People Before Profit blog

CWA: Deutsche Telekom faces rising pressure over T-Mobile misconduct

Thu, 28 Jan 2016 12:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Deutsche Telekom, the parent firm of U.S. mobile phone firm T-Mobile, faces rising external pressure from investors and lawmakers over T-Mobile's refusal to respect U.S. workers' rights, the Communications Workers report.

Not only are CWA and other unions - including ver.di [The name ver.di stands for Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft - United Services Trade Union], the union that represents DT's workers - demanding that DT force its U.S. T-Mobile managers to change and obey U.S. labor law, but so are U.S. lawmakers and major investors, CWA adds.

Latest to raise questions and demand T-Mobile follow the law are pension fund managers APG Asset Management and Norges Bank Investment Management. The latter "sovereign wealth fund," run by Norway's central bank, is DT's fourth-largest shareholder.

APG demanded DT respond to National Labor Relations Board rulings that found T-Mobile broke labor law while opposing CWA's long-running organizing drive among T-Mobile workers, especially call center workers.

Twenty U.S. lawmakers raised the same NLRB violations issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in early January. Her government is the largest DT shareholder, with 30 percent of its stock. Last November, another 25 U.S. female lawmakers wrote to Merkel, telling her of sexual harassment by T-Mobile managers as part of the firm's anti-union campaign.

"Your government has the ability to work to reform policies that are harming the employees of T-Mobile," their letter, authored by Reps. Betty McCollum, DFL-Minn., and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said. One big problem: A "non-disclosure agreement" that T-Mobile forces workers to sign. A federal judge tossed the non-disclosure agreement, but only for T-Mobile call centers in Maine and South Carolina.

"A worker should not have to risk his or her job while enduring months of legal actions to have unlawful policies repealed state by state," their letter to Merkel added.

Photo: CWA.

Rolando: Unions, postal customers agree on key USPS reform provisions

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:37:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Postal unions and the top customers of the U.S. Postal Service all agree on key provisions of a planned postal reform bill to virtually end USPS' current red ink and set it up on a sound future footing, Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando says.

And senators from both parties appeared to sign on to those concepts, too, at the Jan. 21 Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing where Rolando, speaking for all four unions, testified.

Whether the joint agreement will translate into legislation that finally resolves the USPS' ills and ends its cuts in service and staffing is another matter. That's because the GOP-run Congress has a crowded agenda and is giving itself fewer days for work this election year.

And while the Senate appears open to sensible reforms, the more-ideological House GOP has pushed through past legislation to cut delivery, let the Postmaster General fire thousands of workers, threaten union contracts and encourage "privatization" through outsourcing USPS business from middle-class unionized postal workers to minimum-wage non-union Staples stores.

The Senate panel called this year's hearing in Congress' latest attempt to solve the USPS' financial ills, caused by a 2006 "postal reform" plan enacted by a GOP-run Congress and signed by anti-worker Republican President George W. Bush.

That measure ordered the USPS to pre-fund $5.5 billion per year of future retirees' health care costs for a decade, and billions more beyond that, Rolando testified. It also wouldn't let USPS reclaim a huge surplus in its pension fund.

Combined with the Great Recession and other factors, the health care mandate plunged the USPS deep into the red. It has stayed there, despite operating profits of more than $1 billion yearly for each of the last three years, Rolando said. The prefunding accounts for 86.3 percent of the Postal Service's $56 billion in reported losses since 2006, he noted.

To cut the red ink, past Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe slowed mail delivery, closed sorting centers, tried to let 100,000 workers go by attrition and fire 100,000 more, schemed to end 6-day service, and outsourced postal services, among other moves.

Unions resisted Donahoe's schemes, and not just over jobs. "The damage this policy inflicted goes far beyond the adverse financial effects," Rolando said. For example, it robbed the USPS of money it needs to replace its obsolete fleet of postal vans, cars and trucks.

"It also forced the Postal Service to excessively down-size in ways that are short-sighted and counterproductive," by closing or cutting hours at post offices, removing neighborhood mail boxes, "and reducing its service standards" so it could close mail processing plants, Rolando said. Doing all that is "giving away business."

The legislation, introduced by Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., and supported by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, would keep 6-day delivery, end the health care prefunding, suspend other closures for five years, make current stamp prices good through 2018, and would let USPS ship other goods, such as wine and beer, to increase business and revenues.

The unions enthusiastically support all of those ideas, Rolando said. Though he did not say so, almost all were originally in a postal reform bill authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., now a Democratic presidential hopeful. One of the unions, the Postal Workers, has endorsed Sanders for the nomination. The others have yet to decide.

The joint legislation, Rolando added, would also "use postal-specific assumptions to value pension plans with any surpluses returned to the Postal Service over time," reduce the health benefits cost by enrolling postal employees in Medicare and would let the health fund for postal employees invest in a mix of higher-paying securities, as some other government health and pension funds do. Carper calculated the Medicare move and eliminating the prefunding of health care would save at least $32.5 billion over a decade.

Carper agreed on the need, and even right wing committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., criticized health care prefunding. "Absent legislative intervention, the Postal Service will continue twisting in the wind. It will remain unable to fully invest in its future, and its employees and customers will continue to be uncertain about what that future holds," Carper said.

Photo: Jim Cole/AP

Outsourcing firms that replace workers being sued over Disney IT workers in Florida

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:28:00 +0000

ORLANDO, Fla. (PAI) - The outsourcing firms that brought in foreign high-tech workers to Southern California Edison and forced SCE workers to train them - as their replacements - are being sued for doing that to information technology workers at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. And Disney is being sued, too.

In one of the two complaints, lawyers for IT engineer Leo Perrero told the U.S. District Court in Orlando on Jan. 24 that Disney forced 200-300 of its IT engineers to train their foreign replacements and then fired him and his colleagues. Perrero names Disney as a co-defendant in what is also a racketeering complaint and seeks class-action status for his colleagues.

In both California and Florida, HCL and another outsourcing firm used the federal H1-B visa program to bring in workers from overseas, usually India, forced U.S. high-tech workers - such as the IBEW members-to train them and then fired the U.S. workers.

After the training, Southern California Edison and Disney, which had hired the outsourcing companies, then hired the H1-B workers for substantially less than they paid the U.S. workers. The U.S. workers, including 500 members of Electrical Workers Local 47 at Southern California Edison, were fired.

The SCE firings drew national attention and congressional hearings on corporate abuse of the H1-B visa system, which lets firms to import tens of thousands of trainees yearly into the U.S. High-tech firms in particular argue they need H1-B imported trainees to fill vacant positions that lack qualified U.S. workers.

The H1-B visa law bars firms from replacing U.S. workers with imported H1-B trainees-turned-workers, unless the firms prove that U.S. workers are unavailable. The law also mandates the trainees-turned-workers must be paid prevailing wages, not cut rates.

But unions and workers counter that employers routinely abuse the system, by lying about the lack of U.S. workers, bringing in H1-B trainees, forcing U.S. workers to train them, firing the U.S. workers, and then hiring the trainees to the vacant jobs - at lower pay.

That's what happened in Orlando, former IT engineer Perrero said in his class-action suit filed against Disney and subcontractor HCL.

Perrero "and other Disney workers were told by Disney management they were being fired on Jan. 30, 2015, but that they had 90 days to train the visa-holders as their replacements. They were told that if they did not stay and train, they would not get a bonus and severance." Most of the Disney domestic workers "reluctantly accepted" that deal, the suit says. Fewer than five have gotten jobs since and some were blackballed, it adds.

The whole Orlando sequence is similar, though not identical, to what happened to IBEW

Local 47 members at Southern California Edison. The uproar over that firing led the Democratic-run California State Assembly to pass two bills last year, by 2-to-1 margins, against H1-B visa abuse. The California State Senate may take up that legislation this year.

One California H1-B visa bill asks the U.S. Congress and the federal Labor Department to investigate abuse of the visas. The other sets stiff rules state-regulated utilities, such as Southern California Edison, must follow if they want to import and employ overseas trainees.

Any lawmaker who favors offshoring or "otherwise doing away with vital internal jobs does not deserve to be an elected official," IBEW Local 47 Business Manager Patrick Lavin told California state lawmakers last year.

"The granting of H1-B visa jobs should never result in creation of a virtual pipeline for outsourcing U.S. workers' jobs," says the first bill, introduced by State Rep. Eduardo Garcia, D-Imperial County.

That's basically what happened at Disney, Perrero's suit says.

Perrero "had numerous conversations with H1-B visa holders whom he trained, and based on these conversations, he knew that Disney would terminate - and not rehire - U.S. workers with the job duties taken over by the HCL H-1B visa holders."

Photo: Wordpress site

AFL-CIO report on “Raise The Wage” campaign lauds grassroots success

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 14:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) -- An AFL-CIO report on the first year of its "Raise The Wage" campaign lauds grassroots successes by local unions and unorganized workers out in the field, and makes an effort to link them to the campaign itself-a link that isn't always obvious.

