People Before Profit blog

UK general strike gets U.S. solidarity (with video)

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Over 2 million workers walked off the job across Great Britain Wednesday in a 24-hour general strike. Tens of thousands more across the UK joined them in demonstrations against their conservative government's draconian austerity programs and cuts. Public services were disrupted in England, Scotland and Wales. (story continues after video)

Chicago Solidarity with UK General Strike from Scott Marshall on Vimeo.

Here in the U.S., hundreds of union members and Occupy activists picketed the British Embassy in Washington and British consulates in Boston, Los Angeles, Orlando, San Francisco and Chicago. (Chicago video below)

The United Steelworkers union and the National Nurses Union led the mobilization for the solidarity actions. Central labor councils and Occupy movements also helped turn out.

In Chicago, Robert Reiter, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, hailed the action of the British workers. The British Consulate is on Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Reiter reminded the crowd that 100 years ago, 70,000 workers marched down the avenue demanding the eight-hour day and workers' rights. He said in that spirit, "We have to stand up for what's right like they did. Let's stand behind our brothers and sisters in Great Britain and let's stand behind the Occupy movement and workers rights here in America."

Jean Ross, co-president of the NNU, lauded the solidarity action. Nurses and hospital workers in Britain have been particular targets of the conservative government. Ross said, "We have to stand in solidarity with the British (workers), in solidarity with the French (workers) and in solidarity with every person in this world who works for a living. And we're going to do it."

Bill Gibbons, USW retired District 7 co-director, told the crowd that steelworkers stand in solidarity with those unfairly targeted public workers in Great Britain. And he lambasted the brutal austerity attacks on workers around the world and called for more global solidarity to stop the attacks.

Thirty national unions in Britain participated in the walkout in what has been described as the most significant union action in decades. The strike specifically targets efforts by the conservative government to cut public worker pensions affecting health care, transportation, government workers and other service workers.

Photo: Scott Marshall/PW

Attack on labor board seen as attack on middle class

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - A cabal of the business community and congressional Republicans are mounting a concerted attack to literally destroy the National Labor Relations Board and workers' rights nationwide, a panel of pro-worker experts and two key lawmakers say. And destroying it, they say, is part of a crusade to wreck the middle class.

As far as Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is concerned, the plotters are not going to get away with it. He has declared that he plans to kill any and all anti-NLRB bills the Republican-run House sends over to his panel and the Senate.

"The National Labor Relations Act is the bedrock fundamental underpinning of the middle class in this country," declared Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who led the losing fight recently in the GOP-run House against the Republicans' anti-NLRB bill.

And Miller said the rest of the country realizes it. "There may be a lot of workers who are not members of unions, but they know how they got their wages and benefits, through union activism and collective bargaining," he stated.

Harkin, Miller and the experts spoke at a Nov. 30 AFL-CIO symposium on workers rights and the NLRB. When the forum, which drew a capacity crowd, was put together a month before, nobody had any idea how pertinent it would be.

It occurred the same day the House GOP passed legislation banning the board's plan to change union election rules. Miller said the real goal of the GOP and business is to strip the board of all its enforcement powers against firms that break labor law. The election rules bill passed on a virtual party-line vote, 235-188.

And that same day, Nov. 30, the NLRB itself approved, also on party lines, a resolution outlining changes it wants to make in union election processes - changes the panelists said would eliminate some of the legal stalling and obstructionism that employers now use to give themselves time to frustrate and defeat organizing drives.

The proposed changes prompted so much GOP outrage that the sole Republican on the board, Brian Hayes, threatened to quit, preventing the board from doing any business at all by depriving it of a quorum. But he decided to remain. His side lost, 2-1.

Still, all that put the developments into a larger context of the wide-ranging GOP-business war on the labor board and workers rights, the panelists said. "This is a collective attack on the American worker," Miller declared.

"The threat has become more dangerous" to both workers' rights and the middle class, said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, opening the session. "This is fundamental...This is a proposal fostered by the business community to end workers' rights," said Miller. "They don't want workers to have those fundamental rights."

Miller said the war started on the state level, as GOP-run governors and legislatures - especially but not only in Wisconsin and Ohio - went after public workers' collective bargaining rights, using budget-cutting as a reason. "But this is not about cutting budgets, it's about cutting rights," he reiterated.

Workers, private and public, realize that, panelists said, and they reject the GOP agenda. When collective bargaining rights were put to a vote, in Ohio earlier this month, they noted, collective bargaining won in a landslide, 61 percent to 39 percent.

But now the war has moved to the federal level, with the GOP legislation to destroy all enforcement powers of the NLRB nationwide, the panelists said.

That's a big deal, said Harkin and the other panelists - three academics, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Elizabeth Bunn and Kimberly Freeman Brown of American Rights at Work. Holding up a graphic tracing the decline in median incomes and the decline in unionization since 1967, Harkin noted how exactly they tracked each other.

"They have a clear ideology, and who benefits? The top 1 percent, or actually the top one tenth of 1 percent," Bunn said about business. "At the end of the day, this is about control."

And, as for whether business or the GOP is the driving force behind the war on workers, Bunn stated they're both mixed together, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling letting companies spend unlimited amounts of money on politics.

The panel offered various ways to counter the GOP onslaught against the NLRB in particular and workers in general. They stressed education of the wider electorate. It should focus not just on past wins - such as raising the minimum wage or enacting job safety - but on teaching voters about present benefits of unionization and protection of the rights of all, even non-unionists, to join together to campaign for better conditions.

"We have to go on the offensive," several panelists said. But they also admitted labor has an uphill war to win when discussing the rights of workers, union and non-union. That's because the other side - business and the GOP - is better at rhetoric.

"It's politically useful to scapegoat" unions and government workers, avoiding the rights workers fight for and the benefits the government programs bring, added David Madland of the Center for American Progress think tank.

One panelist, Texas law professor Julius Getman, gave as an example a prior GOP House-passed bill, barring the NLRB from using any money to pursue its case against Boeing for moving airplane production to anti-union South Carolina strictly to punish its Machinist workers in the Pacific Northwest for exercising their rights.

"They call this 'the heavy hand of government on the rights of capital,'" Getman said of the GOP. "As we said in the Bronx when I was growing up, 'b---s---.'"

Republicans plan FAA shutdown to bust unions

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:44:00 +0000

Republican union busters are planning, just in time for the holidays, a shut down of the Federal Aviation Administration .

They have added a stipulation to the FAA funding bill that changes the rules for union elections, mandating that anyone who doesn't vote be counted as a 'no' vote. Under the measure unions would lose even if 100 percent of the workers who show up to vote say they want a union. All the company would have to do to win an election is keep enough employees from voting.

