People Before Profit blog

IKEA stacks deck against union backers

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:23:00 +0000

DANVILLE, Va. - Only days after the Machinists union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election to see if a majority of workers want a union at Swedwood Danville, an IKEA furniture maker, the company has rigged the process against its workers.

IKEA agreed this week to an election date of July 27, but only after adding 30 "team captains" to the voting pool, bringing the total in the pool to 318.

According to William Street, the lead organizer at the plant for the International Association of Machinists, the move adds 30 "no" votes to the voting pool and means that the union will now have to find an additional 25 supporters in order to offset those votes.

The company demanded inclusion of the team captains, the union says, as a condition for setting a "reasonable" July 27 election date. Companies frequently drag out the election date, the union says, so they can run anti-union propaganda campaigns and sometimes harass and even fire union backers before the election.

"It is ironic that IKEA, which claims it wants everyone to decide for themselves whether to be in the union, decides instead to force the 30 team captains into the unit," said Street. "There is only one reason for Swedwood to demand the team captains be in the union, and that is to influence the outcome of the election." Street, in addition to organizing the union's campaign at the plant, is director of the IAM's woodworking department.

IKEA, in an e-mailed response to previous Peoples World articles on the struggle to unionize at Danville, said that it respects its workers right to freedom of association, including their right to join or form unions without fear of reprisal or interference.

"I guess this doesn't apply to the Danville workers who do not wish to associate with team captains or team captains who do not wish to associate with the union," said Street. "It would be interesting to hear how IKEA will defend taking choice away from the workers to decide who they want in their own union," he added.

Calls to the company's public relations office were not returned.

Street noted that the IAM was "more than ready" to represent team captains in their own union if they were serious about wanting that representation. "But IKEA has no business interfering in the choice of the hourly non-supervisory workers to have a union of their own choosing," he declared.

Including the team captains in the voting unit gives IKEA a 10 percent cushion it can count on, right from the start, to vote against the union, Street says. He notes that because there are so many built in advantages for the company, union elections are rarely won by more than 10 percent of the vote.

The union organizing drive at the Danville plant has been fueled by both low wages and dangerous working conditions. IKEA's factory workers in Sweden are paid $19 per hour and get five weeks paid vacation every year. At the Danville plant, many earn only $8 an hour.

Workers at Danville have suffered more than 1,536 days of lost work due to accidents on the job in a recent 30-month period, according to the union.

Petitions have been put out on the Internet by Change.org for members of the public who want to support the workers. The petitions call upon IKEA to allow Danville workers to organize and make their own choices.

Photo via the Associated Press.

1.3 million Ohioans say no to anti-labor law

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:08:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The drive to repeal SB 5, the union-busting law that strips collective bargaining rights from 360,000 public workers in Ohio, culminated Wednesday in a massive 'People's Parade' to the Secretary of State's office where petitions with nearly 1.3 million signatures were delivered.

The march accompanied a giant semi-truck, with "Veto SB 5" on its side, packed to the brim with 1502 boxes of petitions. Leading the march was a bagpipe delegation of police from Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, and a huge banner, reading "Million Signature March!" This was followed by a drum corps of youth from Columbus and a series of red "Fire Chief" cars, complete with Dalmatian dogs. Then came union after union, each in different colored shirts, along with community groups and motorcycle brigades.

"O-H, I-O. SB 5 has got to go!" they chanted.

"This is your day," said Melissa Fazekas of We Are Ohio, the labor-community coalition which led the petition drive, at a rally and press conference outside Secretary of State's John Husted's office. "This is the people's parade," she greeted the crowd, estimated at over 6 thousand supporters.

Deafening cheers arose as she announced that a total of 1,298,301 signatures had been collected, more than five times the minimum number required to put the measure on the November ballot. Signatures of at least three percent of voters in half the state's 88 counties were also needed but Fazekas said more than twice that many had been collected in every county.

"We are celebrating a truly historic achievement," she added.

"Tell me what democracy looks like," the crowd roared, "this is what democracy looks like!"

Never before had so many signatures been collected for a ballot issue in Ohio and never had it been done with so many thousands of volunteers outraged and threatened by Republican Gov. John Kasich's assault on the rights of labor.

"Our ancestors fought for equal rights and for collective bargaining, the rights that SB 5 takes away," said AFSCME retiree Francis Henderson. "They went to jail, were beaten and some even gave their lives for these rights. Shame on us if we let these folks take those rights away. We have to fight!"

"I'm tired of corporate politicians and millionaires scapegoating teachers that work hard to educate our children," said Theresa Whitney of the Ohio Education Association. "SB 5 is an assault on the middle, working, class teachers, police, firefighters, city and state workers that keep our nation going. They want to balance the budget on the backs of regular families while giving tax cuts to billionaires. We're here to say that that won't fly!"

She was echoed by Barry Smith, a school bus driver from Englewood, a suburb of Dayton, who said Kasich's attack on unions was an assault on democracy itself fostered by people like the ultra-right billionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch.

"We're in for a tough fight. There's going to be a massive propaganda campaign against us - just like Goebbels," he said referring to the "big lie" tactics used in Nazi Germany.

"Yes, we are our brother's keeper," said Rev. Dale Snyder of the Columbus AME Church. "This is about our civil rights, not just some people's rights, but ALL of our rights and we're here to say that we all must stand together, united, and united we will be victorious!"

Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, called the day's action "the culmination of tens of thousands of volunteers across the state standing up against the Kasich Administration's extreme attacks on the middle class. We are going to get this on the ballot and let the citizens vote on Kasich and his extreme agenda to attack worker rights."

He said the AFL-CIO, We Are Ohio and other groups were scheduling conferences in the coming month to map plans for a massive grassroots, rank and file effort to educate and mobilize voters to repeal SB 5.

Photo: At the rally where thousands of Ohioans joined together to make history by turning in 1,298,000 signatures to repeal SB 5. Ohio AFL-CIO

View the Ohio SB5 Parade June 29, 2011, slide show here

Video from The People's Parade to Repeal SB5 on June 29, 2011, in Columbus, Ohio.:

Workers charge Target uses threats, illegal actions

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:46:00 +0000

Workers lost a unionization vote by 137 to 85 at a Target store on New York's Long Island June 17. The United Food and Commercial Workers, however, which had hoped it would be the first of 1,700 stores nationally to go union, is continuing the fight.

"The workers at the Valley Stream store endured a campaign of threats, intimidation and illegal acts by Target management," said Bruce Both, president of UFCW Local 1500. The union has asked the National Labor Relations Board to set up a new election and to order Target to cease it what it calls "its illegal activity."

A complaint the union filed with the board three weeks prior to the election said Target had unlawfully prohibited workers from wearing pro-union buttons and from discussing working conditions even on online sites. The complaint also said Target had threatened workers with firing if they spoke openly about the union.

Workers at the Valley Stream Target say that at mandatory meetings supervisors told them that a union could not guarantee better pay or benefits and that the union only wanted their dues. They also report that managers told them that if they voted for the union, there was no guarantee that the store would remain open.

"Target did everything they could to deny these workers a chance at the American dream." said Both.

The company denies that it violated any laws and says the union lost the election, essentially, because the company and its workers are a happy family.

Molly Snyder, a company spokesperson, told The New York Times: "We believe in solving issues and concerns by working together with the help and input of all team members."

American Rights at Work has prepared extensive documentation regarding companies that fight union organizing efforts. The reports show that if Target did not harass workers who were pro-union, the company would actually be out of sync with most other employers.

An analysis of recent data on NLRB union election campaigns shows that 63 percent of employers interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings; 54 percent of employers threaten workers at those meetings; 57 percent make threats about closing the workplace; 47 percent threaten to cut wages and benefits and 34 percent actually fire union supporters.

Unions note that employers like Target carry out such illegal activities because the penalties for violating labor law are less costly than paying decent wages and benefits.

