(The AFL-CIO circulated the following on February 10.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 2,260
New members reported in WIP year-to-date: 7,790
CWA WINS IN NEW MEXICO–After a card-check by the New Mexico Public Employee Labor Relations Board on Feb. 3, 1,600 New Mexico state workers in the Health and Environment Departments won a voice on the job with Communications Workers of America. Under card-check, an employer agrees to recognize the union after a majority of workers indicates a desire for union representation by signing authorization cards. In October, workers in several other departments joined CWA, which now represents about 2,300 state workers.
SEIU WINS AGAIN IN MIAMI–The majority of more than 340 medical technicians, aides, maintenance workers and other support staff at Miami’s Pan American Hospital voted overwhelmingly Jan. 26 to join SEIU. Their union victory comes just two weeks after more than 185 RNs at the hospital joined SEIU. In addition, the majority of about 250 Head Start staff of the SMILE Community Action Agency voted Jan. 26 to join SEIU Local 100 for a stronger voice in advocating quality preschool education. The agency serves the Louisiana parishes of St. Martin, Iberia and Lafayette. And a unit of some 70 nursing assistants, dietary workers and clerical staff at The Hermitage nursing home in Worcester, Mass., recently voted 36 to 24 to join SEIU Local 2020. The facility is owned by Beverly Enterprises.
IUC SENDS HILL MESSAGE ON JOBS–More than 3,000 union members from the 14 unions of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council (IUC) called on Congress and the Bush administration to address the nation’s job crisis. Meeting in Washington, D.C., Feb. 3 for the IUC legislative conference, the workers fanned out to Capitol Hill and urged lawmakers to adopt trade and tax policies that encourage employers to keep well-paying jobs at home, promote workers’ rights abroad, provide affordable health care for all workers and retirees and restore workers’ freedom to form a union. The nation has lost 2.6 million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office, leaving manufacturing employment is at its lowest level in 45 years. The economic policies that fueled the job plunge “were created by men and women we elected to office,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. “The time has come for them to change their ways or be forced out of office.” For more information, visit http://www.aflcio.org .
JOBLESS AID GAINS SUPPORT–Overcoming long-standing opposition by Republican leaders and signaling bipartisan support, the U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 4 approved a six-month extension of the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program. President George W. Bush opposes the extension of the program, which expired in December. TEUC provides up to 13 weeks of unemployment benefits for jobless workers who have exhausted their state unemployment benefits without finding work. The Senate must approve the extension, and Bush must agree to sign–not veto–legislation that extends the TEUC. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said 375,000 workers exhausted unemployment benefits in January without a federal program on which to fall back–the highest single-month total in 30 years. For more information, visit http://www.aflcio.org .
WEALTHY WIN WITH BUSH BUDGET–President Bush’s fiscal year 2005 budget includes permanent tax cuts for the nation’s super-rich while it shortchanges and cuts funds for the domestic programs working families need most, such as job creation, health care, transportation and education. Released Feb. 2, Bush’s tax-cut proposal balloons the already record-high $477 billion U.S. federal deficit to $520 billion in 2005 and as much as $5.2 trillion between 2005 and 2014, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Bush budget “continues a disturbing shift away from the priorities of working Americans and promises to widen, rather than narrow, the growing gulf between the rich and middle class in America,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Bush’s budget proposes cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) worker safety programs by 65 percent but provides increased funding and staffing for the Department of Labor to investigate and prosecute unions. Bush’s budget proposals underfund education so drastically that hundreds of thousands of children will be left behind in classes that are too large and with too few opportunities to participate in prekindergarten programs, and teachers won’t have access to the training needed to upgrade their skills–despite the promises of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act. The president’s budget ignores the plight of jobless workers and fails to call for extension of the TEUC program–at the same time it undercuts job creation by calling for far less than is needed for transportation funding to create jobs and upgrade roads, bridges and mass transit. Bush’s proposed jobs training program trains workers for what he calls the “jobs of the future,” but he says nothing about stemming the loss of current well-paying U.S. jobs. And the funding increases for worker training do not begin to restore earlier Bush cuts in job training and dislocated worker programs. For an in-depth look at Bush’ budget proposals, visit http://www.aflcio.org/bushwatch .
O.T. FIGHT CONTINUES–The Bush administration may soon issue its new rules on overtime pay protections that could cost 8 million workers their overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. But the nation’s workers–including many veterans whose military training could disqualify them for overtime pay under the Bush plan–continue to mobilize with e-mails, phone messages, faxes and petitions urging lawmakers to keep alive the fight to stop the attack on overtime pay and telling Bush to back off his overtime pay take-away. To join the fight to save overtime pay and learn more, visit http://www.saveovertimepay.org .
