(The AFL-CIO issued the following on February 7.)
WORKERS AROSE IN SAN ANTONIO—More 6,300 city employees in San Antonio, Texas, gained a stronger voice for quality public services with SEIU Local 1967 recently. The city recognized the union as the workers’ representative under the city’s new consultation ordinance, which requires management to work with employee representatives to resolve issues. In 2003, SEIU and other San Antonio unions mobilized to elect worker-friendly city council members, which helped lay the groundwork for the ordinance that gives the workers a voice on the job.
MORE BARGAINING PUNCH IN HAWAII—In late January, the 4,000-member Hawaii Nurses Association joined forces with the United American Nurses. The alliance will help the Hawaiian union organize and educate members to negotiate better contracts. “There’s been a lot of organization turmoil in Hawaii in recent years, and nurses have been caught in the middle while employers took advantage. We can’t count on hospitals to do the right thing, but nurses can count on each other, ” says UAN President Cheryl Johnson.
VOTING FOR A VOICE—Despite a tough anti-union campaign by the employer, 72 direct care workers in group homes run by St. John’s Community Services in New Jersey voted recently for Communications Workers of America Local 1037. The workers care for developmentally challenged clients at group homes in five New Jersey counties.
GOING TO KANSAS CITY—Two dozen drivers at TM Transport Inc., an independent contractor that delivers packages for DHL, voted to join Teamsters Local 696 Feb. 1. The Kansas City, Mo., victory is the latest in a series by workers at DHL-contracted companies who are fighting to win a voice with IBT.
IN DEFENSE OF WORKERS—Federal workers and leaders of many of the 36 unions that make up the Department of Defense Workers Coalition will march and rally on Capitol Hill Feb. 8 to protest the Bush administration’s continuing attack on federal workers and their collective bargaining rights. On Jan. 26, the Bush administration announced new personnel rules for more than 180,000 workers in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that slash workers’ collective bargaining and appeal rights and eliminate civil service pay scales and other protections. DHS unions have filed suit over the new rules. Proposed new personnel rules for some 300,000 Defense Department civilian workers also are expected to be issued soon and likely will be patterned after the DHS rules. For more information, visit http://www.afge.org .
BATTLEGROUND STATES—Workers’ rights are being attacked at the state levels. In January, newly elected Republican governors in Indiana and Missouri rescinded the collective bargaining rights of some 50,000 state workers. Now, Republican legislators in several states are pushing paycheck deception bills to silence the political voice of working families and right-to-work-for-less-laws to weaken workers’ unions. Paycheck deception legislation, which limits unions’ use of funds for political action, has been introduced in Arizona, Georgia and Oklahoma, and a paycheck deception ballot initiative has been filed in California. Legislatures in Indiana and Kentucky will consider so-called right-to-work legislation, which bans workers—who by a majority vote decided to form a union in their workplace—and employers from negotiating union security clauses. State federations, central labor councils and community groups are mobilizing to defeat these anti-worker efforts.
YOUR PRIVATIZATION PRICE TAG: $152,000—President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech Feb. 2 focused on his drive to privatize Social Security but failed to explain its cost to workers. “He didn’t say that working people would end up with lower benefits under Social Security privatization,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. Bush claims his privatization blueprint would be voluntary and workers could choose to remain in the traditional Social Security program with guaranteed benefits. But even workers who don’t choose private Social Security accounts would face big benefit cuts. A young worker would lose 30 percent or more in guaranteed benefits, according to the Social Security Administration and other groups. That adds up to as much as $152,000 in retirement benefits lost in the 20 years after retirement, according to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Bush also failed to mention privatizing Social Security would cost taxpayers $4.5 trillion in the first 20 years alone—a cost that would explode the nation’s deficit past its already record level—or that his plan would allow politicians to handpick Wall Street firms to control the private investment accounts, a process easily corrupted by politics. Following the speech, Bush flew off in a campaign-style swing through several states to pitch his Social Security scheme at tightly controlled, supporters- only “town hall meetings.” In Bismarck, N.D., more than 60 union members, senior advocates and others staged a counter-demonstration on the steps of the state capitol. To learn how privatizing Social Security will shortchange workers’ retirement and to download fliers, facts sheets and charts or send a message to your lawmakers, visit http://www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity .
McOUTSOURCING—When customers at the Hermiston, Ore., McDonald’s drive-through order a Big Mac and fries, the voice on the other end is in a call center 1,300 miles away in Grand Forks, N.D. The Hermiston golden arches is one of a handful of McDonald’s restaurants in the area using the call center for drive-through orders, and union and community groups are telling the burger kings they don’t want jobs-to-go. “When you order a burger in Oregon, the person taking the order should be in Oregon,” says Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt. For more information and to send a message urging McDonald’s to keep the jobs in the community, visit http://www.oraflcio.unions-america.com .
