(The AFL-CIO issued the following on March 29.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 1,158
New members reported in WIP, year-to-date: 42,724
CHOOSING A VOICE–Some 482 workers gained a voice on the job with AFSCME. More than 300 Washington State Patrol employees, including office assistants, customer services specialists and others, voted to join the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28 on March 17. Lakewood City, Ohio, managers voluntarily recognized the choice of 127 clerical and technical employees to join Council 8 on Feb. 27. And 55 Naugatuck, Conn., police voted for Council 15 on Feb. 19.
HERE HIGH ON LOEWS–In a major victory, 250 workers at the Loews New Orleans Hotel became members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 166 and Operating Engineers Local 406 after a card-check in mid-March. Under a card-check or majority recognition 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. Construction union pension funds are major investors in the hotel.
UNION ON GEORGIA’S MIND–A total of 211 workers voted for the Teamsters recently. At Allied Waste/BFI’s Bankhead Highway waste management facility near Atlanta, 90 workers chose IBT on Feb. 27. In Tyrone, Ga., another 35 workers at Allied Waste/BFI voted to join Local 728 March 19. The 53 cooler workers employed by NewStar Fresh Foods LLC in Yuma, Ariz., and Lemoore, Calif., voted unanimously March 25 to be represented by Local 890. And on March 23, the 33 police officers in Winter Garden, Fla., voted to join Local 385.
VICTORY IN MASSACHUSETTS–The majority of 90 Head Start workers employed by the Quincy (Mass.) Community Action Program overcame strident employer opposition and voted March 22 to join SEIU Local 888. Quincy’s mayor as well as Massachusetts Sens. Edward Kennedy (D) and John Kerry (D) supported the effort. Also, 75 clerical workers at Miami’s Pan American Hospital voted March 9 to join SEIU.
WORKING RETAIL–The 30 part-time workers at Heiner’s Bakery in Huntington, W.Va., became the newest members of Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21. The company voluntarily recognized the union. In Kansas City, Mo., 20 cafeteria workers at Honeywell Corp. joined Local 184-L on March 23.
REPUBLICANS DUCK O.T. VOTE–Rather than risk passage of an amendment to bar the Bush administration from removing overtime pay protections from 8 million workers, Senate Republicans sacrificed an important foreign trade bill that could cost U.S. firms tens of millions of dollars in tariff payments. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) was to offer the amendment to the Foreign Sales Corporation tax bill, designed to end a trade dispute with Europe. Harkin’s amendment would have banned the Department of Labor from revising the Fair Labor Standards Act to deny workers overtime pay protections. But Republican leaders blocked the vote by pulling the bill. “The Bush administration and the Republican leadership would rather pay tariffs to Europe than pay overtime to American workers,” Harkin said.
BUILDING TO WIN–More than 3,000 union construction workers kicked off the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s annual legislative conference March 29 in Washington, D.C. The conference, “American Jobs: Defending the American Dream,” is focused on political mobilization. Along with appearances from a number of U.S. Senate and House members, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) will address the delegates March 31. The conference also includes workshops on important labor legislation and a lobbying day on Capitol Hill.
AMERICA EMBRACES SHOW US THE JOBS(TM) TOUR –The 51 workers on the Show Us the Jobs(TM) bus tour–one from each state and the District of Columbia–are generating public excitement and spurring people to action over the nation’s jobs crisis. The tour, which began in St. Louis March 24, traveled through Ohio March 29 with stops in Toledo, Cleveland and Warren/Youngstown. On March 30, the riders will tell their personal stories of how the nation’s jobs crisis affects them, their families and communities at stops in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The riders will end their tour of eight states and 18 cities in Washington, D.C., March 31, where they will lobby lawmakers to create new policies that keep good jobs in this country and join a rally to save overtime pay and good jobs. The tour is sponsored by the AFL-CIO and WORKING AMERICA, a new national organization for working people. You can follow the bus by viewing daily videos online at http://www.showusthejobs.com . Along the way, many participants are recording their thoughts in daily blogs, or Web logs. In addition, each rider’s personal story is available on the website and visitors to the site are writing their own comments about the nation’s jobs crisis. The site also includes an activist toolkit you can use to fight for good jobs in your community, opportunities to speak out for better jobs and Show Us the Jobs(TM) gear you can order online.
