People Before Profit blog

Machinists endorse Clinton

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 17:21:00 +0000

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (PAI) - Citing overwhelming support from both rank-and-file members and union political activists, Machinists leaders unanimously endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The August 14 move makes IAM the second union to back Clinton. It also backed her in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Then, it issued a double endorsement, favoring former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., in that party's primaries. This time, IAM did not back a Republican.

Earlier in 2015, the Teachers backed Clinton and National Nurses United endorsed her current main challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt. He is running in Democratic primaries.

"Hillary Clinton's long record of supporting workers' rights stands in stark contrast to her Republican rivals, who seek to ban unions, silence workers, eliminate sensible regulations and give corporations total control over working conditions," said Machinists President Tom Buffenbarger. "The question should not be why are we endorsing Hillary Clinton now, but rather, what took us so long?"

He called Clinton "now the target of unprecedented attacks, financed on a scale never seen before. The time to help is when help is needed most, and we intend to do just that."

Clinton, whom the union calls an honorary member, spoke this year at the IAM's staff conference in New York. And after a late-July closed-door session with the AFL-CIO Executive Council, including Buffenbarger, Clinton said if elected she would push for stronger U.S. labor law as part of a platform to help re-expand the middle class.

"Our members understand what's at stake in this election: The right to vote, the right to join a union and the right to retire with dignity. But it's more than just civil rights and labor rights at risk," Buffenbarger said.

"Evaporation of economic opportunity is a rank obscenity compared to the alarming and growing concentration of wealth in America. It's time for an economy and a president who works for more than just the wealthiest among us."

IAM said it would start its support for Clinton by concentrating on the first two states on the primary calendar, Iowa and New Hampshire, and by repelling the corporate attacks on her.

It also said the survey of 1,700 IAM members shows 48 percent backed Clinton when asked which of the 20 presidential hopefuls - Democratic and Republican - they support. Her ratio over her closest challenger, the survey said, was more than 2-to-1. And her margins over Sanders exceeded 6-to-1. Questions e-mailed about other survey details went unanswered.

The survey, by Fingerhut Granados, showed IAM members, by a 58 percent-19 percent margin, favored a presidential endorsement now. By 2-to-1, they also supported "getting involved in the presidential selection process early," not after the two parties select nominees.

Independents were the exception to that consensus, backing a presidential endorsement now by a 37 percent-33 percent margin, with the rest undecided. The survey did not say how many respondents were Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Among the Democratic respondents, Clinton led Sanders by a 71 percent-11 percent margin, with others - including Vice President Joe Biden, who is pondering whether to join the race - in single digits. The survey release did not include GOP totals.

Survey respondents said that in the face of the concentration of wealth, workers must stick together. Sixty percent agreed "a lot" with that statement and another 22 percent agreed with it "a little." Ten percent disagreed.

Photo: Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks with Dreamers about immigration. While all the Republican candidates have moved to the right on the issue of immigration reform, Clinton pledged to fight for a path to citizenship for the millions of undiocumented in the U.S. | John Locher/A

Farmworker rebellion spreads along almost the entire Pacific coast

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 16:25:00 +0000

A burned-out concrete blockhouse - the former police station - squats on one side of the only divided street in Vicente Guerrero, half a mile from Baja California's trans-peninsular highway. Just across the street lies the barrio of Nuevo (New) San Juan Copala, one of the first settlements of migrant farm workers here in the San Quintin Valley, named after their hometown in Oaxaca.

Behind the charred stationhouse another road leads into the desert, to a newer barrio, Lomas de San Ramon. Here, on May 9, the cops descended in force, allegedly because a group of strikers were blocking a gate at a local farm. A brutal branch of the Mexican police did more than lift the blockade, though. Shooting rubber bullets at people fleeing down the dirt streets, they stormed into homes and beat residents.

By then a farm labor strike here was already two months old. Some leaders say provocateurs threw rocks and egged on a confrontation, but the beatings undeniably set off smoldering rage in the Lomas and Copala barrios. In addition, a government official who'd agreed to negotiate had failed to show up to talk with strike leaders.

By the end of the day, the police headquarters was a burned-out shell. One of the armored pickup trucks (called "tiburones," or sharks) driven by police at breakneck speed down the dusty alleyways had been torched as well. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic demonstration of workers' fury over four decades of hunger wages.

And while the most dramatic protest this year has taken place in Baja California, the same anger is building among indigenous farm workers all along the Pacific coast, from San Quintin in Mexico to Burlington, an hour south of the U.S. border with Canada. Two years ago Triqui and Mixtec workers struck strawberry fields in Skagit County in Washington State. Two years before that, Triqui workers picking peas in the Salinas Valley rebelled against an inhuman work quota, and immigration raids in the town of Greenfield.

The strawberries, blackberries and blueberries sold everyday in U.S. supermarkets are largely picked by these indigenous families. Their communities are very closely connected, all along the agricultural valleys that line the Pacific Coast. These migrants come from the same region of southern Mexico, often from the same towns. They speak the same languages - ones that were thousands of years old when Europeans first landed on this continent. Increasingly they talk back and forth across the border, sharing tactics and developing a common strategy.

Indigenous farm workers labor for a small number of large growers and distributors who dominate the market. One of the largest distributors is Driscoll's. Miles Reiter, retired CEO and grandson of its founder, says its intention is "to become the world's berry company." Driscoll's contracts with growers in five countries, and even exports berries from Mexico to China.

Driscoll's and its Baja partners BerryMex and MoraMex have a large share of Mexico's berry harvest, worth $550 million annually. Last year Mexico shipped 25 million flats of strawberries to the U.S. Mexican shipments of 16 million flats of raspberries and 22 million flats of blackberries were larger than U.S. domestic production. The company, with headquarters in Watsonville, California, is a partner with growers all along the U.S. Pacific Coast as well.

Global distributors and growers wield enormous economic and political power. But farm workers are beginning to challenge them, organizing independent and militant movements on both sides of the border.

One of the San Quintin strikers, Claudia Reyes (her name has been changed to protect her identity), walked out when the movement started. She works in the huge tomato greenhouses of Rancho Los Pinos, owned by the Rodriguez family, one of the most politically powerful in Baja California. The gulf between her living conditions and the wealth of the grower she works for is typical of indigenous farm worker families in the valley.

Reyes' home in Santa Maria de Los Pinos is a cinderblock house with a concrete floor, an amenity many neighbors lack. Several years after building it she still can't come up with the money to buy frames and glass panes for windows. She's also strung electrical conduit and plugs up the concrete walls, but the government provides no electrical service. "We buy candles for light at night, and I worry that some crazy person might break in and hurt me or the kids, because there are no streetlights either," she says.

During the six-month work season her family doesn't go hungry, but they only eat meat twice a week because a kilo costs 140 pesos (about $8). Eggs cost 60 pesos ($4) a carton, she says, "so it takes half a day's work just to buy one." She's paid by the hour, making 900 pesos a week, or 150/day ($9), for the normal 6-day week.

All along her dirt street neighbors have strung up long pieces of thin cloth to keep out the omnipresent dust. There's no sewer service, and although there is a water line, the water is almost unusable. Since the mid-1970s big growers and their U.S. partners have pumped so much water from the desert aquifer that salt has infiltrated the groundwater. The largest growers are now building desalination plants and installing drip-irrigation systems in huge greenhouse complexes.

Children become sick

In the barrios, however, families live with salty water. "It makes the children sick," Reyes says, "and gives them a rash if they wash with it." At the entrance to her yard sit two 55-gallon drums. Every few days a big tank truck fills them with drinking water - for a price.

It was water that led to the creation of the organization that mounted this spring's strike. Two years ago community committees in the valley towns formed the Alianza - the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice - to fight for better water. They won promises from the government of extended service hours and improved quality.

According to Bonifacio Martinez, an Alianza leader, "For years we've been hoping for some kind of change but it never happened." Before starting the strike on March 16, activists went from one colonia to another, meeting with families after work. "We asked them, 'Are you willing to continue living like this?'" he remembers. "What's behind this movement is hunger and need. To the powerful people here we're just machines to do the work. They have to see us as full human beings, and respect our rights and indigenous culture."

Women charge that supervisors harass them. According to Reyes, "They don't say anything. They just go with the foreman, but they do it against their will, out of fear." She named several supervisors at large companies she says have hit on women. All the companies say they have policies forbidding sexual harassment, but firings for violations are virtually unheard-of.

Fidel Sanchez, an Alianza spokesperson, charges that the most basic disrespect is economic. "The companies are paying 10 pesos (60¢) a box on the piece rate, and an hourly wage of 100 to 120 pesos ($6-7) a day," he said in an interview at the height of the strike. "How we can survive on these wages? "

BerryMex, the largest employer of strawberry pickers in the San Quintin Valley, says it pays much more. A posting on the company website during the strike claimed workers earned $5-9 per hour - a top wage equal to California's minimum wage of $9.

Pickers are usually paid a piece rate, however, both in Mexico and the U.S. Earnings vary greatly depending on the time of year, the condition of the field, and how fast they work. In an interview, BerryMex CEO Garland Reiter mentioned one worker who made 2800 pesos a week ($185), but acknowledged the average was probably less. "But we also pay the employee's contribution [for government-required social benefits]," he said. "When the employee gets 180 pesos a day we're actually paying 220." BerryMex' piece rate is 14 pesos a box (the Alianza wanted 20).

Reiter said lower wages in Mexico wasn't the main reason for developing its San Quintin operation. "We wanted to compete with Chile, using trucks to get to the U.S. market in the winter instead of air freight," he said. The company invested in erecting cloth tunnels over its berry rows, a desalination facility, a clinic, and measures that doubled worker productivity.

