(The AFL-CIO circulated the following on April 5.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 4,312
New members reported in WIP, year to date: 47,036
GOING BACK TO GO FORWARD—After spending three frustrating years without a contract as part of an unaffiliated union, a majority of 2,500 Jacksonville, Fla., city workers voted March 25 to rejoin AFSCME Council 75.
SCHOOL WORKERS CHOOSE AFT/NEA—In Osseo, Minn., 750 school workers voted to join Education Minnesota on March 25, forming Osseo Educational Paraprofessionals. Education Minnesota is the merged AFT and National Education Association state organization.
UNION SUPPLY LINES—Some 589 workers at three Michigan plants that supply automotive parts to General Motors Corp. chose a voice with the UAW recently. The new union members include workers at the Dakota facility in Lansing, who voted for the union March 25, as did employees of New Products in Benton Harbor. The workers at the Faurecia plant in Auburn Hills chose UAW in a card-check. Under a card-check or majority-verification procedure, an employer honors its workers’ choice to form a union if a majority of workers signs authorizations designating the union as the collective bargaining representative.
ENGINEERING A WIN—Concerned about potential outsourcing, promotion policies and benefits, the majority of 241 municipal employees who are members of the Association of Engineers and Architects (AEA) in San Jose, Calif., voted March 25 to affiliate with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21. More than 6,000 professional, technical, managerial, supervisory and administrative employees in municipalities and other public agencies throughout the Bay area already have a voice on the job with Local 21.
TAKING TO THE AIR—More than 100 stock clerks employed at American Trans Air in Indianapolis voted to join the Machinists recently. Other new IAM members include 18 helicopter electronic maintenance technicians working for Computer Sciences Corp., at Fort Campbell, Ky., and 15 janitors and mailroom workers for Creative Management Technologies at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
IT’S A ZOO—The 80 staff members at the Akron (Ohio) Zoo voted March 31 for Teamsters Local 507. The unit includes zookeepers, groundskeepers and others. Also, 16 truck drivers at the USF Dugan terminal in Mobile, Ala., voted April 2 for Local 991. This is the first victory in the “One Company—One Voice” campaign by employees of USF Dugan and USF Bestway to gain a voice on the job, with more elections scheduled this month.
CHOOSING A VOICE—Despite a strong anti-union campaign by the employer, three meat cutters at Borowiak IGA supermarket in Sparta, Ill., voted March 5 to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881.
MORE JOBS, BUT NOT GOOD ONES—Although the nation’s economy added 308,000 new jobs in March, the official unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent, up from 5.6 percent in February, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. It will take many more months of sustained job growth to replace the more than 3 million jobs lost since 2001, experts say. No new high-paying manufacturing jobs were created in March, but more than 300,000 lower-paying service jobs were. Meanwhile, the number of people who have been unemployed for six months or longer reached nearly 2 million—a 200 percent increase since President George W. Bush took office. Workers who have exhausted their state unemployment benefits no longer will receive long-term emergency unemployment insurance because the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to renew the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation program, which previously provided benefits when regular state benefits expired.
TAKING TO THE AIRWAVES—The AFL-CIO launched a new television advertising campaign April 1 to carry the message of the impact of the nation’s jobs crisis on families and communities. The ads, which will air in 11 states, point out that 2.8 million manufacturing jobs and 544,000 information jobs have been lost since President Bush took office. The ads follow the Show Us the Jobs™ tour in which 51 workers—one from each state and the District of Columbia—traveled to eight states to tell their personal stories of the jobs crisis. The tour culminated March 31 in Washington, D.C., where the workers joined Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and other members of Congress for a special Capitol Hill hearing on the jobs crisis and rallied to support policies to create good jobs and save overtime pay. The tour was sponsored by the AFL-CIO and WORKING AMERICA, a new national organization for working people. Watch a video of the new Show Us the Jobs™ ad and clips of the tour at www.showusthejobs.com. On the website, you also can read several of the riders’ daily blogs or Web logs, along with each rider’s personal story. You can download an activist toolkit to fight for good jobs in your community and order Show Us the Jobs™ gear online.
BUSH TAKES NEXT STEP TO GUT O.T.—The Bush administration continued efforts to eliminate the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime pay protections for 8 million workers. In late March, the White House sent its final version of the rule gutting workers’ overtime pay to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. OMB now has up to 90 days to issue a rule. On March 31 outside a Bush campaign fund-raiser at a Washington, D.C., hotel, more than 1,000 union members, including the 51 jobless workers who had just completed the five-day Show Us the Jobs™ tour, protested President Bush’s overtime pay attack and the administration’s support for shipping jobs overseas. Join the more than 2.25 million who signed petitions and sent faxes to the Bush White House urging the president to withdraw the overtime pay take-away by visiting www.unionvoice.org/campaign/faxbush4ot. Meanwhile, on April 2, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) signed into law a bill that exempts Illinois from the overtime take-aways being crafted by Bush’s Department of Labor.
