(The AFL-CIO issued the following on September 20.)
FLOC WINS HISTORIC AGREEMENT—In a historic win for migrant farm workers and their families, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) on Sept. 16 signed an agreement with the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), giving a voice on the job to as many as 8,000 farm workers on more than 1,000 farms throughout the state. The agreement, which was endorsed by the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. in a separate agreement, ends a five-and-a-half year boycott of Mt. Olive, the second-largest pickle company in the nation. The farm workers, most of them migrants from Mexico, will be able to sign up for the union without interference by the NCGA or Mt. Olive. A unique aspect of the contract allows the union to oversee the recruitment and employment of the workers from most Mexican states who will come to work in North Carolina with work visas. “We will continue struggling and give it all we got, because there is still work to do,” said farm worker José Hernandez-Coronado. “Right now we do it for ourselves and for our families in Mexico, but we also sign this contract for the future generations.”
HEALTHY VICTORY—Some 330 workers joined United Food and Commercial Workers in late August. The majority of 200 health care workers at Westminster Care and Rehabilitation Center in Orlando, Fla., voted to join Local 1625. More than 70 workers at Timberlake Healthcare in Farmerville, La., won a voice on the job with Local 455. Another 60 health care workers at the Northwest Nursing Home in Oklahoma City voted for Local 1000.
IMPROVING CARE—The majority of 230 hospital workers at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding, Calif., voted in August to join SEIU Local 250 in an effort to improve care at the facility by negotiating a union contract geared toward stemming staff turnover.
DELIVERING A WIN AT DHL—Some 214 workers at DHL package sorting and delivery facilities in Miami joined Teamsters Local 390 recently. Fourteen workers at DHL Logistics, concerned about job security and health care costs, voted Sept. 15 for the union. In July, some 200 workers at DHL-Gateway also voted for Local 390.
INSULATED FROM INJUSTICE—After a campaign this spring, two Asbestos Workers locals successfully persuaded K&S, a mechanical insulation firm in Trenton, N.J., to sign a union contract. Local 14 of Philadelphia and Local 89 of Trenton worked together on the effort. K&S employs six workers.
HOTEL WORKERS POISED TO STRIKE—Some 10,000 hotel workers in three cities, all members of UNITE HERE, are poised to strike if they cannot negotiate fair contracts. Workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., members of locals 11, 2 and 25 respectively, 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. The previous contracts in Los Angeles expired in April and in the other two cities last week. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org or www.hotelworkersunited.org. Meanwhile, 17,000 members of Local 54 in Atlantic City, N.J., voted Sept. 17 to strike if talks don’t produce a fair contract by Oct. 1. Ten-thousand workers rallied for a fair contract Sept. 16 outside Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, site of the Miss America pageant this past weekend. The Atlantic City workers’ major issue is the increasing move by hotels to hire nonunion subcontractors.
JOB TRACKER EXPOSES JOB EXPORTS—American workers now can find out which employers or industries in their communities are shipping jobs overseas and speak out for saving good jobs by visiting Job Tracker, an online interactive database created by WORKING AMERICA, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Launched Sept. 16, Job Tracker contains more than 200,000 entries on U.S. companies and subsidiaries that have moved jobs overseas and laid off workers due to flawed U.S. trade policies. “The official policies of the current administration in Washington, D.C., promote exporting American jobs instead of attacking the problem. And, over the past four years, the problem has gotten far worse,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said during a Washington, D.C., press conference. The United States has lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs and 850,000 professional and business services and information jobs, many of which have been shipped overseas, since President George W. Bush took office in 2001. The Job Tracker also enables visitors to report companies exporting jobs in their communities and send a fax to Bush and members of Congress urging them to stop rewarding companies with tax incentives to export American jobs. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org.
ANOTHER WIN FOR O.T. PROTECTION—The powerful Senate Appropriations Committee Sept. 15 approved an amendment prohibiting the Bush administration from funding enforcement of overtime pay rules that threaten the overtime pay of 6 million workers. The bipartisan 16–13 vote “reinforces a strong message from the U.S. Congress to President Bush: Withdraw your overtime pay cut,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. Bush has threatened to veto the bill, which funds health care and education, if it contains the overtime pay amendment. To tell Bush to respect the will of Congress and the paychecks of workers, visit www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bush_NO_VETO. The House of Representatives Sept. 9 passed an identical amendment that would force the U.S. Labor Department to rescind changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that limit eligibility for overtime pay. Both amendments would allow the Labor Department to enforce new inflation adjustment rules that will benefit some 384,000 low-income workers.