The GOP is trying to undo a ruling that would make it easier for employees of Delta Air Lines to unionize. The ruling they are trying to kill is the recent one by the National Mediation Board, which said that airline unionization efforts should be decided by a majority of those who vote. That ruling shelved the long time policy that said eligible voters who failed to vote would be counted as voting against unionization.

The recent NMB ruling has its most immediate impact on Delta, which has so far held off union organizers.

The Communications Workers of America has launched a nationwide campaign urging voters to contact specific members of Congress, demanding they stop the union-busting plan and pass FAA funding. The lawmakers targeted by the union are the Republican House members considered most vulnerable in 2012. The union plans for those lawmakers to receive 1,300,000 phone calls. In addition, the CWA is mounting an online campaign to pressure the legislators.

A recent video released by the CWA highlights Delta Airlines' role in driving the GOP maneuvering over the FAA bill and delaying the bill's numerous benefits in the process.

Story continues after the video.

"It is past the time to finalize a long-term FAA reauthorization bill that improves our aviation infrastructure, grows our economy, creates hundreds of thousands of new jobs and keeps elections fair for air and rail employees," says the union in a statement.

In addition to union organizing rights, at risk are tens of thousands of good-paying jobs that would be created via the FAA reauthorization bill, along with infrastructure upgrades that will modernize airports across the country as well as national and air traffic control systems.

"We cannot continue on this disastrous path," declared Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., about the Republican scheme when he spoke recently to the Aero Club in Washington, D.C. "I do not understand how this fixation with one airline can be seen as so paramount that the House would shut down the FAA to get its way."

"Delta Airlines should rebrand itself as the official airline of the one percent," said Candice Johnson, communications director of the CWA in a phone interview. "At fault for the continued failure to forge a funding agreement are ideologically-driven Republicans who have been lobbied hard by Delta Airlines. Their unwillingness to maintain the democratic standard for union elections, and instead count a non-vote in a union election as a NO vote is an unfair standard no member of Congress could get elected to office with. And it threatens to derail job-creating legislation for the foreseeable future.

"For millions of people, air travelers and job seekers alike, Republicans are more intent on silencing workers' rights than they are on forging a long-overdue agreement," said Johnson.

The CWA notes that the union-busting move by the GOP comes just as Congress has gotten close to passing the overdue funding bill, and after 22 extensions of FAA authority to operate.

A union statement urges everyone to "call your member of Congress and House leader Eric Cantor today and tell them to stop playing political games and pass a clean, long-term FAA funding bill with no special interest provisions."

The targeted lawmakers are:

Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., Rep. John Mica, R-Fl., Rep. Mary Bono Mac, R-Calif., Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., Rep. Robert Dold, R-Il., Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., Rep. Blake Farenhold, R-Tex., Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., Rep. Nan Hayworth, R-N.Y., Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wis., Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., Rep. Reed Ribble, R-Wis., Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., Rep. Charlie Bass, R-N.H., Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minn.

Photo: A passenger jet flies past the FAA control tower at Washington's National Airport. (Cliff Owen/AP)

Mediation board rejects AFA complaint of Delta interference

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)-The National Mediation Board, which governs bargaining between labor and management in airlines and railroads, has rejected the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA's case that Delta Airlines skewed last December's union recognition vote there through management interference.

The ruling apparently ends AFA-CWA's third try to organize flight attendants at the "new Delta" - a combination of airlines that saw anti-union red-state Delta devour wall-to-wall-union blue-state Northwest. The NMB's decision bitterly disappointed AFA.

AFA-CWA lost the third vote, among 19,000 voting flight attendants at the combined airline, by around 300 votes. That loss deprived 8,000 unionized Northwest flight attendants of representation, after 60 years, and denied it to the rest.

"NMB has now given a green light to all manner of employer coercion and intimidation during representation elections that leaves employees with no recourse. It is a shameful, illogical and cowardly decision," said AFA-CWA President Veda Shook.

The NMB took a year to reach its decision, AFA-CWA noted on Nov. 18. "This is not democracy, not in outcome nor process," the union's statement added.

AFA said Delta broke the law in the run-up to last December's vote by urging Flight Attendants to vote "NO" as the best way to support another Union, increasing supervisor surveillance of flight attendants at work, threatening union supporters and "running an aggressive campaign against union representation."

"However, the board concluded this coercive conduct did not affect the outcome," despite what the union called management's "blatant, persistent attack on Flight Attendants' right to fairly choose a union," AFA said.

Refinery safety tops Steelworkers' oil bargaining goals

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:05:00 +0000

BEAUMONT, Tex. - Vast improvements in oil refinery safety will be the top bargaining goal of the Steelworkers (USW) when they open talks with the nation's oil companies on a new contract, the union announced.

To back up their determination on the issue, the USW's 30,000 oil sector workers gave Vice President Gary Beevers, their lead bargainer, authorization to call a strike at selected refineries or industry-wide, if needed. USW negotiates a "pattern" contract with one firm, and the others then agree to it. The current pact expires Feb. 1 at 12:01 a.m.

The union represents workers at 168 refineries and allied facilities, which handle 64 percent of U.S. petroleum products.

The overwhelming vote for the strike authorization is part of USW's National Oil Bargaining Program, which 300 delegates to its conference in Beaumont, Texas, drafted in September. The bargaining program was sent to USW's oil locals for voting.

The key issue will be "process safety," where refiners are required to ensure safe working conditions and to prevent accidents not just at individual refinery components, but at entire refinery complexes. Federal data show refiners failed frequently in that responsibility, with an average of one refinery fire a week for the last three years.

Process safety was a bitter disagreement in the last bargaining, after the fatal blast at BP's Texas City, Texas, refinery in 2005. The explosion killed at least 15 people and injured more than 100. USW found Occupational Safety and Health Administration never did a full process safety inspection of the whole plant.

Not only that, but such OSHA process safety inspections were infrequent at other refineries, too. USW made process safety a key point in the talks, but the companies absolutely refused to discuss the issue. That won't happen this time, Beevers vows.

"We think this is a fair proposal that addresses the problems we're finding in the industry's approach to safety and health," Beevers said after the vote. "Since Feb. 1, 2009 -- the date the current pattern settlement began-through Nov. 10, 2011 we are aware of 138 fires. In that time there have been 18 workplace deaths that we know of.

"The oil industry can't continue down this path," Beevers said. "Our proposal addresses safety and health issues and offers solutions to this continuing problem."

The best result, he added after the September meeting, would be for the oil industry to admit it has a safety problem and "partner with" with USW-which has enormous expertise oil safety and health issues-and create solutions "to make these facilities safer."

