(The AFL-CIO distributed the following on April 26.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 4,504
New members reported in WIP, year to date: 54,241
IN THE CARDS—Some 1,390 workers voted to join AFSCME, including 486 administrative assistants working for the State of Illinois, who won a voice on the job with AFSCME Council 31 recently. They benefited from a change in state labor law, won by unions and signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), that allows state employees to win union recognition through a majority verification or card-check process in which an employer agrees to honor the workers’ choice after a majority indicates the desire to form a union by signing authorization cards. The majority of 374 workers in the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission voted April 9 to make the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28 their union. The 270 Santa Clara County (Calif.) Valley Transit Authority employees voted on March 30 to join Council 57. Other recent AFSCME organizing wins include nearly 100 service and maintenance workers at Clarkson University, a private institution in Potsdam, N.Y., voting for Civil Service Employees Association/Local 1000, and in Connecticut, 74 City of Milford employees and 86 City of Hamden employees voting to join Council 4.
CHOOSING A VOICE—A total of 1,064 workers joined United Food and Commercial Workers recently. In Forest, Miss., 680 food workers at Koch’s Foods chose Local 1529 April 15 via a card-check. At the Palms of Sebring nursing home in Sebring, Fla., 122 certified nursing assistants voted for Local 1625 on April 8. And an April 7 card-check at the Lake Placid Nursing Home in Lake Placid, Fla., also gave 118 certified nursing assistants a voice at work with Local 1625. Sixty-three certified nursing assistants at the Kenilworth Care & Rehab Center in Sebring, Fla., voted for Local 1626 on April 2. Other new members include 41 production workers at Platinum Sportswear in Tigwall, Ga., who joined Local 1996, and 40 housekeeping and laundry workers at two Healthcare Services Inc. nursing homes in Charlotte, N.C., who selected Local 204 on March 1.
INSURING THEIR JOBS—After two years of legal wrangling, 964 Prudential Insurance Company of America representatives in 34 states voted for Office and Professional Employees Local 153 on April 23.
A CLEAN SWEEP—More than 600 janitors at several companies in Bergen County, N.J., gained recognition for SEIU 32BJ under an innovative countywide contract that allows eligible workers to join the union after a certain percentage of them signed cards indicating their desire for a voice on the job. Meanwhile, the majority of 65 workers at Pontiac Nursing Home in Oswego, N.Y., voted to join SEIU District 1199 Upstate this month.
POINT BLANK VICTORY—After a two-year campaign that included an unfair labor practice strike, Point Blank Body Armor Inc. on April 20 announced it has recognized the choice of its 250 workers for representation with UNITE at its Oakland Park, Fla., plant, through a majority verification procedure.
HAPPY WITH HERE—This month, 150 Sport Service gaming employees at the Finger Lakes Race Track joined Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 471 via a majority verification procedure (card-check). In Chicago, 21 Aramark food service workers at Riverside Brookfield High School voted for Local 450 on Jan. 12.
MARKING WORKERS MEMORIAL DAY—Thousands of union members and their allies worldwide will mark Workers Memorial Day, April 28, with rallies, candlelight vigils, interfaith services and marches. Activists plan to expose the Bush administration’s abysmal record on worker safety, which includes killing workplace ergonomics protections, withdrawing all new workplace safety and health rules and moving to slash the federal job safety budget. The International Labor Organization, an arm of the United Nations, plans to release a report showing that work kills more people than wars, with 2 million worker deaths a year, many of them preventable. “The Bush administration has turned its back on American workers and workplace safety,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). “It’s time—and past time—that the federal government enforced the right of every American to a safe, healthful workplace.” For more information and to download materials, click on www.aflcio.org/yourjobeconomy/safety/memorial/index.cfm.
BUSH GRABS O.T. FROM MILLIONS—Millions of workers, from registered nurses to financial service workers, claims adjusters and more, stand to lose their rights to overtime pay under Bush administration changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) finalized last week. Employers can begin dropping workers’ overtime pay as early as Aug. 20 unless Congress acts to stop the new federal regulation. The Bush administration published the rule in the Federal Register April 23, and employers can implement it after 120 days. The White House used the federal regulatory process—which does not require congressional approval—to approve the overtime pay take-away. The Senate is likely to vote next week on an amendment by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to the Foreign Sales Corporations (FSC) tax bill, legislation designed to end a trade dispute with Europe. The Harkin amendment would block portions of the Bush regulation that restrict overtime eligibility but allow the administration to change the overtime rules to increase eligibility. If the amendment wins Senate approval, it still faces formidable obstacles in a House and Senate conference to meld the two versions of the FSC tax legislation. “The Bush administration looks out into the economy, and this is the problem it sees—middle-class blue-collar and white-collar workers are making too much money. I don’t know what families they are looking at, but they don’t live in my congressional district,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). You can send a message to President George W. Bush with a copy to your senators and tell him what you think of the new overtime rules by visiting www.unionvoice.org/campaign/stopbush4otpay.
GROCERY DÉJA VU—Some 15,000 workers at Safeway, Albertsons, Kroger-owned QFC and Fred Meyer grocers in the Puget Sound area of Washington state are fighting employer demands to strip away affordable health care benefits and cut wages. The companies, which earned $9.6 billion in profits over the past five years, began advertising for temporary replacement workers in case of a lockout or strike. Health care has been a key issue in talks between UFCW and grocery chains across the country, including Southern California, where 59,000 workers were on strike for five months to save affordable health care. Meanwhile, in Indiana, some 4,000 UFCW Local 700 members at 58 Kroger supermarkets ratified new contracts April 16 that run through May 24, 2008. The accords provide pay increases of 25 cents to 40 cents per hour, retroactive to Nov. 1, 2003.
FIGHTING FOR FAIRNESS AT SBC—The 102,000 union workers at SBC Communications nationwide have launched a community campaign to protect health care and good hometown jobs. The workers, members of the Communications Workers of America, who are in contract talks with SBC, are asking SBC customers to pledge to switch their service to another union carrier if the telecom giant doesn’t back off demands to cut workers’ health care benefits and job security. The workers also plan to carry their fight for a fair contract to SBC’s shareholders meeting April 30 in Columbus, Ohio. For more information or to take the pledge, visit www.cwa-union.org/sbc.
TIME FOR TEACHERS—Nearly 4,000 part-time professors, members of Adjuncts Come Together/UAW at New York University, averted a strike and reached a tentative settlement on a first contract on April 21. Meanwhile, a strike by 1,900 Columbia University graduate students demanding recognition of UAW Local 2110 entered its sixth day. Columbia has joined other universities in an effort to reverse a 2000 NLRB decision that graduate student teachers are employees and are eligible to join a union.
A START IN EL SALVADOR—San Francisco-based retailer Gap Inc. and UNITE are jointly heralding the soon-to-open Just Garments, El Salvador’s first clothing factory operating with an independent union agreement. Gap plans to buy T-shirts from the co-op, partially owned by its 150 workers, most of whom lost their jobs in 2002 after Taiwanese owners closed the two factories they had successfully organized.
LACKING STANDARDS—The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department filed a formal petition April 20 urging Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to establish specific graduation requirements by craft for construction apprenticeship programs. A 2003 study by the BCTD found significant failures in the standards and completion rates at nonunion apprenticeship programs. Last month, Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Patricia Murray (D-Wash.) asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the performance of construction apprenticeship programs.
BRINGING G.E. TO LIGHT—Workers and retirees, members of the 14 unions at General Electric Co., will rally outside the company’s annual shareholder meeting April 28 in Louisville, Ky., in support of several union-sponsored resolutions. The resolutions call for a halt to moving jobs overseas, justification of G.E.’s political contributions, separation of the jobs of CEO and chairman and higher pensions for retirees. For more information, visit www.geworkersunited.org.
BRAKING OPTIONS—Some 9.5 percent of voting shares in the Union Pacific Corp. were cast in favor of a proposal by the Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen/Teamsters to replace executives’ stock options with restricted shares that would be tied to performance and could not be sold until the executives left the company. “With rampant reports of operational problems, staffing shortages and remote-control accidents at Union Pacific, the board of directors should be looking for ways to more closely link executive compensation with performance,” said union President Don Hahs.
ON TARGET—In New Jersey, 11 union members were elected to various school boards April 20, as part of the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s Labor Candidates Program. Since 1997, when the state federation began its effort to elect union members to public office, 277 union members have won seats in the state senate and assembly, on town and county councils, in mayors’ offices and on school boards. The New Jersey program is part of the AFL-CIO’s Target 5000 initiative designed to elect 5,000 union members around the country.
WWII MEMORIAL UNION-MADE—The National World War II Memorial, built mostly with union labor, opens to the public this month in Washington, D.C. At least eight building and construction trades unions worked on the $67.5 million project for more than two years, completing the task ahead of schedule. The memorial will be officially dedicated May 29 during the Memorial Day weekend. For more information, visit www.wwiimemorial.com.
REALITY TV—Last week, the NBC series “West Wing” featured a major storyline about CWA members losing their jobs to outsourcing. This week, the real CWA will build on the show’s message with an ad, which will run in 23 cities during this week’s episode of “West Wing,” April 28. The ad features CWA President Morton Bahr saying thousands of high-tech jobs have been lost through outsourcing and referring viewers to www.techsunite.org, which features a Web-based tracker that displays the mounting number of jobs U.S. companies send overseas.