosi and her congressional allies, few analysts expect the Democrats to retake the House.

Canada's ruling Conservatives "doubled down on regressive policies that led to levels of inequality not seen since the Great Depression," Mulcair said. The NDP is the official opposition in parliament for the first time ever, and leads in opinion polls. "I'm here to tell you there's hope. When New Democrats form (the) government in 2015, we're going to raise the bar. Everyone who's ever dreamt of fairness and equality has brought us to this day. I know the United Steelworkers doesn't just talk about these goals, it's willing to fight for them. Together, we'll make that dream a reality."