(The AFL-CIO issued the following news release on March 21.)
NYC CAREGIVERS CHOOSE SEIU—Nearly 900 home care and health care workers in the New York City area won a voice at work with SEIU District 1199NY in February. Some 830 home care workers employed by the All Seasons home care agency voted to join the union Feb. 22. Earlier, 65 physician assistants, technicians and others at two League of Voluntary Hospitals facilities voted for a voice with 1199NY. In Philadelphia, 15 janitors employed by Bravo Building Services, 18 by Shellville Services and 10 by the Arthur Jackson Co. voted to join SEIU Local 36.
EDUCATION STAFFERS JOIN TOGETHER—The Long Beach (N.Y.) School Related Personnel Association voted to affiliate with the New York United Teachers/AFT March 10. The 410 members are school support staff, including office employees, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, instructional paraprofessionals, food service workers and others.
UAW’S RIGHT AT FREIGHTLINER—Workers at Freightliner Corp.’s Memphis, Tenn., parts depot voted for a voice at work with the UAW March 2. The 119 workers join several thousand other Freightliner manufacturing, inspection and parts depot employees who have chosen the UAW during the past two years.
GLOUCESTER POLICE JOIN IUPA—The 48 members of the Gloucester (Mass.) Police Patrolmen’s Association, who serve the fishing port depicted in the movie “The Perfect Storm,” have affiliated with the Massachusetts Coalition of Police (MASSCOP), International Union of Police Associations Local 100. The local represents more than 2,000 police officers in Massachusetts.
BOLLING WORKERS ROLL TO WIN—Thirty contract workers at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., voted for a voice at work with the Electrical Workers Feb. 24. The workers are electricians, carpenters, laborers, locksmiths and painters employed by Chugach McKinley Inc.
CHANGE TO ORGANIZE—The union movement must find new ways to relate to professional employees, who make up the fastest growing segment of the workforce, rather than “stuffing them into a box we’ve already created,” AFT President Edward McElroy told 200 delegates at the March 14–16 AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees conference on organizing professionals. McElroy, who chairs DPE’s board, said new unions may be needed to accommodate the concerns of unorganized workers in fields such as finance, real estate and insurance. The number of technical and professional workers will skyrocket in the next century, but they will not work traditional hours or stay on a job 30 years and retire with defined-benefit pensions, he said. “These changes require a different structure and response from unions,” he said. For more information, visit www.dpeaflcio.org.
TRUTH TRUCKS ROLL OUT—Members of the Alliance for Retired Americans will take to the road March 21–April 1 to deliver 1 million petitions collected from seniors urging members of Congress to protect Social Security. The Alliance’s Social Security Truth Truck will begin its 3,000-mile, six-state tour in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and end it in Harrisburg, Pa. At stops along the way, local Alliance members will talk about what Social Security means to them. For more information, visit www.retiredamericans.org.
MORE WALL STREET PRIVATIZERS DEFECT—For the third time in a month, a major Wall Street organization has backed out of a group supporting Social Security privatization. The Financial Services Forum, an association of 19 CEOs of large U.S. financial services companies, withdrew last week from the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America’s Social Security, the group leading the effort to gain support for privatization. Financial services companies Waddell & Reed and Edward Jones recently pulled out of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, another corporate lobbying group that backs privatization. This latest defection from President George W. Bush’s plan comes as union activists plan a National Day of Action March 31 to demonstrate at offices of Charles Schwab and other investment firms across the country and alert clients about the firms’ support for Social Security privatization. This will be the largest single-day grassroots mobilization ever against privatizing Social Security. Events are set in dozens of cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, half the members of the U.S. Senate supported a nonbinding measure declaring Congress should not pass any Social Security plan that would require “deep benefit cuts or massive debt increase.” Working families and their allies are circulating petitions urging Congress to oppose Social Security privatization. Download the petition at www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity.
BUSH MEDICAID CUTS CUT—The U.S. Senate voted 52–48 to stop some $15 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next five years. The bipartisan vote was on an amendment to the fiscal year 2006 budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 18) that mostly mirrors President George W. Bush’s proposed budget. All 44 Democrats, one Independent and seven Republican senators voted for the amendment offered by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) to eliminate the cuts and establish a commission to study long-term solutions to Medicaid funding. A House of Representatives version of the budget resolution contains $14 billion in Medicaid cuts. A House–Senate conference will have to resolve the differences. Large-scale Medicaid cuts, such as those Bush proposed, would force hard-pressed states to eliminate Medicaid coverage for a substantial number of low-income people, increasing the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.
