(The AFL-CIO issued the following on March 14.)
A VOICE GROWS IN BROOKLYN—In a unanimous vote, workers at American Warehousing of New York decided last month to join Teamsters Local 805. The 45 warehouse workers, drivers and sorters load coffee and cacao beans onto trucks and barges at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. In Illinois, workers at a DHL-contracted delivery company voted for a voice at work with IBT Local 371. The March 3 win for the 33 drivers and other workers at My Type Inc. in East Moline is the latest in a series of victories for workers at DHL-contracted firms.
EDUCATION WORKERS WIN—Education workers in three states voted for AFT earlier this month. The 105 members of the Elmont (N.Y.) Paraprofessional Association voted to affiliate with AFT. In Wayne County, Mich., 90 workers at Western Wayne YWCA Head Start voted to join AFT. Some 47 instructors at the Lincoln Technical Institute in Union and Mahwah, N.J., voted for the New Jersey Federation of Teachers/AFT.
HEALTH WORKERS VOTE FOR VOICE—In Las Vegas, 280 health care workers at Southern Hills Hospital have a union with SEIU Local 1107 following two recent elections. A unit of 175 RNs and other workers along with a unit of 105 aides and support staff voted Feb. 29 to join the union.
MINIMUM WAGE HIKE NIXED—Senate Republican leaders denied some 7.4 million minimum- and low-wage workers a raise when they defeated a measure that would have boosted the current $5.15 an hour minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage was last increased in 1997. Four Republican senators crossed party lines to vote for the wage amendment offered by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to bankruptcy legislation (S. 256). It failed 46–49 March 7. A Republican amendment that called for a $1.10-an-hour increase and contained devastating poison-pill rollbacks on overtime and equal pay protections also was defeated 38–61. That measure would have ended the 40-hour workweek and replaced it with an 80-hour, two-week work period. The Republican measure also would have cost about 10 million workers minimum wage, overtime and equal pay protections by doubling the revenue levels employers must meet before they are required to abide by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Kennedy said he likely will offer his minimum wage amendment to other legislation later this year.
WE BEAT WAL-MART—Unions, highway safety advocates and congressional Democrats beat back attempts by a Wal-Mart–led coalition to force truck drivers to work longer hours with less rest. Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.), who represents the district where Wal-Mart is headquartered, withdrew an amendment to the transportation bill that would have extended truck drivers’ days to 16 hours instead of the current 14. Opponents of the bill said the increase in truckers’ hours would endanger both truckers and other highway users. Teamsters President James P. Hoffa and AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Edward Wytkind pledged to oppose any measures that endanger America’s drivers.
GAO HITS SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION—President George W. Bush’s claims that Social Security is in “crisis” and privatization provides the answer don’t hold up, according to the head of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Comptroller General David Walker told a congressional committee March 9 that Social Security does not face an immediate crisis, and private accounts such as those Bush is promoting could actually “exacerbate” the system’s financial problems. He criticized Bush for launching an aggressive campaign to sell his scheme to privatize Social Security. Instead, he said, the White House and Congress should focus on improving financing for the program, something privatization will not do. Meanwhile, workers scored another victory last week when the financial services company Waddell & Reed pulled out of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a corporate lobbying group that backs privatization. Another company, broker Edward Jones, dropped out Feb. 11. Community, retiree and union activists have demanded the financial services firms quit the coalition, which plans to finance a campaign to push privatization. Union activists plan a National Day of Action March 31 to demonstrate at offices of Charles Schwab across the country to notify current and potential clients of Schwab’s support for Social Security privatization. Unable to drum up grassroots support for Bush’s privatization scheme, the Progress for America Voter Fund, a Republican advocacy group, began a $2 million three-week television ad campaign last week backing Bush’s privatization plan. At the same time, working families and their allies are circulating petitions urging Congress to oppose Social Security privatization. Download the petition at www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity .
‘AHHNULD’ DUCKS PROTESTORS—Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) ducked through a side door of a luxury Washington. D.C., hotel March 8 to meet with deep-pocketed, special-interest campaign contributors rather than face protestors challenging his attempt to end California public employee pensions. Schwarzenegger was on an East Coast fundraising campaign for his re-election and to raise money for a ballot initiative that would replace his state’s guaranteed pension plan for state workers with a 401(k)-style plan. While union activists, including Fire Fighters who shadowed Schwarzenegger on his tour, braved single-digit wind chills and blowing snow, Schwarzenegger’s corporate friends paid from $5,000 to as much as $23,300 for lunch with the governor. The $23,300 also bought two photographs with the actor-turned-politician.
