(The AFL-CIO issued the following on February 28.)
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MEETS—The AFL-CIO Executive Council will examine ways to strengthen America’s union movement for the future and make the concerns of working families a top national priority at its March 1–3 winter meeting in Las Vegas. In addition to proposals for change, the council’s agenda includes stopping President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security, the campaign for good jobs and against the Wal-Martization of jobs and restoring workers’ freedom to form unions. New proposals for change from unions and others are posted on the AFL-CIO’s website that examines ways to strengthen the union movement for the future. Visit www.aflcio.org/ourfuture to read the proposals and comments and post your own comments.
SCHOOL WORKERS CHOOSE AFT—Education employees in New York and New Hampshire voted for a voice at work with AFT in three recent elections. Some 140 workers at the New York City Technical College/City University of New York Research Foundation voted for New York State United Teachers/AFT representation, as did 30 members of the Roslyn (Nassau County) Food Services Association. The 57 Henniker (N.H.) Community School support staff workers voted for a voice with the New Hampshire Federation of Teachers/AFT.
UNANIMOUS FOR UNION—Twenty workers at American Commercial Finance, a DHL independent cartage contractor in Waterford, Mich., voted unanimously for a strong voice at work with Teamsters Local 299 of Detroit. Key issues were better wages and benefits, including health care coverage. Eleven other DHL members from Local 299 met with the unit’s organizing committee and “talked to them about the benefits of being Teamsters,” said IBT Local 299 President Kevin Moore.
UNIONS SUE RUMSFELD—A coalition of federal workers filed a federal lawsuit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Feb. 23 charging that new personnel rules covering some 750,000 civilian Department of Defense workers will gut civil service and bargaining rights. The suit, filed by AFGE, Teamsters, Laborers and other unions, charges Rumsfeld with violating a 2004 law granting the department authority to make personnel changes only in consultation with the employees’ unions. The suit says the rules were developed instead by “secret working groups.” It asks for an injunction against implementation of the rules. Defense workers and others have until March 16 to file their comments on the rules. People can submit comments about the new rules to the Federal Register by visiting www.unionvoice.org/campaign/save_rights . For more information, visit www.afge.org or www.aflcio.org .
ACTIVISTS SAY ‘NO’ TO PRIVATIZATION—Working families are gaining momentum in their campaign to strengthen Social Security in the face of President Bush’s attempts to privatize the nation’s most successful family protection program. Last week, union activists used the Presidents’ Day congressional recess to lobby lawmakers to turn back Bush’s privatization scheme. Meanwhile, Robert Myers—a Republican who was the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary from 1947 to 1970—came out against privatization. “I am completely opposed, now and forever,” Myers told the newsletter Congress Daily. “I don’t think the program is broken,” Myers said, countering Bush’s claims of a Social Security “crisis.” Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute reported that removing the wealthy wage exemption from Social Security would virtually eliminate the funding gap the program faces over the next 75 years. Currently, only the first $90,000 of a worker’s wages is subject to the Social Security payroll tax. For more information, visit www.epinet.org . Outside Washington, D.C., activists are gearing up to introduce resolutions opposing Social Security privatization in state legislatures and county and municipal bodies. Others are petitioning their elected officials at all levels to pledge to fix, not privatize, Social Security. Visit www.socialsecuritypledge.org to download the petition. For fact sheets, fliers and more information about Social Security, go to www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity .
NO WAL-MART IN NEW YORK—A coalition of union and community activists, small businesses and elected leaders in Queens, N.Y., successfully mobilized to stop what would have been Wal-Mart’s first New York City store. A real estate developer last week dropped plans to build the city’s first Wal-Mart as part of a huge shopping center. Press reports revealed that Vornado Realty Trust had hoped to win approval for the shopping center before the public learned Wal-Mart was to be an anchor store. When that was revealed, opposition to the project soared. City council member Helen Sears said to win approval to locate a store in the area, Wal-Mart would have to improve its wages, health benefits and pensions and end its vehement stance against unions. “Until then we can only offer our backs,” said Sears.
MORE WAL-MART WOES—In Alabama, more children dependent on public health benefits have parents who work for Wal-Mart than for any other employer, the Associated Press reported Feb. 23. Studies in seven other states show Wal-Mart workers’ families as the leading or top beneficiaries of such programs, thanks to the company’s low wages and unaffordable benefits. In other Wal-Mart news, a New York court ordered the company to pay $7.5 million in a discrimination case to a former worker with disabilities who said the company hired him to work in the pharmacy but reassigned him to collecting shopping carts in the parking lot. Responding to charges that Wal-Mart violated child labor laws involving young workers’ use of dangerous equipment, which Wal-Mart recently agreed to pay $135,540 to settle, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Child Labor Coalition called on Wal-Mart to implement a badge system identifying minors too young for hazardous duties. The two groups are sponsoring an e-mail campaign urging Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott and U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to abandon a sweetheart deal giving the company advance notice of child labor and wage-and-hour inspections. For more information, visit www.ufcw.org , www.nclnet.org and www.WalMartCostsYou.com .