DEFENSE RULES ARE SECURITY THREAT—New workforce rules that gut civil service and collective bargaining rights for some 750,000 Department of Defense civilian employees will destroy civilian defense worker morale and threaten national security, union leaders told a Senate subcommittee March 15. AFGE President John Gage and Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, testified on behalf of the United DOD Workers Coalition, a group of 36 unions that represents the vast majority of Defense Department civilian employees. The pair also said the Department of Defense may have violated a labor relations law that covers federal employees when it failed to involve employee representatives during the development of the National Security Personnel System. The unions have filed suit in federal court seeking an injunction to stop implementation of the rules. For more information, visit www.afge.org, www.ifpte.org or www.aflcio.org.
CAFTA ON TABLE—Opposition to the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is growing in the United States and Central America. The trade deal is expected to come before Congress as early as April. During the spring recess, working families will urge members of Congress to oppose CAFTA. Last week, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson called on fellow Texan Rep. Henry Cuellar (D) to reconsider his decision to support CAFTA, which would extend the flawed policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. According to the Economic Policy Institute, under NAFTA the United States has lost 900,000 jobs and job opportunities, including many in Cuellar’s district. In Guatemala, members of the Guatemalan teachers’ union and other union activists protested against CAFTA in the town of Colotenango on March 15. Police carrying AK-47s and shotguns stormed the marchers, killing one teacher and wounding three others, according to the teachers’ union. For more information on CAFTA, visit www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/globaleconomy.
CHAO DEFENDS CHILD LABOR BUDGET CUTS—Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao told a Senate committee March 15 the Bush administration’s 87 percent cut in funds for the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) does not “lessen the department’s commitment to international child labor issues.” ILAB is the government’s only international child labor watchdog. Skeptical senators questioned her claim. ILAB received $94 million in fiscal year 2005 but Bush’s budget proposes cutting the funding to just $12.4 million in 2006. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said with no other federal agency policing child labor, “if the Labor Department doesn’t do it, who will? There isn’t money anywhere else in the budget.” The next day Chao was grilled by Democrats on the House Workforce Committee over a settlement the Labor Department made with Wal-Mart over child labor law violations in its stores that gives the company a 15-day advance notice of any investigation, including child labor and wage and hour investigations. Chao denied it was a sweetheart deal that would weaken enforcement of labor laws at Wal-Mart. A detailed analysis of the agreement is available at http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats and for more information on Wal-Mart, visit www.walmartcostsyou.com.
NLRB LOOKS AT WAL-MART’S INTIMIDATION—The National Labor Relations Board ordered a hearing last week into claims that Wal-Mart intimidated and bullied workers at a Loveland, Colo., store to vote against joining the United Food and Commercial Workers. Wal-Mart added new workers to the Tire & Lube Express to dilute union support, UFCW said, and no union representative was allowed to observe the Feb. 25 election. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart will pay $11 million to settle lawsuits concerning its use of undocumented workers. Under terms of the agreement, announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wal-Mart will not admit any wrongdoing or liability for its use of janitorial service contractors that hired the undocumented workers to clean Wal-Mart stores.
MINIMUM WAGE GETS JERSEY BOUNCE—Minimum- and low-wage workers in New Jersey will see a pay increase after the state Assembly voted to boost the state’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.15 by October 2006. Earlier this year, the state Senate approved the pay increase and Gov. Richard Codey (D) said he will sign the bill. The wage will increase to $6.15 an hour on Oct 1. New Jersey becomes the 16th state, along with the District of Columbia, to set a minimum wage higher than the federal level of $5.15. On March 7, U. S. Senate Republican leaders killed a measure to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.15 an hour over two years. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/minimumwage.
TRIANGLE FIRE REMEMBRANCE—On March 25 near New York City’s Washington Square Park, union and community leaders will honor the memory of 146 immigrant workers who were killed in the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire on that date in 1911. UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor, John Wilhelm, president of the union’s hospitality industry division, and New York Fire Fighters will take part in the services that begin at noon when a firefighter will toll a bell as students and workers read aloud the name of each victim and lay a flower for each of the deceased. Firefighters will raise a ladder to the highest point firefighters could reach in 1911—two floors below the workers who were trapped by locked exit doors.