The website Gawker, known as a good place to go for celebrity gossip, has also done an excellent job of documenting and posting the concerns of Target workers:

A young man who worked at Target for five years, from when he was 16 until he was 21, said he was hired at $.50 over the minimum wage, although most at his store were hired at only $.25 over the minimum.

He described a policy of being subjected to forced overtime, even young workers who need time for school assignments: "The real kicker is that working all of these 10 to 12 hour shifts didn't mean more money. As soon as you were in danger of receiving overtime pay, your remaining shifts for the week were cut. Those left working the shift were stuck doing the extra work. This alone is a good reason for a union."

A young woman who is working her first job ever at Target: "I would like to go to college, but cant' afford it. I think a union would make sense because at least then we have some hope of having a say. Currently, we honestly get shit hours, benefits are minimal and expensive, and reviews are a joke. We stay until all hours of the night, and we get acknowledged with just a great team card. If a union can make Target into a place with an awesome environment and at least passable pay and benefits, I am all for giving it a try."

Bus drivers fed up, locked out, then fired

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:49:00 +0000

ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va. - On June 13, the bus drivers of AFSCME Local 3001, who drive the Arlington County, Va., buses, made the declaration that they have had enough.

They were tired and pushed beyond the breaking point by the private contractor, Forsythe Transportation. Having been refused bathroom breaks, their schedules switched unfairly, being unjustly compensated and individuals amongst their ranks sexually harassed, they went out on strike.

The last straw for these Arlington Transit (ART) drivers, the action that sent them to the picket line, was the firing of their leader for wearing a union button to work.

Their strike began in the early hours of the morning and by the afternoon they found themselves without jobs. Thirty-five people in total were fired. Forsythe said that the bus drivers had violated their contract which prevented them from striking unless it was a matter of the company violating an arbitration agreement.

The aftermath of all this is a county unable to interfere and regretful of the strike by the union local and the mass firings by Forsythe Transportation.

County Board Chairman Chris Zimmerman said in a statement July 16, "Drivers have expressed concerns that need to be taken seriously, including allegations of sexual harassment, and the improper disciplining of a union representative." But, he added, "As this is a labor relations issue between a private company and its workers, Arlington County has no authority to intervene in this matter." He called for "both parties to work together to resolve the issues," including use of mediation services.

Talking with a representative of the union local by email June 14, I've learned that they plan to take their case to the National Labor Relations Board. They also tell a slightly different story of the events that ensued.

The union representative wrote:

"Yesterday, Forsythe Transportation officially fired all drivers who had participated in the strike, even though the strike had ended the previous Friday and all were willing to return to work (Forsythe locked them out until their official termination letters were sent)."

The representative went on to accuse Forsythe of allowing trainees, who are not ready to drive buses unsupervised, to drive by themselves in place of the fired workers. The union rep attributed a minor accident by these new drivers to this policy.

Photo: Arlington Transit

Jokers and facts explain "union advantage" at new website

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:27:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO launched a new website last week designed to educate union members, potential union members and the general public about collective bargaining, the "union advantage" and right-wing attempts to weaken labor law.

The website, collectivebargainingfacts.com, features short comic videos, a Real Jokers quiz employing mildly shocking humor to educate, and provides hard facts on why unions are good for working people.

While employment data and wage-benefit statistics are important, let's be honest - that's usually pretty boring! Furthermore, it's time-consuming and hard to understand. So the use of humorous videos and quizzes is a welcomed addition to the labor movement's arsenal of tools.

Fortunately, over the past couple of years the labor movement has been experimenting with new ways to communicate, to reach out to and educate members and potential members in new ways. With traditional forms of union communications (newspapers, newsletters, flyers, in-person meetings with stewards, etc.) increasing in cost, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions have been exploring the online world, utilizing social networking sites, online videos and interactivity more and more.

With Facebook pages, interactive websites and online videos unions are able to reach hundreds of thousands of people with a push of a button. Obviously, these aren't designed to (nor should they) replace traditional forms of organizing and member education - like union meetings, door-to-door canvassing and worksite visits - but they do have their place.

They are relatively inexpensive tools that should be utilized and taken advantage of. And the new AFL-CIO website is a good example of where the labor movement is headed.

For example, the first video currently featured at collectivebargainingfacts.com, titled "Let's Negotiate," shows a group of workers - male, female, young, old, brown, black and white - a reflection of the American working class - walking proudly towards a conference room. The narrator reminds us: In these hard economic times workers have sacrificed for the "good of the company," and even though wages have stalled and benefits were lost, executive bonuses soared and "CEO pay and company profits are hitting new highs."

As the workers get closer to the conference room the narrator suggests that workers should "share in the prosperity." But the door closes! The point: American workers have been locked out of the negotiating process, locked out of the American Dream!

Another narrator then says: "Without collective bargaining, workers don't have a voice at the table."

Unfortunately, most people are unfamiliar with collective bargaining agreements; it all seems very complex and confusing. With anti-union propaganda, fear and intimidation, antiquated labor laws and low union density in most industries, how are ordinary people supposed to understand the intricacies of negotiated wages, benefits, pensions, vacation time, sick leave and job classifications?

In fact, I know many union representatives who have spent a lifetime trying to decipher our labor laws as they pertain to collective bargaining.

What is collective bargaining? The new website makes it clear and simple.

In short, it is all about raising wages, negotiating health care and pension plans, sick leave, job security and your rights in the work-place.

According to collectivebargainingfacts.com:

- Collective bargaining agreements equal higher wages. On average, union members - workers covered under a collective bargaining agreement - earn about 28 percent more than their non-union counterparts.

- Collective bargaining increases wages for all workers. Latino union members earn almost 51 percent more than their non-union counterparts; union women earn almost 34 percent more than their non-union counterparts; African American union members earn about 31 percent more than their non-union counterparts; and white male union members earn about 21 percent more than their non-union counterparts.

- Workers who have a collective bargaining agreement are more likely to have health care, a pension and paid sick leave. Eighty-four percent of union workers have employer-provided health care; only 55 percent of non-union workers have employer-provided health care.

Check out collectivebargainingfacts.com. Not only will you come away with a better understanding of collective bargaining - and what it means - but you might also have a good laugh or two.

Steelworkers warn Congress: Don't back trade that hurts workers

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:36:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH - The Steelworkers have laid out, again, a detailed case against all three pending "free trade" agreements - with Colombia, Panama and South Korea - circulating on Capitol Hill. But it's literally the last line of union President Leo Gerard's 5-page single-spaced letter that may really wake lawmakers up.

That's because he says voters will remember next November which politicians favored workers and which ones didn't on the trade pacts - a warning to both parties.

"The American people, in increasing numbers, reject the approach our policymakers have taken on the trade issue. They will remember, at the next election, those who stood by their side and those who put their jobs, their families and their communities at risk," Gerard's detailed June 20 letter concludes.

Gerard wrote Congress as debate heated up over the pacts, and especially over those with South Korea and Colombia. Business launched an expensive blitz for the pacts. The GOP-run House Ways and Means Committee started work on legislation to implement them, but Congress can do nothing officially until the Obama administration sends such legislation to Capitol Hill - which must vote it up or down, with no changes.

The Steelworkers leader argues all three treaties are built on the flawed model of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As labor forecast in arguing against it, NAFTA has cost at least 683,000 well-paying U.S. industrial jobs, calculations show. Gerard urged Congress to beat all three new pacts.

"Overwhelming portions of our members work in import-sensitive manufacturing sectors, and all too often lost jobs due to bad trade deals and unfair and predatory trade practices. Promises made by administrations past and present touting the benefits of free trade have simply not materialized for America's manufacturing workers," he said.

"The results of 'free trade' deals are all too clear: In the last decade alone, six million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 plants have been lost. Multinational companies easily set up operations overseas and export back to the U.S....New Department of Commerce data show large U.S. multinational companies cut their workforces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million. This continues even as workers wrestle with a tepid and uncertain recovery."

Trade policies that "encourage job growth overseas" lead to unemployment and under-employment here, Gerard warned lawmakers. Citing the Economic Policy Institute's calculations, for example, he said the U.S.-Korea FTA pact alone could cost another 159,000 high-paying jobs and increase the U.S. trade deficit in seven sectors.