In a final negotiation session between the Alianza and the government on June 4, authorities announced a new minimum wage in San Quintin of 150, 165 or 180 pesos a day, depending on the size of the employer. They also warned they would enforce the collection of employer contributions for social security, housing and other benefits.

But the price of a gallon of milk in a Baja grocery store is the same as in San Diego. At a minimum hourly wage in a California field, that takes about 25 minutes to earn. A Baja piece rate worker in a good field might make it in an hour or two. At the top daily wage of 180 pesos, it takes almost 3 hours. At Reyes' wage, it takes even more time.

The picking season is only six months long, but workers have to survive during the months when there's no work. San Quintin's Mixtec and Triqui laborers originally came as yearly migrants, returning to Oaxaca after picking ended. Today, however, most live in the valley permanently. BerryMex's labor camp houses 550 temporary migrants, but the rest of its 4-5000 pickers live in the towns along the highway. The Mexican government subsidizes some living costs in the off-season, through an income-based subsidy called IMSS-Oportunidades (recently renamed IMSS-Prospera). But most families have to get what work they can or borrow from friends.

Families also survive through money sent home by relatives who work in the U.S. A recent study estimates that over 12 percent of San Quintin's farm worker families now have at least one member living there.

Large corporations increasingly organize that migration. Sierra Cascade, which grows rootstock for strawberry plants in Tulelake, California, has a recruitment office in San Quintin. The company was sued by California Rural Legal Assistance in 2006 for cheating guest workers hired under the H2A visa program. In 2007 Sierra Cascade recruited 340 guest workers from San Quintin, 550 in 2010, and more every year since. According to Laura Velasco, Christian Zlolniski and Marie-Laure Coubes, authors of From Laborers to Settlers, "the San Quintin Valley has become a center for the recruitment of temporary migrant workers for the U.S."

Fought to a draw

In economic terms, the strike was fought to a draw. Workers originally demanded 300 pesos a day, and then lowered it to 200 pesos. The government gave even less. Nevertheless, wages and benefits will rise for some. But after negotiations ended, Alianza leaders announced a decision that will a have greater long-range impact, and will bring them into much closer alliance with indigenous strawberry workers across the border.

"We will establish an independent national union for all workers in the fields," Sanchez explained in an interview, "and sign contracts with the different companies. What is being agreed today is just a stage on the road to organizing this new union.

To do this, however, the Alianza will have to break the agreements, called protection contracts, that growers have with politically-connected and company-friendly unions. These agreements are signed without input from workers, who often have no idea they even belong to such a union. When the strike started, these unions quickly signed new agreements for 15 percent wage increases (less than what the government eventually agreed to), and then told strikers to go back to work. Reyes charges the union in her workplace even paid a bounty of 50 pesos for the names of strikers, which it then turned in to management. Workers, she says, are told that if they don't join it they'll be fired.

An independent union in Baja California, however, contesting for a contract with Driscoll growers, will find allies among workers in Burlington, Washington. Two years ago several hundred Mixtec and Triqui strawberry pickers went on strike at one of the state's largest berry growers, Sakuma Farms. They then organized an independent union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice).

Alianza leader Bonifacio Martinez is a friend of Felimon Piñeda, the vice-president of FUJ. "We've talked a lot with Felimon," he says. "They've been fighting for almost three years, and they've formed a union. We're trying to set up the same thing - a union that will defend our rights. We're the same workers, and we're talking about the same kind of union." They also work indirectly for the same company. Sakuma Farms sells its blueberries to Driscoll's, which also markets the berries from BerryMex and MoraMex..

Martinez and Piñeda have talked half a dozen times this year. After the strike started in San Quintin, Piñeda called Martinez with a proposal. "We are willing to boycott Driscoll's to help them and to help ourselves too," Piñeda explained. "If we get our contract first, we won't stop until they get what they're fighting for. If they win what they're demanding, they will continue to boycott until we get our contract. That way they get a contract there and we get one here. That's what we're thinking of doing."

The workers in Washington State have been organizing pressure on Sakuma Farms and Driscoll's since they went on strike originally in 2013. That season several hundred workers left the fields repeatedly in disputes over wages, the conditions in the company's labor camp and the firing of a worker leader. FUJ demanded $14 per hour, and a piece rate set so that workers would make at least that minimum.

Managers at first agreed to a process for setting the piece rate. But when it would have set higher wages the company would not implement it. That year Sakuma applied for 160 workers under the H2A visa program, and eventually brought in about 70. Ryan Sakuma said in an interview at the time, "Everyone at the company will get the H-2A wage for this work." That was about $12 an hour - a wage mandated by regulations governing the program. According to Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community to Community, an organizing project that's been the workers' key source of support, "The H-2A rate limited what was possible. The workers had to accept $12 because that's what the H-2A workers got." Some workers said they were earning less - Washington State's minimum wage of $9.19/hour.

FUJ President Ramon Torres met some guest workers in a local church, away from the labor camp. "They were very afraid. They said that they'd been told that if they talked with us they'd be sent back to Mexico," he charged.

Relations deteriorated and the company fired Torres over an allegation - later proven false - of domestic abuse. The next spring Sakuma sent strikers form letters saying they'd all been fired. The company applied for certification from the U.S. Department of Labor to bring in 438 H2A guest workers, enough to replace its previous workforce, saying it couldn't find local workers. Strikers all signed letters to the DOL saying they were willing to work, and Sakuma eventually had to withdraw its application. According to FUJ, however, most strikers were not rehired in the 2014 season.

The union launched a boycott of Driscoll's, saying the company was obligated to ensure that growers producing its berries respected labor rights, including the right of FUJ members to their jobs, and to negotiate a labor agreement. FUJ members and supporters began picketing Washington State supermarkets selling Sakuma berries under its own label, and also under Driscoll's label.

This spring the Fair World Project, based in Oregon, collected over 10,000 signatures on a petition to Driscoll's, asking it to terminate purchases from Sakuma "until they in good faith negotiate a legally binding contract." Driscoll's vice-president Soren Bjorn told the Fresh Fruit Portal website the company had audited Sakuma Brothers Farms. "There were some legitimate claims a while back and those have all been properly addressed," he said, adding, "We stand behind them as long as they continue to meet our standards."

FUJ also criticized Driscoll's because it supports the H2A program. Bjorn says it fills an alleged shortage of farm workers. "Your only mechanism is to bring in H-2A labor," he told Fresh Fruit Portal. "It's the only way today that growers can really expand their labor pool." Guillen responded bitterly, "Labor in the fields has got to be as cheap as you can get it and be as easily controllable as it can be, and the guest worker program provides a way for them to do it.

Want even more "guest" workers

Driscoll's is just one of many agricultural employers making a new push for the expansion of the H2A program and relaxation of its minimal requirements. One Arlington, WA, grower, Biringer Farms, claimed it could not find local workers despite posting a notice on Craigslist and in a church bathroom. Others claim they're being forced to raise wages, and need guest workers to be more competitive. Last year growers imported 116,689 people, about 50,000 more than in 2011. Joe Pezzini, CEO of California Artichoke and Vegetable Growers Corp. with 1000 employees, told the Wall Street Journal "now the highest-priority issue is the availability of labor."

Nevertheless, Sakuma Farms, whose application for H2A workers was defeated in 2014, did not make one for the 2015 season. Many FUJ members went to work, and when picking started so did protests. The company implemented a pay system requiring workers to pick 35 pounds of strawberries per hour to earn a $10 minimum wage ($2 below what they'd paid guest workers in 2013). At first workers negotiated a cut in the quota with owner Ryan Sakuma. When blueberry picking started at the beginning of July, however, the quota was raised.

On its website, Sakuma says it pays a production bonus and a $10/hour guarantee. The website claims that pickers can earn up to $40 per hour. Workers say the quota changes every day. One recent pay scale puts the minimum at 40 pounds to earn $10/hour. To make $40 a worker has to pick 100 pounds each hour.

In two short strikes workers got some concessions, but not on the quota. On July 2 FUJ vice-president Felimon Piñeda led strikers back into the field and delivered a demand for a union contract. The company called deputy sheriffs. "The police said they were going to arrest me," Piñeda laughed. "The people asked, 'Are you going to arrest us all?' So we all left the field and went to the Costco in Burlington to boycott."

Sakuma pickers walked out a third time on July 24. Then on August 8 a strike broke out at another company, Valley Pride Sales. Thirty-five workers left the fields and joined FUJ, asking for a 50¢ increase per box of blackberries. They complained there were often no bathrooms or drinking water in the field, and according to Ramon Torres, they were told to use the restroom at a nearby gas station. After refusing to pick for at the company's piece rate, strikers were told to leave its labor camp.

Over the last several years, Mixtec and Triqui workers in California have also organized work stoppages. One strike by Mixtecos paralyzed Santa Maria strawberry growers in 1999. Four years ago a strike by Triquis hit the Salinas Valley pea harvest, after workers were fired for not meeting high production demands. "Their hands were swollen," remembers Andres Cruz, a Triqui community organizer in the small town of Greenfield. "You use your nail to cut the pod from the stem, and the nail can't handle it sometimes pulls off. We organized that strike in one day." Fired workers won reinstatement and a cut in the quota, but leaders were blacklisted the following season.

As the Triqui and Mixtec population of Greenfield grew, immigration raids began. "The police began to hound anyone indigenous," recalled Eulogio Solanoa, a Mixtec farm worker later hired by the United Farm Workers. When the police chief stopped the harassment and began meeting with the indigenous community, the city council fired him. "That was racism towards the indigenous community. Farm workers marched in his defense, but Greenfield's longtime residents won. It was an injustice."