WAL-MART ORDERED TO END HARASSMENT—The Quebec Labor Relations Board last week ordered Wal-Mart to stop intimidating and harassing employees who have been organizing their colleagues at a Wal-Mart store in Ste-Foy. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, Wal-Mart managers threatened the workers with bad performance evaluations and disciplinary measures. On Feb. 9, Wal-Mart closed its store in Jonquiere, Quebec, where workers voted last year for a voice at work with the UFCW. The union asked the Quebec Ministry of Labor to impose binding arbitration on contract negotiations, as Canadian law provides. Just hours after the Ministry of Labor announced its approval for the arbitration request, Wal-Mart announced the closure. Meanwhile in Loveland, Colo., Wal-Mart’s heavy anti-union campaign coupled with the threat its closure of the Canadian store posed, workers at the Colorado store’s Tire and Lube shop voted not join the UFCW. The union plans to file charges against Wal-Mart with the National Labor Relations Board over the election.
STATES TAKE ON OUTSOURCING—Companies bidding for state business in Illinois will have to reveal if the work will be performed in the United States or shipped overseas under a new law signed Feb. 20 by Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D). The new law allows the state to take this information into account when awarding contracts. In recent years, contractors working for many states have used offshore facilities, such as call centers. The Colorado AFL-CIO is backing similar legislation, and a state committee there held a hearing on the bill Feb. 22. “The state should use its buying power to create and maintain jobs for its citizens,” said Colorado AFL-CIO President Steve Adams.
IAM ON BOEING’S PLANT SALES—The Machinists praised the commitment by Onex Corp. to invest more than $1 billion in three Boeing Co. plants it will purchase from the aircraft maker. One of those plants is in Wichita, Kan., where IAM represents about 6,000 workers and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace has about 3,200 members. “In a time when so many jobs and industries are leaving our shores, we’re encouraged by Onex’s willingness to invest in a showcase U.S. industry,” said IAM President Thomas Buffenbarger.
LATINO, LABOR GOALS THE SAME—The top priorities of Latino workers are good jobs, affordable health care coverage and secure retirements, Latino labor leaders said at a special AFL-CIO roundtable for Spanish-language media Feb. 24. Strengthening Social Security is vital for Latino families because nearly half of older Latinos depend on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their incomes. Labor leaders told the Latino media that ensuring respect for immigrant workers is part of a larger union movement initiative to gain immigration reform that will provide a certain path to legalization for workers from around the world who already are living and working in the United States. “The Latino community and the union movement belong together as allies,” said AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson.
MEXICO ‘REFORMS’ WEAKEN RIGHTS—The Mexican government’s proposed labor law reforms would severely weaken core labor rights for Mexican workers and violate the labor side agreement of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), more than two dozen U.S., Mexican and Canadian unions charge. The unions filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Labor’s office that deals with NAFTA’s implementation and are urging the department to initiate talks with Mexico about the so-called reforms. The proposals would weaken Mexican workers’ rights to freely associate, form unions, bargain collectively and strike.
FIRE FIGHTERS TRAIN FOR WMD RESPONSE—If weapons of mass destruction are found or used in U.S. cities, the nation’s Fire Fighters will be prepared to protect the public with techniques learned in the IAFF’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Emergency Response to Terrorism Operations training program. Fire Fighters in dozens of U.S. cities, including Miami, Phoenix and Los Angeles, have completed the training. On Feb. 17, IAFF President Harold Schaitberger and Houston Mayor Bill White (R) announced that the city’s IAFF Local 341 members would begin the training.
SPACE CASE—LAYOFFS OR NOT?—Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, has asked Congress to hold NASA to its public pledge that it does not plan to lay off civil service workers, despite a series of management briefings on how to reduce the agency’s workforce. In a letter to the House Science Committee, Junemann noted NASA has prepared a detailed document on downsizing methods and as recently as Feb. 14 briefed top mangers on the plan. But on Feb. 17, NASA Administrator Fred Gregory told the committee no layoffs were planned. Junemann urged the committee to include a no-layoff provision in the NASA authorization bill when it considers the legislation later this year. Such a provision “simply embraces management’s public testimony and makes it official policy,” he said.