BCTD STORMS THE HILL—More than 3,000 union construction workers took their message about creating and protecting, not exporting, American jobs to Capitol Hill March 30. Delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s legislative conference in Washington, D.C., urged lawmakers to support strong highway and transit and other infrastructure building measures. They also called on Congress to turn back Bush administration attempts to gut the nation’s wage laws and support the freedom of workers to join unions.
REPUBLICANS DUCK WORKER VOTES—Senate Republicans again are threatening to pull a major bill from consideration because Democrats want a vote on a pro-worker amendment. Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered an amendment to the reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) bill that would raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7 per hour in three increments. But rather than risking a minimum wage vote, news reports say Republican leaders are likely to pull the bill, which reauthorizes the nation’s federal welfare programs. On March 26, leaders pulled the Foreign Sales Corporation (S. 1637) tax bill from the floor because they feared successful passage of an amendment to the bill that would have barred the Bush administration from taking away overtime pay protections. The Bush administration supports the tax bill, which, among other things, would expand tax breaks that encourage companies to move offshore. The AFL-CIO has called for the bill to be recrafted to give additional incentives to keep domestic manufacturing in the United States.
GROCERY WORKERS RATIFY NEW DEAL—Some 28,000 members of UFCW locals 27 and 400, who work for the Giant and Safeway grocery chains in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas, approved a new four-year contract March 30 that maintains health care benefits without co-payments and provides wage increases over the term of the agreement. “Our members were determined to preserve their health care benefits, and we did,” said Local 400 President Jim Lowthers. “Overall, this is a contract that will benefit our members while also helping our employers remain competitive in this market,” Local 27 President Buddy Mays said. Under the agreement, Giant and Safeway will increase funding for the pension plan, as well as increase workers’ hourly wages from 30 to 35 cents per year on average.
THE WASHINGTON POST(PONING)—The mailers and helpers who package The Washington Post newspaper for delivery demonstrated March 24 at The Post-sponsored FOSE show, a technology exhibition for government technology professionals. The mailers and helpers, members of Communications Workers of America Local 14201, have been working without a contract since May 19, 2003. A key issue is pay equity for utility mailers who do the same work as journeymen but receive less than half the journey rate. Eighty-five percent of those workers are African American or Latino, and many work second jobs to make ends meet. CWA is urging activists to phone The Post publisher Bo Jones at 202-334-7141 or e-mail him at jonesb@washpost.com to tell him these workers deserve equal pay.
WORKING WOMEN’S VOICE—The AFL-CIO’s new survey gauging such working women’s priorities as health insurance, child care and family leave is available online at www.aflcio.org/women/report/wwsurvey2004.cfm. Respondents filling out the survey get instant feedback and see how their answers stack up with all the responses received. In early May, the AFL-CIO will release the results of a national poll, incorporating some of the findings of the online survey.
EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE—The George Meany Center for Labor Studies–The National Labor College has been awarded accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The rigorous accreditation process began for the college in 1999. It is widely recognized as a barometer of quality in higher education. The college currently is undergoing a $35 million renovation and expansion project, which includes construction of new dormitories and a 72,000 square-foot facility that will include classrooms, conference space, a dining hall, bookstore and distance learning center.
RODNEY BOWER DIES—Former IFPTE President Rodney Bower, 75, died March 22. Bower served as president of the IFPTE from 1972 to 1988, overseeing a 33 percent increase in his union’s membership when many other unions were losing members. Bower had “tremendous presence as a leader and a deep caring for all workers,” said IFPTE President Gregory Junemann.
REMEMBERING MILLIE JEFFREY—Social justice activist Mildred McWilliams “Millie” Jeffrey, retired director of the UAW’s Consumer Affairs Department, died March 24 at age 93. Jeffrey spent a lifetime working on labor, civil rights, education, health care, employment and recreation issues. In 2000, President Bill Clinton presented Jeffrey with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Jeffrey was a founding member and chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus. A celebration of her life will be held on a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to either the Mildred Jeffrey Endowed Scholarship Fund or the Mildred Jeffrey Peace and Conflict Collection at Wayne State University. Checks should be made payable to Wayne State University with a fund designation and sent to the Development Office, Beecher House, 5475 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202.