Photo: Aerial view of petrochemical plants and refineries, Deer Park, Tex. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Verizon is tax deadbeat, report shows

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:10:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In the last three years, as it raked in more than $100 billion in revenues and $33 billion in U.S. profits, Verizon - which is campaigning to cut its unionized workers' health care - has been a tax deadbeat, a new report says.

Unpaid Bills: How Verizon Shortchanges The Government, by Good Jobs First and the Citizens for Tax Justice, reveals Verizon actually got tax rebates from the federal Treasury worth a total of $951 million, and also paid only about one-third of the state taxes it owed.

With the nominal U.S. corporate tax rate at 35 percent, Verizon should have paid about $11.4 billion in taxes, the report adds, rather than getting about a billion dollars back.

"Verizon doesn't use its tax avoidance gains to keep up its copper network or extend its fiber optic technology to cities like Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo, or other communities, or create quality jobs. It isn't negotiating a fair contract with the workers who have made this company so successful," said CWA senior director George Kohl.

"Instead, it is demanding nearly one billion dollars in givebacks and making sure that its top executives stay in the top one percent of American earners. That's why we say 'the 99 percent' are picking up Verizon's tax tab."

Verizon responded by attacking the credibility of both sponsoring groups. It also claimed many of the taxes involved were deferred and will be paid later.

But the report points out that Verizon is avoiding paying taxes now. Good Jobs First called it one of the top corporate deadbeats in the U.S.

"At the federal level, despite posting more than $33 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits in the past three years, the company has arranged its tax affairs so it received net payments from the Treasury of nearly one billion dollars. It has also used a tax gimmick known as a 'Reverse Morris Trust' to avoid more than $1.5 billion in taxes while selling off parts of its landline business," the report points out.

"And during the past three years it has paid a nationwide state income tax rate of less than three percent and received more than $1 billion in state tax subsidies" - a figure that would have been even higher had Verizon not cancelled construction of a call center in upstate New York, for which state and local governments had promised $600 million.

"While these federal and state tax subsidies are good for Verizon, they're bad for the rest of the taxpaying public. When the federal and state governments collect $14 billion less in tax revenues from Verizon, the result is less spending on critical services, a higher public debt load, and higher taxes for others."

Photo: Tony the misfit // CC 2.0

Trumka, Weingarten blame GOP for "super committee" failure

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - With the congressional "super committee's" deficit-cutting efforts in ruins, the first two union leaders to comment on the failure, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and AFT President Randi Weingarten, blamed the flop on GOP refusal to abandon tax cuts for the rich.

But the failure might not be all bad, pro-worker Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., pointed out. Democrats on the panel had proposed cutting increases in Medicare and Social Security as part of a "grand bargain" to reduce red ink - and that was something voters reject, Sanders said. Now, lawmakers have the chance to cut deficits without cutting those programs, and by raising taxes on the rich, as voters favor, he said.

The comments from Trumka, Weingarten, and Sanders came after the two co-chairs of the committee, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, announced on Nov. 21 that the evenly divided 12-member panel could not create a plan to reduce federal deficits by at least $1.2 trillion in the decade starting in 2013.

Negotiations failed on GOP refusal to have the rich pay their fair share, the union leaders said. The GOP had offered to close $300 billion in loopholes, in return for enshrining the Bush tax cuts for the rich in law. Bush's tax cuts end at the close of 2012.

"Republicans have once again shown that if they can't get their way, they take their marbles and go home," Trumka said. "'Getting their way' means making the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, letting the top one percent off the hook on deficit reduction. It means driving the economy further into a ditch - letting Wall Street run amok, refusing to take responsibility for their actions, and blaming everyone else. This, in a nutshell, is how our economy got broken in the first place.

"If we want to fix our economy and put America back to work, we have to start focusing on the 99 percent. Now is the time to start investing in infrastructure that puts people to work right away while laying the groundwork for broadly shared prosperity in the long term. And we have to defend and strengthen the Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment, and Medicare benefits the 99 percent depend[s] on. The last thing we should do is make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent," he concluded.

"We're disappointed about the apparent failure to reach a deficit deal, but let's be clear about what really happened here: There is not equal blame to go around," said Weingarten. "While Democrats tried to find common ground for the common good, Republicans insisted on protecting the one percent from additional taxes. American Federation of Teachers members know what it means to negotiate in good faith, and it is clear that Republicans refused to compromise."

But Weingarten was not as sanguine as Sanders about what would happen next. Absent a deficit-cutting deal, $1.2 trillion in cuts, spread out over the years and evenly split between domestic spending - minus Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - and defense will start in Jan. 2013. Weingarten said such trims would produce a 7.8 percent cut in federal aid to education, harming women, teachers, and kids.

Structural crisis exposes neoliberalism as disaster

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:02:00 +0000

It would be wrong to simply characterize this global economic crisis as only cyclical in nature. In a typical cyclical crisis, workers are idled, wages are lowered, excess capacity is destroyed, inefficient competitors are eliminated, inventories are reduced, and debt is drawn down. And in so doing the conditions are created for a vigorous recovery, that is, a fresh round of accumulation of capital (investment and growth) on a broader scale.

In the post-World-War II period this is precisely what happened in the core capitalist countries. Full recovery followed retrenchment.

But so far this crisis is different. True, it follows old patterns, but only up to a point. No revival and recovery has followed.

Growth rates are no longer negative, but they are not robust either. And there is little reason to think it will be much different going forward.

All of which suggests that this crisis is structural and systemic as well as cyclical.

Over the course of the last century, the country has experienced four structural crises.

The first was in the 1890s and out of it came the rise of finance and finance capital (the first financial hegemony), which lasted to the Great Depression.

The second was the Great Depression of 1929-1940 and out of it came the Keynesian (class) compromise of reforms and concessions to the working class, and an era of vigorous growth.

The third began in the 1970s and lasted for nearly a decade and out of it came neoliberalism (the second financial hegemony).

And the final and most recent began in 2007/2008 and its outcome is still to be decided.

None of these crises were self-correcting. They were longer lasting and deeper in character. And their resolution was bound up with the outcome of a bitter class struggle in which the victor - the working class and its allies or the capitalist class and its allies - was able to restructure the economy, politics, and conventional wisdom in its interests.

Crisis of neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, as mentioned, emerged in the wake of the structural crisis of capitalism of the 1970s. It was the result of the economic contradictions of capitalism and the class struggle at that time.

It rested on the emergence of global-scale flexible production networks, union-busting, deregulation, low-wage labor, inflation-suppression, the hollowing out of the welfare state, tax redistribution, and, above all, the rise of finance.

