(The AFL-CIO circulated the following on October 18.)
PROTECTING CHILDREN WITH SEIU—The majority of more than 250 child welfare workers in Western Massachusetts voted last month to join SEIU Local 509. The clinical case and family support workers are employed by the Massachusetts Society to Prevent Cruelty to Children and provide mental health counseling to children and families. Meanwhile, the majority of more than 230 nurse assistants, technicians and other support staff members at St. Francis Medical Center in Minneapolis overcame employer intimidation tactics and voted Sept. 30 to join SEIU Local 113. In New York, the majority of 120 workers at Westgate Nursing Home in Gates voted to join the Health Care and Human Service Union, SEIU District 1199NY, and a total of 70 school bus drivers and monitors in Rhinebeck and Catskill voted to join SEIU 200United recently.
EATING WELL WITH AFSCME—The majority of about 80 workers employed by Chartwells, which provides campus dining services at State University of New York, Purchase, decided to join Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME Local 1000 on Oct. 8. Faculty, students and staff supported the workers’ efforts.
PRINTING A WIN WITH GCIU—The majority of 46 workers at Graphic Enterprises in Detroit voted in August to join Graphic Communications Local 2-289M.
IATSE MAKES THE SCENE—The 15 stagehands and projectionists as well as workers in charge of actors’ wardrobes, makeup and hair with Black Walnut LLC, a scenery shop based in Garnerville, N.Y., are the newest members of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 645. In addition, the 12 theater workers at the University of Akron in Ohio voted unanimously to join IATSE on Sept. 10.
CONGRESS BACKS OT PAY RIGHTS AGAIN—On Oct. 11, the Senate by voice vote passed a bill by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would restore overtime pay rights to some 6 million workers, marking the sixth time members of Congress have acted to protect overtime pay rights. But the Bush administration continues to threaten to veto any legislation that would change its overtime pay take-away. A few days before the vote, House and Senate negotiators removed an amendment identical to Harkin’s bill from an unrelated export tax bill. Congress plans to reconvene for a lame-duck session Nov. 16, when it will take up the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill. In September, bipartisan majorities on the Senate Appropriations Committee and in the House passed amendments to the spending bill by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.) and George Miller (D-Calif.) that would force the U.S. Department of Labor to rescind overtime pay eligibility changes but let stand new inflation adjustment rules that will benefit some 384,000 low-income workers. To send a fax to the White House urging Bush to take back his overtime pay cut, visit www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bush_NO_VETO.
JUDGE RULES FOR VOTING RIGHTS—A federal judge ruled election supervisors in the key presidential battleground state of Ohio must count provisional ballots so long as the votes are cast in the counties where voters reside. The Oct. 14 decision by U.S. District Judge James Carr overturns a ruling by Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that provisional ballots only be counted if the vote is at the correct precinct. The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, provides for provisional ballots for persons whose eligibility cannot be resolved immediately. “If even a single vote is lost due to the failure to implement (the law), that loss alone is irreparable,” Carr said. Blackwell is expected to appeal the decision in the case brought by the Ohio Democratic Party. The Ohio Voter Protection Coalition, which includes the Ohio AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Ohio League of Women Voters and People for the American Way Foundation, filed a similar lawsuit. For more information on how to make sure your vote is counted, visit www.myvotemyright.com.
ONLY 15 DAYS TO GO—Union activists are picking up political momentum with rallies, phone banks and precinct walking in the 15 days before the Nov. 2 election. In his third and final debate against President George W. Bush on Oct. 13, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) put the concerns of working families front and center. Kerry forcefully contrasted Bush’s failed record on jobs, health care and retirement security with his own vision that will lift America’s families. The day after the debate, Kerry and vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) rallied with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and other national union leaders in Des Moines, Iowa. On Oct. 18, hundreds of activists marched, rallied and voted early in Miami. Several unions and allied groups, such as America Votes, Rock the Vote and the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, spearheaded a march to the city’s government center, encouraging voters to cast their ballots early. To find out about early voting in your state, visit www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/politics/voterreglist.cfm. This week, union leaders in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania plan to release reports detailing the devastating effects job exporting has had on their states’ unemployment crises, while thousands of union activists continue walking precincts and phoning fellow union members to get out the vote. To volunteer, visit www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/politics/volunteer_main.cfm.
BIG WIN IN BIG APPLE—More than 26,000 SEIU Local 32BJ commercial building workers in New York City earlier this month reached a tentative contract agreement requiring their employers to continue to pay the entire cost of the cleaners’ health insurance premiums. “This agreement deals a serious setback to employers that are trying to shift the burden of health care costs to workers,” said Local 32BJ President Mike Fishman. Under terms of the agreement, employers will provide an additional $475 million in health care coverage—a 64 percent increase from the previous contract. The union workers also will receive a 5 percent salary increase over the contract’s three-year term. The health care provisions will be applied automatically to Local 32BJ’s 28,000 residential building workers under terms of the master residential pact.
