(The AFL-CIO circulated the following on July 26.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 701
New members reported in WIP, year to date: 72,825
GET ME INFORMATION—Some 652 workers recently won a voice on the job with AFSCME. The 282 workers in the nonsupervisory bargaining unit at the Department of Information Services voted to join the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28, as did the 91 nonsupervisors in the state Department of Fish and Wildlife Business Services Program and Public Affairs Office. On June 17, the majority of 121 Northampton (Pa.) County employees voted for Council 88. The workers hold primarily clerical and administrative posts in the county courts and in domestic relations, probation and district justice offices. Seventy-six supervisors in the Town of Danbury, Conn., joined Council 4, while the majority of 60 RNs and LPNs at Correctional Medical Services, a private firm that provides health care workers for jails and prisons, voted for District 1199J. And 22 workers at Guiding Hands in Gallia County are the newest members of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, an AFSCME affiliate.
A HEALTHY WIN—Thirty-seven workers at the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers Local 3 Health and Welfare Fund are the newest members of PACE International Union Local 2-286 after a majority verification process, in which workers win their union when a majority signs authorization cards indicating the desire to join a union.
CHOOSING A VOICE—The majority of 12 food service workers at the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children in Pittsburgh voted for a voice on the job with AFT on July 20.
UNION CARDS ON THE TABLE—UNITE HERE achieved a victory with the recent passage of legislation in the California legislature guaranteeing strong union organizing rights for gaming workers at five casinos in the state run by American Indian tribes. With the agreement, the tribes receive expanded gaming capacity in return for increased revenue for the state and provisions allowing workers to form unions through a majority verification process and requiring employers to remain neutral during organizing campaigns. Nearly 4,000 workers could win a voice on the job due to the agreement.
REPUBLICAN LEADERS DUCK O.T. VOTE—Rather than face a vote that could have stopped the Bush administration’s new rules that will take away overtime pay protections from millions of workers, House Republican leaders delayed action on two key bills and then recessed for the summer July 23. Congressional observers said a bipartisan coalition of House members had enough votes to approve either of two measures that would block new rules that redefine who is eligible for overtime pay. The first measure is an amendment offered by Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) to the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill. The other is an instruction to House conferees on the Foreign Corporation Sales tax bill to include an amendment passed by the Senate that would make the Bush overtime pay take-away invalid. The Senate will interrupt its recess in August, but the House will not return until after Labor Day, Sept. 6, more than two weeks after the overtime pay take-away rules go into effect. But employers likely will require some time to fully understand these extremely complex and confusing new rules and reappraise their workers’ eligibilities, giving lawmakers another opportunity to overturn the rules. Visit www.unionvoice.org /campaign/stopbush4otpay to tell President George W. Bush to withdraw his overtime pay rules.
UNION MEMBERS HOLD KEY TO ELECTION—If working family voters mobilize and vote in large numbers in November, they will play the decisive role in electing a new president and vice president, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) told nearly 1,000 union member delegates and guests during a Labor Delegates Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “I know the extraordinary efforts you are putting into making sure we have the kind of ground game we need. We need you to make the difference,” he said. The vice presidential candidate, who spoke live via satellite July 25, told the union delegates a Kerry/Edwards administration will promote vital working family concerns such as good jobs, affordable health care, education, retirement security, workers’ rights and a strong and secure America. The forum kicked off convention activities for the 800 union member delegates from dozens of unions. Convention delegates will take part in a special July 28 workshop on restoring workers’ freedom to form unions. Several workers who have sought to form unions at their workplaces will describe the often-brutal tactics employers routinely use to thwart workers’ rights to join unions. Union delegates, along with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, also will participate in a Fair Trade Summit on July 27 highlighting the nearly 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since President Bush took office. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson is slated to speak to the full convention July 27, and federation President John Sweeney is scheduled to address the full convention prior to Kerry’s acceptance speech July 29. View John Edwards’s speech to union delegates and get more coverage at www.aflcio.org.
REAL HOMELAND SECURITY—While applauding the 9/11 Commission for its work, union leaders said better staffing and funding are needed to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. Citing an agencywide hiring freeze in the Department of Homeland Security and the debate over whether to privatize federal airport screeners, AFGE President John Gage said, “America’s homeland cannot be secured without a professional, adequately funded and fully staffed workforce.” Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger chided the Bush administration for squandering previous opportunities to fund, train and equip the nation’s first responders to terrorist attacks.