The nine-page report says workers hit the streets for causes ranging from decent pay to undoing two-tier wage systems to health and safety. It adds that in a record year of contract bargaining, 2015, the average worker won a 4.2 percent annual raise.

Some of the lowest-paid workers got double-digit percentage raises, it adds. And two-tier wage systems are on their way out in the auto industry, the fed says, with the UAW winning a 45 percent raise over the life of its FiatChrysler contract for lower-paid workers there.

The AFL-CIO also claims workers are educating themselves about Common Sense Economics, the fed's multi-part platform that includes specific "raise the wage" ideas. But the report does not tie any platform planks, by name, into specific successes. By year's end, "a growing number of people across the country were unwilling to accept stagnant and falling wages without complaint. They're demanding new rules" for the U.S. economy, the report says. It points to successes in a number of fields:

Organizing wins included among taxi and Uber drivers, AFT's win among adjunct professors at Temple University, National Nurses United wins that created new locals, and the Communications' Workers win among 5,000 airline passenger service agents at Envoy.
Gridlock in Washington was balanced by President Obama's pro-worker executive orders, plus Labor Department rules expanding overtime for all and minimum wages for federal contractor employees and home health care workers. Also balancing the D.C. inaction: State and local legislation to raise the minimum wage, enact equal pay for equal work and approve paid sick leave, among other items.
Even the strike was revived to some extent-and it succeeded when it was, the report claims. Among others, it cites successful teachers strikes in Chicago and Washington state, the Steelworkers' success when the major oil firms forced them to strike over safety and the ongoing Fight for 15. That includes successful 1-day strikes by fast food workers.

As a result, even low-wage and non-union firms such as Walmart had to raise wages for their low-paid workers, the report claims. "We recognized we can create a healthier economy and a more democratic society" in last year's drives, the AFL-CIO says. "But everyone has to participate to create an economy that works for all of us.

But 2016 is another matter, the report warns. "The landscape in 2016 looks very different than it did in January 2015," it explains. "The torrent of intolerance and hate unleashed by would-be presidents"-the report doesn't name names-"is designed to sow fear and division. Anti-union and extremist forces have mobilized to fight on all the fronts. But we're different, too. We'll keep our eyes on the prize: A more just and inclusive economy that serves all of us, not just the wealthy and well-connected," it concludes.

Photo: Fast Food workers and allies from across the nation shutdown McDonald's annual shareholders meeting in Oak Brook, Illinois, May 20, 2015. Earchiel Johnson/ People's World.

Workers, lawyers, NLRB team up to expose Menard's union busting

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 13:25:00 +0000

David versus Goliath comparisons leap to the journalist's pen whenever an average person fights for rights against the controlling richest .01 percent. It's a popular truism. But sometimes it's dead right. Such is the case of an unknown union organizer who likes to work computer and phone out of a coffee shop near his Manhattan home in a state that doesn't even have one of John Menard Jr.'s 280 Big Box home improvement stores.

In the Midwest - stretching from the Dakotas to Michigan with headquarters in Eau Claire, Wis., - the 76-year-old John Menard Jr. has risen to what Forbes labels the richest person in Wisconsin (personal wealth $8.6 billion) largely based on hatred of workers' rights and union organizing.

Menard's privately held company is notorious for harsh scrutiny of employees, court cases against his partners, sexual and otherwise, and legal action against environmental cops as he vies for dominance in the lucrative Midwest home improvement chain business with Home Depot and Lowe's.

His coziness with the billionaire Koch Brothers' political arms and with GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was evidenced by the $1.5 million in secret gifts he gave the governor during the last recall election. This was uncovered last March in a delicious Rachel Maddow MSNBC segment, making Menard the definition of the politically untouchable autocrat who kicks peasants out of the way.

Seth Goldstein, an experienced New York City-based organizer for the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) has taken up the cause of the Menard workers. He has been peppering the media and the National Labor Relations Board with more and more quality complaints against the far-away Goliath, angry that Midwest unions and government lawyers seem to have given up because of all the intimidation of money.

"I can't find anyone who likes him or likes working for him," says Goldstein, "and his violations of basic rights simply got me mad."

Menard has gone to court to fight accusations of dumping partners and soliciting sex with a partner's wife among other proclivities. In the 1990s when he was in his 60's, Menard was the most fined dodger of environmental regulations in Wisconsin history. He was accused to of spying on his employee practices with store stock.

Catch up on Urban Milwaukee editor's Bruce Murphy's delightful roundup of Menard's brushes that brought fines of $1.7 million for 21 violations. In 1997, Murphy relates, "He was caught using his own pickup truck to haul plastic bags filled with chromium and arsenic-laden wood ash to his own home to dispose in his household garbage."

Cozy relationships with Donald Trump and the Palm Beach society run through the article with explanations as to how Menard, under Gov. Walker's reign, suddenly evaporated from the illegal dumpster hate list of the state Department of Natural Resources, substituting $1.8 million in tax credits that more than offset the fines.

What really spiked Goldstein's attention was Menard's chronic treatment of workers' rights. There had long been rumors that Menard's employee handbooks forced his managers contractually to automatically dock their own pay 60 percent if a union formed under their jurisdiction, along with harsh rules if they "let workers gossip" about working conditions. Legalese imposed amazingly broad "liquid damages" against workers' pay, to be determined by binding private arbitration, even long after a worker left the company.

In December of 2015, with actual document language in tow, Menard's imposition of the 60 percent automatic dock broke into headlines through a Progressive magazine story by one of Wisconsin's leading watchdog investigative reporters, Bill Lueders.

Even though the complaining worker backed off from further action the story sparked broader coverage in several outlets (Madison Capital Times, Gawker, radio shows) and a terse company response that such language was being removed from all manager contracts in 2016.

Goldstein remained skeptical and on the hunt for more ammo. "Who can take Menard's word as one of the worst union busters I've ever seen?" he asked. "And it's not only unions. Basic rights protected by the NLRB and approved by the Sixth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals are in jeopardy. Workers don't know those rights and are afraid to act because of Menard's wealth and warnings of financial consequences."

Goldstein points out that previously signed contracts don't have an end date and Menard's also imposes a binding arbitration clause that lasts years after a worker leaves, with direct warnings not to work for a competitor. So Goldstein went to work expanding his Unfair Labor Practice complaint first filed Dec. 10 with Region 18 of the NLRB. It has grown into a formidable set of current charges as recent workers have hired their own lawyers to join the suit and more documents from more workers are being added every week. Goldstein is hunting up more and has a willing audience, filing through OPEIU, Local 153.

The NLRB has a policy of not commenting on open cases - but sources within Region 18 say this one is "being seriously investigated." A decision in a few months would probably be automatically appealed to the National Labor Relations Board in D.C.

A few current workers encouraged by management to come to Menard's defense have been rather tepid in opinion letters, saying at least they still got work through hard times and admitting there are policies they don't like.

The contract language docking managerial pay, many labor experts told Lueders and other reporters, was certainly "pernicious" on its face, but what Goldstein would need to stir Region 18 was evidence that the money threat had led to illegal action against workers.

Reached while on teaching sabbatical in Australia and given some of the documents, Paul Secunda, a major legal power who writes extensively on current U.S. labor practices suggests there's more than enough violations right there. Secunda told me by email that Menard's demand on management was on its face blatantly illegal interference with worker rights outlined in Section 7 of NLRB law and may also involve portions of Section 8 dealing with discrimination and interference. It doesn't matter that managers are not covered directly in the law - their behavior is.

Prof. Secunda, head of Marquette University's Labor and Employment Law Program, a noted law scholar and frequent panelist for NLRB events, argued that "blaming supervisors for not being anti-union enough not only interferes with their right as individual employees but also is a derivative violation of their employees' rights to organize since they will inevitably be coerced and intimidated as a result of the company policy."

He sees no question that Menard is in trouble. Goldstein continues to add individual charges and pursue more firsthand accounts from Menard hires who have been fearful to talk, he feels, because the billionaire power on the other side has scared them off. He has already found 18 specific language charges violating NLRB rules in employee handbooks and is getting more news outlets interested in following up.

Being untouchable in a biased state court system while spreading the same policy over 18 states is "scant legal protection," Goldstein points out. "I've been at this a long time and only the very rich can think of so stern a financial penalty as harmless."

Photo: Menards home improvement store, by Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing), Public Domain.

Workers of San Quintin Valley: No longer willing to be invisible

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 10:43:00 +0000

On March 29, 2015, U.S. photographer and labour activist David Bacon followed a group of farm workers in the San Quintín Valley in the Mexican state of Baja California as they marched to the U.S. border.

Thousands of workers - who pick strawberries and tomatoes for the U.S. market - went on a two-week strike in protest over their poverty wages. These farm workers, who mainly come from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and make up the bulk of the agricultural workforce in Baja, are paid about U.S. $9 a day; they were demanding wages of about 300 pesos, or U.S. $24.

