(The AFL-CIO issued the following on September 27.)
IRON WORKERS SIGN LANDMARK DEAL—In a landmark agreement, the Iron Workers signed a contract with Phoenix-based J.D. Steel, one of the nation’s largest reinforcing contractors. The pact covers 350 workers—most of them Latino immigrants—in 19 states. They become part of a newly created nationwide Local 846, which will give the union flexibility to help other nonunion reinforcing workers across the country to gain a voice on the job. The contract was signed Sept. 9.
HEALTHY WINS—Some 150 workers recently won a voice on the job with United Food and Commercial Workers. The majority of 45 caregivers at the Beverly Health and Rehab Center in Washington, D.C., voted overwhelmingly for Local 400. The 35 workers at the Mercer County Geriatric Center in Trenton, N.J., voted to join Local 1360. On Sept. 2, 32 order pickers at the Peapod facility in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., joined Local 1500 through a majority verification process, as did 21 other workers at the Peapod, who chose Local 464A. Under majority verification, workers win their union when a majority signs authorization cards indicating their desire to join a union. Eleven meat department workers at Albertsons in Las Cruces, N.M., voted for Local 1564, while Local 2008 helped six workers at Healthcare Services Group in McGehee, Ark., win a voice on the job.
A SHOT IN THE ARM FOR WORKERS—The 178 blood-collection workers at the Northern Ohio Blood Services Region division of the American Red Cross withstood a lengthy anti-union campaign by the employer and voted Sept. 23 for Teamsters Local 507 in Cleveland. In late July, the local filed unfair labor practices charges against the Red Cross. Meanwhile, 22 workers at Synergy International in Easton, Md., and Bridgeville, Del., voted to join Local 355, as did the majority of 17 drivers at R-Max Services in Bridgeville. The two companies are independent contractors that deliver packages for DHL.
VOTING FOR A VOICE—The 11 auto technicians and auto body technicians at Heart City Automotive in Elkhart, Ind., are the newest members of Machinists District 90 after recently voting for the union.
HEARING ON GRAD EMPLOYEES—Graduate employees at private universities should have the same rights as other workers to form unions and bargain contracts, workers and labor experts told Sen. Arlen Specter at a Sept. 23 hearing called by the Pennsylvania Republican, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education. This summer, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) voted along partisan lines to deny teaching and research assistants the protections of the National Labor Relations Act.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED—With Election Day only five weeks away, working families are working overtime to ensure that union members know where the candidates stand on such critical issues as overtime pay, affordable health care and good jobs and to ensure working families vote Nov. 2. Thousands of workers across the country are participating in phone banks, door-to-door neighborhood walks and other actions in an unprecedented mobilization to get out the working family vote. The battleground states, where union households can make a big difference on Election Day, are Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Find out how you can get involved by calling your local union or central labor council and watch for e-mails from the AFL-CIO Working Families e-Activist Network. If you want to sign up for the network, visit www.aflcio.org.
PROTECTING FLORIDA VOTING RIGHTS—The AFL-CIO, along with AFSCME and SEIU, last week asked a Florida court to require state election officials to count provisional ballots as long as they are cast in the county where the voter lives. Provisional ballots are given to persons whose eligibility to vote cannot be immediately verified. Often those voters are persons of color who move more frequently and are less likely to have IDs, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop implementation of the state law. The union groups are seeking a temporary injunction to prevent enforcement of a Florida law that requires destruction of provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. To learn more about how the AFL-CIO, unions and other groups are working to ensure that every vote is counted in this election, visit www.votenov2.com.
RALLYING FOR AFFORDABLE DRUGS—More than 1,000 seniors are expected to rally Sept. 29 in Washington, D.C., “to send a message to President Bush: Seniors are angry and will vote in November against any candidate who supports privatizing Social Security or dismantling the traditional Medicare program,” says George Kourpias, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, the rally sponsor. Other rallies are planned in California, Florida, Nevada and Ohio. For more information, call the Alliance’s Field Mobilization Department at 888-373-6497, option 1, or visit www.retiredamericans.org /events. Hundreds of seniors rallied on Capitol Hill Sept. 24 in support of bipartisan legislation that would allow U.S. residents to buy prescription drugs from Canada and other countries at prices lower than in this country. The House passed a similar bill in July, but Senate Republican leaders refuse to bring the bill, S. 2328, which is co-sponsored by 32 senators, to the floor. The rally came as a new survey by the Opinion Research Corp. for the Civil Society Institute, a Massachusetts-based research group, shows 20 million Americans skip or reduce the dosage of their medications because they cannot afford more. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org.