That anger is building again. Rosalia Martinez, a Triqui picker in Greenfield, explained in an interview, "They want you to pick 130 pounds in ten hours, and we make very little. The hourly wage is supposed to be $9.50, but on the piece rate it's less - $100 in a day sometimes, but other times $80 or $70."

The piece rate is physically destructive, she added. "You have to work on your knees, and it hurts. Sometimes your knees break down. That's happened to a lot of people. Their knees go out permanently and they can't work anymore."

When the strike started this spring in San Quintin, Martinez began following the news on Facebook. "I worked there for a number of years," she said. "We agree with what they did. We come from the same towns. We are the same community. We are indigenous people, and we have to do whatever we can to keep our children eating, no matter what they pay. But if we don't work and harvest the crops, there's nothing for the growers either. We are thinking of doing something here like they did there."

While the absolute wage level differs substantially between Burlington and San Quintin, many demands made by workers are similar, and reflect similar conditions. Piñeda said that when he arrived at the Sakuma labor camp in 2013 he was given mattresses so dilapidated that he had to wrap them in plastic, and had to cover the concrete floor in carpet samples. Another Sakuma striker, Rosario Ventura, said her cabin roof leaked. "They just stuffed bags in the holes and the water still came in. All my children's clothes were wet," she remembers.

The pressure to produce on the piece rate is just as intense on the U.S. side of the border. "You have to make 'weight,' they say," recalled Ventura. "If you don't they give you some days off, and if you still can't make it, they fire you." The pressure of no income in the off-season is the same. A large percentage of Sakuma workers live in Madera and Santa Maria, California. Their work in Washington State has to pay the cost of travel, and then tide families over during the winter. In San Quintin some workers at least qualify for IMSS-Oportunidades. But in California the situation of Mixtec and Triqui workers is even more precarious because they are largely undocumented, disqualifying them from social benefits.

Mixtec and Triqui farm workers in the U.S. and Mexico also share a common history of labor organizing. Many are veterans of three decades of strikes and land struggles in Baja California. Indigenous leaders in both countries recall the first rebellions in San Quintin, led by the Independent Central of Farm Workers and Farmers (CIOAC). In the mid-1980s CIOAC sent organizers to northern Mexico to mount strikes. These were not always peaceful struggles. In one San Quintin strike a local packinghouse went up in flames. Later, as workers began trying to leave the valley's labor camps and build permanent homes, CIOAC organized movements to take over land and force the government to provide water, electricity and basic services. Two leaders, Beatriz Chavez and Julio Sandoval, were sent to federal prison for leading land invasions. One, Maclovio Rojas, was killed.

"Our movement did not arise spontaneously in 2015," Fidel Sanchez emphasized. "We have roots in CIOAC and many of us came out of these earlier struggles." Sanchez also worked for some years in the U.S., where he participated in Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Other Alianza leaders belonged to the UFW as migrants. "We're trying to unearth knowledge of previous struggles, and incorporate them into the Alianza," Sanchez explained.

Another group with these roots is the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB), organized by activists who led farm worker strikes in Baja California and northern Mexico in the 1980s. Its first members were migrants in California, but later it organized chapters in Oaxaca and Baja California. Today FIOB has members in almost every town along the highway in the San Quintin Valley. They were active in the strike, and one, Faustino Hernandez, was shot by police in Camalu during the events of May 9. This spring local chapters began holding workshops teaching the basics of organizing. FIOB chapters in California raised thousands of dollars for the strikers, and a caravan of activists from Los Angeles brought down three tons of food.

"The violation of the human and labor rights in San Quintin has been going on for years, " explains Rogelio Mendez, FIOB's Baja California coordinator. "People have the right to better wages, and they've been fighting for 30 years to get them. But the authorities have abandoned any effort to protect labor rights. Workers are going to have to do this for themselves."

Met with management

FIOB met with BerryMex and Driscoll's management, after organizing a picketline with other community groups at company offices in Oxnard. Garland Reiter said their accusations against BerryMex were untrue, and then hosted a delegation of outside observers to inspect conditions in its San Quintin fields and labor camp. Two observers later issued a report generally praising them.

FIOB supported the Mixtec and Triqui workers in Burlington as well. When the strike started in 2013, FIOB's binational coordinator, Bernardo Ramirez, flew up from Oaxaca to help. "Foremen have insulted them, shouted at them and called them 'burros [donkeys],'" he declared. "When you compare people to animals, this is racism. Low wages are a form of racism too, because they minimize the work of indigenous migrants."

The Alianza, FUJ and FIOB all charge that migration and low wages impose instability on workers. FIOB calls for the right to not migrate, or the right to stay home - for jobs, education and economic development in home communities that would make migration a voluntary choice, rather than a necessity for survival.

Fidel Sanchez agrees: "We have had to abandon our lands and transform ourselves into farm workers, not just here in the San Quintin Valley but in the United States too. People should not be forced to migrate in search of a better life."

But since Mixtecos, Triquis and other indigenous people have had to leave home, and are now trying to settle in communities up the Pacific coast, they also want rights as migrants and a better economic status. As they fight to get them, they are linked both by common indigenous roots and by their work for common employers. "If companies like Driscoll's are international now, we the workers must also become international," Bonifacio Martinez insists. "I want to say to our brothers in the U.S. - we are crying out for you on our side of the border too. Just like in the United States, here in San Quintin we've decided to come out of the shadows into the light of the world."

This article was originally published by The Nation.

Photo: Lorena Hernandez, a 20-year-old farm worker and single mother of a four-year-old girl, picks blueberries in a field in California's San Joaquin Valley. Workers are paid $8 for each 12 pound bucket they pick. David Bacon photo.

Media unions “heartsick” over journalists murdered doing their job

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 15:02:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) -- National media unions are "heartsick" over the murder of two television journalists in the Roanoke, Va., area who were killed for doing their job.

WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were murdered on August 26 as they were interviewing a local business official for a live early morning news show. The murderer, an embittered former colleague, later shot himself after a police chase, and died.

Vicki Garner, whom Parker and Ward were interviewing, was also shot. She is recovering in a local hospital. Video of the shootings, including video from the shooter's cellphone, at first circulated on the Internet but was later pulled.

"We are heartsick over the killings of WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. Our thoughts and prayers are with their grieving colleagues, friends and families," said Communications Workers Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens, a former reporter in San Jose, Calif. CWA includes both print and broadcast journalists and other media workers.

"We also pray for the recovery of Vicki Garner, the woman the journalists were interviewing, who was badly wounded," she said. The News Guild and the National Association of Broadcast and Employees and Technicians, both CWA sectors, joined in the statement.

"Whatever the shooter's motive, two young people who were looking forward to long and happy lives are gone today. We join with WDBJ, the Roanoke community and all those who loved Alison and Adam in mourning their loss," the statement said.

"The threats journalists face on the job every day do not normally include their coworkers. But tragically, work-related shootings and other violence are not uncommon in the United States. Our members in the media sector and all of the Communications Workers of America are gravely concerned about this issue and committed to helping build safe workplaces," Steffens added.

Statistics compiled by reporters' groups show that since records started in 1837, at least 39 U.S. journalists have died on the job in this country. Most wrote for ethnic-group publications, and their stories angered powerful people or groups in their communities.

But the first recorded death of a journalist for doing his job was the notorious murder, by a pro-slavery mob, of crusading abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy, in Alton, Ill.

And the latest to die in the U.S., eight years before the murders of Parker and Ward, was Chauncey Bailey of the Oakland Post. While investigating municipal corruption, Bailey was shot to death in his own driveway by a hit man hired by one of the pols he exposed.

The prior deaths before Bailey were of eight journalists killed by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. Seven were NABET broadcast technicians working inside the buildings. Photographer Bill Biggart was killed by falling debris from the collapsing WTC North Tower while photographing the attack.

Photo: Reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot and killed while doing a live TV interview. Newsguild.org.

Court upholds federal minimum wage, overtime pay for home health care workers

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 12:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Overturning a lower court decision, a federal appeals court panel has upheld the Obama Administration Labor Department's rules mandating minimum wages and overtime pay for up to two million home health care workers nationwide.

The home health care workers and their allies hailed the judges' decision, saying it would bring the workers out of the low-paying shadows many now toil in. A majority of home health care workers earn under $10 an hour, the National Domestic Workers Alliance says.

An overwhelming majority of them are women, minorities, or both.

"This is an enormous step forward for home care workers and for our country. We are closing the sad chapter of racial discrimination that was ingrained in the Fair Labor Standards Act and ensuring two million home care workers now have the same protections the vast majority of Americans have at work," said Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry.

SEIU organizes and represents thousands of the home health care workers, and has long fought to put that industry under federal minimum wage and overtime pay law.

The home health care industry tried to overturn the rules, arguing in lower courts that the workers are equivalent of maids, chauffeurs and other domestic service workers. DOL, noting conditions for caring for the elderly and disabled have greatly changed in the last several decades, disagreed. The old rules were instituted more than 40 years ago.

The rising and enormous costs of hospital or nursing home care have led more of the elderly and disabled to live at home, with third-party agencies sending caregivers to provide "companionship services and live-in-care within a home," the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals noted on August 21.

But since Medicare and Medicaid often pay for the care, the federal government has a right to change the rules on how - and how much - they're paid. DOL did so, and judges backed the agency. DOL's new rules, however, do not cover home health care workers whom the person, or their family, directly hires, without an agency referral.