Growers bring over whole families, particularly Mixtec and Triqui indigenous peoples, to live in labour camps and housing notorious for poor conditions. The whole operation is reminiscent of the maquiladora [export assembly plants] industry, transplanted into agriculture.

The big companies walked out of negotiations with the workers March, and signed contracts with government-affiliated unions that were not on strike. They promised 15 percent pay rises for the workers, which is much less than what they were asking for.

The biggest U.S. distributor, Driscoll's, claimed its main grower, BerryMex, pays higher rates of U.S. $5 to US$9 per hour - a highly dubious claim, according to activists. The growers want to move towards a code of conduct that avoids any negotiation or contracts with the striking union, the Alianza. At the same time, growers brought more workers up from southern Mexico to break the strike.

In a final negotiation session between the workers' organisation, the Alianza, and the government on 4 June 2015, authorities announced a new minimum wage in San Quintín of 150 (approximately U.S. $8.40), 165 (U.S. $9.20) or 180 pesos (U.S. $10) a day, depending on the size of the employer.

But at the top daily wage of 180 pesos, a Baja field worker has to work for almost three hours to buy a gallon of milk. Workers also say the companies are not abiding by the agreement, and have announced their support for a boycott of Driscoll's berries.

Fidel Sanchez, leader of the strike told Bacon: "Consumers eat the fruits and the vegetables that these workers are producing, but know next to nothing about the workers themselves. This march, and the strike itself, show that workers are no longer willing to be invisible."

Photo: After getting off the bus in Tijuana, striking farm workers line up to march to the border. | David Bacon

Workers tell Los Angeles: Stop job discrimination!

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:18:00 +0000

Los Angeles Black workers and anti wage theft activists have joined forces to demand that the city take action on Black workers' economic plight.

Black, Brown, Asian and white workers marched through the streets of Los Angeles demanding that local enforcement of federal equal opportunity guidelines be added to the range of responsibilities of the wage enforcement division that was established in 2015.

The Los Angeles Black Workers Center and the Los Angeles Coalition Against Wage Theft organized a march, ending in the chambers of the city council demanding concrete action to address the fact that roughly 50 percent of L.A.'s Black workers are under- or unemployed. (story continues after video)

"We need to ask ourselves: is it even possible for Los Angeles to be the 'world-class city' that we aspire to be, if we continue to turn our backs on rampant inequality in our economy?" said Loretta Stevens, co-director of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. "Our city may have made great strides recently in protecting workers' rights," she said, but added that there remains what she called an "equity loophole" in the fact that the legislative process skipped over equal opportunity enforcement altogether. Stevens noted that other cities, such as Seattle and Portland, have launched initiatives to address these issues. "If Seattle and Portland can work towards racial equity," she said,"why can't Los Angeles?"

As the city grows, such equity in hiring and other workplace practices is by no means assured. As you walk through the downtown area of Los Angeles you see many new buildings being constructed. Yet a 2015 survey of several construction worksites conducted by Los Angeles Black Workers Center found that black workers were underrepresented, not only on construction sites overall, but also at sites within or adjacent to majority-black areas.

The groups are calling for the City of Los Angeles to create a local Discrimination Compliant Resolution System within the Human Relations Commissions. They are also calling for the city to create a civil rights ordinance that will empower the city to work with federal and state agencies to strengthen enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

During public comment, workers representing different racial backgrounds addressed the city council in support of Black workers and called for an end to job discrimination. One worker stated that as she marched by several construction jobs going on in the city, she only saw one Black construction worker.

Photo and Video: Rossana Cambron/PW

Labor experts ask NLRB: give unions equal voice, time at “captive audience” meetings

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 13:46:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - In an attempt to help level the playing field between workers and bosses during union organizing drives, a group of 106 labor law professors and related experts formally asked the National Labor Relations Board to write a new rule giving unions equal time and an equal voice at so-called "captive audience" meetings.

Their proposal, submitted Jan. 15, would deal a key blow to employers' anti-union diatribes. If an employer refused to give the union equal time and voice and later beat the union in a recognition election, the professors' proposed rule would have the NLRB throw out the results as a violation of labor law and mandate a rerun, after meetings with equal time.

If the union wins a recognition vote, even without a mandated voice, there would be no penalty.

If the experts petition succeeds in producing a new rule - and a final decision on that issue could take months if not years - a key tool that vicious employers and their union-busting "consultants" use to discourage and deter unions would be weakened.

The captive audience meetings, as interpreted by the NLRB starting in with a GOP-majority board in 1953, let employers summon workers into closed meetings to hear anti-union rhetoric and worse. Unions get no right of reply. And workers who miss the meetings face company discipline and punishment.

That was not originally in labor law, even after the Republican-run 80^th Congress approved the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, Cornell University labor law professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, one of the 106 scholars, told Press Associates Union News Service.

The proposal "takes away the scorched-earth" aspect of current captive audience meetings, Bronfenbrenner adds.

The Economic Policy Institute reports that workers in nine of every 10 union organizing drives are subjected to the captive audience meetings, which are notoriously one-sided and intimidating.

They can also include explicit or implied threats by the bosses and the "consultants" of retaliation against workers if they vote union, up to and including illegal threats of closure of the plants and loss of jobs.

The result, Bronfenbrenner found in a recent study, was a 73 percent union win rate in recognition elections without captive audience meetings, and a 47 percent win rate in campaigns that included them.

NLRB rules allow an individual person to petition the agency to rewrite federal regulations covering labor law, Bronfenbrenner explained.

Southern Methodist University labor law professor emeritus Charley Morris, Bronfenbrenner and their colleagues have been working on this proposal for several years, but chose to submit it now before the board's membership is affected by the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, she explained.

Their proposal is sure to draw some flak. Business fought the board's last rule changes, on union recognition election regulations, through the courts. Business ultimately lost.

"Anything that in any way makes it so that the employer cannot have the law work to their advantage will be controversial," Bronfenbrenner said.

Photo: Keith Srakocic/AP

Steelworkers, ExxonMobil, CalOSHA start talks on Torrance refinery explosion

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 11:47:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH (PAI) - The Steelworkers and the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (CalOSHA) have opened talks with ExxonMobil about how to solve rampant safety problems in the oil firm's Torrance, Calif., refinery after a federal investigative agency revealed last year's explosion there was a near-miss of a disaster.

"Things are going fine" in the talks with ExxonMobil about how to solve the problems, "but it's a slow process," says Kim Nibarger, the Steelworkers vice president who now heads its oil, chemical and atomic workers sector. Nibarger was formerly USW's top overall safety and health official.

But in an indication ExxonMobil still is recalcitrant, the company "didn't share that same vision" by the feds of the near-miss, "which is quite disappointing," Nibarger adds.

On Jan. 13, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board unveiled its findings about the Feb. 18, 2015 accident at Torrance, which injured two workers. The Steelworkers represent the Torrance refinery workers, as well as two-thirds of all U.S. refinery workers.

But this Torrance accident could have been a lot worse, CSB Chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland reported.

The refinery's electrostatic precipitator (ESP) which helps control air pollution, exploded after hydrocarbons (gases) built up in it over six days, CSB found. The "blast dispersed large quantities of catalyst dust up to a mile away" from the refinery, CSB added.

The blast also hurled large ESP pieces elsewhere around the refinery. One narrowly missed its alkylation unit, including a tank with thousands of pounds of modified hydrofluoric acid (HF). "Had the debris struck the tank, a rupture could have been possible, resulting in a potentially catastrophic release of extremely toxic modified HF into the neighboring community," the board reported.

"Hydrofluoric acid can pose a severe hazard to the population and environment if a release occurs," Sutherland explained. CSB noted 333,000 people live within a 3-mile radius of the refinery. That area also contains 71 schools and eight hospitals.

"After HF acid vaporizes it condenses into small droplets that form a dense low-lying cloud that will travel along the ground for several miles and can cause severe damage to the respiratory system, skin, and bones of those who are exposed, potentially resulting in death," CSB said.

It's that hydrofluoric acid threat that concerned CSB and concerns Nibarger, too, he said in a telephone interview with Press Associates Union News Service.

"The issue in our settlement discussions" with the state agency and ExxonMobil "has been company reluctance to give out information about the HF alkylation unit," he said.

"It's something you'd want to look at, wouldn't you think?" he asked.

The Torrance blast occurred last year just as the oil industry forced the Steelworkers to strike nationwide over safety issues. The refiners had refused to address the problem, even though federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration records and information from other sources showed the industry averaged one refinery accident a week for the prior five years, and some of them fatal.

Publicity surrounding the strike, and the reasons why, forced the oil firms to settle with USW and to promise to address two of the key safety issues it raised: Fatigued workers and adequate safety staffing. They also agreed to more USW monitoring of refinery conditions.