"The Korea-U.S. FTA will accelerate the off-shoring and outsourcing of auto parts production, jeopardizing not only the jobs of 350,000 Steelworkers that make products that can be used in the auto supply chain, but those of other workers across the country," Gerard said. Obama did well to keep U.S. tariffs on Korean vehicles for up to eight years, he conceded, but "came up short for the vastly larger auto supply chain."

Labor is split, however, on the U.S.-Korea deal. The United Auto Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers favor it and other unions - plus the AFL-CIO and Korean organized labor - oppose it.

UFCW says the U.S.-Korea deal will open up the Korean market to processed U.S. meat and poultry, whose plants employ many of its members. UAW negotiated with the Obama administration to keep the tariffs on the Korean vehicles.

Gerard said the pact would endanger the auto supply chain workers' jobs. They would face cheap Korean imports, aided by Korea's currency manipulation. The pact does nothing to curb that manipulation or multinationals' actions, he said. And the pact lets Korea export vehicles to the U.S. that are only 35 percent Korean-made, making Korea a transshipment center for even-cheaper Chinese cars - and costing more U.S. jobs.

Organized labor is unanimously dead set against the Colombia FTA, for the reasons Gerard laid out in his letter: The Latin American nation is the world leader in political assassinations of unionists and has been for more than a decade.

And a recent agreement on labor rights enforcement between Colombia's new president and Democratic President Barack Obama is only just that - an agreement - that hasn't gone into effect yet and that isn't part of the U.S.-Colombia FTA, he adds.

The pact is "sacrificing the lives and livelihoods, the worker and human rights of the Colombian people at the altar of free trade," he declared. It "institutionalizes a status quo that makes Colombia the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member." The death toll is approaching 2,600.

Colombia "continues to fail miserably at effectively prosecuting those responsible for anti-union violence. Impunity for anti-union killings remains at 96 percent, while impunity for other forms of anti-union violence remains at an incredible 99.8 percent," Gerard wrote. "Colombia should not be rewarded with a trade agreement until it has a proven track record of bringing to justice" the perpetrators and enforcing workers' rights nationwide.

In a separate letter, The Washington Office on Latin America also enlisted 431 groups against the U.S.-Colombia FTA. They included IBEW Local 1837, fair trade coalitions in Minnesota and Oregon, the United Electrical Workers, USW Local 1188 and the union's Maine state council, Teamsters Local 340 and UFCW Local 1689.

Photo: messay Shoakena // CC 2.0

It's union time at America's airports!

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:52:00 +0000

40,000 workers at 450 airports across the nation are celebrating today after choosing the American Federation of Government Employees as their union and sole bargaining agent.

Their victory ends a ten-year struggle that began shortly after 9/11 when then President Bush, on grounds of protecting national security, took away the collective bargaining rights of Transportation Security Administration employees at the nation's airports.

In the midst of unprecedented nationwide attacks on the right to join a union the workers have elected AFGE as their exclusive union representative. The 8,903 - 8,447 vote came in a runoff with the National Treasury Employees Union. In the union election earlier this year the workers had voted 8,369 for AFGE, and 8,097 for NTEU, with only 3,111 voting "no union." The runoff was necessary to achieve a majority.

"With all the attacks on unions these workers were given a choice and they said, 'We want a union," declared a jubilant Emily Ryan, an AFGE communications specialist, in a phone interview. "They said, 'We are Americans, we deserve a voice on the job, we have a right to a union and we are going to have that union."

Ryan said the victory was particularly sweet because, "In ten years the 40,000 workers have gone from having all their rights stripped away by President Bush to having those rights restored by the Obama administration, to having to fight for actual union representation, to the big victory they have just won. For them it is out of the darkness and into the light."

"We are thrilled with the election results, but more importantly we are overjoyed that the transportation security officers will have the full union representation they deserve," said AFGE President John Gage.

Also pleased, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, in a statement. "Today's victory affirms the deep-seated desire of workers for a voice on the job and a seat at the table when given a free choice."

Ryan said the workers deserve credit for their willingness to fight even during the period when they had no collective bargaining rights. During the 10-year struggle to restore collective bargaining rights, she explained, more than 12,000 of them joined 40 AFGE local unions across the country. "They wanted their union to be in place as soon as they won back their rights," she said.

AFGE succeeded last year in winning one of its key battles when TSA announced that no more airports would be privatized.

Kim Adams, now a union member in Montana, said, "Within hours of our call to the union to help us save our jobs and stop the privatization of our airports in Montana they went into high gear in Washington. The airport officials in Montana told us we had no chance of stopping them but the union proved them wrong."

Veda Shook, president of the flight attendants union (CWA), said the newly union-represented security workers "play a vital role in transportation security. We count on them every day to ensure a safe environment for all our passengers and for ourselves."

Despite the celebratory mood Ryan said AFGE will remain "on guard" to defeat further attacks from the right on collective bargaining rights.

She said her union was outraged over the fact that GOP House members voted earlier this month to again strip from TSA workers their right to collectively bargain by passing an amendment by Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) to the House Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill.

"We are going after senators to make sure that this amendment goes nowhere," said Ryan.

The union says there is no evidence that collective bargaining rights impact negatively on national security. "Let us not forget," said Gage, "that the 9/11 police and firefighter first responders were all union members with a collective bargaining contract, and it was AFGE police at Fort Hood who didn't stop to check their collective bargaining contracts before taking down a killer."

He added: "We will not allow these corporate, right wing politicians to make being in a union un-American."

Photo: A TSA employee checks a passenger's ticket at DFW Airport in Fort Worth, Texas. Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/AP

Labor board rules would make it easier to unionize

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:02:00 +0000

The National Labor Relations Board proposed new rules this week that would make it easier for workers to unionize.

The NLRB proposals would shorten the process by ensuring that employers, employees and unions receive information sooner and by delaying employer-instigated litigation over many voter-eligibility issues until after workers vote on whether to unionize.

It is through such litigation that employers are now able to remove workers who back the union from the list of eligible voters. Companies frequently delay elections, for example, by submitting lists of employees they say are really "supervisors" and therefore ineligible to vote. The rule changes would prevent such claims from causing delays because they would have to be taken up after the election.

Taken as a whole, the proposed NLRB changes could significantly shorten the now-average two months time that it takes after a petition is filed before an election actually happens.

The problem now is that once petitions for an election are filed, companies use the average two-month period before the election to hire union-busters, run anti-union propaganda campaigns and even harass and fire union supporters. The new rules give them less time to do this.

Also among the proposed rule changes are measures that would speed up the process by allowing electronic filing of petitions and other materials.

One of the board's four members, Brian Hayes, the only Republican, dissented from the proposed new rules.

The AFL-CIO has applauded the proposed changes because the new rules weaken the ability of companies to deny workers their right to form a union.

Labor and its allies back the changes because, at least to a modest degree, they address a major problem the now-sidelined Employee Free Choice Act was designed to solve - the problem of companies getting too much time to kill union organizing drives. The EFCA, in its various forms, would have allowed workers to choose a union either via majority sign-up (card-check) or, in case of a secret ballot election, an election held within days, not months, after the filing of a petition.

Right wingers, as expected, are mounting an almost hysterical campaign against the proposed changes. They are trying to take full advantage of the 75 days everyone has to submit official reactions to the board, which can then modify the proposals.

"It's like the sky is falling ," is how James Park, in a piece written for the AFL-CIO website, characterizes conservative reaction to the rules changes.

Randy Johnson, the chief labor official at the Chamber of Commerce, declared yesterday, "The proposal is one of the administration's biggest gifts yet to organized labor."

A day earlier Michael Eastman, another Chamber official, used identical language in reaction to an unrelated proposal by the Labor Department that would improve transparency reporting by "consultants," the word employers use to describe union-busters they hire to fight unions.

"This is probably the most significant handout to organized labor that we've seen in this administration," Eastman said about the proposed Labor Department rule.

But Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, called the NLRB moves "a modest step" that would be good for businesses as well as workers.

"Our current system is a broken, bureaucratic maze that stalls and stymies workers' choices," Trumka said. "With the proposal of these new standards, the board is taking a modest step to remove roadblocks and reduce litigation - and that's good news for employers as well as employees."

In the past two weeks, particularly after the NLRB sued Boeing for retaliating against its union workers by opening a production line in a non-union plant in South Carolina, Republicans have accused the NLRB of going beyond what they narrowly define as its mission of scheduling union elections and resolving disputes.

The NLRB argues that enforcement of labor law and entering the rule-making process to revamp existing procedures are actually solid board traditions ever since it was established under the National Labor Relations Act 75 years ago.

"It is fair to predict that the new proposals will be controversial," the board's chair, Wilma Liebman, said in a statement accompanying the proposed rules changes. "That controversy is unfortunate, but it is not a good reason for the board to abandon its responsibilities."

Her reasoning was completely lost on Republican Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, chair of the House Education and the Workforce (formerly Labor) Committee, who said, "Big Labor has found faithful friends on the Obama NLRB, who are working hard to fix a process that isn't broken."

The committee's senior Democrat, Rep. George Miller of California, had the opposite view. "Idealogues will undoubtedly criticize and scaremonger over this modest, common-sense proposal," he said. "In reality, the proposal will reduce costly litigation for all parties and reduce unnecessary conflict in the workplace."

Unions turn up the heat on Colombia trade

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - With the House's ruling Republicans poised to write draft legislation affirming the controversial trade pact between the U.S. and Colombia, labor stepped up its drive against the agreement, dispatching top U.S. unionists and a delegation of Colombian union leaders to lobby against it.

And the Communications Workers, who are leading the charge, added to it with a report showing how the Colombian communications company Telefonica denies its workers rights by forcing them into labor "cooperatives" that ban organizing and strip workers there of other protections, such as the minimum wage, too.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO launched an ad campaign pointing out how the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is bad for U.S. and Colombian workers. Colombian and U.S. unionists and several lawmakers reiterated that at a Capitol Hill press conference on June 16.

The U.S.-Colombia FTA, first negotiated by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, is at the desk of Democratic President Barack Obama, who wants to send it to Congress for up-or-down votes, with no amendments. The GOP-run House Ways and Means Committee, which handles trade, plans to start work on it on June 21.

But trying to get congressional support - and to overcome the fact that right-wing paramilitaries, often paid by multi-national corporations, have murdered almost 2,600 Colombian union leaders in the last 15 and a half years - the administration negotiated a labor accord with the new Colombian government.

Obama also lined up strong support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobby, for the U.S.-Colombia FTA. And Obama certified Colombia is meeting the first benchmarks of that labor accord's protections of workers.

The Colombian union leaders and CWA President Larry Cohen said that it isn't.

"The (labor) action plan by President Obama and (Colombian) President Santos is nothing more than a trick to get the free trade agreement passed," said one of the six Colombian union leaders, Jose Diogenes Orjela Garcia, through an interpreter.

The plan "is not going to stop them from firing workers or murdering workers. Ten more have been murdered thus far this year, five after the plan was signed."

"This action plan and other laws have not been discussed with Colombian workers," added Johnson Torres Ortis, a leader of the Colombian sugar cane cutters union - a group that is predominantly Afro-Colombian, and the most persecuted.

Colombia is also notorious for not prosecuting murderers of unionists - or anyone else killed in its long left-right civil war - and it doesn't protect the vulnerable. "Three of six members of our delegation have been threatened," said Orjela Garcia.

"Companies refuse to put an end to the 'cooperatives.' They refuse to enter collective bargaining, and refuse to stop firing workers for seeking a union," he added.

U.S. workers who want to form unions are threatened, harassed and fired, Cohen said. Colombian workers who want to form unions are threatened, harassed - and become victims of drive-by shootings, he declared.

Meanwhile, multi-nationals and other large companies benefit from Colombian laws that deny workers their rights, including the law allowing the collectives and others that declare Colombian workers independent contractors or ban them from bargaining.

Both groups of firms would benefit from the U.S.-Colombia FTA, the unionists said.

Cohen and CWA used Telefonica as the case study.

The White House-pushed action plan for Colombia to solve its labor ills has laudable aims and goals, the union study says. "But judging from early action, and based especially on the case study of Telefonica, we have little or no confidence the action plan will bring about desperately needed changes in Colombia."

Spanish-owned Telefonica, among other things, uses private third-party agencies to avoid the requirement that it honor union-organizing mandates, hires workers as six-month temps through those agencies to do its telecom work - when a worker must be with a parent firm for longer than that to gain labor law coverage - and "fosters a climate of fear to maintain the status quo."

"Last June, Telefonica fired 432 employees without justification and without notice." That "creates an effective and intimidating tool to prevent unionization and hold down labor costs," the CWA report adds. CWA posted the report on its website.

The firm has 11,421 workers in Colombia, but at least 8,000 jobs there have been outsourced, thus denying workers their rights in another way.

CWA took the Colombian union leaders around to educate approximately 20 members of Congress. Three also came to the press conference, to explain the impact on U.S. workers, denounce the FTA and promise to educate their colleagues, too.

"When they have to compete against workers who are not allowed a minimum wage or overtime, who can't stand up for themselves, how can American workers compete with that?" asked Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif. "There's no freedom there."

Photo: Public Citizen // CC 2.0

“Winkler County nurses” win another victory

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:58:00 +0000

The American Nurses Association hailed a new victory for two whistle-blower nurses from Winkler County, Texas - Vicki Galle and Anne Mitchell - with the conviction this week of County Sheriff Robert Roberts.

This case became known nationally after the two long-time registered nurses at Winkler County Hospital in Kermit, Texas, reported to the Texas Medical Board in 2009 about serious misconduct, substandard care and an inappropriate business partnership between Sheriff Robert Roberts and a hospital physician, Dr. Rolando Arafiles Jr.

Normally after such a report an investigation takes place and the complainants' names are kept confidential. However in this case, the sheriff used his position to confiscate the nurses' computers, finding their letter to the medical board. The hospital then fired the nurses, whose names were now public, and the nurses were charged with "official misuse of information," which could have resulted in 10 years of imprisonment and fines.

Nurses all over the country voiced support for their right to be protected as "whistle-blowers". The Texas Nurses Association supported them and nurses sent thousands of dollars to support their defense.

American Nurses Association President Karen A. Daley, in the online bulletin Nursing Insider, said, "The public trusts nurses to be their advocates and nurses are legally bound to protect patients and their quality of care."

"Safe harbor" laws allow nurses to report serious misconduct or patient care concerns anonymously so that charges may be investigated without reprisal or being fired. If nurses are scared to report concerns about physicians, they say, the public is in danger.

At the nurses' trial in 2010 the charges against Galle were dropped and Mitchell was acquitted.

Subsequently charges were filed against Dr. Arafiles, Sheriff Roberts, County Attorney Scott Tidwell, and the Winkler County Hospital. The charges included the same "misuse of information" that the hospital had initially charged the nurses with. But Dr. Arafiles was charged with several counts relating to unsafe patient care, violating the Medical Patient Care Act, and his business dealings with Sheriff Roberts, selling patients questionable health supplements. Another charge of "witness intimidation" was leveled against Sheriff Roberts who helped to identify the two nurses.

On June 14 Sheriff Roberts was convicted by a jury after only two hours of deliberation. He was sentenced to four years of felony probation, 100 days in jail and a $6,000 fine. He must surrender his "peace officer" license. The others who have been indicted, Dr. Arafiles and County Attorney Tidwell, await trial.

The hospital has already been fined $15,850 for improper supervision of the physician.

Protection of nurses and reporting laws are widely seen as of great importance for both nurses and patient safety. The new Affordable Health Care Act allows not only nurses but other health care personnel such as nurses' aides to report misconduct and unsafe conditions. The National Nurses Union has also taken up the issue of unsafe staffing conditions that seriously affect safe patient care.