The Supreme Court majority ruled in 2007, in a case SEIU sponsored, that home health care workers could - not must - be treated like babysitters and exempt from the FLSA. Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Sri Srinivasan said that left the ultimate ruling of how the home health care workers are treated up to the federal government.

That 2007 case "confirms the (Fair Labor Standards) Act vests the department with discretion to apply or not to apply the companionship-services and live-in exemptions to employees of third-party agencies," he explained.

"As more individuals receive services at home rather than in nursing homes and other institutions, workers who provide home care services...perform increasingly skilled duties analogous to the professional services performed in institutions," the judges explained. That brings them under the FLSA.

"The department's decision to extend the FLSA's protections to those employees is grounded in a reasonable interpretation of the statute and is neither arbitrary nor capricious," the judges concluded.

Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance called the ruling "a major step forward, recognizing the value of care work in today's economy." Her group, SEIU, Jobs With Justice, and the National Employment Law Project are lead defenders of DOL's rules, though the Obama administration handled the court case and arguments before the judges.

The court's decision "not only addresses a longstanding, shameful exclusion of professional caregivers from basic worker protections, it allows us to begin the real task at hand: strengthening this workforce for the enormous responsibility of caring for a growing aging population in America."

Jobs With Justice Executive Director Sarita Gupta called the judges' decision a win not just for the home health care workers, but for the families they serve. It would make the home care workforce more stable, she pointed out.

"Paying workers less than the minimum wage for their work hours, and not paying an overtime premium after 40 hours a week, benefits no one," added NELP senior attorney Sarah Leberstein. "Low pay leads to burnout and high turnover and compromises care, which in turn create economic strains on the home care system. Many states already recognized the need to raise standards, and extending basic wage protections is a key element of that process."

The ruling "means women and men who care for seniors and people with disabilities must be valued and respected. There's no basis for discriminating against home care workers or holding us back anymore," home health care worker Jacquelyn McGonigle of Denver told SEIU. "We are no longer invisible."

Photo: Care worker speaking at Houston rally for home care workers, seniors, and people with disabilities. National Domestic Worker Alliance Flickr page

AFL-CIO backs legislation to curb execs’ revolving door to D.C.

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 15:45:00 +0000

(Too Much and Press Associates) -- Why do regulators in Washington so often do their best not to irritate overpaid bank and corporate execs? In many cases, they're counting on these same execs to hire them into cushy corporate jobs that pay astronomically more than they're making in government service.

Recognizing that revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, progressive lawmakers last month filed legislation to slow if not stop it. The AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform, and other progressive groups back the bill.

The new Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act, by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and others, doubles the time former government employees have to wait before they can lobby for a company they used to regulate.

It also bans government employees from accepting bonuses from their former private sector employers for entering government service.

And current government workers, including financial institution supervisors and procurement officers, would be banned for two years from working for the institutions they regulated or whose contracts they approved.

"Hard-working middle class families can't afford to have the financial industry and government creating a cozy relationship that allows Wall Street to write its own rules," said Baldwin. "We need to ensure government officials are working on behalf of the public interest and our common good. The American people can't afford to have government officials in the pocket of the financial industry that they are charged with overseeing.

"At a time of historic income inequality, we need to do everything we can to make sure we are building an economy that works for everyone. We can't afford to have a revolving door working to stack the deck in favor of Wall Street and against hard working Americans who are struggling to get ahead. The American people deserve to have trust in the fact that government is working for them and that the system is not being rigged against them," she added.

"Working families deserve to know they can count on financial regulators to protect them," said Heather Corzo, director of the AFL-CIO's Office of Investment. "For far too long the revolving door between Wall Street and federal financial regulators has allowed big corporations and Wall Street banks to have way too much influence on financial policies.

"How can the public trust that executives who received seven- or eight-figure golden parachutes from their former employers can properly regulate them?" Corzo asked.

"Those who accept the honor of public service must serve only the interests of the American people," added Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the lead House sponsor.‎ "There is absolutely no reason someone entering government service would need a payment from any outside source as a reward for that service or to incentivize favorable treatment-including from a previous employer-and no company would offer these payments if they didn't yield some benefits to them."

Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are also original co-sponsors of the bill. The measure, however, is expected to make little progress in the Republican-run 114^th Congress. The GOP chairs of its banking and financial services committees are more intent on tearing down laws and regulations enacted five years ago. Lawmakers passed those bills in response to the financiers' finagling that led to the Great Recession and its disastrous impact on workers.

You can Urge Congress to pass the "Financial Services Conflict of Interests Act" by signing the AFR petition.

Photo: Flickr Code Pink Creative Commons

ATU: “A Common-Sense Bus Safety Proposal”

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:43:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Putting intercity bus drivers under federal overtime pay laws would raise the drivers' pay, lower their fatigue behind the wheel and cut fatal bus crashes and deaths, a new Amalgamated Transit Union report says.

Sudden Death Overtime: A Common-Sense Bus Safety Proposal notes driver fatigue accounts for 36 percent of all deaths in bus crashes. Federal data shows fatigue occurs when drivers spend huge amounts of hours - such as 100 a week - behind the wheel or take other jobs to make ends meet. Drivers who toil long hours don't get the time-and-a-half overtime pay rate. Federal data shows bus crashes kill approximately 50 people yearly and injure another 1,000.

The bus crash problem has increased ever since the industry was deregulated, ATU notes, and especially with fly-by-night bus firms and largely unregulated so-called "Chinatown" bus companies. [The bus services originally transported workers in Chinese restaurants to and from jobs. Also, some bus lines transport large groups of mainly Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants to and from casinos. The buses have been subject to controversy because of safety issues. Some companies have been shut down either temporarily or permanently by regulatory authorities.] But the fatigue problem also exists among Greyhound drivers, ATU adds.

"It is doubtful Congress intended market forces to result in reduced safety," ATU says. Yet bus firms "are now free to set their own rates, which allowed customers to lock in jaw-dropping fares between certain cities.

"If you take your chance on a discount bus operator, there is a good chance you will be putting your life in the hands of a severely fatigued driver who may not speak English or even understand road signs. And you may very well be riding in a bus that has been cited for numerous safety violations...More people are putting themselves at risk every day."

Legislative proposals to solve the problem, including a bill by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, address bus structural safety but not fatigue factors, the report notes. While making the buses stronger is extremely important, structural safety makes little difference if the bus driver falls asleep at the wheel and the bus hurtles off the road, ATU says.

The federal Transportation Department has tried to address driver fatigue by limiting hours on the road, but enforcement - especially on newer, smaller operators - is spotty and limiting hours while preserving inadequate pay still leads drivers to toil long hours, ATU says.

"There is no inconsistency between enforcing rigid maximum hours of service for safety purposes and at the same time, within those limitations, requiring compliance with the increased rates of pay for overtime work," ATU says. "In fact, both issues are paramount to safety, and they are clearly linked. When drivers are not paid well, including appropriate overtime rates, they are going to be pushed to make a living elsewhere, providing them little time to rest and turning them into weary operators."

Citing a 2002 study of long-distance truckers and their hours and pay, ATU notes "only a 10 percent higher driver base pay rate leads to a staggering 34 percent lower probability of a crash." It adds 85 percent of U.S. hourly workers are eligible for overtime. Bus drivers are not.

"Now is the time to lift the overtime exemption on intercity motorcoach drivers, who are still categorized with an odd group of workers that have no apparent connection to public safety which includes boat salespeople, buyers of agricultural products, forestry employees, livestock auction workers and motion picture theater employees.

"If the teenager who rips your ticket at the movies falls asleep on the job, the only consequence is that patrons get in for free. When bus drivers fall asleep at the wheel, people die," ATU says.

Photo: Authorities investigate the scene of a fatal collision between a tractor-trailer and a tour bus on Interstate 380 near Mount Pocono, Pa., June 3. Three people were killed and more than a dozen were sent to hospitals. | David Kidwell/AP

Rail workers score big safety win in California

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 12:35:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (PAI) - Rail workers scored a big safety win in California on August 21 as state lawmakers gave final approval to a bill mandating two-person crews on all freight trains.

The measure, pushed by the Teamsters and their California affiliates, the Rail Division of SMART - the former United Transportation Union - and the state labor federation, now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., who is expected to sign it.

Rail unions nationwide have been pushing for the two-person crews while the rail carriers have been pushing for just one, an engineer. Several months ago, the head of one carrier, the Burlington Northern, advocated crewless freights.

The unionists told lawmakers presence of a second crew member would cut down on horrific crashes such as the one that obliterated downtown Lac-Megantic, Quebec, two years ago. Then, a runaway oil train crashed and exploded, killing 47 people. That train had only an engineer. There has been a string of similar U.S. accidents since, especially of oil-carrying trains. Recent oil train accidents were near Galena, Ill., Lynchburg, Va., and in West Virginia.

The proposed California statute requires trains and light engines carrying freight within the nation's largest state - home to one of every eight Americans - to be operated with "an adequate crew size," reported Railroad Workers United, a coalition of rank-and-file rail workers from SMART, the Teamsters and other unions.

The minimum adequate crew size, the bill says, is two. Railroads that break the law would face fines and other penalties from the state Public Utilities Commission. The commission supported the bill, SB730.

"Today's freight trains carry extremely dangerous materials, including Bakken crude oil, ethanol, anhydrous ammonia, liquefied petroleum gas, and acids that may pose significant health and safety risks to communities and our environment in the case of an accident," said sponsoring State Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Solano.

"With more than 5,000 miles of railroad track that crisscrosses the state through wilderness and urban areas, the potential for derailment or other accidents containing these materials is an ever present danger. I urge the governor to sign this bill into law, providing greater protection to communities located along rail lines in California, and to railroad workers."

