(The AFL-CIO issued the following on December 6.)
PUBLIC WORKERS GAIN UNION—In Doña Ana County, N.M., nearly 200 juvenile/adult officers and blue-collar workers at the county jail formed unions with AFSCME Council 18. In Bridgeport, Conn., 35 supervisors from the housing authority chose Council 4 through a majority sign-up, in which workers win their union when a majority verifies the desire to join a union by signing authorization cards. In Chester, Deep River, Essex and Regional School District 4 in Connecticut, the majority of 24 school workers including custodians, secretaries, network technicians and registered nurses voted to join Council 4.
A VOICE AT DUANE READE—Some 77 workers recently voted for a voice at work with the United Food and Commercial Workers. In New York City, 21 employees at two Duane Reade stores voted overwhelmingly for a voice with Local 338 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/UFCW. Fifty-six employees at the Spring Lake Nursing Home in Orlando, Fla., voted for UFCW Local 1625 on Sept. 22.
GETTING ON THE UNION BUS—More than 70 school bus drivers employed by Laidlaw in Rhinebeck and Catskill, N.Y., voted to join SEIU Local 200United earlier this fall.
‘JOBS FIGURES SIGN OF WEAK ECONOMY’—The latest economic news shows the nation’s “economy is deeply unbalanced and too weak to produce the jobs, especially the good jobs, American workers and their families need,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that employers added 112,000 new jobs in November—half the expected number. At the same time, new jobless claims rose sharply and the nation’s retailers reported a sluggish start to the holiday shopping season.
CHINA SCRUBS SEMINAR—Chinese authorities canceled the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) seminar on foreign investment guidelines that was to be held in Beijing later this month. More than 80 corporate and union leaders from around the world were scheduled to discuss internationally accepted standards for corporate responsibility. “It is critically important that foreign investors observe the guidelines and that foreign-direct investments assist in improving working conditions, union recognition and health and safety standards,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, president of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD.
SUTTER SHUTTERS STAFF—Some 7,000 registered nurses and caregivers, members of SEIU Local 250 and the California Nurses Association, conducted a one-day strike against nine Sutter Health hospitals in the San Francisco Bay area Dec. 1 to protest insufficient staffing. Sutter retaliated by locking out workers at 13 of its facilities for four days and hiring replacement workers. On Dec. 3, the two unions filed a suit against Sutter and Modern Industrial Services, which provided replacement workers, charging they violated state law by not informing the replacement workers they were being hired during a labor dispute.
PORT CAPTAINS FINALLY GAIN PACT—After two years of litigation, the Longshoremen reached a three-year contract with China Ocean Shipping Co. North America, based in Secaucus, N.J., covering the company’s port captains. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled in April that port captains, who plan stowage of cargoes aboard vessels and perform other operations, are rank-and-file professional workers and therefore eligible to form a union. Under the pact, they will receive guaranteed annual pay increases, premium pay for the round-the-clock hours they are required to be available and overtime pay for after-hours stowing and other duties.
BACKING HUMAN RIGHTS DEC. 10—Union activists and their allies among civil rights, community and religious groups are gearing up to celebrate International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which includes the freedom to form unions. The activists will shine a spotlight on the tactics unscrupulous employers use to harass and intimidate workers who try to exercise their right to have a voice on the job. American Rights at Work (ARAW), a research and advocacy group aimed at improving the climate in which workers can exercise their rights in the workplace, will launch a ticker on its website (www.americanrightsatwork.org) tracking the number of workers who are fired or discriminated against for trying to form unions and bargain collectively. Visitors to the site can send a letter to President George W. Bush urging him take action to end the human rights crisis in American workplaces. On Dec. 11, a coalition of unions, human rights groups and religious organizations are sponsoring a daylong conference in Boston on workers’ rights, featuring ARAW Chair David Bonoir and Cornell University Lecturer Lance Compa, author of Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards.
CONTINENTAL CARBON LOCKOUT ENDS—The three-and-a-half year lockout of workers at Continental Carbon’s plant in Ponca City, Okla., ended after members of PACE International Union ratified a new five-year contract Dec. 2. “We are very pleased the union objectives were achieved and our locked-out members will be returning to their jobs with a good union contract,” said union President Boyd Young. Workers launched an extensive campaign against the company after the May 8, 2001, lockout. The Steelworkers and the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions joined in the campaign.