The state didn't withdraw from the economy as much as it restructured its role and functions to suit the objectives of the top fractions of the capitalist class and particularly finance capital: the restoration of class power, income, and privilege.

Giving a necessary and heavy assist to this process was the Reagan administration. Much like Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, Reagan employed state power to crush the opposition to neoliberal policies, reframe popular thinking, and grease the skids and shape the contours of neoliberal financialization and globalization. In doing so he set into motion three decades of neoliberalism in a right-wing political skin.

In other words the morphing of capitalism into its neoliberal form was a contested process in which the working class and its allies found themselves on the defensive, fending off blows and unable to mount a sustained and sufficiently strong counteroffensive.

What is more, the neoliberal expansion beginning in the early 1990s, resting on debt-driven bubble economics, temporarily hid the conflicting interests and contradictions of this structure of capital accumulation.

But all this changed in the fall of 2008 when the collapse of the housing market triggered a near meltdown of financial markets and a long-term crisis of overproduction and stagnation in the economy as a whole.

Looking ahead, the exact contours and content of the recovery will depend on which class and its allies are able to leave their imprint on the political and economic process.

This is not a struggle between capitalism and socialism in the near and medium term, but over whether the working class and its allies are able to set into motion a process of reforms, including radical reforms, within the framework of capitalism.

So far financial capital and right-wing extremism has the initiative. But the battle and final outcome is far from settled.

What is encouraging is that millions, thanks in part to the Occupy movement, are coming to the conclusion that there is a divergence between neoliberalism and the needs of the working class and society.

And if neoliberalism is being challenged at the national level, it is under siege at the global level. In nearly every region of the world neoliberalism finds itself discredited.

It was undone by its own contradictions. It promised growth and rising incomes, but brought hardship.

The rebellion against neoliberal globalization and financialization in some regions of the world, namely Latin American and Asia, has progressed from protest to the development of alternative growth models. They offer new pathways and promise.

Photo: Neoliberal ax-and-slashers British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan yuck it up. roberthuffstutter // CC 2.0

Hoffa wins re-election as Teamsters president

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Incumbent Teamsters President James Hoffa was re-elected to a fourth term in final results announced by an independent overseer on Nov. 18.

Hoffa's running mate, new Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall, and the rest of the incumbent president's slate will join him. The consent decree the Teamsters signed with the U.S. Justice Department more than 20 years ago requires rank-and-file one-member one-vote balloting, complete with the independent oversight.

Final results showed Hoffa with 137,172 votes, ahead of challengers Fred Gagare (54,148) and Sandy Pope (39,251). There were 13,457 challenged ballots. Gagare made Hoffa's failure to get the consent decree lifted a top campaign plank. Pope, a New York local leader, was the first woman to seek the union's highest office.

Hoffa won 59.4 percent of the valid votes, Gagare won 23.5 percent and Pope 17 percent. With 136,497 votes, Hall defeated challengers Jim Sheard (56,854) and Gary Marquardt (27,934) with the same number of challenged ballots.

Hoffa-endorsed board candidates, including Graphic Communications Conference President George Tedeschi, also won. Tedeschi drew 134,523, the third-highest total among 14 candidates for seven at-large vice-presidential slots.

"The members have spoken," Hoffa said after the election totals announcement. "This is not just our slate's victory but a victory for all working Americans who are fighting to save America's middle class. We traveled across this country to mobilize our members to fight the right-wing attack on workers.

"Teamster members responded because they know it is not workers who are to blame for the crisis facing America - it is the greed and corruption of big business and Wall Street and their bought and paid-for puppets in Congress.

"Now that this election is completed we will intensify our efforts in the fight for all working families. The Teamsters' strength is in organizing the unorganized, fighting for strong health care, good wages, secure retirement, and holding employers and politicians accountable," Hoffa concluded.

Hoffa has been Teamsters president since December 1998, when he defeated the incumbent, the late Ron Carey, in a rerun election ordered after Carey's campaign was found to have illegally used union funds for electioneering. Hoffa was re-elected in 2001 and 2006. If he serves out his new 5-year term, which starts in March, Hoffa will be the union's second-longest-serving president, surpassing his late father.

Hall succeeds veteran Secretary-Treasurer Tom Keegel.

Photo: Jon Huss // CC 2.0

Federal judge rules against misclassifying workers as contractors

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:21:00 +0000

The U.S. Department of Labor won a major victory this month in its campaign against job misclassification, a growing problem where companies illegally label employees "independent contractors" to evade taxes, wage and hour laws, health, safety and anti-discrimination standards.

In a Nov. 3 decision Judge Thomas Rose of the U.S. District Court in Ohio ruled that Cascom, Inc. had illegally denied overtime pay, as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act, to 250 installers of cable TV, telephone and internet services in the Dayton area. The installation company, retained by Time Warner, had misclassified the workers as independent contractors and was sued by the Dept. of Labor, which is now seeking $1.6 million in back wages and damages.

"The misclassification of employees as independent contractors is an alarming trend," said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. "The practice is a serious threat to both workers, who are entitled to good, safe jobs, and to employers who obey the law and are undercut when others use illegal practices."

The suit was brought as part of a coordinated effort of the Departments of Labor, Treasury and other agencies under auspices of the Middle Class Task Force set up by the White House shortly after President Obama took office and headed by Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2010 Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray estimated there were over 90,000 misclassified workers in trucking, home health care, construction and other industries, costing the state over $350 million in lost unemployment insurance taxes, workers' compensation premiums and income tax revenues. According to the Labor Department, as many as 30 per cent of companies nationally misclassify some 3.4 million workers as contractors.

In this way they avoid an estimated 20 to 30 percent extra cost per worker in Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes as well as minimum wage, overtime and other costs. The crackdown on misclassification should increase revenues by $7 billion over the next decade according to Biden's Chief Economic Advisor, Jared Bernstein.

Law abiding companies, undermined by the unfair competition, have praised the Labor Department's offensive against misclassification, as have labor unions.

Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen hailed the court decision as a victory against the "massive issue of job misclassification in the United States, particularly in the cable industry." He added, "Misclassifying workers has made cable organizing harder because of the threat or the actual use of subcontractors."

With thirteen years of experience in the field in telecommunications, I can speak first hand to the substandard conditions in the cable industry. Misclassified workers face deplorable safety standards, unreasonable productivity expectations, absence of adequate training and low wages. This results in high turnover and poor service to consumers. Injury rates are hard to calculate because many misclassified workers lack health care and access to workers' compensation benefits. Those who seek more stable full-time work at broadband companies like Time Warner find few jobs available due to their use of contactors.