"California has nearly 7,000 miles of railroad track that winds through both wilderness and urban areas, making train safety a priority issue," said California Labor Federation spokesman Steve Smith. "SB730 will help to protect railway workers, the public, and the environment from freight train derailments by ensuring trains operate with a two-person crew.

"The labor federation is proud to support this critical legislation and we're urging the governor sign it into law."

The rail workers union and Railroad Workers United have also pushed for two-person crews at the national level, but they've run into indifference, at best, in the Republican-run 114th Congress. Meanwhile, the carriers lobby federal regulators to let them have one-person crews.

Dennis Pierce, President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Teamsters Rail Conference, told the U.S. House Transportation Committee in June that while another safety measure - positive train control (PTC) - would also help cut down the possibility of accidents, it's no substitute for two-person crews.

"PTC can't replace the second crewmember," Pierce said then. "It doesn't provide a second set of eyes and ears trained on the road ahead or monitor the 'left' side of the train for defects like hot wheels, stuck brakes or shifted lading, or observe the 'left' side of highway-rail grade crossings for drivers who fail to stop, or separate stopped trains that block crossings to allow first responders to cross the tracks."

SMART, the Teamsters and other rail unions and workers are pushing the Safe Freight Act (HR1763), mandating the two-person crews, introduced by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the senior Republican in the House.

SMART Transportation Division President John Previsich said, "The safest rail operation is a two-person crew operation. With several major train derailments having occurred in the last few months...our lawmakers and the general public must understand that multi-person crews are essential to ensuring the safest rail operations possible in their communities. No one would permit an airliner to fly with just one pilot, even though it can fly itself. Trains, which cannot operate themselves, should be no different."

Photo: Police helicopter view of Lac-Mégantic, the day of the derailment. Forty-two people were confirmed dead, with five more missing and presumed dead. Licensed under CC BY-SA 1.0 via Commons

Video: Despite anti-union attacks, steelworkers rally for contract, justice

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 15:06:00 +0000

GARY, Ind. -- United Steelworkers (USW) union members and allies demonstrated this past week in two separate rallies for a fair contract for workers who produce steel. Seventeen thousand US Steelworkers and thousands more at ArcelorMittal began industry-wide contract bargaining in basic steel about a month ago. Their current contracts expire on Sept. 1, and these two big steel companies have come with terrible proposals for cutting deep into active worker and retiree benefits, dangerous work rule changes, and proposals that will severely weaken bargaining rights.

These tough negotiations come at a time of unprecedented attack on unions by corporate-sponsored far rightwing politicians, think tanks and media. Already the aluminum company, ATI, has locked out 2,200 USW workers around the country.

But the union membership and leadership are fired up and rallying with allies around the country at the different plant gates of each company.

Steelworkers Want a Fair Contract Now! from Scott Marshall on Vimeo.

Nevada unions to Trump: pay your hotel’s workers fair wages

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:29:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS - As far as Nevada's unions are concerned, hotel mogul-turned-Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump should put his money where his mouth is, and pay his hotel's workers in Las Vegas fair and living wages. And recognize their union, too.

The 500-plus workers, who seek to join Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 226, are battling Trump management over recognition, wages and working conditions.

They add hotel management is not only breaking labor law - including verbal and physical assaults and verbal threats - but that they're not following the boss' own campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again!"

So the hotel workers, joined by Teamsters Local 986 members and other unions, took their campaign to the streets with a march through downtown Las Vegas, to Trump's hotel, on the evening of August 21. That came two days after more than 100 of them joined Democratic presidential contender Martin O'Malley in a pro-worker press conference there.

"Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again," Geoconda Arguello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the 55,000-member local, Nevada's largest, said at the press conference with O'Malley. "Trump should start right here in Las Vegas with workers at his hotel. Many of them are immigrants who work hard to provide for their families. They deserve equal treatment and should be respected for their contributions to this great city," she added.

"I came from Mexico many years ago and became an American citizen to have a better opportunity for me and my family," Maria Jaramillo, a housekeeper at the Trump Las Vegas, told the union. "This country is a nation of immigrants, and we all work hard and deserve to be treated fairly."

Monte Carlo Resort and Casino banquet server Pamela Parre, a native of the U.S., added her union job "gives me the opportunity to provide for my family. That's why I support Trump workers who want to unionize." Trump, she said, "can make America better by treating his employees with dignity and respect, and make their jobs great jobs just like mine."

O'Malley and the other top two Democrats - Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders - were in town to address the Nevada AFL-CIO convention. Nevada is one of the more heavily unionized states in the U.S., and the site of the second presidential caucus next year.

The struggle at Trump's hotel "is a big issue for us," Nevada AFL-CIO Executive Secretary Danny Thompson told local media after O'Malley's appearance. "What everyone needs to understand is we're not going to walk away from this fight" for recognition at Trump's hotel. The hotels and casinos on Las Vegas' strip are 95 percent unionized.

O'Malley had a few choice words for Trump, too: "There are a couple things Donald Trump doesn't understand. First, if we want our economy to grow we need to treat our workers with dignity and respect, pay them better and respect their right to organize. Secondly, in every generation, new American immigrants have made our economy stronger and better."

Photo: August 21, Culinary Workers Union Local 226 at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas

Thousands protest Koch Brothers convention in Ohio

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:23:00 +0000

COLUMBUS - In a powerful rebuff to extremist efforts to push "Right-To-Work" and other anti-working class programs, some 4000 union members and supporters poured into Columbus Friday, Aug. 21 to protest the "Summit on the American Dream" held by Americans for Prosperity" (AFP), a political action group funded by the right-wing billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch.

Protesters sported a kaleidoscope of union t-shirts on this bright sunny day, as they poured off buses from cities throughout the state, and as music by Bruce Springsteen and other artists blared from the stage at McPherson Commons.

Ten buses of UAW auto workers unloaded red-clad protesters, joined by busloads of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) members in green. Teachers also wore red. Teamsters in black shirts mixed with steelworkers in blue and United Food and Commercial workers wearing yellow. A group backing Bernie Sanders for President joined in their "Feel the Bern" shirts. A giant puppet mocking Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who passed a "Right-To-Work" law there, mixed in with dozens of union banners and hundreds of signs. There was also a contingent of red t-shirted Communist Party members with a banner reading "Socialism USA - Of, By and For Working People. Modern, Democratic and Green."

They gathered for a "Rally to Defend the American Dream."

"Stand up to the Koch Brothers," Ohio AFL-CIO PresidentTim Burga exhorted the cheering crowd. "Stand up to their agenda of busting unions, destroying pensions, privatizing Social Security and Medicare so that they can enrich the few while impoverishing the many!

"Too many people have fought too hard, for too long, under tough conditions, for us to allow a handful of greedy billionaires to steal our democracy! It's too precious for all of us and we won't stand for it!"

The corporate media may have preferred to cover the AFP event, with appearances from GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal, without distractions. However, the huge demonstration took over the front page of the Columbus Dispatch. All TV stations covered the march, displacing attention from the Koch Brothers group to the thousands of demonstrators calling for democracy and worker's rights.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also a candidate for president, was not invited to the Summit evidently because he had agreed to expand Medicaid in the state as part of Pres. Obama's Affordable Care Act. Nonetheless, he was very much on the minds of the protesters because of the infamous Senate Bill 5, his failed 2011 attempt to outlaw collective bargaining rights for public employees, an attack on public workers' rights. The protest served as a powerful warning to Kasich, who is anxious to show he has this key battleground state under control as he attempts to sell his candidacy to the GOP, that any attempt to use Republican control of the legislature to pass Right-To Work in Ohio would unleash the same massive uprising that repealed SB5.

"We've seen firsthand what these so-called 'Right-To-Work' laws do to working folks," said Ohio UAW Retiree Director Bill Bowers. "The billionaires push their anti-worker laws, telling people it's in their interests, but it literally wipes out working class communities. Small businesses and local tax bases are killed, as well as hurting workers' bargaining power. We had to show up to let folks know that we are drawing a line in the sand in Ohio. No further!"

"Keep the faith, don't give in," Rick Ward, a UAW worker from Kokomo, Ind., declared. "The billionaires passed 'Right-To-Work' in Indiana. They thought we'd just lay down and give up. Instead, they just pissed us off! We got so inspired we just organized 4000 new workers into the union!" The response from the crowd was deafening cheers!

"We've seen the Koch Brothers. type of 'prosperity,'" said Mike Walton, leading a delegation of Teamsters who recently suffered cuts in their federally administered pensions. "It doesn't work for regular working folks," he said. "Some of our people had their pensions cut by over 65 percent. If that's 'prosperity,' it's not for us!" "We're all with Bernie," he added, referring to Vermont Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a socialist. "He introduced a bill that would restore our pensions. He stood up for us."

"We are the majority, we are the people!" said Rev. Susan Smith, an African American leader, as protesters prepared to march.

"The corporate politicians love to talk about 'takers and makers,' as though they've ever made anything in their lives," she said. "Every road and every bridge, every school and every home, every hotel and building, everything, was made by you! All they have is money! We are the people, and united there is nothing we can't accomplish!"

With bystanders, including some police cheering them on, the crowd marched to the Columbus Convention Center, a sea of colors chanting, "People's needs - not corporate greed," "United we stand, divided we fall," "No justice - no peace!"