THE SHOW GOES ON—Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America arrived at a tentative contract agreement Oct. 13 with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and with the four major television networks. The 11,000 union members are set to vote next month on the three-year pact, which protects writers’ health care benefits and improves their pension plan.
HOTEL STRIKE, LOCKOUT CONTINUES—Thousands of union and community activists, along with Haitian-born hiphop singer Wyclef Jean and actress Dana Ivey, rallied Oct. 16 to support the 10,000 members of UNITE HERE Local 54 in Atlantic City, N.J., who are continuing their strike against several hotels. San Francisco hotels continue to lock out 4,000 workers at 14 hotels, despite UNITE HERE Local 2 members’ attempts to return to work and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s call for the hotels to let the workers back in. A federal mediator is convening bargaining between union representatives and the hotels later this week. On Oct. 12, thousands of hotel workers and their allies flooded Union Square for a unity rally. They were joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, San Francisco religious leaders and elected officials. Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) later joined the picket line at the Sheraton Palace. In Los Angeles on Oct. 8, members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Screen Actors, the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, Teamsters Local 399, IATSE and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians/CWA offered their solidarity with union hotel workers during a rally at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. In Washington, D.C., contract negotiations continued between UNITE HERE Local 25 and 14 major hotels. For more information, visit www.hotelworkersunited.org.
GRAD EMPLOYEES NEED FAIR TREATMENT—A new AFT report calls for a coordinated program to improve the financial and professional circumstances of graduate employees across the country. Recognition and Respect: Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Graduate Employees offers suggestions on compensation, fair employment practices, professional responsibility and rights for graduate employees in their unions. The report was released Oct. 8 at a Columbus, Ohio, news conference where graduate employees announced plans to organize a union at Ohio State University. At campuses across the country, universities are increasingly relying on graduate employees to teach classes and conduct research previously handled by regular faculty. Despite added responsibilities, stipends for graduate employees remain extremely low, and only about one-third receive health benefits. For more information, visit www.aft.org/higher_ed/news/2004/grademp_report.htm.
BUSH GETS POOR GRADE ON CIVIL RIGHTS—President Bush has failed to lead the nation in protecting civil rights, including voting rights, access to quality education for all students and workplace equality for women, according to a draft report from the staff of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004, posted on the commission’s website this month, says “President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words.” Bush didn’t provide leadership to ensure HAVA passed or was implemented in a timely way and filed friend-of-the-court briefs opposing affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan. Bush also repealed a rule allowing states to use unemployment compensation funds to provide benefits to workers who must leave their jobs temporarily to care for newborn or newly adopted children; appointed to the federal bench extremist judges who don’t have strong commitments to civil rights; and opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect gays and lesbians from workplace bias. To download the report, visit www.usccr.gov.
A QUARTER OF FAMILES STRUGGLING—A new report by the Working Poor Families Project recently found that more than one in four U.S. working families earn wages so low they have trouble surviving financially. Twenty-eight million jobs in the United States, more than one-fifth of all jobs, cannot keep a family of four above the poverty level and provide few or no benefits, says the report funded by the Annie E. Casey, Rockefeller and Ford foundations. To download the study, visit www.aecf.org/initiatives/jobsinitiative/index.htm.
AFGE FIGHTS FOR FAIRNESS—AFGE marked Department of Defense action week Oct. 11-15 by spreading the word to workers about a proposed personnel system that threatens to take away many workplace rights. The new rules could force civilian Defense employees to be called up to serve in the military with little or no notice and put in place unfair pay and grievance procedures, AFGE says.
SHANKER EXHIBIT—A new exhibit, Albert Shanker: Labor’s Educator, is on display at the National Labor College’s George Meany Campus in Silver Spring, Md. The exhibit runs through Dec. 10 and tells the story of Shanker, former president of AFT and a leading figure in the 20th-century union movement. For more information, call 301-431-5451.
KEEP ROCC-ING—The Coalition of Labor Union Women and Working Women Reaching Out Against Cervical Cancer (ROCC) are teaming up with musician and cancer survivor Christine Baze (whose last name was misspelled in a recent WiP) to support her nationwide Yellow Umbrella tour. The first 25 union women to sign up in each city will get free tickets and a yellow umbrella. To sign up, call toll free 1-866-211-3841. For more information, visit www.cluw.org.