LOOK INTO THE ABC—The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department last week called for federal and state agencies to investigate 19 chapters of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) for alleged illegal financial activities in its apprenticeship programs. The BCTD charges ABC failed to disclose financial transactions between its chapters and apprenticeship programs and that apprenticeship trusts paid local chapters more than the value of actual services provided. “If a labor organization had these types of transactions, the Bush administration would quickly be at their door with subpoenas,” said BCTD President Edward Sullivan. “It’s time to find out if the law applies to allies of the Bush administration.”
IMMIGRANT JUSTICE—The New Americans Opportunities Campaign, a coalition of pro-immigrant organizations including the AFL-CIO, launched a National Week of Action Sept. 20, the first anniversary of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. Immigrant rights supporters in 29 states will rally and march throughout the week to push for changes to the nation’s immigration policy. On Sept. 21, more than 100 activists from a dozen states will urge Congress to support the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act (S. 1545) and the Agricultural Jobs Benefits and Security Act (S. 1645), which would allow undocumented high school students and agricultural workers, respectively, to earn the permanent legal right to stay in the United States.
BACK PAY ADDS UP TO $100 MILLION—About 1,000 Steelworkers who were denied reinstatement after going out on strike for two months in 1997 against Rocky Mountain Steel Mills in Pueblo, Colo., will share a back pay settlement estimated at nearly $100 million over 10 years. The workers will receive an initial payment of $2,500 each. Oregon Steel Mills Inc., owner of Rocky Mountain Steel, agreed to sell 4 million shares of its stock to create a trust fund for distribution to the strikers and will distribute up to $35 million in profit sharing to those workers over the next 10 years. The company and USWA also agreed to a five-year contract, which provides enhanced early retirement benefits for as many as 200 former strikers.
CONTROLLERS CALL FOR NEW HIRES—The best way to respond to expected personnel shortages due to an imminent wave of federal air traffic controller retirements is to hire new controllers, not grant waivers to the mandatory retirement age of 56 as the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed, Eugene Freeman, policy counsel for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told a Senate panel Sept. 14. Studies show a controller’s performance level drops off significantly after age 50, Freeman said. NATCA has called on the FAA to hire 1,000 new controllers a year. About half of the current total of 15,000 controllers will leave the FAA between 2002 and 2011, mostly due to controllers reaching age 56, according to a Government Accountability Office study.
SHIFTING COVERAGE—Some 2.4 million children lost health care coverage provided by their parents’ employers between 2000 and 2003, according to a new report, The Chronic Problem of Declining Health Coverage by the Economic Policy Institute. For workers in the bottom 20 percent of income, the percentage of children who received employer-paid health insurance dropped from 24.3 percent to 18.6 percent—nearly a 25 percent decrease. At the same time, government-provided insurance, such as Medicaid and state Children’s Health Insurance Programs added 4.3 million children to their rolls, increasing the percentage of children covered by government programs from 20.9 percent to 26.4 percent. For a copy of the report, visit www.epinet.org.
HIGH-TECH BUST—A new report shows that U.S. high-tech workers still face chronic unemployment and a serious jobs deficit despite an economic recovery. America’s High-Tech Bust, a report by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois, Chicago, found the U.S. high-tech economy lost a whopping 203,000 jobs between November 2001, when the recession officially ended, and April 2004. The university conducted the research for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a local of the Communications Workers of America.
FALLEN FIREFIGHTERS—The Fire Fighters honored the 106 firefighters who were killed on the job in the past year at a memorial service at IAFF’s Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sept. 18. “We stand with the families of the 106 brothers and sisters this week, as we have stood with them during the past year, and as we will stand with them forever,” said IAFF President Harold Schaitberger.
NEW LEADERS—The annual meeting of officers of the Maintenance of Way Employes elected Freddie Simpson president and Perry Geller secretary-treasurer of the union Sept. 16. Simpson and Geller served in their respective posts on an interim basis since April when longtime President Mac Fleming retired. The two will serve until a rerun of the 2002 election is held, as required under a court-approved settlement.
HONORING A LABOR PIONEER—The Senate unanimously passed a bill Sept. 15 designating the Kate Mullany House in Troy, N.Y., as a national historic site. The bill, introduced by New York Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, honors Mullany, who with 200 co-workers formed the Collar Laundry Union, the first women’s labor union in this country. A House subcommittee held a hearing Sept. 14 on a companion bill, H.R. 305, sponsored by Rep. Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.). The New York State AFL-CIO, working with the nonprofit American Labor Studies Center, has purchased the house, where they plan to create a national Center of American Labor Studies.