As of last report the two Winkler County nurses have been out of work since the beginning of the case in 2009.

Administration clashes with government workers

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:34:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration and the American Federation of Government Employees are clashing over collective bargaining rights for thousands of health care workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with Obama officials saying legislation that AFGE backs goes too far.

At issue is the VA's use of one paragraph of the U.S. code, dealing with banning bargaining over routine pay matters such as overtime. AFGE backs legislation by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to change the wording of the paragraph from a ban on bargaining over "compensation" to a ban on bargaining over "rates of basic pay."

Dr. Robert Jesse, principal deputy undersecretary for health at the VA, said Brown's bill, S572, which would aid at least 100,000 workers, goes too far.

The change is important because the VA has been using the law to arbitrarily set pay and compensation for some of its health care workers and not others, and to deny grievances when the union raises pay equity issues, said AFGE Secretary-Treasurer J. David Cox, a registered nurse.

"S572 does not create new bargaining rights," Cox testified on June 11. "This restores equal bargaining rights over routine compensation matters previously afforded to the following medical professionals covered by the VA's personnel system: Registered nurses, physicians, dentists, physician assistants, optometrists, podiatrists, chiropractors, and expanded-duty dental auxiliaries.

"Until 2003, VA's medical professionals had the same compensation bargaining rights as Veterans Health Administration employees covered by bargaining rights and medical professionals at military hospitals and other federal facilities. Over the past eight years, the VA interpreted the bargaining rights law - Section 7422 - to single out medical professionals and deprive them of basic rights to grieve and negotiate over routine pay matters such as nurse overtime pay and physician incentive pay.

"The VA has also used Section 7422 to block complaints arising out of violations of rights under other federal laws. How can anyone oppose making the VA abide by its own pay rules?" Cox asked.

But Jesse opposed the legislation. He said VA is trying to fix the problem internally via discussions with AFGE and four other unions representing its workers. He said:

"The ability to exercise pay flexibility is a vital recruitment and retention tool. It is necessary to allow the VA to efficiently compete on a cost-effective basis with the private sector and to attract and retain clinical staff who deliver health care to veterans. This flexibility would be greatly hindered by the collective bargaining ramifications of S. 572."

Photo: Jason Kuffer // CC 2.0

Panel pushes end to secrecy on women's pay

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Rampant secrecy about pay, often written into employers' rules and "employee handbooks," helps fuel pay discrimination against women on the job, a panel of equal pay advocates says.

The June 9 discussion, convened by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, found in a new survey that 48 percent of employees reported that they're subject to flat bans about talking about their pay, under threat of discipline or firing. In the private sector, it's 60 percent.

"Pay secrecy policies are incredibly prevalent," said Carol Golubock, policy director for the Service Employees and one of the four panelists. But "union counsel can deal with them" and the National Labor Relations Act makes pay a mandatory subject of bargaining, she added, thus lessening secrecy.

The secrecy particularly harms woman workers and their families, 48 years after Congress passed the original Equal Pay Act, the panelists said. But that law has few teeth, no damages - unlike other civil rights laws - and is enforced by a small agency, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. And only six percent of EEOC discrimination complaints involve sexual pay discrimination, panelists said.

"The National Labor Relations Board has made it clear that prohibiting employees from talking about pay is an unfair labor practice," the formal name for company labor law-breaking, Golubock explained.

Unfortunately, she reiterated the fact that penalties for labor law-breakers under the National Labor Relations Act aren't much better: Back pay minus earnings gleaned from other jobs while awaiting resolution of labor law cases, which can take years.

As a result, Golubock admitted, "even when the union does come in" by winning a recognition election and negotiating a contract for workers "employers don't pull their pay policies" banning such pay discussions. "It's often a battle for us," she said.

The more usual thing is in the form of a phrase she quoted from an unnamed New Hampshire employers' handbook: "At no time is the employee to discuss pay with anyone. If so, the employee is immediately terminated."

All this prompted the panel to again urge the crowd, which packed a Senate hearing room, to push for the Paycheck Fairness Act. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Sens. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would put some teeth in the older law. Their bill entered the House in the Democratic-run 111th Congress. The Senate fell two votes short of breaking a GOP filibuster against it.

Their bill would award triple damages to workers - without subtracting other pay - who win discrimination suits. It would also outlaw employer bans on workers discussing pay. And it would award compensatory and punitive damages.

And the proposed law would cover every worker, Golubock pointed out; that includes those now exempt from the National Labor Relations Act: Home health care workers, farm workers, domestic workers and anyone the NLRB rules is a "supervisor." Passing it would also let workers pursue other wage frauds, she added, notably denial of earned overtime pay.

But there are also other forms of discrimination on the job that hurt women workers' paychecks, panelists said.

Lila Hunter-Taylor, CEO of The Staff Hunter, a placement firm, and a member of the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce - which is more sympathetic to workers than the regular male-dominated U.S. Chamber of Commerce - said women often are not socialized to speak up for themselves in negotiating pay.

They take the first offer, she added - and employers know it. Some have even told her flatly they prefer hiring women for new vacancies because of that.

"Such persistent wage gaps can be challenged only when women have the tools available to them" by pay comparisons with other workers, Hunter-Taylor said.

Fatima Gross-Graves of the National Women's Law Center pinpointed another problem the law does not address, but that the pending class action suit against Wal-Mart, now before the Supreme Court, does: "A culture of intimidation, of being fired and demoted for discussing pay, suppresses wages in and of itself," she stated.

Class-action suits, if the court allows them, help overcome that culture by putting the whole issue in the hands of courts, she noted.

But a big key that ran through all the presentations was that information, or lack of it, can affect the chances for women gaining equal pay, and that's where the legislation comes in.

"If a worker can talk with another worker about how much they're paid," Golubock concluded, "enforcement" of equal pay laws "is much easier."

Push for 1 million Ohioans against SB 5

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:18:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio - "We can realistically reach a million signatures against SB 5 with the mobilization we've put together now," said John Parker, regional field director for the We Are Ohio coalition. "This is a goal that will build momentum into the November election. It will show everyone that the union-community coalition can and will have the horses to reverse SB 5 and gain justice for Ohio's working families."

Parker was speaking to union and community supporters at the Carpenters union hall here on Friday, preparing for the final run to the polls in the drive against SB 5, the bill passed by the GOP legislative majority to wipe out collective bargaining rights in the state. Petitioning to place that bill on the November ballot is continuing through this month, with a target of June 25 as the cutoff date to turn in petitions. Signatures of 233,000 voters, totaling 3 percent of the electorate in 44 of Ohio's 88 counties in the previous election, are needed for the proposed referendum to be certified on the ballot in the fall.

We Are Ohio announced Friday that more than 714,000 signatures had been collected. "The goal now is 1 million signatures," Parker said. (See video below.)

In central Ohio, more than 1,500 volunteers are helping in the campaign. Four festivals have been selected as key mobilizing targets: Columbus Pride, Juneteenth and Creekside Blues/Jazz fest, all of which took place June 17, and Comfest this coming Friday, June 24.

The biggest priority is being put on mobilizing for this Friday's Comfest, the huge Columbus music fest. This year SB 5 petitions will be officially part of the fest, at various designated areas, and a break-out session is scheduled to push for signatures and support. Volunteers are urged to go online to www.WeAreOhio.com, or email John Parker at jparker@weareohio.com, to sign up to help out. The Fire Fighters union and SEIU will have official delegations campaigning there, as well.

"We will probably speak to over half of the entire electorate in Ohio before we finish the petition drive, " said Norm Wernet, Ohio director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. "In all the struggles I've been involved in, I've never seen so wide a coalition built, so many Ohioans involved."

The We Are Ohio website has charts of festivals, gatherings, rallies and various mobilizations taking place every day through June and July that people can check out, call in for and help out with. In addition to petitioning, phone banks are now running full time at the Ohio AFL-CIO offices on E. Broad St., Columbus. Volunteers are needed for data entry, picking up petitions and numerous other tasks, as well. Folks can text OH225568 to get regular updates on the campaign.

Celebrations, parties, get-out-the-vote rallies and many other activities are already being planned for July to November. The campaign here has begun developing a huge Labor Day rally, in the Columbus Commons, which will kick off the fall referendum campaign.

"This needs to re-establish Labor's Day and really reclaim our Commons, for all of us," said Don Coulter, president of Columbus SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees). "I'm really happy we're re-establishing Labor Day as a holiday here for all working folks, but we have to keep it going, do it in 2012, and every year after that!"

The fight for the referendum will begin in earnest after July, and will face a massive money-driven campaign by corporations and the wealthy to defend SB 5. It will take a huge turnout of working people to win, but, activists say, we have the people, all they've got is money!

"This fight is a tough one," said Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga. "There is terrible danger to our people in SB 5, but it also offers us a tremendous opportunity to talk to all Ohioans about the positives of unionism, about what unity and coalition work can win for us. This is a difficult, a tough fight, but when we're united and determined, we will win!"

Photo: Voters sign petitions to repeal SB 5, May 16 in Pomeroy, Ohio. We Are Ohio

Unions hit GOP "verification" scheme

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:51:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Two top union leaders, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Service Employees Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina, are blasting the Republicans' latest anti-worker gambit: Forcing firms to use a faulty employee verification scheme, called "E-verify," to check the legal status of every job applicant.

The right-wing plan would open up to 60 million workers to the threat that they could be misidentified as not being citizens or legal residents, by requiring their present government and private employers to check their status all over again.

And employer response in such cases, Medina noted, has not been to give workers a chance to produce papers proving their legality - as E-verify requires - but to immediately fire them.

The "Legal Workforce Act," authored by right-wing House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, goes even beyond E-verify in punishing workers, the union leaders said.

They noted that if employers didn't want to use the system, Smith's scheme would let them avoid it by simply declaring employees to be "independent contractors," a common employer dodge that strips workers not just of their labor rights, but of mandatory employer tax payments for Social Security, Medicare and workers' comp.

Smith is long known for his anti-Hispanic crusade and his demand that all undocumented workers in the U.S. be rounded up and immediately deported. Details of his law prompted the sharp comments from Trumka, Medina and Service Employees International Union Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman.

"This is a bad, bad, bad idea. It'll be bad for the economy, bad for workers, bad for business and bad for society," Medina told a June 16 telephone press conference.

"It would make E-verify mandatory on all" federal, state and local "government workers nationwide, and that's 18 million people. Each and every one would have to be re-verified to make sure they are in the country legally." The measure would also apply to every new worker hired, and Medina said businesses fill 40 million slots yearly.

"Are soldiers federal workers? Are you going to pull every single soldier off the front line in Afghanistan to see if they're legally entitled to put their lives at risk for their country?" Medina asked.

Previous SEIU lawsuits against use of E-verify, which right now is voluntary for firms, show its database is riddled with errors on approximately 20 percent of its names.

Smith's bill is in line, however, with the overall trend in the GOP, which emphasizes anti-Hispanic measures - everything from immediate local arrests and deportation of undocumented workers to use of federal immigration agents on raids on businesses that employ many "foreign-looking" workers.

Those raids frequently occur at employer request during union organizing drives, especially in meatpacking plants.

"Smith thinks if he talks tough about holding employers accountable for breaking workplace immigration laws, no one will notice that his bill allows employers to avoid E-Verify altogether by incorrectly classifying employees as independent contractors," Trumka added in a June 15 statement.

"Smith thinks if he talks tough about protecting the jobs of U.S. workers, no one will notice he is laying the groundwork for a vast expansion of temporary foreign guest worker programs, programs which will displace U.S. workers and drive down wages.

"Unemployed workers are fed up with tough talk on immigration that adds up to nothing more than a free pass for Big Business and the Farm Lobby to continue with the same business-as-usual" approach, Trumka said.

Medina said that in addition to mobilizing workers, community groups, church groups and activists against Smith's bill, he personally has been talking to business about opposing it. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in the past has cooperated with unions on failed efforts for comprehensive immigration reform, has reversed course and supports Smith's legislation.

That disappointed Medina and prompted Ackerman to blast the business lobby for "working on behalf of large corporations, not small businesses." The smaller firms, both said, would find such extensive checking a huge burden.

Medina said the smaller firms he talks with "are absolutely opposed" to Smith's bill; so is the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Still, Medina conceded Smith's bill - despite what he called the congressman's "xenophobia" - will probably pass the heavily GOP House. Both Medina and Ackerman predicted it will die in the narrowly Democratic Senate. But the Senate killed comprehensive immigration reform, pushed by then-GOP President George W. Bush and the late Sen. Edward M, Kennedy, D-Mass., in 2007. Still, said Ackerman, "I can't imagine any (Senate) Democrats voting for this."

Photo: Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., on Capitol Hill. Drew Angerer/AP

Philly Council passes paid sick days, will mayor sign?

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:22:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA - Capping a three year effort of organizing political pressure and a hectic day of vigorous last minute lobbying, the City Council passed a bill here last week requiring most employers to provide their employees with the opportunity to earn paid sick leave. Following the tense, closely watched vote, Council President Anna Verna, who had voted against the measure, announced the result: 9-8 in favor. Supporters of the bill erupted in cheers throughout the halls there after the vote.

The advocacy groups supporting the measure included Women's Way; Pathways, PA; Jobs with Justice and other community grassroots organizations. They had built a coalition of over 100 supporting organizations including the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and many individual unions. Many of them spent the day at City Hall working to ensure that, when the vote took place, it would have a positive outcome.

The bill now awaits the signature of Mayor Michael Nutter, who has not been a supporter. The bill drew opposition from some business groups and the commercial media, including a lengthy article in the business section of the Philadelphia Inquirer arguing that such a law would be too costly for small businesses to bear. But Marianne Bellesorte, senior director of Policy at Pathways PA told the media after the vote that she believed "the mayor will see that this is a great bill" and "this was a bill that everyone needed to think about."

Around 40 percent of all the hourly-wage workers in the city have no sick days. The bill's supporters argued that many are concentrated in fields such as child care and food preparation where it is especially important for workers on the job to be healthy and not be under pressure to come to work sick.

The bill, if it becomes law, would enable workers to earn one hour of paid sick time for every 40 hours worked. Employers of 10 or more workers would be required to provide up to 7 sick days on this basis. The measure would make Philadelphia the third city in the nation to have such a law after San Francisco and Washington, DC. A Wisconsin state law recently passed by the Republican legislature reportedly over ruled a similar measure in Milwaukee.

Photo: Community organizer Dennis Spain leads the chant at Philadelphia's City Hall: "Earned sick time now!" (Ben Sears/PW)

Attacks on labor end in a whimper

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:44:00 +0000

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - The third big front in the right-wing Republican-business state-by-state war on workers, in Missouri, ended mostly with a whimper, not a bang, when the state legislature adjourned in May.

But in one respect, the GOP won big: They passed a congressional redistricting map that gives Republicans 6-2 control of the state delegation. It throws one of its three Democrats, Russ Carnahan of south St. Louis and its suburbs, into a GOP-dominated district, to make up for the fact that Missouri lost one U.S. House seat.

When it opened this year's legislature, the GOP touted an agenda that it claimed would create thousands of jobs for the state. But their plans faltered and eventually died in the Missouri legislative session that ended May 13, the victim of political bickering between Republican leaders in the state's House and Senate.

When Republican House Speaker Steven Tilley and Senate President Rob Mayer announced the Republican legislative agendas in January, they said their priority would be creating more jobs for Missouri. That didn't happen.

The two biggest jobs bills in the legislature were to create a China trade hub at Lambert Airport in St. Louis, and to facilitate the construction of a new nuclear power plant near the existing nuclear plant in central Missouri. Both would have created thousands of jobs. Instead, Republicans spent most of their time in both chambers on other issues. The China hub and the nuclear power plant bills died in the final week.

Meanwhile, strong opposition from every union in Missouri, plus important help from a small group of Republican state senators, led to the defeat of a broad anti-union agenda promoted by strong Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature.

The major union victory was defeat of a phony so-called "right to work" bill by Senate President Rob Mayer. He tagged it SB1 and said it was his #1 priority.

But in the face of a lengthy filibuster by the senate's eight Democrats, backed by another half dozen or so of the 26 Republicans, the bill died on the senate calendar.

The campaign got significant help from a coalition of community activists, faith leaders and unions in Jobs With Justice who orchestrated a grassroots campaign that contacted thousands of union members and encouraged them to talk to their state representatives and senators.

Other anti-union and anti-worker bills that died included: paycheck deception, which would have required voluntary written authorization for payroll deduction of union dues, and restricted use of union funds for member education; elimination of project labor agreements, the labor-management agreements that prevent strikes and require job disputes to be mediated without work stoppages; elimination of the state's prevailing wage law, which is aimed at preventing low-wage outside contractors from underbidding local contractors on local and state construction projects; elimination of tenure for public school teachers and the expansion of private charter schools paid for by taxpayers; elimination of the cost-of-living provision in Missouri's minimum wage law; and a measure letting employers escape liability for health and safety hazards such as overlooking unsafe working conditions and exposure to cancer-causing materials such as asbestos.

Mayer's right to work bill was a lightning bolt that activated unions throughout the state, and drew attention from their international headquarters. Missouri AFL-CIO President Hugh McVey said union leaders and members made phone calls and personal visits to state representatives and senators, both Democrats and Republicans, all over Missouri. Their key message: Right to work laws in other states led to lower wages, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and a lower standard of living for all working families.

"Those contacts were critical. They helped members of the House and Senate - Democrat and Republican - understand the implications of right to work, and we managed to bring a small but important number of Republicans over to our side.

"This issue is not going away and we believe we can bring more Republicans to a realistic understanding of this issue in the future. Democrats support us 100 percent. But we think we can continue to educate Republicans on the harmful effects of this phony right to work issue."

Union leaders hope the cordial relationships developed with state lawmakers this year will lead to greater understanding of issues affecting working families in the future.

"In years past, we've ignored the Republicans," said Herb Johnson, the state AFL-CIO's lead lobbyist, who testified in both houses against the anti-union bills that were given hearings. "That was a mistake we won't make again."

Democratic State Sens. Tim Green and Ryan McKenna led the opposition to the bills in the Senate, along with Sen. Victor Callahan of Kansas City, the Democratic floor leader. They said another important element in defeating the anti-labor bills was the individual relationships their tiny group of Democrats in the senate developed with Republicans, who control the Senate, 26-8.

With a majority that large, Republicans can do pretty much what they want to do. But cordiality and respect built up over the years help Democrats sometimes get their way, in a body where partisanship plays a lesser role than in the state House.

Republican senators Tom Dempsey, the GOP floor leader, Eric Schmitt, John Lamping and Kevin Engler all demonstrated bipartisanship, Senate Democrats say.

In the House, another element came into play over the right to work bill. Despite a nearly 2-1 Republican majority there, right to work was stopped cold by no less a figure than state House Speaker Steve Tilley.

Tilley let it be known that he did not want a right to work bill passed because it might land on the state ballot in 2012. Some versions of the bill would have placed it in a referendum. That would bring out huge numbers of union voters and could help defeat him in a race he plans to run for lieutenant governor.

Union members who worked against the anti-union agenda were jubilant.

"It's time for lawmakers to stop answering only to the corporate special interests and take action on the issues that really matter to Missouri voters - like creating good, family-supporting jobs and strengthening our economy," said Beth Dysart, a cashier at Shop-N-Save supermarkets in Lemay and member of UFCW Local 655.

Local 655 was part of a coalition including Missouri Jobs with Justice, Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, the Service Employees, the Communications Workers, the Missouri State Workers' Union, the Missouri affiliate of the National Education Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The redistricting loss was accompanied by another GOP bill - like those elsewhere - requiring voters to have photo IDs. It is aimed at suppressing Democratic votes among the elderly, disabled and younger voters, many of whom lack IDs.

Hundreds join Congress Hotel strikers at 8th Anniversary rally

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:08:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Sixty workers who have been on strike at the Congress Hotel here for eight years were joined June 15 by hundreds of supporters at a rally outside the hotel.

The crowds of community supporters, members of Unite Here, the hotel workers' union and members of many other local unions marked the 8^th anniversary of the strike, now the longest hotel strike in U.S. history.

It was on June 15, 2003 that workers at the Congress Hotel went out on strike after the hotel said it was freezing wages until 2010, ceasing payment of healthcare premiums for its workers and initiating a policy of subcontracting out any or all of the work performed by members of Unite Here's Local 1 bargaining unit.

Since that day in 2003 the hotel has never offered a proposal that included any type of wage increase or any change in its policy of not paying health care premiums beyond the amounts that were in place in the contract that expired in 2002.

The last bargaining session was in the summer of 2010.

The union will enter negotiations with the hotel again in early July of this year.

"This fight is my life," said Rene Patino, who was at the demonstration yesterday. He worked at the Congress Hotel for three years before the strike began and has been on strike since then with his wife Maria.

Patino sees sticking it out for all these years as the reason workers at other hotels in Chicago have made gains in recent years.

"If we quit with the strike," he said. "I know that the other hotels would take the same position as the Congress. Wages are still around $8 an hour (at the Congress) and they don't want to have any responsibility to the workers at all."

There are 60 active strikers who continue to picket the hotel day after day, week after week and year after year on bright sunny days and in rain and snow.

A review of gains made by hotel workers elsewhere in Chicago over the past few years shows that Patino's claims about the far-reaching effects of the strike are accurate.

At the time when Congress Hotel workers walked out, Chicago housekeepers were making $8.83 an hour. Today they earn $15.10 per hour.

Patino and the other strikers believe that those gains were made, in part, because the brave band of 60 strikers at the Congress has refused to settle for substandard wages.

The union has publicized the struggle all over the country. "We are determined," said union spokesperson Anne Marie Strassel, "to make sure that hotel jobs are strong family-sustaining jobs. It's why we have taken this fight from the negotiating table out into the streets of Chicago and all over the world."

Unite Here, Local 1 reached citywide agreements recently with Starwood Hotels and Hilton. The settlements reached thus far resolve all hotel contract disputes in Chicago except those with the Congress and Hyatt hotels.

Photo: Hotel strikers at 8th anniversary rally. UNITE HERE Local 1

Unions take fight vs. Walker bill to federal court

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:13:00 +0000

MADISON, Wis. - The Wisconsin AFL-CIO and a group of unions here filed a federal lawsuit June 15 to halt Republican Gov. Scott Walker's law that kills collective bargaining rights for public workers. The filing took place shortly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a party-line 4-3 ruling, allowed the law to take effect.

Unions and their allies say the union-busting law, officially called the Budget Repair Bill, is unconstitutional.

"Not only have Scott Walker and his deep-pocketed corporate allies sought to silence the voices of Wisconsin workers, they have also violated those workers' constitutional rights," declared Wisconsin State AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt.

The lawsuit filed by the unions notes that Walker's law destroys collective bargaining rights for all but a select group of public-sector workers (police and firefighters).

"Scott Walker has created two classes of public-sector workers and that is unconstitutional," Neuenfeldt said. "When a legislature discriminates against classes of workers, especially when doing so has more to do with political payback than with any legitimate reasoning, the law has been violated."

In a statement the unions that filed the lawsuit said the bill also violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by stripping away basic rights to bargain, organize and associate for the purpose of engaging in union activity - rights that have been in place in Wisconsin for the past half century.

The suit by the unions seeks to halt the collective bargaining provision of the law but does not seek to reverse the increased pension and health insurance requirements for public workers contained in the bill.