This ruling is a giant step in the right direction for protecting the welfare of the nation's workforce. Enforcing proper classification and the Fair Labor Standards Act should stop the downward spiral of wages and compensation and support creation of full time jobs.

The ruling also raises questions about Time Warner, which hired Cascom to install its services and was certainly aware of the widespread misclassification practice in the industry.

Curt Hess is Organizer Coordinator for the Communications Workers of America in Cleveland.

Photo: Vice President Joe Biden and members of the Euclid Fire Department applaud as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis speaks during a campaign stop at a firehouse in Euclid, Ohio, Nov. 15. (Amy Sancetta/AP)

Steelworkers, top British union, hold joint Congress

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Carrying out their ever-closer alliance, the Steelworkers and a top British union, Unite, held a joint congress in London on Nov. 11 to help flesh out the structure and goals of their new joint group, Workers Uniting.

"Workers Uniting's strength is built on its three million members on both sides of the Atlantic. In order to raise awareness among members of the severity of the situation, provide rapid support for those in danger and discourage those responsible from carrying out such attacks in the first place, Workers Uniting will create an urgent action network," one of the points in its initial framework, adopted several years ago, says.

Workers Uniting's convention in London adopted a theme of "Fighting Back Globally." In his opening speech there, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard added, "Standing up for the world's 99 percent is the Workers Uniting mission. We can globalize the fight for working people all around the world. We have the vehicle to fight back."

Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey said the Workers Uniting Congress "is taking place against a backdrop of global economic chaos and a global attack against working people."

Delegates in London discussed strategies each of Workers United member unions adopted for saving manufacturing capacity in their respective countries, joint collective bargaining efforts with common employers in the paper, chemical and titanium industries and international solidarity to protect trade unionists' rights elsewhere, notably Colombia and Mexico.

The Steelworkers already have a strong working alliance with Mexico's leading independent union of metal workers and mine workers, Los Mineros. Gerard told a job safety and health conference in D.C. that USW and Los Mineros "are talking about uniting our unions, so we have one union from the tip of Mexico to the top of Alaska."

The London conference also discussed participation by rank and file delegations of activists in each other's education, rapid response, health and safety, civil rights, and women's conferences.

In his Washington remarks, just before he left for London, Gerard said, "You can't allow globalization to cause deterioration of health and safety standards here." But he quickly made it clear that wasn't the only area of workers' rights the wrong kind of globalization harms.

"We can't allow globalization and rotten trade deals to cause deterioration anywhere in the world," he declared. "We don't have too much globalization -- we have too little of the right kind.

Teamsters add 20,000 corrections officers in Florida

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:45:00 +0000

TAMPA, Fla. - Winning more than half of the ballots cast, the Teamsters were elected as bargaining representative for almost 20,000 correctional officers statewide in Florida, the union announced on Nov. 17.

The final tally showed 4,097 for the Teamsters, 3,015 for the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, 116 for the Independent Union of Police Associations, 154 for no union, 126 void votes, and nine challenged ballots.

By winning more than half the vote, the Teamsters avoided a runoff. Assuming PBA doesn't contest the results, the Teamsters will be certified as the bargaining representative on Dec. 1, said Ken Wood, president of a Tampa-based local that led the statewide campaign. The corrections officers will have their own separate local.

Key issues in the drive were respect on the job, job security - particularly with a threat to privatize Florida's prison system -- and lack of raises for six years, corrections officers Glynn Reeder and Kimberly Schultz told a telephone press conference.

GOP Gov. Rick Scott has floated the idea of privatizing the Sunshine State's prisons, ceding them to a for-profit firm, and the overwhelmingly Republican legislature could go along. But Wood noted several anti-worker measures went down the drain in Tallahassee in the last legislative session, thanks to strong labor lobbying.

And the PBA filed suit to stop any privatization plan, a suit the Teamsters support, Wood said. He praised PBA for doing so.

"The biggest reason we voted for the Teamsters is we had no representation" either in bargaining with Corrections Department officials or at the state level, Reeder said. "We had no raises in six years and every time an officer came up for discipline, it occurred" with no acquittals or modifications, despite any contrary evidence.

"It's a really strong organization out there in the field" that will work "to give us the recognition we deserve," Schultz added.

Wood and Teamsters Organizing Director Jeff Farmer said the union has started building a grassroots organization among the officers to make their voice "heard loud and clear in Tallahassee" on privatization or any other anti-worker schemes.

"We'll do everything to make sure [the corrections officers] are part of the political process" in the state capital, "so state officials don't take away their jobs and benefits," Wood added. And since a large share of Teamsters are registered Republicans, Farmer noted, the new unionists will lobby both sides of the aisle.

Written by Mark Gruenberg for Press Associates International.

Service Employees back Obama

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:31:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The Service Employees became the third big union - and the second within Change To Win - to endorse Democratic President Barack Obama for re-election, when its executive board voted to do so on Nov. 16.

The vote was overwhelming, but totals were unavailable, an SEIU spokesman said. Union President Mary Kay Henry was enthusiastic. In an email to members, she not only praised Obama for standing up to anti-worker forces, but included links for members to send $10 in voluntarily to the union's campaign finance committee.

The endorsement was bottom up, the spokesman added. He said locals started calling the international office months ago, seeking comparisons between Obama and stands by several of the Republican hopefuls now campaigning nationwide.

The locals said members were pro-Obama but wanted more compare-and-contrast data. Once they got it, they relayed their own pro-Obama stands to the board.

SEIU's endorsement, after that of the independent National Education Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers, means three unions with self-estimated membership totals that, combined, top six million workers now back the president. UFCW is also a Change To Win union.

"President Obama is the only candidate for president who shares our vision of America as a land of opportunity for everyone," Henry said on the union's blog in announcing the endorsement. "We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent, and stand with hard-working families to say that the world's wealthiest corporations must pay their fair share.

"Our economy and democracy have been taken over by the wealthiest one percent," she continued. "These bankers and CEOs use their wealth and excessive political influence to treat our state and federal governments like their personal cash drawer - spending lavishly on elections and then pressuring legislators to give them even more instead of creating jobs. It shows in the results.

"Just last month, congressional supporters of the one percent blocked President Obama's latest job proposals. They claimed we couldn't afford to invest in creating good jobs in the U.S. and then suggested another round of tax cuts for wealthy corporations and the one percent. I have a word for that: Ridiculous.

"We know what's really important. We know that after a decade of tax breaks for the rich and out-of-control gambling on Wall Street, things have gotten much harder for working Americans. We know that if these problems aren't taken care of now, the next generation will have it even worse," she said.