But ExxonMobil is still having trouble responding to CSB's call for top-to-bottom "process safety management" inspections of refineries by the federal and California OSHA's, CSB Chair Sutherland said. CSB's chief investigator, Mark Wingard, said the firm had "multiple process safety management deficiencies" at the Torrance plant.

CSB found similar problems, and lack of company oversight, after a notorious August 2012 Chevron refinery blast in nearby Richmond, Calif. That explosion and fire injured 19 workers and sent 15,000 people to hospitals for examination.

Nibarger said some of the nation's oil companies, the so-called "Seven Sisters," are responding to key issues the union emphasized in its contract talks. "But others have balked, or sent us information on an aggregate level, and not on a unit (refinery by refinery) level," he added. Some sent USW "a jumble of charts and graphs" on safety.

But with ExxonMobil and CalOSHA in the Torrance refinery talks, "I'm hopeful we can do something," Nibarger says. "It's to everybody's benefit to have adequate, well-rested, well-trained staff" of refinery workers "in place" to stop accidents before they start.

Photo: Torrance refinery explosion. | Nick Ut/AP

“Ramp up our pay,” demand Seattle baggage handlers

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 16:48:00 +0000

SEATAC, Wash. - Fifty-five and 15 are two numbers that Alaska Airlines airport baggage handler Socrates Bravo thinks about every work day on his pre-dawn drive on Interstate 5 to the giant Seattle-Tacoma airport here.

Bravo says 55 is the speed limit that he'll surely be ticketed for violating, while $15 is the legal minimum wage that his employer, a contractor for Alaska Airlines, violates every day with impunity.

It's about fairness as much as the money, Bravo says, "I have to follow the law, why shouldn't they?" (story continues after video)

Scores of baggage handlers employed by Menzies, a contractor for Alaska Airlines, marked Martin Luther King's birthday here this Monday with a one-day strike.

The SEIU seemed oblivious to the cold and rain as they gathered at the entrance to SeaTac Airport and briefly blocked the intersection.

The striking workforce appeared to be made up mostly of young men in their 20s and 30s reflecting the diversity of the area - Mexican, Filipino, African American, East African and more. Broad shouldered, they stood up tall and their faces glowed above the neon yellow of their safety vests, reflecting a dozen shades of determination. They were losing a day's pay, and risking their jobs, they said, to dramatize their demands that the company comply with a law passed more than two years ago requiring employers in the city of SeaTac to pay a minimum wage of $15 and provide sick pay.

Sick pay is an important issue, Bravo says, because the baggage handlers work outside in harsh weather, their backs absorbing the strains of wrangling hundreds of pounds of luggage. "If we take off even one day sick, we are punished and could be fired," he said.

The "Good Jobs Initiative" passed by a tiny margin in a ballot measure in November 2013 in this small working class town. Seatac is the work base for thousands of hotel, food service, cargo, car rental and other workers serving the airport. Alaska Airlines, SeaTac's largest carrier, was the leading donor in a corporate campaign to defeat the measure, which spent $650,000 to influence Seatac's 12,000 voters. Supporters of the measure were able to check and raise that, mostly pooling union resources with nearly $1 million and a vigorous door-to-door campaign. The measure passed with a breathtaking 77-vote margin.

Ramp agent Bravo complains that since then Alaska Airlines has spent more money to defeat the measure than it would take to pay him and his co-workers a legal wage. After a succession of appeals, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the legality of the ordinance last August.

Halley Knigge, a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines told People's World that despite the August decision there is still an outstanding issue justifying the airline's refusal to follow the regulation. According to a press release, the court still needs to address an issue regarding the validity of some signatures which put the measure on the ballot. The Airline claims that while its focus is on the legality of the issue, it does support higher minimum wages "so long as they are reasonable ...and do not single out specific industries such as aviation." Alaska goes on to state that its $12 minimum wage is "a fair and competitive wage." Alaska spokesperson Knigge said she could not say whether following resolution of the case the Airline would pay back pay to the aggrieved workers.

Alaska's press release did not include information or comment on the fairness of the pay packages of its executives, but according to website salary.com, Alaska Airlines President and CEO Bradley D. Tilden received $2,947,282 last year, 120 times the ramp agents annual wage.

The $3 an hour missing from Socrates Bravo's paycheck could make a big difference to his family, the airport worker says. His daughter, who is now a walking, talking 3-year-old, was just a babe in arms when Seatac voters passed the Good Jobs Initiative. Alaska Airlines has been pocketing over $100 of her family's income just about every week of her life.

Photo: Baggage handlers at SEATAC. | Michael Cote/Flickr via PBS.org

Teacher sickouts close almost all Detroit schools

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 16:14:00 +0000

Nearly all Detroit Public Schools (DPS) are closed Wednesday, as teacher sickouts which began last week continue. Teachers are calling in sick to draw attention to the deplorable conditions in their schools and to force Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled state government to take emergency action.

Their concerns include overcrowded classes, dilapidated buildings, safety hazards including mold and vermin, a lack of basic classroom supplies such as textbooks and computers and low pay.

Today's sickouts are timed to coincide with a visit to Detroit by President Obama who is here to appear at the North American International Auto Show. Teachers held a morning news conference at a local union hall before rallying outside Cobo Hall, site of the auto show in hopes of drawing the President's attention to their plight. A grassroots group called Detroit Teachers Fight Back has claimed credit for organizing the sickouts though teachers at individual buildings have voted on participating.

While the sick-outs are not sanctioned by their local union, the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), there is obviously widespread support for the tactic on the part of rank-and-file teachers who are using social networking to advance their cause and coordinate their activities. Teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan and teachers and their local unions are subject to heavy fines and dismissal.

The leadership of the DFT has been supportive of teachers' desperate efforts to call attention to the conditions in their schools. At a news conference last Monday, Interim DFT President Ivy Bailey said, "We refuse to stand by while teachers, school support staff and students are exposed to conditions that one might expect in a third world country, not the United States of America."

The union has called for public hearings to air the plight of city schools and held a general membership meeting last Thursday to consider next steps. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was present at the meeting and addressed the teachers.

While large urban, predominately minority school districts across the country are under siege, none is more at risk than Detroit's. The percentage of children living in households below the poverty level is among the highest in the country. The district's scores on national assessments of student achievement in math and reading are the lowest nationwide. Enrollment has dropped by two-thirds in the last fifteen years.

The district has an outstanding debt of nearly $3.5 billion. Forty percent of current state per-pupil funding is being used to pay off debt at the expense of students and classrooms, forcing the district to continue to borrow to meet operating costs. Teachers and other district employees have made extensive salary and benefit concessions. It's estimated that without an infusion of funds from the state, the district will run out of money by the beginning of April, close down, and be forced to declare bankruptcy.

A host of factors have contributed to the crisis that now exists. Decades of plant closings, white flight, and predatory real estate and mortgage lending practices form the historical backdrop for the district's (and the city's) decline. More recently, there has been a concerted effort on the part of Gov. Snyder, the state legislature and business interests to usurp democratic control by the DPS Board of Education, systematically dismantle the district and replace it with a motley patchwork of state funded, privately operated, for-profit charter and state-run schools.

Emergency managers, appointed by the governor and vested with total control over district operations at the expense of the elected school board have run the district since 2009. In that time, under four different emergency managers, DPS has lost nearly half its enrollment and closed more than half its schools. It has endured serious declines in math and reading scores and run up new deficits in excess of $700 million.

Ironically, the current DPS Emergency Manager, Darnell Earley, was Flint's emergency manager when the decision was made to switch from the Detroit water system to Flint River water, a decision linked to lead contamination in residents' households. Both cases illustrate the dire consequences of the state assuming the powers of democratically elected local governing bodies accountable to the communities they serve.

In every instance where the governor has declared a financial emergency and appointed an emergency manager it has been in a predominately African-American city or school district like Detroit or Flint. These are communities that have borne the brunt of the downsizing of the auto industry and the consequences of racist real estate and lending practices which have destroyed their tax base. Rather than directing additional resources to them to help compensate, the state's response has been to deprive them of their right to govern themselves, slash state revenue sharing and impose other austerity measures which have deepened the crises they face.

More than half of school-age children in Detroit attend charter schools in the city or inner-ring suburbs. The increase in charter school enrollment mirrors the decline in that of DPS. They have drawn students and state per-pupil revenue away from DPS faster than it can reduce its costs.

Michigan has substantially more state-funded, for-profit charter schools than any other state. There are no state standards for charter school operators and they operate with little or no state oversight. In fact, the regulation of charter schools in Michigan is among the weakest in the nation. They spend more on administration and less in the classroom than traditional districts. Not surprisingly, state and national assessments indicate that students in charter schools do not, on average, perform any better on standardized tests than those in traditional public schools.

The state lifted the cap on the number of charter schools in 2012 and incentivized charter school authorizers for granting charters. The result is a massive oversupply of schools in the city and fierce competition between DPS and charter schools for a shrinking number of students. Precious tax dollars are squandered on marketing. Considering student outcomes, it's clear that monies spent to fund and promote charter schools would be better spent to improve traditional public schools.