BUDGET SLASHES MEDICAID—The U.S. Senate this week will try to stop some $15 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next five years when it votes on an amendment to the fiscal year 2006 budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 18). The resolution mostly mirrors President Bush’s proposed budget. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) plans to offer an amendment—with bipartisan support—to eliminate the cuts and establish a commission to study long-term solutions to Medicaid funding. If the Medicaid cuts go into effect, hard-pressed states will be forced to eliminate Medicaid coverage for a substantial number of low-income people, increasing the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured.
PORTLAND COUNCIL BACKS RIGHTS—The Portland (Ore.) City Council March 9 called on Congress and the state legislature to stand up for workers’ freedom to form unions. The council approved a resolution urging Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and calling on the state legislature to incorporate those principles into state law. The Employee Free Choice Act would ensure when a majority of employees in a workplace decides to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block workers’ free choice. The city council heard from workers fighting to join unions including AFSCME, Farm Workers, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Laborers and SEIU. The Oregon AFL-CIO and community activists also spoke up for the resolution. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/voiceatwork .
CLINTON HONORS HOTEL BOYCOTT—Former President Bill Clinton honored some 2,500 hotel workers when he declined to attend a conference at one of eight boycotted Los Angeles area hotels where workers have been without a contract for 10 months. Clinton cited respect for the boycott as the reason he chose not to attend the Southern California Defense Counsel’s conference, according to UNITE HERE. Other groups have pulled events and other business from the hotels, the union said. The workers announced the boycott in October because of alleged intimidation by the hotels. Their main contract issue has centered on the hotels’ insistence on reducing health care benefits. For more information, visit www.unitehere.org .
LOCKED-OUT WORKERS WIN UI BENEFITS—Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) signed legislation March 7 that will allow workers locked out from their jobs to collect unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. The law switches the onus for proving bad-faith bargaining from the employees to the employer. This action “will ensure businesses negotiate in good faith with their workers rather than threaten them with a devastating lockout—with no pay,” said Illinois AFL-CIO President Margaret Blackshere.
TRAVEL SNAFU MANAGEMENT’S FAULT—The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found US Airways’ management, not its employees, responsible for the 2004 holiday travel snafu that resulted in hundreds of cancelled flights, thousands of unanswered phone calls and tens of thousands of lost and damaged bags. The carrier had blamed excessive absences by reservation agents, flight attendants and baggage handlers for the problems. The inspector general’s report blamed chronic understaffing and high management turnover, citing as an example an 8.4 percent cut in flight attendants in Philadelphia where scheduled departures had grown 33 percent. “The people who run the company need to face up to their own failures,” said Teddy Xidas, president of the Flight Attendants US Airways Master Executive Council.
CINTAS POLLUTION ALARMS TOWN—Residents of Branford, Conn., have demanded a hearing after the state’s Department of Environmental Protection issued Cintas a draft permit that doubles the amount of polluted material the laundry can discharge to the town’s water treatment plant. Four years ago, the department sued Cintas over 900 alleged violations of a previous permit. Cintas workers around the country are fighting for respect on the job, fair pay and benefits, workplace safety and a union voice with UNITE HERE. For more information, visit www.uniformjustice.org .
WOMEN’S WORK STILL UNDERVALUED—On International Women’s Day March 8, women around the world rallied and marched to show working women’s struggle for equality in the workplace is far from over. Though women make up a record 39 percent of the world’s workforce, they still are paid less than men for equal work and face other forms of discrimination, according to two recent reports. Women earn 38 percent less than men over a 15-year span, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Worldwide, 70 percent of people living in poverty are women, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reported. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/women .
NEW E.C. MEMBERS—Four union leaders were named to the AFL-CIO Executive Council at its recent meeting in Las Vegas. They are Operating Engineers President Vincent Giblin, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters President William Hite, Transport Workers President Michael O’Brien and Teamsters Vice President Jack Cipriani. They replaced retiring members Sonny Hall, Frank Hanley, Carroll Haynes and Martin Maddaloni.
NEWSPAPER GUILD AWARDS—The Newspaper Guild-CWA will hold its annual Freedom Award Fund banquet in Washington, D.C., March 30. It will honor The New York Times with its Herbert Block Freedom Award, named for long-time Guild member and The Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herb Block. Last year, courts sought to force Times journalists to reveal their confidential sources, and three have been subject to court sanctions. Also at the banquet, the Guild will present two other awards for journalistic achievement—the Heywood Broun Award and the David S. Barr Award.