ROADBLOCK TO CITIZENSHIP—Immigrant rights activists and working families vowed to hold President Bush accountable for blocking bipartisan legislation that would have paved the way for 500,000 undocumented farm workers to move toward citizenship while working in the fields. The Bush administration and Senate Republican leaders on July 16, blocked an amendment offered by Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) from coming to the floor. The amendment contains the same language as the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security (AgJobs) Act of 2003, which has 62 co-sponsors, including 26 Republicans. The Bush administration has opposed every congressional effort to place undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship.
NEW DEALS—Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers ratified a new four-year contract July 2 covering about 9,500 employees at Kroger Co. supermarkets in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. The pact retains health care benefits and raises wages by up to $1.30 an hour over term. Meanwhile, some 8,500 UFCW members who work at A&P supermarkets in New York and New Jersey are voting on a tentative 51-month contract, which also retains employer-paid health care coverage.
WORKING TOO MUCH OR NOT AT ALL—Most of America’s working families have faced steady economic erosion over the past 20 years, according to Regaining Control of Our Destiny: A Working Families’ Agenda for America, a new report from the MIT Workplace Center and MIT Institute for Work & Employment Research. Currently, two-parent families are working the equivalent of two full-time jobs, or about 3,800 hours per year. Over the past two decades, three-fourths of the increases in family incomes were due to mothers putting more hours into the labor force. A separate report shows recent job growth is not enough to raise most states’ job levels to where they were when the recession started in March 2001. In 47 states, unemployment rates are higher now than when the recession began, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. For more information, visit www.jobwatch.org/states/index.html.
SEEKING A FULL HEARING—Unions representing media workers joined members of Congress July 20 to call for full public hearings as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reconsiders its rules on media ownership. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last month ordered the FCC to re-examine the basis for its rules lifting current limits on the number of television, radio and newspaper outlets a corporation could own. The unions had charged the new rules would lead to unprecedented media consolidation and now hope to convince the FCC to change the rules. To that end, the unions released a poll showing frontline media employees believe consolidation already has compromised the quality of news reporting and further consolidation would lead to too much control by a handful of corporate executives of the news the public receives.
STAFFING CRISIS—The National Air Traffic Controllers Association welcomed the House Appropriations Committee approval of $9 million for hiring and training additional air traffic controllers. The Federal Aviation Administration anticipates a controller shortage of up to 50 percent in the next 10 years, necessitating the hiring of at least 1,000 new controllers each year to meet demand. A bipartisan group of senators is asking colleagues to approve $14 million to begin the hiring process. “It is up to the Senate to ensure that our air traffic control system continues to be the envy of the world. Considering that it takes five years to train new controllers…the time to act is now,” said NATCA President John Carr.
FILM RIGHTS AUCTIONED—In a groundbreaking move to recover wages owed to its members, the Screen Actors sold the rights to seven films at the union’s first-ever foreclosure auction July 13. Under SAG’s collective bargaining agreements with film producers, the producers frequently guarantee payments to performers and use the film rights as collateral. This is the first time SAG actually foreclosed on film rights. The producers of the seven films, all produced in the 1990s, owe SAG members some $400,000 in payments.
MINE SAFETY NOW—The Mine Workers last week stepped up efforts to move the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to strongly enforce mine safety laws. The call for action came after MSHA found Jim Walter Resources negligent in the death of a UMWA member at one of its Alabama mines in April. “If MSHA officials in Alabama had been doing their job correctly, the violations Jim Walter was cited for would have been corrected and this accident could possibly have been prevented,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts said.
RAISING MINIMUM WAGES—With no increase in the federal minimum wage since 1997, action to raise the wage floor is occurring in three states. In New York, the state legislature overwhelmingly approved raising the minimum wage in three steps to $7.15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2007, and indexing it to rise with inflation thereafter. The state’s minimum wage was raised in 2000, and a dozen states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum pay level above $5.15 since then. Meanwhile, the Florida Supreme Court, in an advisory opinion, approved the text of a state minimum wage ballot initiative that would raise the minimum to $6.15 an hour six months after enactment and index it to inflation. In Nevada, a state judge ordered a similar initiative placed on the November ballot, which would raise the minimum to $6.15 per hour for workers whose employers do not offer health insurance benefits.
HALL TO RETIRE—Transport Workers President Sonny Hall announced his retirement effective in September. Under the union’s constitution, Executive Vice President Mike O’Brien will serve as president until TWU’s next convention.