DUANE READE LIABLE ON PENSIONS—The NLRB has upheld a decision finding New York drug-store chain Duane Reade liable for unpaid contributions to union benefit funds—a liability of more than $30 million. “It’s time for Duane Reade to stop its unlawful practices and to finally bargain a contract for these workers,” said John Durso, president of Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 338, an affiliate of UFCW, which represents 2,600 workers at 142 Duane Reade stores.
HOTEL TALKS RESUME—Negotiations resumed in Washington, D.C., but remained stalled in Los Angeles and San Francisco, three cities where more than 10,000 hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE, have banded together to fight for better working conditions, employer-paid health care benefits and better pensions. They are seeking two-year contracts that will expire at the same time as hotel contracts in other major cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York and Toronto. The workers believe that by joining with hotel workers in other cities they will gain equality with the global hotel industry. Meanwhile, about 1,000 workers at four casinos in the Chicago and Gary, Ind., area voted last week to strike if their concerns over affordable health care are not met in contract talks. These workers join 17,000 casino workers in Atlantic City, N.J., who voted to strike Oct. 1 if talks don’t produce a fair contract. For more information, visit www.hotelworkersunited.org.
CORPORTIONS GET TAX WINDFALL—Between 2001 and 2003, nearly one-third of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporations paid no federal income tax—while still receiving billions of dollars in tax rebates, according to Corporate Income Taxes in the Bush Years, a study released Sept. 22 by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Eighty-two of 275 companies CTJ examined enjoyed at least one year in 2001–2003 in which they paid no federal income taxes yet received billions of dollars in outright tax rebates. To download the report, visit www.ctj.org/corpfed04an.pdf.
NO GRACE PERIOD ON SAFETY—Transportation unions praised a bipartisan 339–70 vote in the House of Representatives Sept. 22 to block Bush administration plans to delay applying U.S. safety standards to truck and bus operators entering the country from Mexico and Canada. The North American Free Trade Agreement requires the vehicles meet the same safety standards as U.S. motor carriers, but the administration proposed a two-year “grace period” for the foreign vehicles to meet the standards. The vote “sent a clear message to the White House: There can be no grace period for safety,” said Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department.
FATAL INJURIES INCREASE—A total of 5,559 fatal workplace injuries were reported nationwide last year, up from 5,534 in 2002, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week. Latino workers suffer the highest rate of fatal injuries. One in every five deaths—1,126—occurred among construction workers. For a copy of the report, visit www.bls.gov/iif.
O’BRIEN NEW TWU HEAD—The Transport Workers executive board on Sept. 21 elected Michael O’Brien the new president of the union, succeeding the retiring Sonny Hall. Most recently, O’Brien had been TWU’s executive vice president. He began his career with the union in 1972 as a school bus driver in Bristol Township, Pa.
UNION VETERAN?—If you are a union veteran, visit the new Union Veterans’ website, www.unionveterans.com and sign up for e-mail alerts.
NEW PLACE TO SLEEP—The National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., recently welcomed students to its new residence hall, which can accommodate up to 98 students. The new hall is part of a campus improvement plan that includes construction of a 72,000 square-foot center named for former AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. The Kirkland Center will house new state-of-the-art classrooms, a new dining hall and cutting-edge distance learning capability. For more information about the National Labor College, visit www.nationallaborcollege.edu.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?—The economic rebound has missed millions of working people, according to several reports released last week. Some 43.4 percent of the people nationwide who began receiving state unemployment benefits last year exhausted their benefits without finding new jobs, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported. That is the highest benefit exhaustion rate in more than 60 years. The reason for the high level of long-term unemployment is the lack of jobs, EPI said. In 2003, the share of the unemployed who had been seeking work for six months or more was 22.1 percent, the second highest share on record, EPI found. For more information, visit www.epinet.org. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released two reports demonstrating the impact of companies exporting jobs. One report found increased losses in manufacturing jobs (2.7 million since George W. Bush took office in 2001) have stretched trade adjustment assistance (TAA) resources in the states to the limit, resulting in waiting lists. A second GAO report found exporting jobs is a growing trend that cannot be ignored and the agency plans another four studies of its impact on various parts of the economy. U.S. workers now can find out which employers in their communities or industries are shipping jobs overseas and speak out for saving good jobs with Job Tracker (www.workingamerica.org/jobtracker), an online interactive database created by WORKING AMERICA, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.