Yet another cause of the dire financial situation of DPS and many other Michigan school districts are the nearly $2 billion in corporate tax cuts under Gov. Rick Snyder. While Michigan businesses depend on public schools to prepare students for the world of work, they aren't shouldering their share of the burden for funding our schools. Restoration of these cuts would enable the state to provide emergency assistance to DPS, Flint and other communities and school districts.

Last March, a coalition of community, labor, business and religious leaders, the "Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren," issued a report recommending comprehensive changes to improve schools in Detroit. American Federation of Teachers Michigan President David Hecker served as co-chair of the Coalition. Among its recommendations are the following:

Governance of Detroit Public Schools should be returned to an elected school board.

Charter authorizers and charter school boards should improve transparency, focus more on quality, and better coordinate all charter schools.

The state should assume DPS debt.

A new nonpartisan entity, the Detroit Education Commission, should be created act as gatekeeper for opening, closing, and siting all new schools in Detroit. It would hold all schools to the same high academic standards.

Establish advisory School Leadership Teams including parents, staff and students.

Establish a plan to transition back to DPS the 15 Education Achievement Authority schools run by the state.

Create shared systems of data, enrollment, and neighborhood transportation.

Indications are that the actions taken by Detroit teachers have caught the attention of state and local officials. Last Tuesday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan toured a number of schools and promised that the city would inspect every school in the district for health, safety and building code violations. He called on the governor and state legislature to act on a plan that would provide $700 million in funding for DPS over 10 years. NAACP President Wendell Anthony blasted Snyder and the state legislature for their inaction on the growing crisis in DPS.

Republican legislators, for their part, finally introduced bills that, while falling far short of the coalition's recommendations, at least provide a context for struggle over the key issues going forward which include:

Restoration of governance by an elected school board.

State assumption of responsibility for DPS debt.

Enhanced state and local oversight of charter schools.

Adequate state funding for DPS going forward.

Delegation of responsibility for holding all city schools to the same high standards.

Given Republicans' lock on state government, their abysmal record since assuming control of DPS, their advocacy for unregulated for-profit charter school operators, and their unrelenting efforts to slash business taxes at the expense of schools and local governments, finding solutions to DPS' problems will continue to be challenging. Only broad, unified, and militant action inspired by the teachers' courageous example can force Lansing to address the needs of Detroit's schoolchildren. Meanwhile, despite the heroic efforts of teachers, support staff and parents, nearly 50,000 DPS students are being denied their right to the quality education they deserve and are entitled.

Photo: Demonstration in Detroit related to the teacher "sickouts," drawing attention to the plight of these workers and the deplorable conditions in schools. | Todd McInturf/AP

The "Right-to-Work" movement's attack on women workers

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 16:22:00 +0000

Amanda Sheppard, 33, has been a home-care worker for 10 years, caring for ill and elderly people in Vermont. Sheppard is also the president of Vermont Homecare United, a group that won its ability to collectively bargain for higher wages in 2013.

Before they were able to collectively bargain, some Vermont home-care workers were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Some were earning a "day rate" of $2 to $3 per hour - even though they worked for an entire day. According to Sheppard, once the union bargained its first contract with the state in 2014, hourly wages increased to $10.80, and the day rate minimum pay became $160 for a full day's work. These benefits were achieved for all Vermont home-care workers - not just those who identify as members of Vermont Homecare United.

"I knew home-care workers who had been working three jobs and still couldn't make ends meet," Sheppard told Truthout. "This collective bargaining contract helped so many home-care providers in Vermont."

But soon after this 2014 contract was secured, the right-to-work movement - a movement that seeks to disempower collective bargaining and labor unions generally - won a US Supreme Court case that, based on a First Amendment argument, undercuts home-care workers' collective bargaining activity. Home-care work is a field dominated by women and rife with low wages. The right-to-work movement may now succeed in undercutting collective bargaining across a range of sectors that are dominated by women if the Supreme Court again rules in favor of its First Amendment argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA).

Feminist legal theorists have long argued that there are gendered implications of laws and policies that may seem "neutral" or rooted in constitutional doctrine. Indeed, the First Amendment argument touted by the right-to-work movement is a thin veil, underneath which lies a serious gender problem. Effectively, this argument is an attack on women's economic security.

On January 11, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Friedrichs v. CTA, which could weaken collective bargaining for a range of public sector employees, including police officers, firefighters and nurses, in addition to teachers. The named plaintiff in the case is Rebecca Friedrichs, a third grade teacher in Anaheim, California. Friedrichs has been a teacher for nearly 30 years.

Represented by the Center for Individual Rights, Friedrichs and approximately 10 other plaintiffs are arguing that being required to pay agency fees, or "fair share" fees, to the CTA to help pay for the CTA's work in bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions are in violation of their First Amendment right to free speech because she is not a member of the union and does not support its collective bargaining activities.

Agency fees, or fees paid by non-union members to support collective bargaining efforts, have been deemed constitutional for 39 years, since the Supreme Court ruled in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. This case held that agency fees are not in violation of the First Amendment if they support "legitimate, non-ideological, union activities germane to collective-bargaining representation." Even though she is not a member of the CTA, as a California teacher, Friedrichs benefits from the agreements the union secures through bargaining with the State of California.

Per Abood, Friedrichs and all teachers can also opt out of supporting any lobbying activity the CTA may engage in, so her money is not supporting political speech. As Justice Stephen Breyer said during oral arguments, negotiating for wages, hours and working conditions is "pretty far removed from the heart of the First Amendment."

Breyer's comment notwithstanding, early analyses of the oral arguments indicate that the court will side with Friedrichs, upending the longstanding precedent set by Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.

If the court does side with Friedrichs, many workers may choose to stop paying agency fees, thus gutting many public sector unions of a longstanding source of revenue that supports collective bargaining activity - which could negatively impact the many women who hold positions covered by collective bargaining agreements.

"Petitioners in Friedrichs are arguing that every time a union bargains, that is an inherently political act," said Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel of the National Women's Law Center. "That is a really naked attempt to strip ability for public sector workers to bargain for very basic protections like better wages and health benefits."

Women represent the majority - 55 percent - of public sector employees, and women public sector employees like Friedrichs who are covered by union collective bargaining agreements are paid 24 percent more than women who are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, according to the National Women's Law Center. The gender wage gap is also narrower among public sector union jobs: Women who are represented by public sector unions also tend to earn about 89.3 percent of what their male counterparts earn (as opposed to the standard wage gap of 78 cents on the dollar). Women in public sector unions are also more likely to have employer-based health-care coverage.

Thus eroding public sector unions' collective bargaining prowess could affect the wages and working conditions of many women who hold secure union jobs.

Indeed, the right-to-work movement has consistently targeted women-dominated fields like home-care work and teaching. In the 2014 Supreme Court decision of Harris v. Quinn, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation represented the plaintiff, a home-care worker named Pam Harris. Harris sued the State of Illinois and its governor, Pat Quinn, for assessing agency fees for the same reason Friedrichs is suing the CTA: Harris believed that the collective bargaining activity that her fees supported violated her First Amendment right to free speech. Harris said she opposed her home being a union work place.

The State of Illinois assessed these fees on all home-health aides who are paid by the state in order to support collective bargaining efforts of that sector. Several other states have similar practices, including California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oregon and Vermont.

The Supreme Court disagreed with the State of Illinois' argument that states do have authority to assess such fees "to support legitimate, non-ideological, union activities germane to collective-bargaining representation."

At its core, the right-to-work movement is arguing that paying agency fees represents political speech. Labor organizers disagree.

"Our work is not political," Sheppard told Truthout. "Unfortunately the right-to-work movement has turned us into commodities and assets. It's like our health and our lives are commodities that we have to earn."

One California study echoes the benefits of collective bargaining that Sheppard speaks to. It shows that home-care workers in San Francisco who are represented by collective bargaining agreements earn better wages, and are more likely to stay in the job for a longer period of time.

As a result of Harris v. Quinn, Sheppard says Vermont Homecare United's revenue will now largely be dependent upon fees paid by their 1,300 members as opposed to the roughly 10,000 home-care workers in the state of Vermont.

Since home-care workers labor in individual homes as opposed to an office, communicating with her colleagues on wages, benefits and other issues germane to collective bargaining is not easy - making the revenue of agency fees even more critical.

"Home-care workers are spread throughout the state; we don't have an office bulletin board where you can hear news and updates about wages changing or benefits being cut," Sheppard said. "Our organizing is hard work."

Vermont Homecare United's contract must be renewed this year, and Sheppard is guardedly optimistic.

"We have faith that our contract renewal with the State of Vermont will sustain good terms," she said. "But being able to ensure this depends on our strength as an organizing force."

Now, if the Supreme Court's ruling in Friedrichs mirrors Harris v. Quinn in assessing that agency fees are in violation of the First Amendment, the uncertainty Sheppard is facing could be something that teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters' unions will face going forward.