Photo: Ohio workers on the march against the Koch brothers. | Bruce Bostick/PW

Today in labor history: United Farm Workers launch the lettuce boycott

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 14:41:00 +0000

Forty-five years ago on this date, August 24, 1970, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) leader César Chávez called for a consumer boycott of lettuce to support the strike against lettuce growers who would not negotiate contracts with farm workers for decent wages and working conditions. UFWOC was the predecessor organization to the United Farm Workers (UFW). The Delano grape boycott had recently shown some success, and the union was eager to advance workers' claims into new fields.

To keep the UFW out of California lettuce and vegetable fields, most Salinas Valley growers signed sweetheart contracts with the Teamsters Union. Some 10,000 Central Coast farm workers respond by walking out on strike. The UFW used the boycott to convince some large vegetable companies to abandon their Teamster agreements and sign UFW contracts.

The so-called Salad Bowl strike was a series of strikes, mass pickets, boycotts and secondary boycotts that led to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history. Shipments of fresh lettuce nationwide virtually ceased, and the price of lettuce doubled almost overnight. Lettuce growers lost $500,000 a day. A state district court enjoined Chávez personally and the UFW as an organization from engaging in picketing, but both Chávez and the union refused to obey the court's orders.

Violence against UFW workers became increasingly widespread in the fields. On November 4, 1970 a UFW regional office was bombed.

Chávez spent from Dec. 10 to 23 in jail in Salinas, Calif., for refusing to obey the court order. Former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete Rafer Johnson, Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, visited him in jail.

On March 26, 1971, the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW's right to organize field workers, although Teamsters did continue to organize in some places, with frequent violent attacks on UFW members. The Teamsters finally left the field in 1973.

After a dramatic 110-mile march from San Francisco, which gathered more than 15,000 people by the time they reached the E & J Gallo Winery in Modesto on March 1, 1975, UFW's persistent action led directly to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which went into effect on August 28th. The UFW organized thousands of agricultural laborers into unions, in many cases winning recognition and negotiated contracts.

After hundreds of elections under the law in its first two years, the UFW and Teamsters finally signed a long-lasting jurisdictional agreement in March 1977,and the UFW ended its boycotts of lettuce, grapes, and wine in February 1978.

Adapted from ufw.org and Wikipedia.

Photo: peacebuttons.info

Black union leaders speak out on labor movement’s future

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 15:19:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - A new 35-page white paper, "A Future for Workers: A Contribution From Black Labor," was released last month by the Black Labor Collaborative, a group of influential African American leaders from major labor organizations who offer a progressive critique and agenda to frame discussions about the direction of the American labor movement. This is a seismic development, because it is the first time representatives of 2.1 million black trade unionists have published a comprehensive outlook on organized labor.

The BLC report landed the same week that the AFL-CIO's Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice held its first meeting. It also comes amid an explosion of protests and activism in black communities and among low-wage black workers across the nation, demanding racial justice as well as economic justice. For example:

* For the past 50 years, the unemployment rate for African American workers has been at least double that of their white counterparts.

* At its lowest point, when white male median earnings dropped to $37,000 in 1981, it was still higher than the peak median earnings of $34,118 that black men reached in 2006 - 25 years later.

In an executive summary that accompanies the report, the BLC calls for a "transformed labor movement," noting that "the foe we face, in the political Right and global capitalism, demands a transformed and energized labor movement that can fight back with more than slogans of solidarity. No tinkering around the edges! A transformed movement must be authentically inclusive because diversity carries the strongest seeds of change, of untapped creativity."

Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, one of the BLC conveners, said, "This is not about a 'black agenda.' This brief paper seeks to advance a broader discussion that is so badly needed: What is it that workers need and want, and how can it become the robust agenda that can truly rally the bottom 99 percent to collective action?"

Melvin, who is also president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), added, "We approach these questions in the voice of nearly 2.1 million African Americans in labor unions. We believe a frank and open conversation where diverse voices are heard can produce changes that will strengthen our movement and benefit all workers."

Download 'A Future for Workers' Report

Download 'A Future for Workers' Report - Executive Summary

Bloomberg BNA Daily Labor Report - Media Coverage

Top AFL-CIO officials: “U.S. labor law must catch up”

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 14:49:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - U.S. "labor law must catch up" to the modernized global economy through a rewrite and strengthening of the National Labor Relations Act and U.S. agreement to - and obedience to - international labor law standards, two top AFL-CIO officials say.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and federation General Counsel Craig Becker make that argument in their analysis, The Future of Work: Labor Law Must Catch Up, posted on the website of Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Trumka and Becker - a former union general counsel and National Labor Relations Board member - trace the history of failed attempts to rewrite U.S. labor law, in 1977 and in 2009. Corporate lobbying and congressional Republican filibusters stopped both efforts.

They precede it by pointing out that a combination of business defiance of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the global race to the bottom and increasing productivity has led to current low union density in the U.S., along with stagnant and declining wages and a shrinking middle class.

They did not mention, however, that the AFL-CIO is working on a draft rewrite of labor law that would be far stronger than the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which business and the GOP defeated in 2009.

Such a strong rewrite, however, would have little to no chance in the GOP-run 114^th Congress. Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley all promise to push for comprehensive labor law reform should they win the White House in 2016. President Obama promised to sign EFCA if passed, but did not push it.

"American workers will continue to become more productive as the digital revolution advances. But United States labor law must be reconstructed to recognize changes in work and the employment relationship and to once again effectively permit workers to organize and designate representatives to bargain with their employers," Becker and Trumka said.

"Otherwise, workers will not share the increased income generated by their productivity, ultimately threatening economic growth.

"Since the 1970s, as the number of union members has gradually declined, workers' productivity has continued to increase, but wages have not gone up proportionally. As a result, workers' share of income gains has fallen sharply. In fact, in the 15 years between 1997 and 2012, the top 1e percent received more than 70 percent of income growth while the share going to the bottom 90 percent fell.

"According to sources as diverse as the International Monetary Fund, Standard & Poor's, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the resulting inequality is threatening economic growth," Trumka and Becker say.

"Underlying these trends is the fact that the free market drives innovation, but also a relentless effort to reduce costs, including labor costs, and that one primary area of 'innovation' in the past half-century has been in avoiding the 'cost' of complying with law.

"Employers have escaped U.S. labor law by moving jobs across borders and by restructuring their relationship with the workers in order to claim that they no longer employ them."

Efforts to change labor law have failed, "not because it (change) is not needed and not because a majority does not favor it, but because a minority has used undemocratic procedures to permit U.S. labor law to become outdated and, therefore, ineffective."

Now corporations seize on the U.S. Constitution's 1^st amendment freedom of speech clause "as a sword" to argue "it interferes with their labor relations" and "as a shield" to protect unlimited corporate campaign contributions to politicians, who in turn kill reform, they add.

"This history also teaches us what government should do - modernize our labor laws to once again foster strong organizations of working people in order to restore balance in the economy and the polity," Trumka and Becker conclude.

Photo: AFL-CIO Headquarters, Washington, D.C by Mattpopovich. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Commons, Wikipedia.

Today in labor history: first edition of IWW Little Red Songbook

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:05:00 +0000

On this date in 1909 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, released the first edition of its Little Red Songbook.

The Little Red Songbook, also known as "I.W.W. Songs" or "Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World," is a compilation of tunes, hymns, and songs used by the IWW to help build morale, promote solidarity, and lift the bleak spirits of the working class. Its small size enabled a worker to easily carry it in a shirt or pants pocket.

Since the founding of the IWW, songs have played a big part in spreading the message of the One Big Union. Many of them were parodies of hymn tunes captured on street corners from Salvation Army recruiters, and some openly satirized the hold of religion on the people.

The Songbook was first published by a committee of Spokane, Wash. locals, and was originally called "Songs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles, and in the Shops - Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent." It includes songs written by radical poets and writers such as Richard Brazier, Ralph Chaplin, Covington Hall, Laura Payne Emerson, and T-Bone Slim. The early editions contain many of the labor songs that are still famous, such as "The Red Flag," "The Internationale," and "Solidarity Forever." Thirty-six editions were published between 1909 and 1995.

The first song by Joe Hill that appeared in the songbook was "The Preacher and the Slave" in 1911, his parody of the hymn "The Sweet Bye and Bye." The 1912 edition carried his first Wobbly cartoon.

The songs included in the evolving songbook were meant to educate, illuminate and agitate, countering bourgeois mentality and anticipating a new social order, the commonwealth of toil. With their clever use of humor, these songs were more widely read and appreciated than the hundreds of manifestos, pamphlets, documents and declarations that emanated from the American left over many decades.

These songs were sung on picket lines, in hobo jungles, union halls, free speech rallies, and mass meetings. Ralph Chaplin's "Solidarity Forever" eventually became American labor's national anthem, closely followed by the Earl Robinson-Alfred Hayes 1936 song "Joe Hill," which came out of the Communist Party's Popular Front period.

Over the years various editors have deleted songs that were no longer relevant, and others that dealt in a dated manner with gender or with controversial issues such as job action, sabotage or relations with other factions on the left. Other lyrics had been set to music that was no longer popular or familiar.

A "Canadian I.W.W. Songbook," compiled and edited by Jerzy (George) Dymny, featuring 41 songs with a Canadian slant, was published in 1990. An edition commemorating the centennial of the IWW's founding in 1905 was published in 2005. The latest edition of the Little Red Songbook was printed in 2010.

The 190 different songs included in the Little Red Songbook between 1909 and 1973 are collected and annotated in The Big Red Songbook, edited by Archie Green, David Roediger, and Franklin Rosemont and published in 2007.