ANOTHER GROCERY STRIKE POSSIBLE–Some 28,000 members of UFCW locals 400 and 27 will vote March 30 on a contract proposal from the Giant and Safeway grocery chains in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas. If the pacts are not approved, the workers are prepared to walk out, the union says. Safeway CEO Steve Burd, who led the attack on Southern California grocery workers’ health coverage, is leading these negotiations as well. Community support is building for the workers, who are trying to save health care benefits and fair wages. A group of Washington, D.C., ministers voted unanimously March 17 to urge their congregations to honor picket lines if the workers strike. The 59,000 California grocery workers saved their health care benefits after a five-month strike that ended last month.
JOBLESS LEFT EMPTY-HANDED–Between late December and the end of March, a record 1.1 million jobless workers will have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits without receiving additional aid, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Republican-controlled Congress failed to renew the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program, which provided additional weeks of federal unemployment benefits to jobless workers who have run out of regular state benefits. The TEUC expired in December. For a copy of the study, click on http://www.cbpp.org/3-25-04ui.htm .
TO ‘INFINITY AND BEYOND’?–When the Social Security and Medicare trustees–dominated by Bush administration officials–released their annual reports March 23, they calculated Social Security and Medicare costs into infinity, leading to results that are “highly misleading,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The reports predict that over an “infinite horizon,” Social Security and Medicare face a multitrillion-dollar shortfall. In fact, the Social Security trustees’ report shows the program is fully funded through 2042 and will have enough money to cover 73 percent of benefits after that time, even without changes to strengthen the system. The Bush administration should stop the “chicken-little rhetoric…so that we can move on to solving the real problems facing both programs,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
ILA, PORTS REACH AGREEMENT–The Longshoremen reached a tentative six-year agreement March 23 with major U.S. port employers covering 15,000 East Coast and Gulf Coast dock workers. The new pact would provide four raises over term and guarantee that any jobs created through new technology will go to ILA members.
TOWN HALL MEETINGS PLANNED–The Labor Coalition for Community Action, a coalition of AFL-CIO constituency groups, is holding a town hall meeting April 2 in Las Vegas on issues workers want candidates for office to address, such as jobs, health care and education. “Our coalition reaches out to a diverse group, and we expect our members to have a loud voice this coming November,” says Gloria Caoile, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, one of the event sponsors. This is the first of at least 20 town hall meetings planned around the country, with the next set for Detroit on April 17, said Jesse Rios, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, another sponsor.
SOFTWARE JOBS SHRINKING–White-collar domestic software-related jobs are shrinking as companies move operations overseas, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). U.S. jobs in software production declined by 128,000 between 2000 and 2004, and jobs in software occupations shrank by 154,000 between 2000 and 2002, EPI says. At the same time, professional jobs in India’s software export sector rose by 150,000 from 1999 to 2003. About two-thirds of India’s software exports come to the United States. For more information, visit http://www.epinet.org .
TTD: CRASH SHOWS NEED FOR CHANGES–The tragic helicopter crash March 23 in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 10 people spotlights the dangerous conditions in which helicopter pilots work and their need for advanced technologies, said Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department (TTD). TTD’s Executive Committee March 7 demanded government action to improve the safety of Gulf helicopter operations.
TIMELY FARM WORKERS WIN–In a victory for agricultural workers, a federal judge on March 16 ruled that one of California’s largest vegetable producers, D’Arrigo Brothers Co., must reimburse workers for the time they spent traveling on company vans to and from the crops they picked. The Farm Workers coordinated the winning lawsuit. The company could end up owing $13 million or more in back wages and penalties to more than 3,000 laborers, according to UFW.
STUDENTS TAKE ACTION–Student activists nationwide begin a week of events March 29 supporting workers’ rights, commemorating the birthday of UFW founder Cesar Chavez on March 30 and the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4. The annual national student labor week of action will feature rallies, town hall meetings and concerts supporting campus workers’ rights, funding for education and an end to sweatshops. Visit http://www.jwj.org/SLAP/A4/2004.htm for more information.
MARCHING FOR JUSTICE–Toledo, Ohio, Mayor Jack Ford and several city council members joined nearly 300 high school students during a march and rally March 24 supporting farm workers’ campaign against Mount Olive Pickle Co. The North Carolina-based company has refused since 1999 to negotiate with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee over better working conditions and wages at farms where it purchases pickles.
APPRENTICESHIP INVESTIGATION–An AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department study has prompted two U.S. senators to call for an investigation of apprenticeship programs run by the employers’ group Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC). The study uncovered failures in the standards and completion rates of the nonunion apprenticeship programs, with some recording four times as many cancellations or dropouts as graduations. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) last week asked the federal General Accounting Office to investigate the ABC apprenticeship programs’ performance. The U.S. Labor Department registers and monitors the apprenticeship programs. For more information, visit http://www.bctd.org .
Work in Progress is also available on our website at http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/wip .