Katherine Myers has been an eighth grade writing teacher in Chicago for the past 20 years. She is also a Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) delegate at the Peck School in Chicago and a member of the CTU's contract negotiation team, or "Big Bargaining Team."

"As a union, the things we consistently ask for [through collective bargaining efforts] are librarians, nurses, social services, smaller class sizes, limits on high-stakes testing, racial equity across schools, and protection and retention of experienced teachers," Myers told Truthout. "Our work is about the well-being of women and families."

Both Friedrichs v. CTA and Harris v. Quinn are preceded by extensive state-level political activity by the right-to-work movement that also targeted women-dominated fields. Most prominently, in 2011, Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) restricted the collective bargaining rights of teachers, nurses and child-care workers. (Walker deliberately excluded police and firefighters for fear that these employees would strike.) Michigan and Tennessee passed similar initiatives around this time.

Against the backdrop of overall gender-wealth disparities in the United States, the right- to-work movement's erosion of collective bargaining capacity is even more alarming. Women systemically earn less than men across sectors. Women are more likely to fall into poverty in their elder years. Women often spend more on health care. And as they continue to be primarily responsible for unpaid domestic work, women are often struggling to care for children while working in low-wage sectors.

If strong public sector union jobs are eroded as a result of the right-to-work movement's attack on agency fees, this will be an added setback for women's economic status in the United States.

"Our organizing is about our quality of life," Sheppard said. "Fighting to improve our quality of life is not political."

Reposted from Truthout, with permission.

Sheila Bapat is a recovered attorney who now writes about gender and economic justice. Her first book, Part of the Family? Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers, and the Battle for Domestic Workers' Rights, was published by Ig Publishing in 2014.

Photo: Home health care workers rallied for better wages in Los Angeles in April, 2015. AP file photo.

Construction workers killed on the job, manager goes to jail

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 15:51:00 +0000

TORONTO - In a first-of-its-kind conviction, an Ontario judge has sentenced a construction project manager to three and a half years in prison for criminal negligence in an incident that led to the death of four workers on Christmas Eve 2009. When the scaffolding they were working on broke in half that day, the workers were not wearing safety lines and fell thirteen floors to the ground below.

The workers who lost their lives were immigrants from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Latvia. Alesandrs Bondarevs, Aleksey Blumberg, Vladimir Korostin, and Fayzulla Fazilov were four of six workers completing repair work to balconies on the outside of an apartment building in Toronto. Only two safety lines were provided for the six workers. The two workers who were attached to lines managed to survive the collapse, while the other four fell to their deaths.

The jail sentence, described as "historic" by Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) president Chris Buckley, marks the first time that a jail term has been handed out to a supervisor after a worker lost their life on the job. Vadim Kazenelson, the project manager, was also on the scaffolding that afternoon, but managed to survive by clinging to a balcony.

He was convicted of negligence by a court last summer for not stopping the workers from proceeding with their work without an adequate number of safety lines. In addition to Kazenelson's jail sentence, more than $1 million Canadian dollars (CAD) in fines have been handed out to the Metron Construction Company, its owner, and the scaffolding manufacturer.

The prison term was the first to be issued under the authority of Bill C-45, a piece of legislation that amended the Criminal Code of Canada in 2004 allowing for management liability in cases of negligence. It came about as a result of an inquiry into a 1992 disaster at the Westray Coal Mine in which 26 Nova Scotia miners lost their lives in an underground methane explosion. Management had been found partially responsible for the blast, but the courts failed to produce any convictions. The passage of Bill C-45 was intended to prevent such dodging of responsibility. It was spearheaded by a campaign of the Canadian Labour Congress and the United Steelworkers.

Like that earlier campaign, a similar effort was launched by the OFL shortly after the 2009 death of the four construction workers. Under the slogan, "Kill a worker, go to jail," the OFL pushed strongly for a conviction in the Metron case in order to set an example for other negligent employers.

"I hope this verdict sends shivers down the spine of employers of Ontario," Buckley said in a statement. While acknowledging the sentence cannot bring back the workers who lost their lives or reverse the pain of their families, he said it does have "the power to prevent other workers from suffering a similar fate."

The judge in the case announced that his sentencing decision was meant to denounce the failures of Metron management to prevent "manifestly dangerous conditions." He also highlighted the fact that the decision to work without proper safety lines had been made by a desire to complete work before a New Year's Eve deadline and secure a bonus.

The Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, which represents more than 150,000 construction workers in the province, welcomed the conviction. But officials there said it could only serve as a partial deterrent because it does not go to the top of the chain of command within Metron.

Patrick Dillon, business manager for the Trades Council, said, "While it was the construction supervisor's responsibility to ensure the workers had proper safety training and equipment, no one from the company was held criminally responsible for these deaths...not the owner, not the directors, and not any executives."

Construction worker deaths and injuries have also been on the rise in the U.S. in recent years with the recovery of the commercial and residential building sectors. As in the Toronto case, most construction fatalities are the result of falls and are most prevalent among immigrant workers. An investigation by the New York Times late last year examined construction site deaths in New York City since 2013 and found most were "completely avoidable." Top reasons cited for the fatalities included lack of harnesses and helmets, poor supervision, and a push by management for greater speed that resulted in workers taking shortcuts.

While Kazenelson and Metron's lawyers are appealing his sentence, it is hoped that the precedent set by his conviction and sentencing will help improve conditions at construction sites in the future. With an employer facing criminal consequences for the first time, Buckley said a signal is being sent that "employers can't chalk up a worker's life as the cost of doing business."

The OFL has pledged to continue its "Kill a worker, go to jail" campaign and will keep up the pressure "until the employers who put workers' lives at risk to earn another buck find themselves doing hard jail time."

Image: Ontario Federation of Labour.

Trumka on race and class: "When they divide us, they can beat us"

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 14:47:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) -- Saying of the economic and political elite, "When they divide us up, they can beat us. When we stick together, they can't," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared workers of all races, classes and genders must unite to reclaim the U.S. future.

That means uniting around a common agenda of raising incomes and equality for all, regardless of race, color or sexual orientation, he said. But that unity should not obscure the fact that a difficult and honest discussion on race must continue, Trumka added.

Trumka's comments about the need for unity came during a question-and-answer session at the opening of the AFL-CIO's annual Martin Luther King Conference, a 3-day event from Jan. 15-17 in D.C. Other speakers repeated his themes, with variations.

The conference, entitled "Change The Rules, Be The Power" revolved around organizing, politics, issues and activism - including in-the-neighborhoods activism by its 1,000 delegates on Jan. 16 -- and openly discussing race.

It did not come to any conclusions on that issue, though at least one speaker urged the federation to openly endorse and back the Black Lives Matter movement, which has pushed the discussion to the forefront of U.S. consciousness. A special AFL-CIO race and justice commission is holding a series of hearings nationwide to get the painful discussion going.

On both race and economics, "No real change ever comes without a crisis," added federation Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre. "And we are in crisis in this country. Which road we take - the danger or the opportunity - is up to us."

The MLK conference also covered issues ranging from ending mass incarceration of minorities and immigrants to the forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Friedrichs that could make every state and local government a right-to-work fiefdom. One speaker noted that such a ruling would disproportionately harm minorities and women.

Trumka stressed that solidarity reveals there is more that unites workers across racial, gender and class lines than divides them, despite the constant years-long efforts of the political and economic elite to do so.

But the conference's big secondary theme was a need to greatly increase organizing, both by the labor movement and its allies-faith groups, community groups, women's groups, civil rights groups, environmentalists and others-to add to ranks and to marshal resources and people to challenge right wingers, both in the 2016 election and beyond.

"The challenge to the labor movement is that we should have 100 times and a thousand times more organizing campaigns than we do now," said Maria Elena Durazo, former L.A. County Federation of Labor executive director, now a vice president of Unite Here.

"Unless and until we identify and train leaders on how to take on the boss in a lot more workplaces, we'll be over there," Durazo added, gesturing to a far corner of the room during the small-group session at which she spoke.

But while participants agreed on the overall goals, they differed on how to achieve them. Some advocated just tweaking present organizing efforts.

"We don't have to reinvent the wheel," said Rosa Rodriguez, Secretary-Treasurer of Steelworkers Local 1010 in Indiana. "But we have to sit down and see what it is that benefits the workers the best-and then go into that issue as one."

Others called for specific campaigns to organize African-American, Latino and immigrant workers, citing successful pilot projects in Los Angeles and elsewhere to do so. Still others said the organizing must stress broad economic themes and lay out the case against the rich and their so-far successful manipulation of politics and the economy.

Many speakers, discussing recent events, said there must be more and more open discussion about race and particularly the racism of the entire criminal justice system, including the police, local district attorneys and the courts.

That issue came to the fore after Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown more than a year ago. It has remained on the national agenda due to similar confrontations since then in Chicago, Baltimore, the Twin Cities and elsewhere.