The Little Red Songbook is still in print today. It is especially relevant in 2015 as this November 19 is the centennial of the Salt Lake City execution of Joe Hill on a trumped-up murder charge. There will be dozens, if not hundreds of concerts and tributes to labor's minstrel around the country and abroad, and his songs will ring out with ever more resonance. Watch for local announcements and join the choir!

Adapted from the Encyclopedia of the American Left, Wikipedia, and other sources. Amusingly, the Wikipedia entry on The Little Red Songbook advises: "Not to be confused with Mao's Little Red Book."

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)

OSHA proposes cutting worker exposure to beryllium by 90 percent

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:24:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - It's only taken 12 and a half years, but after Steelworker pressure and after management joined the push, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration plans to cut worker exposure to beryllium by 90 percent. Beryllium is a heavy metal whose inhalation causes a chronic lung disease and may lead to lung cancer.

OSHA's proposed rule would cut beryllium exposure to 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Workers in aerospace, smelters, ceramics, dental labs and more - at least 35,000 workers nationwide - could benefit. Beryllium is also "an essential component of nuclear weapons," OSHA says, workers in those plants are at risk.

OSHA calculates the new lower limit would save 96 workers' lives annually, and halt 50 cases of non-fatal illnesses. The Steelworkers and the leading U.S. manufacturer, Materion, came to OSHA in 2002 to urge it to write a new rule. OSHA started considering that in 1975.

"This collaboration of industry and labor presents a historic opportunity to protect the lives and lungs of thousands of beryllium-exposed workers," said OSHA Administrator Dr. David Michaels, a public health specialist. "We hope other industries where workers are exposed to deadly substances join with unions and other organizations representing those workers to reduce exposures, prevent diseases and save lives."

That may not occur. When OSHA has tried other exposure rule updates, as in the case of silica dust, industry, congressional Republicans, or both resist.

Besides saving lives, OSHA also says the benefits of the new beryllium rule far outweigh its costs: $255 million-$576 million in yearly benefits to workers, depending on the discount rate, versus $37.6 million-$39.1 million in annual costs. OSHA seeks comments on its plan by Nov. 5. If there's enough demand for them, the agency will hold public hearings.

The permissible exposure limit (PEL) for beryllium is two micrograms per cubic meter of air. That PEL is one of dozens of OSHA rules on worker exposure to toxic substances established in 1971, just after OSHA was founded, based in studies from the 1960s or before. In beryllium's case, the studies are from the 1940s. The PELs haven't been updated since.

OSHA wants to cut emissions of beryllium into the air, especially since those emissions adhere to clothes and other materials, thus putting not just the workers at risk, but their families, too. And other workers could be exposed to beryllium as it flies out with other waste materials, such as coal ash, OSHA says. The proposed rule doesn't cover them, though.

"Current beryllium permissible exposure limits do not adequately protect workers from chronic beryllium disease, beryllium sensitization, and lung cancer," OSHA explains. The workers now are exposed to beryllium dust, fumes and mist in workplace air, it adds.

OSHA explained the Steelworkers first filed formal papers demanding a cut in beryllium exposure, but that it wasn't until a series of stakeholder meetings that brought labor and management together that the agency was able to move on a solution.

"Engineering and work practices will be sufficient to reduce and maintain beryllium exposures to the proposed" limit "or below in most operations most of the time in the affected industries," OSHA says.

"For those few operations within an industry or application group where compliance...

cannot be achieved even when employers implement all feasible engineering and work practice controls, the proposed standard would require employers to supplement controls with respirators," it says.

"In addition, for each operation where there is airborne beryllium exposure, the employer must ensure one or more of the engineering and work practice controls...are in place, unless all of the listed controls are infeasible, or the employer can demonstrate that exposures are below the action level based on two samples taken seven days apart," OSHA said.

It also lists several "regulatory alternatives" that firms could use to achieve the beryllium new exposure limits. And OSHA would set up schedules for "medical surveillance" of workers exposed to beryllium, as well as ordering employers to enact restricted access areas to warn workers of the danger.

Photo: Smelter at aluminum processing plant. | WKYUFM.org

First female U.S. train engineer inducted into N.D. Railroad Hall of Fame

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 11:40:00 +0000

MANDAN, N.D. (PAI) - Ramona Dockter, the first U.S. woman to become a freight train engineer, 39 years ago, is now the first U.S. woman freight train engineer in a state railroad hall of fame at the N.D. State Railroad Museum.

Ed Michael, of the rank-and-file Railroad Workers United, reported the induction of Ramona Dockter into the Mandan, N.D., hall August 16.

Dockter, a member of the United Transportation Union - now a division of SMART - served as a brakeman for six months until she became the first female engineer, employed by what was then the Burlington Northern, in 1976. She was an engineer for eight more years before retiring to raise her family, as the juggling between family and job got to be too much.

Dockter grew up in railroading, according to the Bismarck News-Tribune story about her induction that Michael posted. Her father, a railroader, too, was very supportive, as was her whole family. So were male co-workers, who encouraged her to step up to the locomotive cab.

But the schedule's strange hours were another matter. It's also what eventually led her to retire. But not before she took classes in and on-the-job training about such things as locomotive mechanics and boilers.

"There's a tremendous amount of people who helped me along the way," Dockter said. "My babysitter, who watched my kids when I got called until my husband came home helped me a lot. The woman in Jamestown I lived with while I was working was so helpful. And the roadmaster, as well as the people I worked with, side by side, would teach me and make sure I knew what I needed to know."

While Dockter mostly drove freight trains, she told the paper she loved driving Amtrak trains. Amtrak runs through North Dakota on its way from Chicago and the Twin Cities to Seattle. Those trains, with seven coaches, not 100 freight cars, could go 70 mph, she said.

Photo: Ramona Dockter operating Burlington Northern engine. | Facebook

Labor board punts college athletes' try to unionize on technicality

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 12:51:00 +0000

EVANSTON, Ill. (PAI) - By a 5-0 vote, the National Labor Relations Board on August 17 tossed out college athletes' - in this case, Northwestern University's football players' - attempt to unionize.

Its ruling disappointed both the union organizers, who had won overwhelmingly in a vote among the players, and the Steelworkers, which backed them, while cheering right wing lawmakers. But the leader of the players' union, noting the board dismissed the case for technical reasons, vowed to continue the fight. The NLRB, he said, "punted" the issue.

The Northwestern players' campaign to unionize was important because, among other things, it exposed the exploitation of college athletes in the major men's sports, football and basketball. Testimony in the Northwestern case showed the two sports are highly profitable, but that the players are barred from negotiating for a share of those profits.

It also showed coaches have virtual total control over wages - scholarships and other financial aid or lack of it - and working conditions, including the players' class schedules, availability of medical care for injuries, accommodations and training schedules, as well as the games themselves.

All those factors had led the NLRB Chicago Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr to rule just over a year ago that Northwestern's football players were "employees" under labor law, and organizable. The College Athletes Players Association (CAPA) had won the vote among the Northwestern players. The board tossed out his decision.

Letting the players organize "would not promote stability in labor relations," the NLRB ruled, and that's a key objective of the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act. The lack of stability, the NLRB said, comes from a lack of uniformity in top-level college football, where Northwestern is one of only 17 private universities, compared to 108 state-sponsored schools.

Otherwise, top-level college football, "does resemble a professional sport in a number of relevant ways," including making money for the colleges, the NLRB said. "In other contexts, the board's assertion of jurisdiction helps promote uniformity and stability, but in this case, asserting jurisdiction would not have that effect."

"While we are disappointed, the USW remains as committed as ever to the idea that scholarship athletes deserve the same rights and protections afforded to other Americans," said Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, whose union funded CAPA. "We will not stop fighting until athletes secure the basic protections they so desperately need."

Eventually, he added, college athletes will win the right to collectively bargain. "Maybe it won't happen in 2015. But before today's athletes send their children to college, every college scholarship football player and every college scholarship basketball player will be a proud union member and no longer exploited on their jobs."

After his statement about the NLRB's punt, CAPA President Ramogi Huma added: "This is not a loss, but it is a loss of time. It delays players securing the leverage they need to protect themselves from traumatic brain injury, sports-related medical expenses, and other gaps in protections."

And both noted that the publicity over the Northwestern case, as well as a case involving college basketball players, forced changes in college athletics that are already benefiting the players in those two sports. They include larger stipends, increased medical attention - especially for football-caused concussions - and, in some cases, guaranteed scholarships.

Photo: Illinois and Northwestern players line up at the line of scrimmage prior to the snap of the football during a NCAA Football game between the Illinois Fighting Illini and the Northwestern Wildcats in Evanston, Illinois on November 29, 2014. (AP Photo/Scott Boehm)

Today in labor history: Hormel meatpackers launch historic 1985 strike

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:39:00 +0000

Thirty years ago on this date, August 17, 1985, 1500 members of Local P-9, United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), struck the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minn. The strike began as an economic struggle by workers to defend their standard of living and fight against giving further concessions to a profit-rich company. It ended as a bitter conflict that galvanized workers' support from around the country and internationally.

Hormel Foods Corporation, an American food company that produces Spam luncheon meat, was founded in Austin in 1891. Hormel sells food under many brands, including Dinty Moore, Farmer John, Lloyd's, Muscle Milk, Skippy, La Victoriaand Stagg, as well as under its own name.The company is listed on the Fortune 500.

The UFCW was created through the merger of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters union and Retail Clerks International Union (RCIU) following its founding convention in June 1979. William H. Wynn, president of the RCIU and one of the merger leaders, became president of UFCW. The merger created the largest union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The UFCW continued to expand both by organizing and merging with several smaller unions between 1980 and 1998.

Very shortly the mettle of the union was forced into severe tests. These were the years of union-busting President Ronald Reagan. In the early 1980s, recession impacted several meatpacking companies, decreasing demand and increasing competition, which led smaller companies to go out of business. In an effort to keep plants from closing, many instituted wage cuts. Wilson Food Company declared bankruptcy in 1983, allowing them to cut wages from $10.69 to $6.50 and significantly reduce benefits.

Hormel had avoided such drastic action until 1985. Workers had already labored under a wage freeze and dangerous working conditions, leading to many cases of repetitive strain injury. When Hormel demanded a 23 percent wage cut, the workers decided to strike. It became one of the longest strikes of the 1980s.

The strike was declared by Local P-9, but the UFCW parent union did not support it. The UFCW ultimately struck a deal with Hormel management, seized control of Local P-9, and removed the local union leaders, actions that challenged the credibility of the UFCW in the eyes of many in the larger labor movement.The strike gained national attention and led to a widely publicized boycott of Hormel products.

After six months, a significant number of strikebreakers crossed the picket line, provoking a vigorous response. On January 21, 1986, Minn. Gov. Rudy Perpich called in the National Guard to protect the strikebreakers. This brought protests against the governor, and the National Guard withdrew.

The strike ended in June 1986, after 10 months. Over 700 of the workers did not return to their jobs, refusing to cross the picket line. In solidarity with those workers, the boycott of Hormel products continued for some time. Ultimately, the company succeeded in hiring new workers at significantly lower wages.

The strike was chronicled in the film American Dream, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1990. A song about the strike, entitled "P-9," was written by Dave Pirner of the Minneapolis band Soul Asylum. The song was included on their 1989 album "Clam Dip & Other Delights."

The strike also had a Harvard Business School Case written based on it (with assumed names), called "Adam Baxter Co./Local 190," which features multiple rounds of negotiations between unions and management.

In the course of their struggle, the P-9ers took on Hormel, the local authorities, the courts, the press, their own national, and the National Guard. The union mobilized its members in a display of democracy not seen in the labor movement for many years. Union activists poured into Austin to participate in the pickets, demonstrations and rallies. It became a fight for the rank and file throughout the nation.

Many strikers' lives became transformed. As they entered into the field of political activity, these "typical workers" became class-struggle militants, willing to face jails and bullets in their fight for social justice. They learned to look beyond their own narrow economic interests, viewing their struggle as part of an international movement of workers against all their employers.

In the midst of the fray, a P-9 leader, Denny Mealy, and muralist Mike Alewitz led the workers in painting an exuberant mural on their union hall which came to symbolize the strike. The union dedicated the mural to then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela, at a time when he was still being vilified as a terrorist by Reagan's government.

After the strike ended, the national union wiped out the memory of the historic struggle by sandblasting the mural off the wall. By October of 1986 it was gone. The green dragon of capitalism featured in the mural was recreated by Alewitz in another mural commissioned in 1990 for the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in Los Angeles, and still exists.

Adapted from UFCW, Wikipedia, and a memoir by the artist Mike Alewitz.

Photo courtesy of the artist Mike Alewitz; for a more complete view of the pic, see here.

AFL-CIO puts spotlight on wage efforts in Twin Cities

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 14:18:00 +0000

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI and Workday Minnesota) - Ongoing campaigns to raise wages and improve working conditions in the Twin Cities are drawing national attention, including a visit in mid-August by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler.

And efforts such as Minneapolis Works! can provide a model for organizing around the country, Shuler said in an interview with Workday Minnesota.

"The boss wants unbridled authority to take advantage of workers," Shuler said. "The only outlet is to fight back through collective action."

The Twin Cities are among 13 targeted communities in the AFL-CIO's "Road Map for Raising Wages" campaign. While calling for a variety of pro-worker measures - from fair trade to strong pensions - the cornerstones of the Road Map are paid leave, fair scheduling and enforcement of labor standards, Shuler said.

Minneapolis Works! is focused on getting the City Council to enact public policies on those issues. Members of the coalition, which includes a number of labor unions, say too many workers don't have access to paid sick leave to care for themselves or their families. Too many workers face unpredictable, last-minute work schedules that make it difficult to plan. Too many workers are not paid for all the hours they work.

Shuler said these are national problems that must be addressed by a broad campaign that involves not only labor, but also allies in the community.

Many of the most successful efforts in Minnesota, such as achieving a $10 hourly minimum wage at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, have been led by worker centers and activist groups such as 15Now.

Other wins, such as legislative passage of a statewide minimum wage increase and the Women's Economic Security Act, were led by coalitions of labor, faith and community groups.

The labor movement traditionally fought for issues that benefit everyone, not just union members, and that approach is more important than ever, Shuler said, with collective bargaining under attack by lawmakers and courts. Next year, the Supreme Court will rule in a case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, that could seriously weaken the ability of unions to represent workers.

Responding to such threats, unions are "looking in the mirror" and examining how they can prove their value to their own members and to other workers, Shuler said. "We need to make sure our finger is on the pulse of what people care about."

Increasingly, people care about issues like fair scheduling, which affects workers in a variety of industries, she added.

The goal of the AFL-CIO's Road Map campaign is to win improvements on fair scheduling and other issues - and "use these campaigns as a yardstick for people who are running for public office," Shuler said. Elected officials at all levels need to be held accountable, she said.

Shuler's visit included meetings with activists at the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, a tour of the construction site for the union-built Minnesota Vikings football stadium, a rally with Bethesda Hospital security officers who are seeking representation by AFSCME and a meeting with women workers at the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation.

This article was originally posted on Workday Minnesota.

Photo: National AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler spoke with Toni Machado, a second-year apprentice and member of Painters Local 61, as she toured the Vikings football stadium construction site. | Steve Share

Here's why the Nurses Union endorsed Bernie Sanders over Clinton

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 11:31:00 +0000

The more than 100,000 people who have jammed into arenas in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Madison and other cities should be a wake up call for anyone still on the sidelines in the critical 2016 election campaign.

National Nurses United, I'm proud to say, has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for many of the same reasons that have brought those 100,000 people to their feet.

Bernie Sanders aligns perfectly with nurses on the most critical problems facing our nation, from income inequality to guaranteeing healthcare to all to holding Wall Street and corporations to account to opening the doors to college education for everyone to racial justice to the climate crisis.

Those are the same issues that animate nurses when we talk about voting for nurses' values-caring, compassion and community to heal America.

But we also support the Sanders moment because of the rare opportunity his campaign represents to not just speak truth to power, but to join movements together to change our country. To stand as a social movement against the obscene wealth that controls our lives, starves our communities, destroys our people and expand a populist movement that put human life before profit.

All the establishment pundits who are scrambling for ways to dismiss the outpouring of excitement for his campaign and to marginalize those who have filled the stadiums increasingly look like cranks trying to stop an approaching train.

The myths

Bernie can't win. Exactly what they said about President Barack Obama at this parallel point in 2007. American history, of course, is filled with examples of change that could never occur, until it does-abolition of slavery, votes for women, ending legal segregation, the right to same sex marriage. Sanders is used to the naysayers. They said he couldn't win running for mayor of Burlington, as an independent running for Congress and then Senate and he won them all. That's why we have elections-to let the voters, not the "experts," decide.

He's not drawing African American and Latino voters. As his campaign and platform become better known, that is changing, evident in the multi-racial crowd at his overflow Los Angeles rally and support from young artists like Lil B and Killer Mike. At a time when Cecil the lion evokes more outrage than the death of Sandra Bland, Bernie is increasingly speaking out and has advanced a platform with a call for a "societal transformation" to end police violence, mass incarceration and "institutional racism." Nurses hold every life in their hands. Nurses know why Black Lives Matter needs to be amplified and so does Bernie Sanders.

He's an "avowed democratic socialist." That fear mongering has lost much of its resonance. What does democratic socialism mean in America? It's how we teach our children, put out fires, pay for our libraries and for building our roads, bridges, highways and street lighting. It's how we inspect our food to make it safe, to provide oversight for clean air and water, develop life saving medications and vaccines and of course, provide Social Security and Medicare. Every governor, mayor and school board member who uses public funds to pay for basic services could be called a socialist.

As nurses, an organization of predominantly women, I have been asked, don't you want to break the glass ceiling with Hillary Clinton?

Yes. We'd love it if Hillary had Bernie's politics, his unequivocal opposition to a dreadful Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that would expand big pharma's monopoly control over high priced drugs and hand corporations increased ability to overturn public protections. And if she opposed the toxic polluting, climate disaster known as the Keystone XL pipeline.

And we'd especially love to see her standing up for single payer, Medicare for all at a time when millions remain uninsured, skipping needed care or facing bankruptcy due to inflated medical bills.

But, at a time of the greatest income disparity in nearly a century, Citizens United corruption of our political system, an all out assault on workers lives and a threat to our planet and our future, our first challenge today must be to break the Wall Street, corporate stranglehold over our economy, our politics, our nation.

"You'll never have to wonder which side I am on," he says. While other candidates are intrinsically tied to Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Bernie not only calls for repeal of Citizens United and public financing of campaigns he is the only candidate not taking money from big corporations and PACs.

Bernie wants to take money from Wall Street too-by taxing them to fund a civil society with the health care, the jobs, the housing and the environmental protections people need.

Bernie Sanders knows that his campaign is not about him. It's about all of us. And it will take all of us to change the course of history. It's time to start now.

This article was reposted from EcoWatch.

RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, the nation's largest union and professional association of nurses, and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO. Follow Rose Ann DeMoro on Twitter.

Photo: National Nurses United, via EcoWatch