Obama knows that, too, and "is looking to turn things around, but he needs support from all of us to be heard over his wealthy opponents, who seem to believe that the only thing wrong with the economy is that they have to share it.

"From now until Election Day we need to dedicate ourselves to the goal of returning President Obama to the White House so he can keep fighting for more jobs and less nonsense. We will fight shoulder to shoulder alongside working families across this nation. We will show the one percent they aren't the only ones willing to fight for America's future," Henry vowed in conclusion.

Mark Gruenberg wrote this article for Press Associates International. Photo: SEIU supporter in 2008. SEIU International // CC 2.0

Postal unions blast two "rescue" bills

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The Letter Carriers and the Postal Workers are blasting both Postal Service "rescue" bills - one a highly partisan document crafted by House Republicans, the other a bipartisan draft from four senators - as deeply flawed legislation that would actually come close to killing the Postal Service.

As a result, NALC is passing around petitions at post offices nationwide to get postal service users to halt the legislation, while APWU has launched a call-in campaign and provided a list of potential allies in saving the Postal Service. Both unions are also strongly opposing the measures on Capitol Hill, while offering alternatives to help the Postal Service regain its financial footing.

At issue are two congressional proposals to aid the Postal Service, which may be considered by the end of this year. USPS managers say it is running out of money. USPS wants to solve its problems by eliminating 100,000 jobs through attrition, firing 120,000 workers - it needs lawmakers' OK to override union contracts for that -- closing 3,700 post offices and distribution centers and eliminating Saturday service.

The Postal Service lost $5 billion in the year that ended Sept. 30, after an $8 billion loss the year before. It also must make a $5.5 billion mandatory pre-payment of future retirees' health care premiums by the end of this month, and says it can't.

The GOP-run House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the agency, approved its legislation on a party-line vote in mid-October. The four Senate leaders of the Government Operations Committee unveiled their legislation just after.

Both measures drew the ire of both NALC President Fredric Rolando and APWU President Cliff Guffey. Both concede the Senate bill has some positive provisions, but on balance it's still a bad bill that doesn't solve the financial/health care problem. And Rolando says the House GOP measure, by committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is so ideological that it would destroy tens of thousands of jobs - and not just at USPS.

"Rather than address the postal crisis caused by the pre-funding mandate, the Issa bill seeks to exploit the crisis to advance anti-worker ideological goals. Radically downsizing the government and gutting the collective-bargaining rights of hard-working postal employees appear to be the main goals of the legislation," he said.

"Unfortunately, by destroying the hub of a $1.3 trillion industry that employs 7.5 million private-sector workers, HR2309" - Issa's postal bill - "may be the most anti-business bill taken up by Congress in years. Slashing service and forcing a massive round of post office closings would seriously damage the printing, publishing, paper, and financial services industries. At a time of massive unemployment, HR 2309 would mandate, not just lead to, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs," Rolando declared. And the unions blasted an Issa provision to appoint a "receiver" to take over the Postal Service if it couldn't pay its bills in any 30-day period. The receiver could trash virtually anything he wanted, including the union contracts and workers' jobs.

Both union leaders were also caustic about the Senate bill by committee chairman Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., and top Republican Susan Collins of Maine. Rolando called it "a job-killing bill that will dismantle the Postal Service." But its bipartisan backing gives that Senate bill a better chance of congressional passage.

The Lieberman-Collins bill, S1789, "would give the USPS short-term financial relief, but it also would force the agency to dismantle its retail and mail-processing network," said Guffey. And an NALC fact sheet added S1789 would tilt arbitration over agency-union contract issues in favor of management.

"Mail will be delayed as a result of the elimination of hundreds of mail processing facilities and thousands of post offices, stations, and branches," Guffey added. Both unions noted S1789 would let USPS kill Saturday delivery in 2014 and service to an estimated 90 percent of customers' doors the next year.

Eliminating Saturday service kills 80,000 USPS delivery jobs alone, and thousands of other agency jobs, right in the middle of the Great Recession, NALC's fact sheet says. "These drastic cuts will severely damage the Postal Service. It will make the USPS less relevant and drive away customers," APWU's Guffey agreed.

"Unfortunately, even with S1789's proposed reduction in the level of pre-funding over several years, the Postal Service would be forced to slash services and eliminate jobs to cover its pre-funding costs. This would prioritize pre-funding over preserving decent middle-class jobs," preserving Saturday delivery, or both, NALC said.

"In fact, it would place the dubious need to pre-fund future health liabilities of workers not yet hired over the continued provision of high-quality, six-day mail service to the American people and to the businesses that employ them."

The two unions suggest alternatives to put USPS on a sound financial footing, including some provisions in the Senate bill: Taking off the cap on postal rates so that mailers - third-class bulk and junk mailers, though they did not say so - will pay their fair share of delivery costs, charging more for longer-distance mail, and letting the agency ship beer and wine through the mail and market other products, using its network of offices and routes. But most importantly, they advocate eliminating the health care pre-funding and also letting USPS draw on its drastically (at least $50 billion) over-funded pension plan to help see it through the recession.

Photo via Save America's Postal Service.

Domestic Workers United, Occupy Wall Street oppose Keystone XL pipeline

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:32:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Domestic Workers United, which the AFL-CIO recently honored, and Occupy Wall Street, the anti-greed grass-roots movement labor backs, decided to oppose construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas.

Their decisions set up a disagreement with the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department, which includes two unions - the Laborers and the Teamsters - that strongly support Occupy Wall Street.

DWU and the National Domestic Workers Alliance join two other AFL-CIO unions, the Transport Workers and the Amalgamated Transit Union, in opposing Keystone. Pipeline foes, led by environmental groups, say that its transport of oil-laden tar sands from Alberta to Texas would increase pollution and damage the environment.

"Many of our members come from countries already severely impacted by climate change and environmental devastation. If constructed, Keystone XL pipeline will have a huge impact on our communities, on First Nation communities, on global greenhouse gas emissions, and risks major contamination of the largest freshwater aquifer in North America," the two domestic workers unions said in a statement.

President Obama's State Department was going to recommend whether Keystone should be built, but on Nov. 10 it delayed the decision until at least next year. It wants to evaluate alternative routes. Building trades unions signed a Project Labor Agreement covering Keystone construction several years ago. They say it would bring 20,000 direct jobs and thousands more indirect jobs to the U.S.

The two domestic workers unions agree construction workers need more jobs.

Unemployment in that sector is 13.7 percent and underemployment is even higher. But NDWA and DWU say construction workers could be employed replacing old water pipelines, repairing bridges and tunnels, and rebuilding transportation infrastructure.