As Trumka said then, and repeated at the conference, "a (union) brother shot a union sister's son." Brown's mother is a United Food and Commercial Workers member.

The depth of the problem goes beyond just police-minority confrontations. One activist described taking 150 union, progressive and philanthropic leaders to interview prisoners at San Quentin, to let them hear and feel the real impact of mass incarceration - often for non-violent offenses - on prisoners, their families and their communities.

And when those prisoners are freed after serving their terms, that speaker added, they often can't get mainstream jobs, including union jobs, because they have to "check the box" that said they were formerly in prison.

Another pointed out unions endorsed the Cleveland District Attorney whose grand jury did not find fault with a police officer's fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy. She said there have been six such shootings in Cleveland, and no indictments. She demanded unions should ask themselves why they're backing that DA.

Photo: AFL-CIO Twitter.

How the Oscars began as a tool for union-avoidance

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 10:40:00 +0000

Everyone's heard of the Academy Awards, but few know the anti-union origins of its sponsor, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy was founded in 1927 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis Mayer to prevent unionization in the film industry. As an invitation-only professional organization, it was meant to be a more prestigious alternative to unionization. With separate branches for producers, actors, writers, directors, and technicians, it would settle workplace disputes and eliminate the need for unions and strikes - while remaining controlled by producers.

From 1927 to 1933, the Academy functioned as a company union. In competition with the Screen Actors Guild and other unions, it developed a standard contract covering terms and conditions of work.

Hollywood unionized anyway in 1933, and company-controlled unions were outlawed in 1935. But the Academy continues on as a way to promote the film industry. To this day, its membership is self-selecting, and secret.

SEE ALSO: THE UNION OSCARS: The Screen Actors Guild film and TV awards are chosen by union members, and honor the collective.

This article was reposted from Northwest Labor Press.

Photo: Craig Piersma/Flickr (Creative Commons)

NLRB rejects McDonalds’ request to treat joint employer cases separately

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 14:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Over the dissent of its remaining Republican member, the National Labor Relations Board has rejected McDonalds' request to split its "joint employer" cases into 31 separate cases involving 161 restaurants nationwide.

The board's early-January decision allows the massive case of McDonald's labor law-breaking to go forward as one unified case. That lets the NLRB's general counsel - its top enforcement officer - present evidence in one big case about the joint responsibility of McDonald's and its local franchises to obey labor law, and their joint liability for breaking it.

The McDonald's case is important because it marks a new field for the labor board, in a new area of work arrangements: franchises. Firms now often use franchising to escape their legal duties to workers, in everything from legal wages and decent hours to obeying labor law.

But the board decided last year, in the McDonald's case, that McDonalds' headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., and local franchises are jointly responsible for obeying or breaking the law.

The Fast Food Workers Committee, backed by the Service Employees, brought the complaint against McDonalds. They charged, and the NLRB's general counsel agreed in his filings, that the fast food giant's local franchises engage in labor law-breaking nationwide against workers - and McDonald's headquarters is responsible for the law-breaking, too.

That law-breaking includes illegal spying, illegal promises of increased benefits, discrimination in workloads against pro-union workers, threats of firing, threats of closing the McDonald's restaurant at 4259 Broadway in Manhattan, cuts in work hours, failure to post work schedules as a punishment and even, at a restaurant on Broad Street in Philadelphia, "pretending to choke the employee to dissuade the employee from seeking union representation."

NLRB Administrative Law Judge Lauren Esposito ruled last year that all the labor law-breaking complaints, involving both McDonald's headquarters and its local franchises, could be heard at one time in one big consolidated case. The board backed her in its Jan. 8 decision.

Esposito "carefully evaluated and weighed the arguments and properly exercised her authority to regulate the course of the hearing under the board's rules and regulations and applicable case precedent," the board majority said.

"The case management order" which rolls everything into one hearing and one case - although the hearing itself may be in three cities, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles - "provides for an orderly presentation of evidence that helps to protect each" individual McDonald's franchise's "confidentiality and due process rights, as well as controlling the efficiency and costs of litigation for those individual businesses," the majority added.

Photo: Thousands of workers rally at McDonald's corporate HQ ahead of McDonald's shareholder meetings to call for $15 per hour and a union. Fightfor15.org

House GOP votes to curb asbestos victims’ class action suits

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 14:10:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - At the end of what one House Democrat called "Chamber of Commerce Week" in Congress, the House's GOP majority rammed through legislation to curb class action suits and to throw open asbestos' victims medical records and payments.

The almost-party-line votes on Jan. 8 also tossed out Democratic attempts to kill or weaken schemes, which were combined in one bill. Another frustrated Democrat said the Koch Brothers - right wing energy barons who fund anti-worker crusades, legislation and GOP political operatives nationwide - welcome the Republicans' asbestos plan.

The AFL-CIO, which has worked for years to try to solve the asbestos exposure mess and assure compensation for the thousands of victims, strongly opposed the GOP measure, especially the asbestos section, Legislative Director Bill Samuel told lawmakers.

"The AFL-CIO is well aware that the system for compensating asbestos disease victims has had its share of problems, with victims facing delays and inadequate compensation and too much money being spent on defendant and plaintiff lawyers," he said.

The House bill "does nothing to improve compensation for asbestos victims and would in fact make the situation even worse. In our view, the bill is simply an effort by asbestos manufacturers who are still subject to asbestos lawsuits to avoid liability for diseases caused by exposure to their products," Samuel added.

The legislation, HR1927, faces an eventual loss. Even if the GOP-run Senate votes for it, Democratic President Barack Obama's Office of Management and Budget said his top staffers would recommend he veto it because it hampers access to the federal courts and "threatens the privacy of asbestos victims." The House passed the measure, 211-188, with 16 Republicans joining all 172 voting Democrats against it.

The class action curb says any class of people who file suit must suffer identical harms in identical ways from identical products. The asbestos bill was rolled into it.

The class action bill's practical effect would be to shut tens of thousands of workers and consumers out of court suits against companies whose products injure them or who perpetrate frauds on them. The asbestos bill harms asbestos victims by opening many of their records.

Given weak federal labor law, workers turn to class action suits against firms that harm them - such as the class action against Walmart for gender-basedpay discrimination - which was unsuccessful.

And the asbestos manufacturers, or their successor companies, have tied up victims in court suits for years, as they evade paying billions of dollars in damages to victims - shipyard workers, construction workers and others - who contracted cancer from the substance.

The class action section "provides that 'no federal court shall certify any proposed class seeking monetary relief for personal injury or economic loss unless the party seeking to maintain" the suit "affirmatively demonstrates each proposed class member suffered the same type and scope of injury as the named class representative or representatives,''' said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va. His panel handled both bills.

"This will make it harder to certify members of a class in pay equity cases because each detail relating to the type and scope of the damage is often unique to the woman who was injured," said Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., who pushed both the pay equity amendment and the housing and credit discrimination amendment. She said the bill means that woman workers could not file class actions "unless they made exactly the same pay (and) worked there" at a company "exactly the same number of years, which is ludicrous."

Asbestos victims, and their heirs, were shut out of hearings on the bill, according to a letter dozens of them signed. They were led by Susan Vento, widow of former Rep. Bruce Vento, DFL-Minn., who died of asbestos-caused cancer (mesothelioma) he contracted before taking office.

"Mesothelioma victims are typically racing against the clock to ensure their families aren't burdened with huge medical bills and that they are taken care of. It's astonishing to us that, of all the issues Congress could be addressing relating to asbestos, you have chosen one that does nothing for victims, but rather one that gives additional tools to the asbestos industry to drag out these cases and escape accountability," Susan Vento's letter said.

Photo: Nellie Kershaw (c. 1891 - 14 March 1924), factory worker, whose death from pulmonary asbestosis was the first such case to be described in medical literature.Her employers, Turner Brothers Asbestos, accepted no liability for her injuries, paid no compensation to her bereaved family and refused to contribute towards funeral expenses as it "would create a precedent and admit responsibility." Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Mayor De Blasio helps celebrate NY Fight For 15 victory

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 12:32:00 +0000

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 - Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke in front of hundreds at District Council 37 in lower Manhattan.

The event was a celebration for New York City public workers and contractors, whose hourly minimum wage will rise to $15 an hour before the end of 2018.

Mayor de Blasio and the city council have called for $15 in NYC wage but state law mandates the minimum wage of cities and towns to be set at the state level. The Republican-led state senate has blocked the desired increase.

Photo and Video: PW

Connecticut’s Annual Amistad Awards Rally calls for justice for all

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 16:01:00 +0000

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - The exciting "Justice for All" People's World Amistad Awards set the tone for the big battles of 2016 in Connecticut as union and community leaders and activists came together in unity and solidarity.

The event filled the auditorium of Arts and Humanities Cooperative High School and contributed to the build-up for two key struggles won in the following week. First, building cleaners, members of SEIU 32 BJ, staged rallies in Hartford and New Haven and won a hard fought union contract in the Fight for $15. Then, New Haven Rising and the unions at Yale held a large march and civil disobedience of 150 which won a commitment from Yale University to hire 1,000 New Haven residents from the city's neighborhoods of need.