BUSH ATTACKS VETERANS’ RIGHTS–President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are attacking the fundamental civil service rights of 700,000 civilian employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, union leaders said at a Feb. 9 news conference. Bush and Rumsfeld are proposing changes to the Defense Department’s personnel rules, released over the weekend, that essentially could terminate bargaining and employee appeal rights, federal workers’ unions said. John Gage, president of AFGE, which represents 600,000 federal employees, said the plan is “the first step to the wholesale destruction of the civil service system.” Meanwhile, AFGE is continuing its efforts to help airport screeners win a voice on the job. On Jan. 15, the union filed a motion in the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn an order by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) prohibiting airport screeners from having the benefit of collective bargaining. AFGE said the ban is unconstitutional and violates the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, which created TSA.
MOMENTUM BUILDS FOR GROCERY WORKERS–More than 1,500 union activists and elected and community leaders including New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson rallied on Wall Street Feb. 5, telling financial experts a Safeway-led coalition of grocers is hurting investors and all working families. Since mid-October, more than 70,000 United Food and Commercial Workers California grocery workers have been striking or locked out after rejecting a contract offer that slashes health benefits and wages for new hires. On Jan. 31 in Inglewood, Calif., more than 15,000 workers, activists and community leaders rallied and marched to a nearby Safeway-owned Vons grocery store. Speakers included Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn (D) and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D), whose office filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles Feb. 2 charging the grocers with violating federal anti-trust laws. Make a donation to the striking grocery workers by visiting https://secure.ga3.org/08/holdtheline or send a check payable to AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer to the Hold the Line for Health Care Strike Fund, AFL-CIO, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20006.
WORKERS SPEAK OUT ON JOBS–Throughout January, workers nationwide met in a series of roundtable discussions to talk about what they want to hear from the president. With 2.9 million private-sector jobs lost since Bush took office, workers at the 16 AFL-CIO-sponsored roundtables in 11 states pointed to the Bush administration’s failed jobs and economic policies. Most, such as laid-off apparel worker and former UNITE Local 488 member Patricia Richards of Lansing, Mich., expressed serious concerns. “We need to see President Bush address the trade agreements that have encouraged manufacturers to move factories to other countries to reduce labor costs,” she said. Another worker, Walter Gammon of Albuquerque, N.M., a Machinists Local 794 worker laid off by General Electric Aircraft Engines after 19 years, said, “Nobody is doing anything about the jobless except telling us to get retrained, and then there still isn’t any work.”
SEND A MESSAGE ON JOBS–“Jobs are on the rise,” President Bush said in his State of the Union address Jan. 20. But that’s not what America’s workers are saying in America Speaks Out on Jobs, a new AFL-CIO webpage featuring workers writing in and sharing their experiences about today’s job crisis. Tell your story and read others’ at http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/americawritesback/index.cfm .
BUSHWHACKED ON SAFETY–The federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) found the Bush administration’s failure to act to prevent reactive chemical explosions “unacceptable.” After a two-year study, the CSB asked OSHA to improve its standard to better control these hazards, which have caused numerous catastrophic incidents and killed scores of workers over the past two decades. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the CSB’s finding is “a serious indictment of the Bush administration’s dismal worker safety and health record.”
TENTATIVE TRANSIT PACT–Amalgamated Transit Union’s nationwide Local 1700 reached a tentative accord with Greyhound Lines Feb. 2. Some 4,500 workers, including drivers and half of Greyhound’s mechanics, will vote on the proposed contract by March 26. Details of the proposal will be available after they are presented to the members, the union said. In October 2003, those workers voted down another proposal by an 86 percent to 14 percent margin.
NEW PACT, NEW OWNERS–Members of UAW Local 600 approved a new three-year contract at Rouge Industries Jan. 28, the final step needed for Severstal, a Russian company, to take over ownership of the bankrupt steel maker. Some 2,000 of the firm’s 2,600 workers are UAW members. The package, ratified 1,207-203, maintains company-paid health care benefits and raises wages 2 percent in 2005 and 2006.
MOSES LEADS WITH PRIDE–Henry Moses III is the new executive director of Pride At Work (PAW), the union movement’s organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender working people. Moses was a research analyst at TransAfrica Forum and the AFL-CIO Food and Allied Service Trades Department and research director for Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 25 in Washington, D.C. He is a former co-president of PAW’s Baltimore/Washington chapter. Moses succeeds Marta Ames as executive director on Feb. 16.
Work in Progress is also available on our website at
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/wip .