DELIVERING A VOICE–Seeking job security, 150 ramp workers and weights-and-measures operations workers at DHL’s facility at Los Angeles International Airport voted by a wide margin for Teamsters Local 986 on July 13. Another 26 workers at Rochester (N.Y.) Transit Service voted for Local 791 last month.
BEEFY VICTORY–Some 101 workers in New York recently won a voice on the job with United Food and Commercial Workers, including 31 workers at Garden Manor Farms beef processing plant in Hunts Point, who voted overwhelmingly for Local 342 in May. In June, the majority of 30 employees at the Golden Acres Adult Home in Spring Valley voted to join Local 348S, as did 25 workers at the Crestview Home in Hawthorne. In Brooklyn, the majority of 15 workers at Help USA, which provides services for homeless people, voted to join Local 888.
MANUFACTURING A WIN–The 54 manufacturing workers at Collins & Aikman in Havre de Grace, Md., won voluntary recognition from their employer to have a voice on the job with Machinists Local Lodge 2424 in early July.
NLRB STRIPS GRAD EMPLOYEE PROTECTIONS–In the latest in a series of decisions that threaten workers’ freedom to form unions, Bush administration appointees on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a 2000 decision and ruled graduate employees at private universities are students, not workers, and are not entitled to the protections of federal labor law. The case arose when teaching assistants at Brown University in Providence, R.I., tried to form a union with UAW. The Republican NLRB majority “overturned precedent and ignored overwhelming evidence of the transformation of colleges and universities into large-scale employers of low-wage academic workers,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
WALKING THE WALK–Thousands of union members across the country will go door-to-door in hundreds of neighborhoods in important presidential battleground states in one of the largest-ever precinct walks the evening of Sept. 2, as President George W. Bush delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Labor’s member-to-member mobilization is a vital answer to the Bush campaign’s “unprecedented negative campaign against Sen. John Kerry [D-Mass.],” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. On June 26, some 10,800 volunteers reached more than 400,000 union households in a massive precinct walk that capped a month of walk actions. They distributed leaflets comparing the failed policies of the Bush administration with Kerry’s plans and record. Sign up for actions in your state at http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/politics/volunteer_main.cfm
BIG LUAU ON OAHU–Union construction workers on the Hawaiian island of Oahu will have plenty of work for a long time after the Hawaii Building and Construction Trades Council signed an agreement with Actus Lend Lease for union workers to build projects totaling some $5.1 billion over the next 50 years. The agreement, signed June 29, applies to all construction and renovation work under the U.S. Army’s Hawaii Residential Communities Initiative Project, covering seven military installations on Oahu.
OT VOTE UP IN AIR–The U.S. House of Representatives could take up as early as this week legislation to prevent the Bush administration from implementing new rules that would erode millions of workers’ overtime pay rights. But Republican leaders are considering delaying the vote until after the July 23 recess. The recess will last through Labor Day, Sept. 6, two weeks after the new rules are scheduled to go into effect Aug. 23. A House Appropriations subcommittee, on a party-line vote July 14, defeated 31-29 an amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill that would have required the Labor Department to keep the current overtime rules but add the new adjusted minimum salary levels so workers would be guaranteed they would not lose overtime pay eligibility. Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), who sponsored the amendment, is expected to offer it again on the House floor when the bill comes up for a vote. Meanwhile, two new reports show how badly the new rules would harm working families. An Economic Policy Institute analysis released July 14 found at least 6 million workers could lose their right to overtime pay under the final administration rules. To read “Longer Hours, Less Pay,” visit http://www.epinet.org/briefingpapers/152/bp152.pdf . Another report by three former high-level Labor Department officials in both Republican and Democratic administrations said the new overtime rules will hurt far more workers than they would help and will remove overtime protections for large numbers of employees currently entitled to the law’s protections. To read the report, visit http://www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/overtimepay/upload/OvertimeStudyTextfinal.pdf .
Urge your senators and representative to block the overtime pay grab by visiting
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/fax4otpay or click on http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/fax4otpay/forward to ask family members, friends and co-workers to join in the fight to save overtime pay.
TELECOM BARGAINING–Members of the Communications Workers of America are mobilizing to retain good health care benefits and gain job security in contract talks with BellSouth and Verizon West. Bargaining with BellSouth resumed July 7 with workers emphasizing they would not accept a health care plan that sacrifices new hires and retirees or shifts unreasonable costs to workers. The current contract covers 48,000 workers and expires Aug. 7. Some 3,400 Verizon West workers in Texas are seeking a wage increase and an end to outsourcing. The Texas contract, which expires Aug. 15, is one of several local Verizon West contracts that will expire by the end of 2005.
PACE WINS CONTRACT, FIGHTS ON–Members of PACE International Union Local 4-487 at Continental Carbon in Sunray, Texas, voted July 14 to accept a new six-year contract while challenging the company to settle a three-year lockout at its flagship plant in Ponca City, Okla. PACE leaders say the company has refused to propose anything similar in Oklahoma to two successive contracts now ratified in Texas since the lockout began in May 2001.
HEALTH COSTS EAT UP TEACHER PAY–Teachers’ salaries inched up 3.3 percent, but health care costs went up 13 percent for the 2002-2003 school year, according to AFT’s annual survey of educators’ pay released July 15. The average teacher salary for the 2002-2003 school year was $45,771. The average salary for beginning teachers was $29,564. For state-by-state figures and the full report, visit http://www.aft.org .
BUSH FAILS FIRST RESPONDERS–The Bush administration has failed to adequately fund, staff, train and equip the nation’s first responders despite the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger said. “The sad truth is…we are no more prepared to respond to an attack today in most places in America than we were on Sept. 11, 2001.” He said Bush’s budget proposal for 2005 cuts homeland security and first responder programs by $700 million. This follows budget cuts in 2004 and no increases in the previous two years.
SAFETY DERAILED–The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department called on Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General to investigate alleged corporate misconduct at giant rail corporations CSX and Union Pacific. The call follows a “New York Times” series on the railroads’ misconduct related to grade-crossing accidents ranging from “destroying, mishandling or simply losing evidence to not reporting crashes properly.” Although some 250,000 at-grade crossings lack gates or warning lights, and nearly 3,000 accidents occur annually, the Bush administration opposes any guaranteed funding directed at improving the situation. TTD President Ed Wytkind said the rail industry has given $9.5 million to political campaigns since 2001–77 percent to Republicans. Vice President Dick Cheney once served on Union Pacific’s board of directors, and Treasury Secretary John Snow is a former chief executive of CSX.
NO CREDIBILITY–Hundreds of AFGE members rallied July 14 outside the Washington, D.C., offices of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) to protest a recent rash of decisions the union said are gutting contracts, reversing decades of consistent precedent. The two agencies resolve disputes between management and federal employees. Recently, the FSIP ruled against AFGE on every contested issue in a contract dispute at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In another adverse ruling, the FLRA held Social Security Administration employees who engage in “security work [that] directly affects national security” can be exempted from bargaining units. The workers in question do not have access to classified information or require security clearances and do not engage in work that directly affects national security, the union said.
BANKRUPT REQUEST–Mine Workers’ members will return to Lexington, Ky., July 20 to rally outside the courthouse where a federal bankruptcy judge will consider a request from Horizon Natural Resources to terminate the company’s health care benefits for its active and retired miners and to abandon its contract with the union. This would mean a loss of guaranteed job rights for the UMWA members if the Horizon properties where they work–or worked–are sold in the bankruptcy. “This is the sad reality of being a worker in America today,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts said. “Work hard all your life, only to have [benefits] taken away by the stroke of a bankruptcy judge’s pen.”
TAX DOLLARS MOVE JOBS OFFSHORE–Most U.S. states are spending tax dollars to send government work offshore, according to a new study. In “Your Tax Dollars at Work…Offshore,” the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First found at least 30 states have awarded contracts totaling $75 million to 18 offshore firms to perform government work, mainly in information technology. Often state governments awarded contracts to U.S. companies that subcontracted the work to offshore vendors. The study was commissioned by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a local union of the CWA. For a copy of the report, visit http://www.washtech.org/wt/report .
AIDS TOLL ADDS UP–By 2005, some 28 million workers worldwide will have died from HIV/AIDS, and the total could reach 48 million unless workers with the disease have increased access to treatment, according to a report by the International Labor Organization, an arm of the United Nations. The disease disproportionately strikes people between the ages of 15 and 49, prime working years, and will lead to a reduced capacity to sustain production and employment, reduce poverty and promote development, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said.
MCELROY HEADS THE CLASS–Delegates to AFT’s biennial convention on July 16 elected Edward McElroy president of their union. McElroy, who served as AFT’s secretary-treasurer since 1992, succeeds Sandra Feldman, who for health reasons did not run for re-election after seven years in the top position. McElroy also chairs the AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees. Nat LaCour, AFT’s executive vice president since 1998, was elected as the union’s secretary-treasurer and Antonia “Toni” Cortese was elected executive vice president.
LABOR DAY CALENDAR–“We’re Taking Back America for Good Jobs, Health Care and Strong Communities” is the message working families will send on Labor Day, Sept. 6. To include your Labor Day rallies, picnics and parades on the AFL-CIO’s comprehensive online calendar, visit http://www.aflcio.org/aboutunions/laborday/calendar.cfm .
Download an updated Labor in the Pulpits toolkit from http://www.aflcio.org/communitypartners/faith/upload/Pulpits2004-2.pdf
.
Work in Progress is also available on our website at
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/wip .