Opening with local singer Ariel Johnson's breathtaking rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," the 2015 Connecticut People's World Amistad Awards inspired young and old alike with its message of unity and struggle. The emotional reaction to Ms. Johnson's performance by everyone in attendance showed that not only was her performance immaculate but the message in the lyrics is still all too relevant so many years after the Civil Rights Movement.

Themed "Justice for All - In Solidarity with Black and Latino Youth - Stop the Right Wing Attacks," the event greeted actions by youth to end racism and achieve a future with hope and dignity for themselves and their communities.

As Joelle Fishman, chair of the Connecticut Communist Party USA declared in a call to action, "We're sick and tired of the hatred, bigotry and fear being spewed to bust us apart and we should never take our unity for granted." She went on to point out that "the brutality of institutionalized racism embedded into capitalism, is still part of our lives.

"The 2016 elections are the battleground for every democratic right we've ever won," she declared. "We can stop candidates who want to bring us back 175 years. We will not go back! We must go forward."

Following Fishman's call to action, emcees Kit Salazar-Smith and Lisa Bergmann paid a well-deserved tribute to her with Salazar-Smith tearfully saying that Fishman's "sense of commitment to the community is boundless."

The next standout performance of the evening came courtesy of local YCL leader Lisa Bergmann and some talented youngsters from the Raca em Moviemento Dance Studio. They put on a Capoeira performance which included a song and movements that represented the origins of Capoeira, which was born out of Brazilian slaves developing methods of resistance and self-defense disguised as dance movements.

Awardees this year included Jill Marks, a leader of New Haven Rising and Alder-elect in Ward 28; Ciro Gutierrez, member-leader of SEIU 32 BJ building cleaners union in Hartford, and Cindy Harrity, Communication Workers of America Local 1298 organizer, retired.

Marks said she was moved to become a grass roots leader after knocking on thousands of doors and hearing the problems of ordinary families. She urged those present to join the fight for good jobs and attend a New Haven Rising rally on December 12.

Marks was honored by her daughter, Scotticesa Marks, who sang a beautiful rendition of "Amazing Grace," before Jill accepted her award. During her acceptance speech, she reminded the audience that, "you need to step up to demonstrate that we are united, we are organized, and we are not backing down until we get respect and the opportunities we deserve."

Gutierrez, born in Peru, described how he became involved in the social movement during the right-wing coup in his country. When his family came to the U.S. after losing their public sector jobs to privatization, he continued his commitment to workers' rights throughout his union. Gutierrez reinforced the notion that "we have an obligation to fight together to defeat the forces of conservatism. They can only bring pain to our people."

Cindy Harrity, unable to project here voice due to illness, prepared comments read by husband John Harrity. Cindy, well known for her successes as a union organizer, referred to a quote found on a piece of paper in her late father's pants pocket. The quote read, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." She urged those present to "be unreasonable" when confronted by exploitation, unfairness or any injustice.

The awards were held on the 96^th anniversary of the Communist Party USA. Edie Fishman, who joined the YCL at 14 and is now in her 80^th year in the working class movement, received flowers from the youth. She recounted experiences which won social security, unemployment compensation, health and safety on the job, and ending Jim Crow racial segregation. "When we stick together and fight together, we can win," Edie said.

The evening was then closed out by three memorable performances that spoke to the theme of "Justice for All - In Solidarity with Black and Latino Youth - Stop the Right-Wing Attacks!"

First up were two young men named Gaylord Salters and Darrell Willis, who performed an original hip-hop song that addressed the police shootings of unarmed black youth. The song contained the lyric, "...and it's crazy how police can do the same thang, what's the thoughts in they mind when the thing bang?"

Poet Aaron Jafferis energized the crowd with his hard-hitting poem, containing many memorable verses, including the question:

"What if we created pairs or small groups of formerly jailed and formerly Yale-d youth to do anti-joblessness projects whose object is to not just get one group fat jobs and one group backwashed into New Haven's court system where black odds are stacked high like white statues sitting on court steps like fat gods?"

Concluding the evening was the electrifying multi-genre performance by Ice the Beef, a New Haven youth anti-violence organization. The performance involved song, dance and a dramatic piece involving a youth being gunned down by police. As the deceased youth was being carried to the morgue, a young girl singing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," which brought the evening full-circle. As the house lights came on, Ice the Beef started on stage and moved through the crowd with an inspiring performance entitled, "Stop the Violence, Start the Peace."

In the words of honoree Edie Fishman, "Life is a struggle but it's a wonderful struggle when we know we're fighting for the right thing."

Video of the event will be posted on Facebook page of the Connecticut Communist Party USA.

Photo: PW

For union supporters rallying at SCOTUS, Friedrichs case is personal

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 13:22:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - For Ethel Everett, Reagan Duncan and Bryce Wickstrom, the elevated arguments over union dues and agency fees, which took place inside the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 11, are personal.

That's because Everett, Duncan and Wickstrom, three of hundreds of unionists massed outside the court during and after the debate, see how the loss of revenue to their unions could hurt them, their families, their kids, the students they teach and the elderly they aid.

Everett, a home care worker and SEIU member from Springfield, Mass., Duncan, a Vista Teachers Association (NEA) member and kindergarten-first grade teacher from San Diego, and Wickstrom, a heavy equipment mechanic and AFSCME District 5 member from Minneapolis, joined unionists from National Nurses United, the Service Employees and others from around the nation in 20-degree temperatures outside the court.

Inside, the justices heard the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association - Duncan's statewide union - which will decide whether all state and local governments, from school boards on up, will become so-called "right to work" fiefdoms where workers could all be "free riders," getting union services but not paying for them.

Outside, the unionists waved both printed and hand-made signs with phrases such as "Working people want a voice," "We do better when we stand together" and "Don't silence us." A smaller group of anti-unionists, marshaled by the right, countered with printed signs saying "We <3 teachers." A so-called association of religious teachers sided with Friedrichs.

"We're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best" from the justices when they decide the case by the end of June, Wickstrom told Press Associates Union News Service. A decision against workers and their allies "would be a severe blow against labor, and especially against organized labor.

"I choose to work union because it gives me guarantees" of success in the middle class, said friendly, bearded, Wickstrom, wearing a green Minnesota Department of Transportation windbreaker and a warm knitted hat.

"Minnesota has been good to us across the board, with fair wages and equal pay for equal work. It gives me something my family could base our lives upon."

That same path succeeded for his mother, a longtime police union official and retired 31-year veteran of the Duluth police force, he added.

Duncan said her students are even more threatened than she is. She noted that 89 percent of her students are English language (ESOL) learners and 95 percent are from families with low socio-economic status. Duncan and other California Teachers Association members view themselves, she said, not just as teachers of their kids, but as their advocates.

And they need a strong union for that, she said. Throw out agency fees, Duncan said, and "it could result in a lot fewer people choosing to form a union" as unions would be deprived of money they need to organize the unorganized.

"By being part of a union, we've been able to work with these families" of the elderly and the disabled "to ensure they get the care they (family members) need," Everett explained. "Our union can negotiate services for our families, so they can be self-sufficient," she added.

Take away dues and agency fees, and it would be less able to do so, Everett said.

"The key distinction is between campaign mode" - when unions try to organize new members - "and governing mode," said the unions' attorney, David Frederick. "In governing mode, they bring stability" to state and local governments "and services" to members, which the fees pay for, he explained.

The lead challenger, dissident California teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, disagreed. She sat through the 80-minute long courtroom argument. Friedrichs, who "spent half of my 28-year career as a union member," said "my voice was silenced" by her union even on her local's board, as well as when she just paid the agency fees. That led her to challenge the fees as "political" violations of free speech, even in contract bargaining and grievances.

"For nurses, who depend on the protection of their union to be able to advocate, without fear of employer retaliation, for their patients at a time when massive healthcare corporations are placing profits over public and patient safety, the threat is particularly dire," said National Nurses United Co-President Jean Ross, RN, before the rally on the courthouse steps.

The political aspect of the Friedrichs case didn't come up in the justices' deliberations, but it did come up outside the courthouse door - in questions to Michael Carvin, the attorney for Friedrichs and the other dissidents. The anti-union, anti-worker National Right to Work Committee hired him to represent them at the SCOTUS session.

And the RTW committee is part of a continuing and growing far right crusade to smash unions, notably public worker unions, which are a bulwark of opposition to business and its political allies, especially congressional and state-level Republicans.

Carvin didn't touch that angle, though, even though the questioning reporter brought up that angle, pointing out that unions and their allies mostly support Democrats.

"There is a political element to this," Carvin replied. "If it was anything but a union case, the American Civil Liberties Union" - a noted defender of free speech rights - "would be standing here at this microphone, not me," he added.

Photo: People participate in a rally at the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP