People Before Profit blog

Jim Hightower opens new front in fight to save postal service

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 17:11:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Progressive broadcaster Jim Hightower is opening a new front in the multi-union, multi-organization fight to save the U.S. Postal Service from its privatizing management and Wall Street interests.

In a March 24 nationwide conference call with activists, Hightower and Postal Workers President Mark Dimondstein outlined avenues people can use to save the embattled agency and the union jobs-of Postal Workers, Letter Carriers, Mail Handlers and Rural Letter Carriers-threatened by shutdowns and the privatization push.

The new avenues include starting a petition to the White House, where 100,000 signatures will force President Barack Obama to address the issue and joining the 70- organization effort, http://agrandalliance.org/ to fight for better, expanded service, not cuts.

"Get to your city councils and your mayors-and not just in places where post offices are closing-to say what the post office means to you," Hightower said.

"To get a letter to the middle of nowhere costs 49 cents. As soon as we get into the privatization-profit model, it could cost $5 -- or maybe not get sent there at all. And if you write down the wrong address, they send it back, for free. Where else can you get all that?"

"The Postal Service takes in $68 billion a year in revenue and Wall Street wants it," Dimondstein added. "Postal management has been playing along."

The campaign comes as Congress' ruling Republicans, with some Democratic help, prepare to renew legislation to close local post offices, eliminate Saturday services, kill door-to-door service for new customers and replace well-paying unionized postal employees with low-paid part-time no-benefits, non-union workers, especially using Staples stores.

USPS management claims it needs to make those moves, on top of mail distribution center closings that began in January-and that eliminated overnight delivery even within major cities-to close a multi-billion-dollar yearly deficit.

Hightower and Dimondstein pointed out that USPS actually ran a $1.4 billion surplus on operations for the year that ended Sept. 30 and another $1.4 billion surplus for the first three months of the current fiscal year, through last Dec. 31.

The deficit comes from a $5.5 billion yearly pre-payment of future retirees' health care costs that USPS must fund under a 2006 postal "reform" law pushed through a lame-duck GOP Congress and signed by then-President George W. Bush, the two noted.

The unions have been lobbying for elimination of the pre-paid health care, but lawmakers have so far turned a deaf ear. As Hightower also pointed out, activists and citizens should join another union campaign-to allow the nation's 31,000 post offices to become banks for underserved and unserved urban and rural areas.

Doing so would provide competition for the big banks, who hate that, he said. It would also provide banking services for the 38 percent of the U.S. zip codes, covering more than a quarter of the population, with no bank branches.

"The post office is well set-up to bring in more revenue" that way, Dimondstein said.

The campaign for post-offices-as-banks and to eliminate the health care prepayment is part of an overall postal reform package that the Letter Carriers, the Postal Workers and other postal unions have been pushing for several years. They also would let post offices serve as notaries and ship alcoholic beverages, among other revenue-raising measures.

More immediately, Hightower and the union leader also urged listeners to support a measure, House Resolution 54, a non-binding measure that says lawmakers want to keep 6-day service. The unions calculate that eliminating Saturday pickups and deliveries could cost approximately 80,000 middle-class jobs.

Today in labor history: César Chávez born in 1927

Tue, 31 Mar 2015 13:24:00 +0000

César Chávez was born on March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, in a Mexican-American family of six children. He grew up in the small adobe home in which he was born. His family owned a grocery store and a ranch, but their land and home were lost during the Great Depression. The family then moved to California to become migrant farm workers.

The Chávez family faced many hardships in California. The family picked peas and lettuce in the winter, cherries and beans in the spring, corn and grapes in the summer, and cotton in the fall.

Conscious of the widespread miserable conditions for migrant farm workers, Chávez, with Dolores Huerta and others, formed the United Farm Workers (UFW) to address exploitation in the fields.

The union achieved the nation's first industry-wide farm labor contracts. Chávez was an adherent of nonviolent civil disobedience and led many strikes and boycotts for his cause.

Chávez was also an early environmentalist, warning the public of the devastating effects of pesticides on both farmworkers and consumers. Chávez fought for the rights of immigrants, refusing to let the forces of agribusiness and racism scapegoat immigrant workers.

One of the union's key tactics was the boycott. It was so effective between 1968 and 1975 that 12 percent of the country's adult population quit buying table grapes. And growers had trouble exporting them too, because of international labor solidarity.

In 2002 a U.S. postage stamp was issued honoring Chávez. At the time John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO said, "A stamp in his honor challenges us to remember that his life's mission is not over until every worker has a living wage, adequate health care and dignity on the job."

In 2012 President Obama attended and helped establish the César E. Chávez National Monument in Central California honoring the great civil rights and union leader. The event took place during the UFW's 50^th anniversary year. Chávez and his family lived and worked at La Paz, Calif., from the early 1970s until his death in 1993. His gravesite there is part of the monument. On September 8, 1994, Chávez was presented posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. The award was received by his widow, Helen Chávez.

Chávez 's birthday is an official state holiday in California, and optional in Texas and Colorado. President Obama has declared his birthday César Chávez Day. The struggle to make his birthday a national holiday continues.

Missouri unionists, businesses, officials mobilize vs. 'right-to-work'

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:02:00 +0000

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (PAI)--Missouri unionists, businesses and officials mobilized in early March to try to stop a Republican and business-generated stampede to pass so-called "right to work" state legislation.

But though they packed the state senate Small Business Committee hearing room and offered hours of detailed testimony on the benefits of unionization and the harm such a law would cause, whether lawmakers listened is another matter.

Both houses of the state legislature are heavily Republican, and passage of such anti-worker anti-union laws, to strip unions of money they need to negotiate contracts and defend workers, is a key cause of the GOP and its right wing and business backers.

The St. Louis Labor Tribune reported the panel first gave the podium to sponsoring Sen. Dan Brown, R-Rolla, and Lieut. Gov. Peter Kinder (R). But they were followed by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay (D), St. Louis and Kansas City pastors, several business owners and UFCW Local 655 members Theresa Hester and Lori Giannini, among 15 witnesses.

Slay said unions bring jobs to Missouri, noting Boeing's announcement that, after talks with his administration and local union leaders, it would add 2,000 jobs in St. Louis.

Giannini, who works at Schnuck's, a retail chain, told Missouri lawmakers that right-to-work would deprive workers of fairness on the job. She said a prior non-union employer, a real estate firm, fired her because another newly hired saleswoman gave the realtor an ultimatum to choose between the two women.

"Where do you think that went?" Giannini, the single mother of two children, asked.

Photo: Labor Tribune in Jefferson City, Missouri. Facebook.

Wisconsin companies join the fight against right-to-work-for-less

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 14:50:00 +0000

MADISON, Wisc. - Given rising anger in business ranks against Scott Walker's right-to-work-for-less law, a law they were supposed to love, there are beginning to emerge increased efforts by some of them to lobby against the law and even cases where they say they will move out of state in order to avoid the law's negative effects on their bottom lines.

It's a quiet effort that moves in the same direction as the more blatant effort by unions that continue now to go to court in their own frontal assault on the anti-labor law.

Gov. Scott Walker, in December, had dismissed any such law as a "distraction" but then reversed himself and pushed right-to-work through when it fit his presidential ambitions in conservative voting primary states. His abandonment of state interests for his national push has not gone unnoticed.

Suddenly selling himself as the destroyer of unions gets attention on the campaign trail despite the fact that the majority in Wisconsin don't feel the same way about unions. Businesses still want state projects but are worried about the complications right to work will cause for them.

Even corporate lawyers recognize the ground may be shifting under Walker because of his overreach. Republicans are criticizing his two-year budget as an attempt to double down on past mistakes.

New scrutiny from the national media is putting back in play the way he raised money to survive the recall election. It's unlikely to be union court action that will bring down Walker, however.

While allowing the legal challenge to Wisconsin's right-to-work law to proceed, a Dane County judge on March 19 refused to grant a temporary injunction to immediately halt the law. In effect, Circuit Judge William Foust wants to wait for the "irreparable harm" that the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers and machinists (IAMAW) believe is inevitable from a law that only went into effect March 11 and can't change existing contracts.

The conservative court system reacts more sympathetically to attacks on business rights and profits than to union concerns - and several businesses say they are contemplating court action against right to work.

"I've never seen my client, a construction company, so hot under the collar" one corporate lawyer confided to me after I shared my similar interview findings - three companies considering court action to oppose RTW for interfering with their profits. The law doesn't let them make pay pool deals on training and benefits with a union workforce. Any workarounds look extremely costly.

Even more companies agree with North America's Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey who wrote the New York Times that RTW will not, as Walker claimed, provide a "compelling reason to consider expanding or moving to Wisconsin." It will actually send businesses scurrying to states where they can find "the skilled craft professionals needed to get projects done safely and efficiently," McGarvey said, now that in Wisconsin "the training infrastructure has gone away." Seeing that change, workers are starting to avoid living in Wisconsin - and smart companies know it.

But where unions are outspoken businesses move more cautiously. While they are getting lawyers involved, they are looking at other options as well.

Some might move to non-RTW states or even relocate a portion of their headquarters to Minnesota, including James Hoffman of the highly regarded construction firm in Black River Falls. To outrage from Wisconsin me-firsters, Republicans in Minnesota are openly luring Wisconsin businesses -- and now even Illinois is getting into the act.

Hoffman Construction Company as well as workers in general are also worried about the next ALEC shoes the Walker forces may drop - the disemboweling of prevailing wage regulations. Such a bill is moving through the Madison legislature.

These are median standards of what workers should expect to be paid county by county for jobs. It is actually done by government surveys, not by unions, and helps businesses anticipate the costs of construction projects, covering pay scales for everything from painters to laborers, from back hoe operators to ceiling tile installers, from landscapers to carpet layers. Non-union construction companies such as ABC have been chafing for decades not just to break apprenticeship limitations imposed by the state laws but to pay workers lower than these medians.

It may not be as sexy to tea partyers and Walker's presidential ambitions as RTW, but eliminating prevailing wage standards "faster than anything will destroy Wisconsin's family incomes." So noted Dan Bukiewicz, president of the Milwaukee Building and Trade Council, US Rep. Mark Pocan and leaders of non-union worker coalitions, all affected by these standards.

Photo: March 5 Rally to Oppose Right to Work. Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Facebook.

Illinois Gov. Rauner's anti-labor ploy actually boosts a union local

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:50:00 +0000

Gov. Bruce Rauner tried to undermine the state's public worker unions by issuing an executive order that would deprive them of the right to collect "fair share" fees for their services. Council 31 has vowed to fight the order.

There's a right way to respond to the vicious attacks that many public workers are facing across the nation, and an Illinois AFSCME local just reminded us how.

In February, the Republican governor tried to undermine the state's public worker unions by issuing an executive order that would deprive them of the right to collect "fair share" fees for their services. This sort of right-to-work scheme has become a popular strategy to defund unions among extreme right-wing politicians, with Wisconsin being the latest state to impose it on working families.

Rauner's executive order is illegal, and unions have filed a lawsuit to stop it. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan seems to agree.

But AFSCME Local 3649, Illinois Council 31, reminds us that such attacks need not hurt us if we stand together. Thanks to Rauner's executive order, Local 3649 now has 100 percent full membership, something it had never seen before. When the eight to 12 fee payers it had realized how the governor was trying to divide them, they became full-paying members.

As our Illinois sisters and brothers demonstrate, when many working families are facing hardship and workers' rights are under attack, solidarity is still our best defense.

Pablo Ros is an AFSCME member who wrote this article for the AFSCME Blog where it originally appeared.

Photo: AFSCME Council 31 Facebook.

Danny Glover tells young unionists they are making history

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:36:00 +0000

CHICAGO - An enthusiastic crowd of young trade unionists and allies from more than 40 states and Puerto Rico cheered as Danny Glover came on stage Mar. 19 at the AFL-CIO's 2015 Next Up Summit here.

Glover, who has been a leader in the struggle of Nissan workers in Canton, Mississippi to win union representation, spoke passionately to the young trade unionists here about the struggle in Mississippi.

He spoke of how Nissan has been willing to do almost anything to stop the union - from the hiring of large numbers of high-turnover temporary workers to the giving out misinformation and intimidating workers when they try to organize.

Glover, a member of the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and an activist since his college days at San Francisco State University, has been involved over the years in numerous battles for civil rights, worker rights, and student rights.

Glover quoted Paul Robeson on the importance of the role of youth in struggle: "Each generation makes its own history and is judged by the history that they make." He stressed how vital the youth are to the movement today, saying, "We need your voices here more than ever."

At Nissan, he noted, a coalition of workers, students and civil rights leaders have been building a movement for civil and workers rights. "It reminds me of Freedom Summer," he said. Freedom Summer was the historic campaign in 1964 to register black voters in Mississippi.

Glover reminded the young trade unionists about the ability of youth to shift entire movements. "They came down specifically to Mississippi and changed the whole temperature of the civil rights movement. That is what young people do."

A coalition of workers, students and civil rights leaders have been organizing a union for the right have a say on health, safety and to end the abuse of workers at their plant in Mississippi, Glover said.

Glover criticized Nissan for trying to build what he called "a temporary economy" within which temp workers are employed to cut costs even though they do the same work as full time workers - basically for half the wages.

He castigated the company for the tactics it uses against union organizers.

"They use threats and intimidation, that's what they've done. Threaten plant closure if workers organize. Targeting union members, blaming UAW for the collapse of the auto industry. Telling workers they can't be pro-Nissan and pro-union. These are the lies they've perpetuated," he said.

He said the company is being hypocritical when it says that to stay competitive it cannot afford a unionized plant in Mississippi, explaining how in Japan, France, Britain and South Africa Nissan has recognized the right of workers to have a voice on their job.

If they can work with unions there, he said, there is no excuse for Nissan to refuse to recognize the right of its workers in Mississippi to organize a union.

Photo: Next Up Facebook page

Today in women’s and labor history: Triangle sweatshop fire kills 146

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 12:02:00 +0000

A total of 146 workers - almost all of them immigrant women - were killed in a fire at New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, March 25, 1911, a disaster that would launch a national movement for safer working conditions.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Co., a manufacturer of blouses - one of hundreds in lower Manhattan - employed young, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Almost half were under 20. Women brought their children to the factory's "kindergarten," where the kids would snip thread. Triangle was located on the top three floors of the Asch Building on Greene Street. It was actually one of the "better" sweatshops in the city - thanks to a citywide strike by 20,000 female garment workers 18 months before - but it wasn't unionized.

When the blaze began, there was one exit, but Triangle's owners had deliberately padlocked it to prevent theft. There was flammable debris - cuttings and scraps - everywhere. The fire escapes were flimsy and ended far above street level. Stairwells quickly filled with smoke and flames. The elevator stalled, though one woman slid down its cable.

The fire department ladders weren't tall enough to reach the upper floors. Hoses were of little use.

The 18-minute blaze left workers with two horrific alternatives: Burning to death or jumping from the window. Most jumped. Many burned.

More than two decades later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt picked Frances Perkins for his labor secretary. Perkins had been a social worker and witnessed the deaths at Triangle from across the street. She used its lessons to help draft and push through New Deal pro-labor legislation when she became labor secretary.

Triangle Fire and its aftermath, including acquittal of the company owners of manslaughter charges, led both to the growth of unions - in particular the pioneering International Ladies Garment Workers - and to the successful campaign for reforms of health and safety laws, fire code improvement and enforcement and institution of workers comp. The struggle continues today both in the United States and globally to enforce and improve health and safety regulations.

Garment workers unions had tried to organize Triangle and other garment makers the year before. The citywide strike won raises for the workers, but not unions at Triangle.

"If the union had won, we would have been safe," said strike leader Rose Safran, who survived the fire. "Two of our demands were for adequate fire escapes and for open doors from the factories to the street. But the bosses defeated us and so we didn't get the open doors or the better fire escapes. So our friends are dead."

Photo: In this 1911 file photograph from the National Archives, labor union members gather to protest and mourn the loss of life in the March 25, 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. (National Archives/AP)

California teachers fight to save their union and the schools

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:26:00 +0000

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. - Unionized California teachers are among the many categories of workers nationwide whose unions are under attack by anti-labor lawmakers and judges seeking to kill unions by draining them of their financial lifeblood. The teachers are saying, however, that they won't shrink from the fight to preserve their union's right to collect fees for the representation services it provides and that they will continue their ongoing fight for quality education for everyone.

Up front at the California Federation of Teacher's state convention here Mar. 20-22 was the threat to ending fair-pay (agency-fee) dues for public sector workers, in a case now before the Supreme Court, Frederich's vs. CTA, which could potentially create a national open shop for public sector labor. CFT would face a loss of at least 10 percent of its dues, around $2 million dollars, from inability to collect agency-fee dues.

In spite of this threat, the union is pressing its mission to restore economic health to the state's public education funding. Its a mission the teachers have been carrying out for quite a while.

Proposition 30, a law the union had a hand in crafting and helping to pass in 2010, has generated over $13 billion dollars in its duration. Before the passing of the bill, the $20 billion dollars in cuts resulting from deficits produced by the Great Recession had caused California to lose 30,000 teachers.

CFT President Josh Pechthalt, in his State of the Union address, said that despite predictions that the wealthy would flee the state in the wake of having their taxes raised via Prop 30, there are more millionaires in California now than before the recession. Although Gov. Brown is not considering extension of the bill, the CFT sees the state ranking at 46th in per-pupil spending to be insupportable, and will pursue renewal of the initiative.

The University of California system is still cutting classes, while raising tuition. Support staff and classified staff lost from the recession cuts have not been restored and need to be rehired.

Pechthalt also described other tasks CFT has been involved in, including collaborating with Brave New Films on a documentary about the union's frustrated efforts to divest their pension funds from the weapons industry in the wake of highly publicized school shootings and gun violence. Shining a light on the bad practices of for-profit colleges that inflate student debt will also proceed this year, with CFT working to regulate for-profit colleges.

CFT has also been instrumental in working to halt the disaccreditation of City College of San Francisco, by the ACCJC, which accredits community colleges and has been attempting to have the school shut down. Pechthalt said that CFT opposes the "narrow vision" of the accrediting agency, which uses "false metrics to gauge success." The union upholds a vision of community college that is not simply outcome (degree) oriented, but also is open to all, including non-traditional, trades, and ESL students.

The union's efforts to effect progressive reform for the state's education system are encompassed in a larger mission of providing the basis for a push for national progressive economic reform. "Even if we put dramatically more money into our schools and work harder and longer, public education won't be able to overcome the kind of wrenching poverty that grinds people down into despair," said Pechthalt

Some 1.3 million school-age children are homeless nationwide. Despite economic hardship and austerity, a populist uprising has not emerged to oppose the agenda of cuts by the Republicans. "Father Knows Best" propaganda succeeded in swaying the 2014 electorate, although people did vote for measures that raised the minimum wage. Democrats have failed to offer an alternative pro-union, populist program for people, he said. In addition, the right wing is using fear and outsized financial resources to attack labor where the labor movement was born, in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana.

Labor faces a Supreme Court that could end both agency fee and collective bargaining for public sector workers with a ruling on Frederich's vs. CTA, said Pechthalt, "To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis' great novel of the 1930s, "It can happen here!"

In hand with an unfriendly Supreme Court, the right wing is pursuing an agenda to shrink public programs to weaken them, attacking them for not measuring up, often with coded racist language, and then working to replace them with privatized programs with non-union labor.

In the last election cycle of 2010, CFT joined with community partners to create the Millionaire's Tax that became Prop 30, and fighting for progressive tax reform has become a key part of CFT's mission. Next the union is looking at the inequities caused by California's Prop 13, a 1970's era anti-tax measure that kicked off the right-wing tax revolt of the era, and will be crafting an initiative for the ballot.

Tens of billions of dollars have been lost from public schools since corporations exploit a loophole that allows them to keep property in their hands from being reassessed at higher rates. Today, Disneyland pays proportionally less in property taxes than the modern California homeowner. Reform of Prop 13, along with a renewal of Prop 30, could raise a projected $15 billion dollars a year.

CFT, along with progressive California politicians and community partners, is training 1,000 speakers to travel in the state to help create a movement to bring success to these ballot initiative for the 2016 election.

Photo: California Federation of Teachers Facebook page

Kelley of the Treasury Employees Union to retire in August

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Colleen M. Kelley, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) president for the last 16 years, will retire at the end of the union's convention this August, the union announced.

In a memo in March to local leaders of her 150,000-member union, Kelley said she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren in her home town of Pittsburgh. She also said the NTEU is "well-positioned" to elect a new president at the convention.

"I am proud of my NTEU career and the state of our union today... As much as I love my role and our union, I will not be seeking re-election to a 5^th term as NTEU president," Kelley said. She also praised her local leaders, saying she is "in awe of" their daily work defending and advocating for their members.

Kelley's union is one of the larger federal workers' unions, along with the Government Employees (AFGE) and the two big postal workers' unions. In her time in office, Kelley has forged alliances with the others, and particularly with current AFGE President J. David Cox, on government workers' issues. NTEU is independent of both U.S. labor federations.

NTEU represents mostly Treasury Department workers, including IRS employees - the agency where Kelley got her start as a revenue agent. After serving as the Pittsburgh local's president, she joined the union's national staff, became executive vice president and then was elected president for the first time in 1999. She has served four terms.

Fighting particularly for the IRS workers, Kelley has made the point that short-staffing the agency - a constant under Republican-run Congresses - ultimately hurts the government as a whole, since it cuts down the pursuit of tax cheats and fraud and leaves billions of dollars of taxes uncollected. Her latest win was to stop a 2-day unpaid IRS furlough earlier this calendar year.

Besides ending the IRS program to outsource tax collections to unscrupulous private debt collectors, Kelley's NTEU also fought successfully in the courts for Homeland Security Department workers' collective bargaining rights and against the agency's tilted personnel system plans.

She's also worked with Cox in the constant campaign to rein in the use of expensive federally hired contractors, rather than unionized government workers. Kelley, Cox and other federal union leaders successfully lobbied for retroactive back pay for the hundreds of thousands of government workers sent home during the GOP-ordered 16-day government shutdown two years ago.

During Kelley's years as president, NTEU also grew by organizing Securities and Exchange Commission attorneys, Food and Drug Administration scientists, and financial regulators at several government agencies.

Photo: Colleen M. Kelley | NTEU/YouTube screenshot

Berger-Marks report guides working women toward greater influence in unions

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:56:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - A new report from the Berger-Marks Foundation gives working women a "how-to" guide to establish women's committees within unions, increase their influence and achieve goals important to women workers. It also is meant to help existing women's committees expand and grow.

The Guide to Organizing Women's Committees by New York consultant and journalist Jane LaTour and Cornell University Professors Lois Gray and Maria Figueroa points out both the frequent need for women to organize their own advocacy groups within unions, and how to navigate the politics of doing so in order to achieve working women's goals.

The report is based on findings of "most effective strategies, programs, and objectives of established women's committees at a range of local and international unions and worker centers," that Gray and Figueroa discussed in a study for Berger-Marks last year.

LaTour notes that unions "limited the participation of women or organized them into separate unions." While those legal restrictions are now off the books, "genuine, systemic equality for women at the workplace, in their unions, and within the labor movement is still unrealized."

If an organization or union needs to encourage more working women to become active, if it doesn't address issues such as pay equity, sexual harassment and worksite discrimination, if there are few women leaders, if there are "women with a strong interest in acting as catalysts to challenge the status quo, yet who are not involved in" the organization's activities, and if there's a lack of skills training and mentoring of new female leaders, then the organization or union may well need a women's committee, LaTour's report adds.

While advocating such a group, she also adds some practical advice: Working with existing leaders, when possible, figuring out the internal politics beforehand and how to use them to working women's advantage, creating a specific agenda of issues to attract a wide spectrum of working women, and additional community outreach.

And the leaders of any new working women's group should also emphasize that its presence - and including its agenda - will make the union stronger as a whole and benefit it, LaTour says. "More women get involved in organizational activities, resulting in unity in bargaining and enhanced effectiveness in political action," she explains.

But to accomplish those twin goals, "Research shows women need independent space to identify and create their own culture where they can speak out about concerns and identify strategies to engage with and change the dominant culture," the report adds.

"Find some sisters to puzzle things out and proceed together," the report urges. "Figure out who has an interest in changing things - those who take an interest in issues, who question the status quo and ask good questions - then try to enlist them in your project and make common cause with these like-minded sisters."

"It's important to keep in mind that unions are political institutions," LaTour warns. "All of the players you'll be interacting with hope to stay in office. So find the overlap - the place where it is in their interest to support your goals." She adds, "Remain diplomatic. Always try to achieve the desired result without alienating officials who may need to be brought along gently.... It's up to you to learn how things work, officially and unofficially."

Informal social networking - from Facebook to bake sales - can help boost the cause, too. One union's working women's committee held a bake sale with two prices per item: $1 for items sold to men and 77 cents for those sold to women, to highlight the wage gap.

Case studies in the report show that "targeted programs for women are particularly helpful" when women are a small minority of members who "must struggle for recognition on the job and in the unions," or where women are underrepresented as leaders.

"Opportunity for networking and leadership development plays an important role in motivating women to participate, gain experience and training, and begin to express their views," while integrating them into the union's or organization's mainstream, LaTour adds.

"Separate outreach plays an important role in involving women and tapping their potential for leadership in worker organizations, an outcome essential to the growth and power of workers' organizations," she writes.

The new report and accompanying workshop materials are on www.bergermarks.org. The Berger-Marks Foundation, named in honor of a longtime organizer and activist for the Newspaper Guild, aims to bring the benefits of unionization to working women and to assist organizations committed to those principles.

Photo: Berger-Marks Facebook page

Workers mobilize vs. GOP budgets’ pension, pay cut schemes

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 14:35:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Members of federal workers and postal employee unions mobilized in late March against Republican budget schemes that would - again - cut their pay.

But whether the solons, and especially the GOP majorities on Capitol Hill, will listen to the workers is unlikely, as lawmakers rushed to complete work on their budget blueprints before skedaddling out of town for a two-week Passover-Easter recess.

Whether the lawmakers will meet that deadline is uncertain: The ruling House GOP is divided between so-called "deficit hawks" who want to slash federal spending and the workforce, too, and "defense hawks" who want to increase defense spending - above Democratic President Barack Obama's request - by taking money from domestic programs.

Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando and Government Employees (AFGE) President J. David Cox led the charge against any version of the GOP budget blueprints, urging their members to lobby lawmakers via telephone, email, and telegram. Both unions concentrated on the ruling Republicans' demand that all federal workers increase their yearly pension contributions eight-fold, to 6.35 percent of weekly pay.

"House budget 'plan'? Cut letter carrier pay (again)," Rolando summarized.

"While the House bill doesn't say exactly how much of a pay cut its authors are looking for, it does refer to the recommendations of President Barack Obama's 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which concluded the government and its employees should share equally in paying for pension benefits," he explained.

That Simpson-Bowles Commission plan called for all federal workers to contribute 6 percent of their paychecks to future pension payments, but without any increase in payouts. "In other words, they want 6 percent of your pay to go toward your pensions, with no accompanying increase in your pension benefits," he added.

That hike would cost a letter carrier at the top of scale a $3,500 yearly pay cut, Rolando said. "The Postal Service doesn't take a dime of taxpayer money, so including letter carriers and all postal workers in this wholly unfair plan, especially under the guise of 'deficit reduction,' makes no sense at all." He also noted postal pensions are virtually fully funded.

Both Cox and Rolando pointed out that federal workers, thanks to the GOP-inspired government shutdown, sequestration and prior pay freezes and cuts, contributed $159 billion to federal deficit reduction over the last several years, more than anyone else.

The Senate hike in pension payments would produce a slightly smaller pay cut for federal workers, of 5.5 percent, Cox said. But a cut is a cut. "Federal employees are in the crosshairs once again," he said.

"Slashing the wages and benefits of government employees who devoted their lives to serving the public isn't a plan for growing the economy. On the contrary, it's a sure-fire way to lower the living standards for working-class people who have already paid a steep price during the economic recession," Cox said. His union, like NALC, has many minority-group members, veterans and women.

"Federal employees aren't some faceless bureaucrats to be cut at a whim. They are real people with real jobs who make a real difference in the lives of millions every day, whether it's ensuring senior citizens get the Social Security benefits they're owed, caring for veterans who return from war with physical or psychological scars, or keeping knives and other weapons off airplanes," Cox, a retired VA nurse, said. "They deserve our respect and admiration, not the contempt and derision being presented in this budget."

Added a third union president, Colleen Kelley of the Treasury Employees, an independent union, "Our nation depends on highly skilled federal workers to protect us in so many ways and on so many fronts. This regressive proposal would harm middle-class federal workers and their ability to do their jobs."

In urging unionists and their allies to flood Capitol Hill with calls, wires and emails, both leaders concluded that "it's time for all of us to tell Congress that enough is enough."

Photo: stock photo

W. Va. GOP legislature passes, Dem. governor signs anti-worker bill

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:35:00 +0000

CHARLESTON, W. Va. (PAI) - Add West Virginia to the ever-lengthening list of Republican-run states that are enacting anti-worker legislation by the carload - but with a twist: The Democratic governor signed it.

In their session, which ended in mid-March, Mountain State lawmakers significantly weakened mine safety and health laws - in the state that annually leads the national list in coal mine accidents and, often, fatalities - and abolished the state prevailing wage statute.

Coal companies lobbied heavily for the anti-safety measure, arguing West Virginia's tough standards led coal companies to flee to other, looser states. Cut-rate non-union contractors hate prevailing wage laws, which ensure decent wages for construction workers.

The two measures, signed by Democratic Gov. Earl Tomblin, upset workers, unions and their allies. Tomblin also told a state coal mine safety board to draft new rules about moving underground equipment in mines, presumably to make them safer. That didn't fool Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, a West Virginian.

"Today marks the first time in West Virginia history that our state officially reduced safety standards for coal miners," Roberts said of the new mine safety law. "It is truly a sad day for those miners and their families, and once again demonstrates that our beloved state has yet to break free of the out-of-state corporate interests that have controlled the destinies of West Virginia's working families for generations.

"I have said it before and I'll say it again: You can't be a friend of coal if you're not a friend of coal miners. As the events in Charleston played out over the last month, we got a pretty good idea about just who our friends are and who are not. We will remember."

Unionists packed hearing rooms in February to argue for keeping the prevailing wage law for state and locally funded construction. It was approved on party-line votes. Contractors split on the issue, with some arguing for keeping the prevailing wage. John Strickland, president of MCS Construction in Charleston, the state capital, told local news outlets that the prevailing wage law lets him hire better workers for his projects.

Photo: UMWA president Cecil Roberts. | Evan Vucci/AP

Illinois union coalition battles Rauner fair share fee ban in state courts

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:18:00 +0000

BELLEVILLE, Ill. (PAI) - A coalition of 26 unions, led by AFSCME District Council 31, has banded together to battle Illinois GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner's order eliminating state worker unions' rights to collect even "fair share" fees from so-called "free riders."

In a lawsuit filed in early March in St. Clair County Court in Belleville, just outside St. Louis, the union coalition said Rauner's order not only violates the state constitution but a 31-year-old state "fair share fee" law as well.

Rauner responded by denouncing "corrupt union bosses" and asking the U.S. District Court in Chicago to rule for his order. The union coalition is fighting that, too. Rauner also ordered his state comptroller to put the fair share fees - $3.75 million yearly - into an escrow account. The comptroller refused, citing a legal opinion from the state attorney general, but Rauner ordered executive branch agencies to withhold the money anyway.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled that Illinois home health care workers and personal care workers - some of whom AFSCME represented - are not state employees and thus did not have to even send in fair share fees to the unions, AFSCME and the Service Employees, that represent them on the job.

The anti-worker National Right to Work Committee rounded up the dissenting workers in that case and financed it. The justices decided it on 1st Amendment free-speech grounds.

In that ruling, Justice Samuel Alito hinted that he would look favorably on a case tossing out fair share fees for all public workers, not just the "hybrid" workers, half-public, half-private, in the home health care and personal care fields.

Since he won election, Rauner extended the ban on union fee collection to all state "fair share" workers who are represented by the unions and using their services, but who are not members. The unions represent some 40,000 state workers, including the 6,300 free riders. The suit says Rauner is purposefully attempting to weaken the unions.

"Rauner has usurped the constitutional power of the legislative branch in promulgating an executive order that effectively repeals" the 1983 law, the suit says. "The executive power is the power to faithfully execute the laws enacted through the legislative process, not to refuse to implement" them.

Illinois AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan said Rauner intends to hurt "the men and women who do the real work of state government...first responders, nurses, caregivers, and corrections officers.

"They plow the snow, protect children, care for veterans and do many other tough, essential jobs that benefit all Illinois residents. Gov. Rauner's political obsession with stropping their rights and driving down their wages demeans their service, hurts the middle class and is blatantly illegal."

Besides AFSCME, SEIU and the state federation, unions suing the governor include the Teamsters, the Illinois Nurses Association, the Laborers, the Bakery Confectionery Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, the Operating Engineers, the Machinists, the Bricklayers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Carpenters, the Electrical Workers, UFCW, the Painters, the Plumbers and Allied Trades, and two police associations.

The St. Louis Labor Tribune and The Labor Paper, of Peoria, Ill., contributed material for this story.

Photo: AP

Students declare national boycott of Wendy's

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 10:00:00 +0000

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Students from around the nation took the stage before a crowd of more than a thousand at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Concert for Fair Food last Saturday to declare a nationwide student boycott of Wendy's. The concert, featuring Grammy-winning artists Ozomatli and La Santa Cecilia, was the latest development in a two-year campaign calling on Wendy's to help eliminate farmworker poverty and abuse through the coalition's Fair Food Program (FFP).

The student-led boycott will be launched at Ohio State University and will snowball over the coming months as dozens more universities adopt the boycott. The action comes as part of the larger student-led campaign, "Boot the Braids," which is aimed at ending Wendy's contractual relationships with universities around the country until the company joins the FFP.

"All of Wendy's fast food competitors have committed to buy only from farms where farmworkers are guaranteed basic human rights, and yet Wendy's has so far rejected that responsibility," said Amanda Ferguson, a member of the Student/Farmworker Alliance at the Ohio State University. "Now we're declaring a nationwide student boycott and we will continue to escalate our efforts until Wendy's joins the Fair Food Program."

The Concert for Fair Food last Saturday drew some one thousand supporters. The sponsoring Coalition of Immokalee Workers sees the event as amplifying the voices of those calling for Wendy's and Publix Supermarkets to improve working conditions for the people who harvest their produce.

At the fair Marisol Marquez, a member of Raices en Tampa, described some of the harsh conditions faced by the workers.

"Just having a bathroom where you can go like during a break when you need to is non-existent," she said. "And I just found out that a couple of weeks ago, basically a group of women came forward and said their crew leader who also happens to be Latino, I think he might have been Mexicano, they all reported that this person had been abusing them sexually and physically."

In addition, farmworkers face harsh conditions such as prolonged exposure to pesticides, the sun, and heat. They face these hazards while performing hard physical labor, and they often have inadequate restroom facilities or housing. Shifts can last up to 12 hours per day.

According to a 2008 United States Department of Agriculture report on the CIW website, farmworkers are among the most economically disadvantaged labor groups in the United States. The poverty rate for farmworkers is more than twice the rate for other waged and salaried workers.

In some cases farmworkers have been held against their will and forced to work for little or no pay.

Some of these abuses have been addressed by the CIW when it got several of Wendy's competitors, including Burger King, Chipotle, McDonald's, and Subway to sign onto the Fair Food Program Campaign. Publix Supermarkets' competitors, among them Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, have already signed onto the Fair Food Program. in which they agree to have clean water and toilets in the fields. They agreed, in the case of tomato workers, to set aside a penny or more per basket for workers' wages and to allow workers to refuse to enter a field right after it has been sprayed with pesticides.

"I think that more than anything the CIW wants workers' rights to exist for the undocumented," Marquez said.

The heightening of the farmworkers struggle comes at a time when many other sectors of the working class are fighting for better conditions and higher wages including fast food workers, adjunct professors and home healthcare workers.

While some states are attacking workers by enacting harmful right-to-work-for less laws that weaken unions, farmworkers are not allowed to participate in collective bargaining at all.

Many unions attended the concert to show solidarity with the farmworkers. Among them were the West Central Floriday AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Electrical Workers. Unite Here, and the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers.

The only other boycott in the history of the 15-year Campaign for Fair Food was declared by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) against Taco Bell in 2002. Then-president Emil Brolick witnessed Taco Bell signing the first Fair Food Agreement with CIW in 2005, declaring in a press release that "any solution must be industry-wide." Now, as president and CEO of Wendy's, Emil Brolick has refused even to talk with CIW, much less commit Wendy's to the Fair Food Program.

At its height, students at over 300 universities, colleges, and high schools were actively supporting the Taco Bell Boycott. Students at 25 educational institutions successfully organized to 'Boot the Bell,' ending or preventing Taco Bell contracts with their schools.

"With 'Boot the Braids' and the Wendy's student boycott, we are reminding Emil Brolick of the power students have in the Campaign for Fair Food," Ferguson continued. "The Concert for Fair Food was not only a celebration of the transformation taking root in the agriculture industry as a result of the Fair Food Program, but also a call to action going out to thousands of students across the country to boycott Wendy's until they, too, are part of the solution."

Young Workers Summit feels the jolt of young labor activism

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 10:56:00 +0000

CHICAGO - The 2015 Next Up Young Workers Summit had all the hallmarks of a youthful presence, inspiring change and justice through activism and quashing notions that the labor movement is not drawing in young workers. Quite the contrary, they were at the forefront over the course of this four-day weekend event.

More than 1,000 young union activists gathered here March 19-22 for the summit, where participants drew on their experiences to map out strategies to fight for higher wages, immigration reform, student debt reform and an end to discrimination, among other things.

For too long, many naysayers have suggested there is a disconnect between young people and unions, but when young worker Caniesha Seldon spoke with the People's World, she showed that once people like her become aware of the struggle, they jump right in. Seldon, who resides in Washington, D.C., is a member of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 2 and their international representative to the AFL-CIO Young Workers Advisory Council. She is also chief steward at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and staffperson at their young worker program (Y.O.U.N.G.).

Seldon remarked, "It was the benefit of joining a union that attracted me. Also, I had the skill set for the job, and the idea of social justice was very appealing." But prior to working for OPEIU, she did not realize what unionism entailed. "Working for a union is a little bit different," she said. "It's one thing to get paid. What I do for OPEIU is full-on union activism. I've taken on so much more responsibility, and the ability to do that comes from the education I got on the job."

She noted that the summit will be a huge step forward, establishing a new movement for young workers. "Since this event started, (this was the third annual AFL-CIO Young Worker Summit) so many young people are taking on responsibilities. There's definitely a change. People are seeing value in grassroots activism."

Prior to this, she said, one of the problems was merely that unions did not know how to reach out to millennials, but that is quickly changing. "Issues that were important to young people were never in the room. Their viewpoints weren't addressed. We didn't make young people vocal enough in labor spaces because we were not enough a part of those spaces."

In addition to many other things, the summit remedied that matter. Issues including LGBT rights, racial justice, young women's rights, and various plights including those of fast food workers, were placed under the spotlight, and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka reached out to them during his speech to a mass gathering of summit participants on Friday.

"Your activism is compelling," said Trumka, "and, in fact, quite inspiring. Your politics are exactly right. And your energy is one of the most powerful things in the world. For those reasons and a whole lot more, I'm honored and excited. This summit is critical. America is begging for change on a grand scale. The kind of change that, quite frankly, has always been led by young people.

"Back in the 30s when unionism lifted up a nation and built the biggest middle class the world has known, young people led that fight. And in the 50s and 60s when the civil rights movement brought our nation closer to true equality, young people were the vanguard of that struggle. For movements for LGBT and gender equality, immigrant rights, fights for public workers in Wisconsin and Ohio, and the political victories that elected America's first African American president - all across this country, young people have led and are leading the organizing, and marching, and mobilizing. That's very essential, and that is you."

If some young people are apathetic or disenfranchised, said Seldon, it's because of corporations that see them as replaceable. "Corporations are being built that way. Making money on the backs of people that are desperate. They've capitalized on the very hostile environment that they've created." This event, she agreed, could turn that around. "This summit was built to give people the tools to fight back and join their voices together in a way where they will go home and still continue the struggle. People are forming regional and state-based relationships. We are joining people together, and that's part of the very design of this summit."

Erica Clemons, an organizer with the UFCW, Local 881 and representative on the Young Workers Advisory Council, said that unions are indeed speaking to young people's issues now. "I'm a young organizer," she said. "A person of color. A mother. These identities matter to me. It's important for the labor movement to understand unique struggles. It was good to see Trumka speak out about racism. He reminded us that if we let ourselves be divided, we will lose, every time. President Trumka knows about being a young person in the labor movement."

Trumka had nbeen elected to the leadership of his union, the United Mineworkers of America, by the time he was in his early 30's., Clemons noted.

For Trumka's part, he was enthusiastic and optimistic about the progress young workers are going to make going forward. "We're going to lift America up," he said. "And I count my lucky stars every day that I get to be a small part of it; that I get to participate in the fight that you're going to wage and the country that you're going to build. This is your day, this is your time, your voice, your power. America needs you and we're going to stand together and win together. Keep on marching, keep on organizing, keep on educating, keep on voting. Just keep on keepin' on, until we win."

Photo: A thousand participants at the Young Workers Summit left the event this weekend to take to the streets of Chicago and support the struggles of workers in the fast food industry. | Next Up Young Workers Summit Facebook page

NLRB chair defends agency as GOP-run house tries to overturn new union election rules

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 15:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)-National Labor Relations Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce stepped up to defend his embattled agency, as the Republican-run House followed the GOP-controlled Senate's lead and prepared to pass legislation overturning the board's more modern and modest changes in union election representation rules.

But Pearce and his fellow NLRB members, as well as workers who count on the agency to - eventually - dispense justice and oversee union recognition elections, don't have to worry about this GOP threat. President Barack Obama has already said he'll veto the bill.

Pearce's defense came just before the House voted on March 19 on a joint resolution to invoke the little-used Congressional Review Act that lets Congress overturn agency rules. The Senate passed the resolution before, but without enough votes to overturn an Obama veto.

The only successful use of that law was when the Gingrich-run GOP Congress first passed it and then later used it to nullify an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule designed to reduce ergonomic, or repetitive-motion, injuries.

The GOP called the NLRB's planned election rule changes, adopted by a party-line 3-2 board vote in December, the "ambush election" rule, because it could reduce the time bosses now use to delay and deny workers their rights to vote for representation or not.

The NLRB's rule, which would take effect April 14, also rolls all challenges to the election - such as who should be in the bargaining unit - into one post-election hearing, if that hearing is needed.

"The board remains committed to the critical work of this agency and fully carrying out the law," Pearce said. "As Congress considers this resolution, this agency will continue productive conversations about the rule ensuring that our processes help fulfill the promise of the National Labor Relations Act.

"It is undeniable that modernizing and streamlining the representation-case process is far overdue. Both businesses and workers deserve a process that is effective, fair, and free of unnecessary delays, which is exactly what this rule strives to accomplish."

The NLRB's proposed rule, which organized labor hailed as a small but positive step to help workers gain their rights on the job, would also modernize the agency's procedures would make workers' names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mails available to organizers during representation campaigns.

Photo: CWA Facebook page.

Wisconsin workers barred from right-to-work-for-less signing ceremony

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:21:00 +0000

BROWN DEER, Wis. - Even GOP Gov. Scott Walker's signing of the right-to-work-for-less-law Mar. 9 - making Wisconsin the 25^th such state -- turned out to be something of a farce. Floor workers at the huge Badger Meter plant here, where the governor held the signing ceremony, were excluded from the signing.

CEO Richard Meeusen had threatened he would close the Brown Deer facility unless the law was passed and promised he would hire at least 30 more people if it was passed. He neglected to point out that any new hire until October 2016 is automatically under a union contract. Nor did he mention how thousands of assembly jobs in Mexico and the Southwest relied on 120 experienced union machinists (IAMAW) in Brown Deer to test the master parts.

Gov. Scott Walker, who ran from the entire idea until he started running for president, changed course because, whether unions like it or not, the talking points from the right have gained traction in a nation that sometimes displays little sense of history.

Many doubt the value of vaccines today because they didn't live through polio or measles epidemics. They readily believe that what unions accomplished for higher paychecks, weekends, overtime and better benefits are now passé-despite how good the economy was when unions were at their prime.

The national decline in union membership and soaring wage inequity are inescapable twin realities. In combo they ought to make absurd the blaming of unions for fiscal problems, particularly as the right-to-work states are doing so badly in comparison to states with full-blooded worker rights-roughly $5,970 less annual income per worker. A realist has to conclude the only justification for the hatred of unions is the voluntary portion of union political action that are a major boon to liberal Democrats. The conservatives have found a scapegoat for their own failed policies.

"From first to last this has been about politics not economics," several Republican legislators admitted to me -- in private. In public the lone Republican no vote, Sen. Jerry Petrowski, repeated his worries that this bill would have "potentially disruptive impact." Democratic US Rep. Mark Pocan put it more bluntly: "It was always more about presidential ambition than any pretension of helping businesses."

But as the dust is still clearing in Wisconsin on how to proceed, business and labor are realizing something else. RTW, as it has been shorthanded, has not been as destructive to private sector unions as extreme advocates intended and no help at all, mainly harm, to the business community.

Many businesses still want to bargain with private sector unions and are dumbstruck when they realize there are new limitations affecting their entire workforce. Even the few big business lobbyists who wanted RTW in ideology still are anxious to use unions in practice - it's a focused manufacturing and heavy industry workforce. Nor are such groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce rushing to find the $35 million in worker training and safety programs needed every year to absorb what state union workers had previously made part of their pay pool. So taxpayers had better get ready to be hit again by the state.

And those workers sucked in by a vision of individual freedom, imagining some yoke was lifted by RTW? Don't expect a free ride either. This is more "right to work someplace else" if you don't like the safety rules, benefits and conditions won by unions and now demanded by practical business people.

The new law also warns anyone who encourages union membership to expect a Class A misdemeanor and $10,000 fine, which has raised the specter of coach Mike McCarthy or GM Ted Thompson going to jail for nine months. Under NFL Players Association rules they could be so charged since every Green Bay Packers recruit has to become a union guy. Unlikely to happen because of the publicity backlash, the NFL tells me, but technically possible.

Private sector unions are bitter at being punished for no reason - several believed Walker when he said even last September (when he needed their votes) that he would not push for RTW. Now they've turned full circle. No one in the Capitol embarrassed Terry McGowan, president of Operating Engineers 139 (IUOEU), with reminders of how in 2011 he "took Walker at his word" about no RTW, because McGowan truly had inroads to the GOP as a champion of admired tough road workers. He testified forcefully in March calling his many conservative members "gun toting, beer drinking, pickup driving rednecks against right-to-work."

"No business model can survive without charging for services," he pointedly told a friendly Republican questioner. When asked what would happen to the new state of the art $10.5 million indoor training facility his members had just funded out of their pay, McGowan suggested it would become "the largest potato storing facility in Waushara County" unless the legislators changed their minds. They didn't.

Unions have already gone to court to get an injunction, fighting along lines previously attempted in Indiana to little avail about property rights.

The AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers and IAMAW (machinists) argue they are being obligated to "provide services to those who do not pay for them."

The Dane County Court ruled today that it will not grant the unions their injunction because they could not prove "irreparable harm." The unions say the law could encourage huge numbers of people to tale advantage of a situation in which the unions are forced to provide a service for which they cannot be paid. "Irreparable harm," they say, could well be the result.

Photo: Local 95 UAW attends a rally against the right-to-work bill outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Feb. 25. | Amber Arnold/AP

Oil workers continue strike against BP despite tentative settlement

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:32:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Although a tentative deal was reached last week that could end the current industry-wide unfair labor practices strike, each local unit of the Steelworkers must conclude its own negotiations with management in addition to accepting the elements outlined in the pattern settlement.

Hundreds of workers at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, just outside Chicago, left their picket lines and descended upon BP's headquarters on South Wacker Drive here, where they demanded that management drop its attempt to weaken their collective bargaining rights.

"While some oil industry employers, particularly at Shell, are working with the union to finish local bargaining and execute contracts, this is not the case with BP at our Whiting refinery or in Toledo, Ohio," explained Bob Lofton, the union's international rep for the struck plant in Whiting.

"Specifically, they want to be able to institute changes in work rules and safety rules without having to negotiate them with the union," Lofton explained, as hundreds of workers all around him chanted, "One, two three, four, we know what we're fighting for."

The chants of the workers and their supporters from other unions, including teachers and hotel workers, echoed through the cavernous streets around the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as the demonstration swelled in size from a small group at first, until hundreds were rallying outside BP's headquarters.

"If they get what they want they would be able to degrade our contract," Lofton said. "And our ultimate goal is a fair contract."

He decried the company's continued use of those he called "untrained replacement workers" at the BP plant in Whiting. "Whenever you do this, you increase the dangers and the risks, especially in an already dangerous industry," he said. "The replacements simply don't have the training they need." He pointed to the mid-February incident involving a major discharge at the plant with flames shooting up through the stacks and belching out a cloud of smoke that covered a huge area.

"Recently, there were problems with the piping system and last Tuesday there were leaks reported; it's just not safe," he said.

It is difficult to dispute union concerns about safety. In the past five years, 27 workers have been killed and hundreds more seriously injured, industry-wide. In the past eight years there have been 349 reported fires, many of which could have resulted, the union says, in massive explosions or chemical releases into the surrounding communities.

"The refining process involves toxic and reactive chemicals, explosive materials, extreme temperatures, and high pressure," said Nathan, an 11-year console operator at the Whiting plant. '"The union's concern here is that mistakes can be catastrophic. Maintenance has to be done properly. I'm concerned about how they are outsourcing maintenance."

"We will continue the strike until we get a fair contract and a safer workplace," Lofton said, when asked how long he thought the job action might continue.

Photo: Scott Marshall/PW

The GOP wants pay cuts for hard workers

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:53:00 +0000

Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation last week to lower the wages of Wisconsin's middle class workers. He wants pay cuts for hard-working Wisconsinites.

It's part of a pattern established by Wisconsin's Republican governor and the Republicans who control the state legislature. Earlier, they slashed the paychecks of teachers and government workers by eight to 10 percent.

Wisconsin Republicans refused to raise the minimum wage for workers who haven't seen an increase in six years, even as 29 states gave raises to the lowest-paid. Meanwhile, Walker and his GOP gang butchered state funding for public schools and propose the same fate for the state's public universities - the colleges that, until now, the middle class could afford.

For putting the squeeze on workers, Walker is the darling of the GOP. In some polls, the college dropout is their leading candidate for the presidential nomination. His Mitt Romney-like hatred of the 47 percent, the working poor and organized labor is so GOP-revered that freshmen Republican governors like Bruce Rauner of Illinois are aping his efforts to shove workers down.

The legislation Walker signed last week is called right-to-work-for-less. That's because workers in states with these laws are paid $1,500 a year less. Wherever Republicans control a house of a state legislature, they propose it.

After Republicans won majorities in both houses in West Virginia for the first time in eight decades, the GOP immediately introduced right-to-work-for-less legislation. GOP Gov. Rauner, a billionaire, tried to circumvent Illinois' Democrat-controlled legislature by imposing right-to-work-for-less on government workers by executive fiat.

Every adult American, of course, has the right to work. What this legislation does is help corporations and state governments cut workers' pay.

Its intent is regressive. Republicans want to return America to the days when robber barons controlled workers' lives completely. This was a time of grotesque income inequality, of child labor, of tragically unsafe workplaces, of bosses compelling workers to remain on the job 50, 60 even 80 hours a week with no overtime pay.

American workers already are suffering the worst income inequality since the Great Depression. Right-to-work-for-less laws worsen that. These statutes forbid employers and labor organizations from negotiating collective bargaining agreements requiring all workers to pay either fair share fees or union dues.

At workplaces where employees have chosen union representation, federal law requires the labor organization to act on behalf of all of the workers, whether or not they join and pay dues. Fair share fees, which are less than dues, cover costs such as bargaining contracts that benefit all workers and representing workers who haven't joined the union but want it to file grievances for them against the company.

Right-to-work-for-less laws are intended to bankrupt unions. And they do.

In Wisconsin four years ago, before passage of right-to-work-for-less legislation for government workers, Council 40 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), representing county and municipal workers, received dues or fair share payments from 32,000 workers. Now, Council 40 gets dues from 13,000.

That cut nearly in half the funds it has to represent all 32,000 workers. As reduced income diminishes the AFSCME Council's ability to do that well, more workers may quit and stop paying dues. That's the death spiral Republicans are seeking.

Wisconsin unions representing workers at private companies face that same fate as a result of the new right-to-work-for-less legislation that Gov. Walker signed last week.

Right-to-work-for-less laws take from workers the tool they used for decades to secure better wages and working conditions. Right-to-work-for-less sends workers back to the desperate days before 1935. That's the year Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, encouraging collective bargaining.

For nearly four decades after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the act, union membership grew, America's middle class blossomed and income inequality shriveled. For the past three decades, as Republicans attacked workers' right to collectively bargain for better lives, union membership shrank and workers' wages stagnated. Now, income inequality is back to robber baron levels.

While the GOP attacked unions, Republicans like Walker and Rauner wounded the working poor and middle class in other ways as well. They cut funding for public transit, day care and unemployment insurance. They slashed spending for public education from Florida to Oklahoma to Arizona.

Now, GOP governors are demanding hundreds of millions in cuts to the public universities attended by the children of America's middle class. Rauner wants to take $400 million from the University of Illinois. Walker wants to slash $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system. Arizona's Republican Gov. Doug Ducey wants to carve $75 million out of his state's universities.

The result is that while workers get paid less, they're shelling out more to buy bus tickets to their jobs, to ensure that while they work their toddlers are safe and to give their kids a college education.

This is the GOP's big squeeze. It means the death of opportunity for the working poor to climb into the middle class. It means more of the middle class dragged down into poverty as workers scramble to pay ever-climbing bills with ever-smaller paychecks.

Unions and progressive groups are fighting back. Unions, including the United Steelworkers, have filed lawsuits in Wisconsin and Illinois to try to reverse right-to-work-for-less in those states.

And a coalition of progressive groups and social welfare organizations staged protests last week across the country under the banner: "We Rise." They're demanding politicians put people and the planet first - that is, before the greed interests and ecological disinterest of Republicans and big corporations.

They refuse to be strangled by the GOP.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard heads one of the nation's most politically active and largest industrial unions.

Photo: Wisconsin Jobs Now, Facebook

Machinists file for union recognition at Boeing plant

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 12:45:00 +0000

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (PAI) - The Machinists have gathered enough union recognition election petition cards to file a formal petition to the National Labor Relations Board for a vote at Boeing's 787 Dreamliner plant in North Charleston, S.C.

Their Mar. 17 move is the latest chapter in a long-running saga which previously embroiled the aerospace manufacturer, its workers in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Senate, and the National Labor Relations Board.

The plant has 2,400 workers and "a significant number" of signed cards, IAM said. NLRB rules require at least 30 percent of a worksite's employees sign the cards before petitioning for a vote. In practice, many unions try for signatures of at least half of the workers.

The North Charleston workers "had reached out to the IAM regarding numerous workplace concerns, including forced overtime, fair wages and a lack of respect on the shop floor," IAM said.

"We're trying to build a better life for ourselves, our families and our community," four-year Boeing worker Gerald Guerena told the Machinists. "We feel the best way to do this is with a collective bargaining agreement that allows us to negotiate with the company over wages, benefits, safety procedures and more."

Management, backed by right-wing Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., is already campaigning against the Machinists. She attacked the workers in her State of the State address.

"Every time you hear a Seattle union boss carry on about how he has the best interests of Boeing workers in Charleston at heart, remember that if it were up to that same union boss, there would be no Boeing workers in Charleston," Haley charged.

Haley's slam against the Machinists referred to the long struggle over manufacturing the Dreamliner in North Charleston. Boeing's CEO had openly said work on the plane, Boeing's newest, would be taken away from the Pacific Northwest plants, in Seattle and Everett, Wash., with suppliers in Portland, Ore., and transferred to South Carolina in retaliation for the union's representation of its Pacific Northwest members.

That promise/threat led the National Labor Relations Board to investigate whether Boeing broke labor law. Its then-acting General Counsel and top enforcement officer, Lafe Solomon, tried to settle the dispute through mediation. But when Boeing refused, he had to file labor law-breaking-formally called unfair labor practices-charges.

Solomon's filing angered GOP senators, led by Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who then hamstrung the NLRB by filibustering against Obama administration nominees for board seats, thus scheming to bring the agency to a dead halt.

And their filibuster in turn eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court case where the five-man GOP court majority threw out all the NLRB rulings involving President Obama's three "recess appointees" to the board. Obama had to name those recess appointees because the 5-person board - thanks to the filibuster - lacked enough members to function.

Back in North Charleston this year, "Boeing workers have a legal right to an election process that is free of intimidation and harassment," said IAM lead organizer Mike Evans. "This is their decision and their decision alone. We expect Governor Haley and her friends, who have no clue what it's like to be a front-line production employee for Boeing, to keep their personal biases to themselves and remain neutral in the weeks leading up to the union vote."

The union's website for the North Charleston Boeing organizing drive is explaining the advantages of unionizing, outlining the Machinists' structure-and warning the Boeing workers of anti-union management tactics to expect. Its "Management Playbook" section gives "examples of tactics companies exercise to confuse, mislead, or divide workers."

Tactics include forcing frontline supervisors to be "frontline soldiers" in the anti-union drive, delivering letters, speeches and talking points prepared by union-busters. The website also warns workers about mandatory 1-on-1 meetings with management "to decipher employees' feelings about the union and persuade them against the union," and about mass "captive-audience" meetings-sometimes with planted anti-union questions.

Management can also use "divide and conquer" tactics based on race or ethnicity and legal and procedural delays to the vote, the website says.

"A union buster's specialty is hammering out materials - be it cartoons, leaflets or management correspondence - to make the case against the union," IAM's website warning adds. "92 percent of companies involved in organizing drives mail anti-union materials to employees' homes."

Photo: Workers assemble Boeing 787 Dreamliners at the company's massive assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. The Machinists union on Monday, March 16, 2015 asked the National Labor Relations Board to set an election so Boeing production workers at the plant can decide whether they want union representation. About 2,500 plant workers are expected to be eligible to vote. Bruce Smith/AP