"We need jobs, but not jobs based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil," NDWA and DWU concluded.

Photo: Tim Wheeler

Commissioner Stern: NBA headed toward “nuclear winter”

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:10:00 +0000

If you're a basketball fan or if your employment status and or small business depend on the NBA, especially these days when unemployment is on the rise in the midst of an economic crisis, you're probably not a happy camper.

The NBA's more than four-month long labor dispute took a turn for the worse this week after the players' union disbanded in an effort to file antitrust lawsuits against league owners in federal court. The players are seeking monetary damages for lost wages, which would be tripled under antitrust law, due to what they contend is an illegal lockout.

The players say they made several economic concessions and had no choice but to disband the union and seek legal redress. The league locked out the players on July 1.

"We've come to the conclusion today that the process has not worked for us," said Derek Fisher, the union's president on Monday Nov. 14, to reporters. "We've continued to want to get back to work, and negotiate a fair deal. But that process has broken down."

The league's latest proposal, which was rejected by the players, called for a reduced 72-game season to start Dec. 15. Commissioner David Stern had issued an ultimatum for the players to accept a deal that would include a 50-50 split of revenues, which the players had accepted. But it also included restrictions on free agency and player payrolls, which the players oppose. The players received 57 percent of the leagues revenue in the previous contract.

Stern urged the union to accept the offer or it would be replaced with an inferior one based on a 47 percent share for the players and a hard salary cap.

Stern warned the league was done negotiating.

After the union rejected the offer Stern darkly said, "We're about to go into the nuclear winter of the NBA," during an ESPN interview.

Meanwhile, NBA fans on Facebook are upset and disappointed.

"Both sides are just being greedy," said Maria, adding, "they are forgetting they are pushing away their fan base, the people whose dollars actually support the dollars they are fighting over."

Another Facebook user, Javier agreed. "If they don't care about putting a product out there for us as fans to see, then screw them, I'll watch college athletes compete. Tell you this, the longer they stay out, the longer it will take to get me back as a fan."

But not everyone feels the same way.

For example, A.B. Wilkinson wrote, "Yes, they are paid very well, but these athletes are extremely talented and have devoted their whole lives to the game. The players bring in much more money for the sport overall and comparatively receives a small percentage of the millions they bring in."

On Nov. 15, the players hit the league with separate antitrust complaints in Minnesota and the Northern District of California. The NBA filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the union last August, in New York, accusing union officials of threatening to decertify as a "negotiating tactic." The suits by the players are in courts considered friendly to the players whereas the suit by the owners is in a court friendly toward them. This will require another legal fight, to decide where the lawsuit should be heard. Eventually, all the lawsuits will have to be combined, with each side arguing to have the case heard in the jurisdiction it favors.

The resolution of the lawsuit could take months or years and could wipe out more than one season. But the immediate goal for the players is to push the owners back to the bargaining table and salvage some part of the 2011-12 season. For any new collective bargaining agreement to be approved by the players, the union would have to be reconstituted.

The NBA season usually runs from November through June. In 1999, the league staged a 50-game season after a 191-day lockout, with a labor agreement finally reached Jan. 6.

Photo: Surrounded by NBA basketball players, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association Billy Hunter, center, and the union's president Derek Fisher, second from left, speak to the media during a news conference after a meeting of the players' union in New York, Nov. 14. The players rejected the league's latest offer and have begun the process to disband the union. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Vice president, labor secretary cheer Ohio voters for SB5 defeat

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:44:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Vice President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis came to a firehouse in suburban Euclid Nov. 15 to thank and congratulate Ohio voters for the repeal of Senate Bill 5, the Republican-backed union-busting measure that was defeated by a landslide in the Nov. 8 election. The event, drawing a cheering crowd of 500, was also seen as a kick-off for the 2012 presidential election in Ohio.

"You put out a different kind of fire," Solis said, referring to the key role firefighters played in the SB 5 campaign. "You threw water on a different threat to public safety and you sent a clear message heard around the nation that labor unions did not cause the problems of the economy and should not pay to solve them."

She blasted Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for endorsing SB5, "the most anti-worker bill to ban the right of collective bargaining" and the Republicans in Congress who have blocked passage of President Obama's American Jobs Act.

Biden called the defeat of SB 5 "very, very, very impressive" and said that, although "labor was attacked as never before," the 2.1 million votes for repeal were "a lot bigger than organized labor." The turnout in an off-year election was extraordinary, he said.

"You tapped into the frustration and anger" of broad sections of the people, Democrats, Republicans and independents, who see that "the deck is stacked against them."

Biden charged that the "basic bargain" that hard work brings security to "middle class" families, had been broken. That bargain "lasted for decades, since the 1940's," but now faces a "full throated attack" by right wing extremism.

The attack continues, he said, in Wisconsin, Florida, New Jersey and other states and in Washington takes the form of efforts to destroy labor and environmental protection as well as throwing up "one roadblock after another" against bills to create jobs.

"They won't allow us to vote on the American Jobs Act," he said. "Not a single Republican voted to save the jobs of 400,000 public employees. They voted against a $1500 cut in payroll taxes for workers. They voted against a bill to refinance mortgages and against modernizing 35,000 school buildings."

The funds for these badly needed programs are readily available if the extremely rich pay only a little more in taxes -- $500 for someone making $1.1 million.

"They won't ask millionaires to chip in but ask everyone else to pay," he said.

"Folks," he said, "you fired the first shot." Now, he added, "it's about whether middle-class people are going to be put back in the saddle again - because you are the people who make this country move."

Photo: Rick Nagin/PW

More meatcutters unionize

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:28:00 +0000

DODGE CITY, Kansas - The United Food and Commercial Workers gained its second big union recognition election win at a meatpacker in two weeks on Nov. 4, just before the union and an international union federation met to discuss the impact of increasing concentration of the retail grocery industry into just a few megafirms.

The win, at National Beef's slaughter and processing plant in Dodge City, Kansas, will bring an estimated 2,500 more workers into UFCW District Local 2. They'll join other workers the local already represents at an area Cargill plant.

"We know that workers at Cargill, just down the street, have had a contract with Local 2 for many years -- and that means they always had a say in their wages, benefits, and working conditions," Ramon Prieto, who works on the kill floor at National Beef, told UFCW. Prieto helped lead the organizing drive at National.

"That's why I voted to join the UFCW, so that we all will have a chance to negotiate benefits and salaries, job security, and a better life for our families," he added.

Meanwhile, representatives of UFCW and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers joined representatives of Cargill, Tyson Foods, Nestle, Smithfield, and other processors and manufacturers in Omaha, Neb., to discuss increasing concentration in food retailing.

The concern of both the unions and the companies is that concentration allows retailers to dictate purchase prices to wholesalers and manufacturers, driving down profits - and forcing manufacturers to try to cut workers' pay to stay in the black.

"Think Wal-Mart," one attendee said, referring to the monster retailer -- which also holds a huge position in the retail grocery industry -- using its massive market force to dictate prices to its suppliers.

"No retailer in the world wants to be like Hinky Dinky. Everybody wants to be like Wal-Mart, so everybody is starting to emulate that," UFCW official Mark Lauritsen told the Omaha World-Herald. "That consolidation at the retail level, it's feeding itself all the way through the supply chain."

IUF speakers said the best union response is an international one, with food workers' unions collaborating across international boundaries to combat retail food conglomerates. That would build on past IUF-coordinated efforts, which saw U.S. unions, such as the Bakery Workers, reach out for support from their overseas counterparts when dealing with multi-national firms.

Can labor build on Ohio win?

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - With one year to go before the Nov. 2012 election, the key question for organized labor after this fall's voting is: Can it build on the Ohio win?

If it can, and if it can keep the organization and enthusiasm going that brought labor a 61-39 percent landslide over GOP Gov. John Kasich's scheme to destroy collective bargaining rights for all state and local government workers, then the outlook is good for labor's political causes next year.

But the key word there is 'if,' and there's another factor involved: Whether labor can successfully extend its impact, getting non-union voters - the overwhelming majority nationwide - energized to protect workers' rights and the middle class.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka intends for the energy to continue. The Ohio vote "is neither a beginning nor an end, but a continuation" of a campaign "that will not end until America is once again a middle class country" he told a post-election press conference. Other unionists say the same thing.

Citing the old maxim that "a rising tide lifts all boats," Cleveland resident Louise Forsman, a member of Working America, added: "A sinking tide - taking away collective bargaining - sinks all boats. And we don't need any more holes in our boat."

And CWA Vice President Seth Rosen said labor is "building a broad movement to fight for good jobs and strong communities, over many election days, not just one."

But to keep the energy, enthusiasm, and commitment going, unionists and their allies also need a cause. In Ohio, it was the defeat of Kasich's law that killed collective bargaining. In Arizona, it was a recall election that ousted the GOP state senate president who shoved through that state's notorious anti-Hispanic anti-immigrant law. He lost to a moderate Republican who supports immigrant workers' rights.

In Wisconsin, the energy appeared earlier this year when the state AFL-CIO led a drive to recall six GOP state senators who provided key votes for GOP Gov. Scott Walker's kill-collective-bargaining law. Workers needed three ousters and got two, leaving Walker with a one-vote majority. The next recall target? Walker.

The right-wing-business scheme to strip workers of their rights and destroy the middle class nationwide may provide the spark needed elsewhere, too.

That, however, remains to be seen.

"The 99 percent who didn't get rich while the rich wrecked the economy have decided to stand up and demand their fair share," Trumka said. "Working people will fight hard for the middle class and the AFL-CIO will stand there with them." Voters overall will be motivated, Trumka contended, "because they're still looking for someone to come in and do something for Main Street, not for Wall Street."

To take advantage of the motivation, and to keep people energized, Trumka reiterated that labor is redoing its political operation into a year-round structure, emphasizing issues, followed by accountability. But he didn't give details.

Jason Perlman, Ohio AFL-CIO Communications Director, called the Ohio defeat of Kasich's law "a victory in a non-partisan sense" as voters concentrated "on creating jobs" and not on the GOP's agenda of destroying workers' rights.

But labor won't be the only motivated voters out on the hustings; activists predicted women and Latinos would join them. But the radical Right, pushed by hate of President Obama - for his policies and his race - will be there, too.

Discussing the ouster of the powerful Arizona legislator, Service Employees Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina - whose unionists ran phone banks and pounded pavements for the victor, as did the state AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers - said Latinos would be energized next year.

Once again, there's a cause: Reaction against the anti-Hispanic immigrant bashing and veiled racism of the state and national GOP. Arizona's 'Exhibit A.'

"Latino voters cast ballots in large enough numbers to make the difference" in defeating the Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce in the recall, Medina said. "But what motivated them was not the party, but the issue" - Pearce's authorship and outspoken advocacy of the anti-immigrant law, SB1070.

Medina predicted Latinos would keep their energy going next year, for the same reason. "Republicans who think they don't need the votes of Latinos had better think again," he said. Their votes, if energized and if turnout is massive, could swing Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and possibly Texas and North Carolina, said another activist on that call, Frank Sherry of Voice for a Better America.

In Mississippi, another right-wing attack on rights galvanized women. The radical Right, led by extreme pro-lifers, pushed a state constitutional amendment to declare that life begins at fertilization. That would have outlawed not just abortion, but birth control and much else. With the Coalition of Labor Union Women helping women's rights groups push back, Mississippi voters defeated the scheme.

Workers taking "extraordinary measures" to save Postal Service

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:23:00 +0000

ROYAL OAK, Mich. - Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The National Association of Letter Carriers has revved up its campaign to save America's postal service. In an unprecedented move Nov. 6, NALC president Frederic V. Rolando made a phone call to over 200,000 of the nation's letter carriers to apprise them of the dire circumstances facing the Postal Service and to encourage them to take action.

Using an amazing teleconferencing technology, at 7:30 P.M. phones rang in tens of thousands of letter carrier households across this land. A live discussion presented by President Rolando concerning the issues facing the postal unions was followed by a question and answer session. The entire event lasted one hour. In that time, many troubling matters dealing with the plight of this nation's universal communications system were brought to light.

Rolando talked about the legislative attacks facing the Postal Service. In the Senate, the 21st Century Postal Reform Act of 2011 (S. 1789) is a deeply flawed bill that would end door to door delivery to 90% of America's postal patrons by 2015. In the House, H.R. 2309 would end Saturday mail delivery, door-to-door delivery, and radically downsize the Postal Service. Both bills could destroy up to 200,000 jobs if enacted.

President Rolando encouraged all letter carriers to become politically active and engaged. "It's up to us to get the American people involved" he emphatically stated towards the end of his call. "We need to contact all of us in our universe" he urged those on the line. "They want a part time workforce with no collective bargaining agreements. They do not understand the full role of what we do in every community" was Rolando's description of USPS upper management and those in Congress who support these bills.

Currently, a nationwide petition drive is underway as well as a campaign to call our legislators about these bills. Go to NALC.org or Save America's Postal Service.org for more information. This is YOUR postal service, America's must trusted and venerable public institution.

Photo: Marilyn Bechtel/PW