EEOC SAYS CINTAS DISCRIMINATES—The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is backing a discrimination lawsuit against Cintas Corp., the country’s largest provider of work uniforms. Several Cintas employees filed the suit last year in U.S. District Court in San Francisco charging that Cintas has a companywide pattern of discrimination against African American, Latino and women employees. “The EEOC’s intervention supports our contention that Cintas systematically shuts women out of route driver jobs,” said Cheryl Johnson, Teamsters Human Rights Commission director. UNITE HERE and the IBT have established a hotline to offer help to Cintas workers and job applicants who believe Cintas has discriminated against them. The unions recently released a report documenting employee claims that Cintas’s corporate culture supports discrimination. The report is available at http://www.uniformjustice.org .
SUPER SETTLEMENT—Some 2,000 janitors working for a contractor at four California supermarket chains will receive up to $10,000 each as part of the recent $22.4 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court. SEIU assisted the janitors in filing the suit, which claimed the Safeway, Vons, Albertson’s and Ralph’s supermarket chains failed to pay the cleaners the minimum wage and overtime pay as required by law. The supermarkets are paying the settlement because they were shown to control the janitors’ working conditions, even though the janitors were not direct employees.
WAL-MART’S TOP 10 OF THE WORST—The Multinational Monitor, which tracks corporate activity, has named Wal-Mart one of the 10 worst corporations in 2004. It cites a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 1.6 million women workers alleging rampant employment discrimination and the retailer’s shifting of workers’ health care and other costs to taxpayers. Last year, a report by the minority staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee found one 200-person Wal-Mart store may cost taxpayers nearly $421,000 annually in public services used by its workers. A recent study in Tennessee found more than a quarter of Wal-Mart’s workforce there was enrolled TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program for low-income workers. For more information, visit http://www.multinationalmonitor.com and http://www.walmartcostsyou.com .
HELPING PROFESSIONALS ORGANIZE—The Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, will host a conference on Organizing Professionals in the 21st Century at the Crystal City Hilton in Arlington, Va., March 14–16. Professional and technical workers are members of the fastest growing and one of the most heavily unionized segments of our economy. National and local union decision makers, organizers, key staff and academic and union researchers will share successful strategies, release and tap newly commissioned research, brainstorm and adopt new approaches. The hotel deadline for the conference rate is Feb. 10. For the agenda and registration form, go to http://www.dpeaflcio.org . For registration questions, contact Marcie Lawrence at DPE, 202-638-0320 or mlawrence@dpeaflcio.org .
CONTRACT SHOWS KIDS COUNT—Winning a new contract, members of Day Care Local 205/AFSCME District Council 1707 in New York City have their first pay raise since April 2000. The 12 percent raise covers about 7,000 workers at the city’s 346 day care centers, including teachers, cooks, office workers, teaching assistants, custodians and caseworkers. The new agreement includes a commitment from the city to help lobby the state legislature to fund retroactive pay.
VERIZON VOTING BEGINS—The Electrical Workers and Verizon North Inc. Mid-Atlantic Region have reached a tentative five-year contract. The contract includes wage and pension benefit increases and drops a provision from a contract previously rejected by the workers that shifted prescription drug costs to them. Members of four local unions in Pennsylvania will vote Feb. 8–10.
SMELL OF SUCCESS—For some 160 fragrance and cosmetic sales associates and makeup artists at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, victory in the form of a first contract is sweet. Two years after voting to join Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-UFCW Local 1102, the workers ratified a two-year agreement Jan. 21 that provides union security, a comprehensive grievance and arbitration procedure, seniority during layoffs and recalls, guaranteed commission rates for sales associates and annual pay increases for makeup artists.
MINERS DO THE SUNDANCE—Several coal miners fighting for union representation at the Co-Op Mine in Huntington, Utah, spoke about their struggle to an audience at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Jan. 28. They spoke to filmgoers who had just seen the premiere of a new print of the award-winning documentary “Harlan County USA” by filmmaker Barbara Kopple. The film tells of the bitter struggle of Kentucky miners to win Mine Workers representation at Eastover Coal Co.’s Brookside Mine in 1973. The Co-Op miners, many of whom are Latino, described the experience of working in unsafe conditions for as little $5 to $7 an hour. Management fired many of the workers before the Dec. 16 election, and the NLRB has impounded the ballots. The UMWA has filed several unfair labor practice charges against the company.