"Public sector unions have made it clear from day one that Wisconsin workers would do their part to share in the sacrifice and keep our state moving forward," said Neuenfeldt. "The lawsuit only seeks to preserve the basic right to bargain and freely associate."

Unions joining in the lawsuit include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Councils 24, 40 and 48; the American Federation of Teachers; the Wisconsin Education Association Council; the Wisconsin State Employees Union; and the Service Employees International Union, Health Care Wisconsin.

Before filing the suit Neuenfeldt blasted the Wisconsin Supreme Court for its inability "to separate partisan politics from the well-being of Wisconsinites." He described the decision as "the latest indication that citizens do not have a voice in this state." He called on voters to turn out this summer for recall elections against six Republican state senators who backed the Walker bill.

Walker's introduction of the bill triggered a massive uprising that saw hundreds of thousands descend on the Capitol here in protests. Republicans rammed the bill through anyway, in violation of the state's open notices requirements.

Circuit Court Judge Maryanne Sumi, herself a Republican appointee, halted the law in a ruling that said the bill was adopted in violation of the state's Open Meetings Act. The state Supreme Court decision Wednesday overturned Sumi's injunction, reinstating the law.

"This [state Supreme Court] ruling is an affront to our democracy," said Neuenfeldt. "Green lighting the sort of shady, backroom tactics Walker used to ram his extreme budget through the legislature sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our state. Democracy is the system by which all people, not just the corporations and the wealthy, have a seat at the table. This ruling shows that Wisconsin Republicans do not believe in a functioning, sound democracy."

The GOP majority on the state Supreme Court avoided any mention of the issues being raised by the bill's opponents.

Instead, criticizing Circuit Court Judge Sumi for blocking the bill, the majority wrote, "One of the courts that we are charged with supervising has usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature."

The Republican justices claimed that in a 1943 case their court decided that "the judicial department has no jurisdiction or right to interfere with the legislative process."

Justice David Prosser, a Walker ally who is leading in a disputed election for the court's swing seventh seat, told unions and their allies not to bother challenging Walker's law after its reinstatement.

"Attacking the constitutionality of an act after it has been published is quite different from attacking its validity before it becomes law. This must be acknowledged," Prosser wrote in a separate concurring opinion.

He added, "No useful purpose would be served by inviting a new series of challenges to 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 after publication of the act has been completed."

Prosser's statement evidently failed to sway Wisconsin's labor movement, as they wasted no time in filing their challenge.

Photo: Rally at the state Capitol protesting the Walker budget, June 14 in Madison, Wis. Wisconsin AFL-CIO

Union power: LA grocery workers march

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:21:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of labor and community activists rallied here June 13 in front of the Vons supermarket on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue, to show solidarity with grocery workers in their fight for a fair contract.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), Local 770, which represents the workers, organized the action with help from leaders in the faith community.

The UFCW's labor contract expired in March. The workers - from the Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons supermarkets - and their union have tentatively settled on pension agreements. However, the most controversial negotiations have been on the issue of healthcare. The employers want the workers to pay a higher percentage for their healthcare benefits.

"There's a general consensus at the Vons in Moorpark that the workers will strike if need be," said Scott Patrick, a Moorpark resident who drove nearly 50 miles to be at the Los Angeles action in support of the workers. "They want their fair contract and, you know, it's the last option but they will strike to get what they need," he said.

The action brought out community activists, several young people, local organizations and other unions in support. They include: International Association of Machinists (IAM), retired and active Teamsters; other UFCW and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) locals; members of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center; the Jewish Labor Committee; the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE); and other clergy members such as priests and rabbis.

Demonstrators held up signs that read, "Respect Grocery Workers" and "Bye Bye Walker, We Are Awakened," a reference to the union-busting Scott Walker, Wisconsin's Republican governor.

The march began on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue and moved up Hillhurst ending in front of the Albertsons supermarket in the nearby neighborhood of Los Feliz with a rally.

Activists chanted: "Who's got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!"

Dozens of cars and trucks driving by honked their horns in support at the site of the demonstration, including several police cars and firefighter trucks.

According to its website the UFCW is one the nation's youngest unions in the U.S. with the greatest percentage of members under 35, younger than any other.

Chelsea Davenport, a worker in her 50s said she has been working for Albertsons, one of the supermarkets for 35 years. She spoke at the rally.

"They want to replace us with robots. They want to have self-checkouts. They want to pay people less," she said. "You know what, anybody that walks in that door behind me when I retire and wants to take my job should have every single, solitary advantage that I have while I was in there working. I know today that I'm not alone ... And it just warms the bottom of my heart to see all of ya'll out here and everybody chanting and walking and doing what we need to do to get a fair contract."

Rabbis, other clergymen and union supporters presented Albertsons management with a letter urging them and the other supermarkets to sign a fair contract with the workers. Community leaders, bishops and community and faith leaders also endorsed the letter.

"We're here till the end," said a UCLA campus rabbi.

The next action is scheduled for June 28 at Albertsons corporate headquarters.

Photo: Hundreds marched in support of grocery workers to demand a fair labor contract with their supermarket employers. (Luis Rivas/PW).

Correction, June 18, 2011: An earlier posting misidentified the Jewish Labor Committee as a local religious grouping. The Jewish Labor Committee is an independent secular organization active across the country.

5,000 join union-led march against corporate greed

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:26:00 +0000

CHICAGO - As the nation's top CEOs held a June 14 summit behind closed doors at the Hyatt Regency here 5,000 angry demonstrators outside chanted, "You got bailed out, we got sold out!"

Twenty-five members of the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union were arrested for sitting down in the street outside the hotel. As police led them away, people belonging to 15 unions and dozens of community organizations chanted, "Let them go!" All those arrested were booked for blocking traffic and released.

The thousands converged outside the executives' summit after three kickoff rallies at Daley Plaza, the State of Illinois building and City Center. It was a noisy, spirited and peaceful demonstration against corporate greed.

Protesters marched on the Hyatt, organizers said, both because the CEO summit was taking place there and because the hotel is owned by the billionaire Pritzker family, which the local labor movement says is notorious for union-busting.

As the CEOs met in the Hyatt tower, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets below. The business execs, according to the Chamber of Commerce which sponsored the summit, were discussing "best practices" and "leadership skill techniques."

The crowds jamming the streets below demanded that the CEOs talk, instead, about creating jobs and reinvesting in the community, in small businesses and in Chicago's public schools.

"They are not doing anything good for Chicago," said Maria Ratanski, a janitor who belongs to SEIU.

Ratanksi, 44, came from Poland as a young girl in 1974 and raised a family here in Chicago. She said she marched because she has an 18-year-old son and a 16-year-old son, both unable to find jobs.

"They are getting very very rich," she said, about the CEOs meeting in the tower. "They say when they get rich, we get jobs, but they are not making any jobs. They get richer and richer, we get poorer and poorer."

Armando Robles, a UE member who led workers in the historic takeover of a windows and doors factory to prevent its closing here in 2009, marched with the thousands who made their way up Michigan Ave. from Daley Plaza.

As people on the sidewalks cheered Robles and his union's contingent he said, "Chicago families are struggling with high unemployment, foreclosures and poverty. Our children are getting robbed of their schools. Our city is getting robbed of decent jobs and for what? It's all going into making big payments to CEOs, welfare for corporations and big tax cuts for corporations. We've got to stop it."

Advocates for the homeless joined the union members and community groups that marched. "Give us back our homes," read the signs carried by people whose homes have been foreclosed.

Stand Up Chicago was the name under which the diverse groups joined together for the protest.

Organizers said that just last year, the richest companies belonging to the Chamber of Commerce reaped $200 billion in profits. But instead of creating jobs with that money, they paid their CEOs huge bonuses.

"All that money should be given back to create jobs, to help our communities and to save our public schools," said Karen Lewis, addressing demonstrators through a microphone as she marched along Michigan Ave.

Photo: In front of puppets representing the kings of "corporate welfare," Chicago workers sit down in the street saying, "Give back our jobs," June 14. PW/John Bachtell