QUEBECOR VIOLATIONS MOUNT—Five new unfair labor practice complaints were added Nov. 29 to the 22 counts already faced by Montreal-based printing giant Quebecor World. The complaints, issued by NLRB regional directors, charge the printer illegally interfered with workers’ efforts to gain a voice at work with Graphic Communications at Quebecor plants in Covington, Tenn. and Corinth, Miss.
CIVIL RIGHTS ENFORCEMENT DROPS—Even though the number of civil rights complaints received by the Justice Department has remained constant, enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws dropped sharply under the Bush administration, according to a new study. The study, Civil Rights Enforcement by Bush Administration Lags, released Nov. 21 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, shows criminal charges alleging civil rights violations were brought last year against 84 defendants, down from 159 in 1999, according to Justice Department data. Further, the study found the number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies recommended prosecution in civil rights cases fell by more than one-third in five years. For a copy of the report, visit http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civright/106. Meanwhile, four of the eight members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Nov. 30 sent a sharply critical report on the administration’s civil rights record to the White House.
UNIONS PROTEST GAG ORDER—Federal employee unions say a new directive from the Department of Homeland Security imposes “unprecedented restrictions and conditions on the free speech rights” of workers. The new directive requires Homeland Security employees to sign a secrecy pledge that forbids them from revealing unclassified information to the public. It also allows the government access to workers’ homes and belongings to search for unclassified information an employee may have, AFGE and the National Treasury Employees union say. In the past such pledges only covered classified information. The unions are asking exiting Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to rescind the order.
RAIL SAFETY WAIVER OPPOSED—Transportation unions have asked Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to intercede to kill a request by Union Pacific, the nation’s largest railroad, to allow its trains to skip inspections after entering the country from Mexico. The company has asked the Federal Railroad Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, to waive federal rules so the trains, about nine each day, can be inspected by Mexican railroad workers. In a Nov. 24 letter to Mineta, the unions noted that six Union Pacific trains have derailed in the past six months in a Texas train yard near the Mexican border, three resulting in fatalities.
OVERTIME COMPLAINTS HIT NEW HIGH—The number of worker complaints about being denied overtime pay, wages and job leave rose to a four-year high in fiscal year 2004. But the Department of Labor also reported that penalties for violations of federal wage-and-hour laws and back pay awards dropped during the same period, which ended Sept. 30. Most of the complaints were received before the Aug. 23 effective date of Bush administration rule changes that could cost some 6 million workers their overtime pay protections.
UNIONS ADDRESS AIDS PANDEMIC—With more than 40 million people infected worldwide and 25 million dead from HIV/AIDS, the global union movement must work to protect the rights of all workers dealing with the disease and play a key role in our communities in responding to the pandemic, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. “Anything less than a full-force effort to rein in this disease is simply immoral in the face of such tremendous human suffering.” AFT announced it is expanding its Africa-AIDS educational program with $3.8 million in federal grants to build on its existing programs in South Africa and Kenya. The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center promotes partnerships between unions and employers to help workers with HIV/AIDS remain on the job. For more information, visit www.solidaritycenter.org/our_programs/hiv_aids.
IBT SKEPTICAL OF MURDER ARRESTS—The Teamsters are withholding judgment on the Dec. 3 arrest of six suspects in El Salvador in connection with the Nov. 5 murder of Gilberto Soto, a Teamsters union organizer from New Jersey. Last week in a meeting in El Salvador with an IBT-led delegation, Beatrice Alamanni de Carrillo, the country’s ombudswoman for human rights, said police were preventing her from monitoring the investigation and reviewing the evidence. “Without transparency, we remain skeptical of the government’s case thus far,” said IBT Port Division Director Chuck Mack. Soto, 50, was in his native El Salvador to meet with trade union leaders and port drivers. Soto’s mother-in-law was among those charged with his murder, which authorities said resulted from a domestic dispute.
HONORING KING’S LEGACY—Hundreds of union civil rights activists will gather in Los Angeles Jan. 13–17 to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through education, community outreach, direct action and service. Participants in the annual AFL-CIO King Day celebration will focus on strategies to build political power and educational equity in communities of color and other issues that affect working families. For more information, contact Eva Walton in the AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department at 202-637-5274 or ewalton@aflcio.org.