(The AFL-CIO distributed the following on November 4.)
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 579
New members reported in WIP, year to date: 128,463
TALKING TRASH–Workers at BFI’s San Carlos, Calif., facility defied management’s anti-union campaign of threats and intimidation and voted to join Teamsters Local 350 Oct. 24. When the company stepped up its fight against the 253 workers, volunteer organizers from other locals, along with community leaders, joined the struggle. Several of the volunteers were from Norcal Waste Services Inc. in Los Angeles, where the 76 workers won recognition with IBT Local 396 Oct. 20 following a six-day strike.
PET PROJECT–In Portland, Ind., 81 workers at Doane Pet Care voted for respect on the job with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 700 Oct. 20. And in Chicago, 10 retail workers at Erehwon Mountain Outfitters voted Oct. 17 for a voice with Local 1546.
SEIU WINS AT NURSING HOMES–Seventy-nine workers at two northern California nursing homes won a voice on the job with SEIU Local 250 Oct. 27 following a check of authorization cards (card-check) showing a majority of workers voluntarily signed the cards seeking union representation. The two new units include 35 aides and other support staff at a Fresno-area Beverly Enterprises Inc. facility and 44 workers at an Independent Quality Care facility in Hayward.
CLEANING UP IN CONNECTICUT–Some 80 laundry workers at Atlantic City Linen in Norwich, Conn., chose a voice at work with UNITE via a recent card-check. The key gains in the new members’ first contract include better wages, holidays and benefits. They join UNITE’s Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Allied Workers Joint Board.
PRIVATIZATION STILL IN MEDICARE BILL–Republican congressional leaders, after weeks of closed-door meetings, are finalizing a Medicare prescription drug bill that moves Medicare toward privatization and raises premiums, co-payments and deductibles for 32.5 million seniors and people with disabilities. It also threatens the employer-provided health care benefits of some 4.5 billion retirees, while showering drug companies with profits (see following item). Bowing to Bush White House pressure, congressional Republicans are moving to get a bill finished before the 2004 elections. Visit http://www.aflcio.org to send a message to your lawmakers: Don’t privatize Medicare.
HOLDING THE LINE FOR HEALTH CARE–Nearly 80,000 grocery workers nationwide now are on strike, fighting to save affordable, adequate health care. Striking southern California grocery workers were joined by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, UFCW President Douglas Dority, Machinists President Thomas Buffenbarger, Bakery, Tobacco, Confectionery and Grain Millers President Frank Hurt, SEIU President Andrew Stern and AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department President Edward Sullivan to announce “Holding the Line for Health Care” to support the 70,000 locked-out and striking workers in southern California and grocery workers in West Virginia and Kentucky who have been off the job since mid-October. Major grocery employers, including Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons, are demanding a 75 percent cut in employer contributions to health coverage for new workers and a 50 percent cut for current workers–making coverage unaffordable and inadequate. “These strikes are not just about UFCW members, because if the giant supermarket chains can kill health care in southern California, then all employers will feel that they can get away with eliminating benefits,” Dority said. According to a new AFL-CIO report, “Squeezing Safeway Workers Won’t Solve the Problem,” poor investments, not health care costs, are destroying Safeway’s competitiveness in southern California. The report also finds that Safeway is taking a hardball approach to negotiations that will hurt short- and long-term investor returns. To send a message telling Safeway to negotiate fairly with workers, visit http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/hold_the_line . For a copy of the Safeway report, visit http://www.aflcio.org/corporateamerica/capital/safeway.cfm .
PHARMA, NOT SENIORS, DRUG BILL WINNERS–A new study shows the pharmaceutical industry will earn a stunning “windfall profit” of $139 billion under the Medicare prescription drug legislation now in a House and Senate conference. The study, “61 Percent of Medicare’s New Prescription Drug Subsidy Is Windfall Profit to Drug Makers,” by the Health Reform Program at Boston University’s School of Public Health, says the bill does not contain mechanisms to control prices and does not even allow Medicare to negotiate prices for drugs. “[T]hese unrestrained prices–given the remarkably low real cost of producing the added volumes of pills that Medicare patients need–will bestow enormous windfall profits on prescription drug makers,” the report says. Visit http://www.healthreformprogram.org to read the report.
GO VOTE–Tuesday, Nov. 4, is Election Day in many states around the country. Off-year elections don’t draw as much notice as congressional and presidential elections, but important working family races and issues are on the ballots. In Kentucky and Mississippi, voters will select governors, and in Philadelphia, voters will elect a mayor. In Washington state, Big Business has financed a ballot initiative to kill the state’s workplace ergonomics law, and in New Jersey, some 54 union-member candidates are on the ballot for local offices. Several states are electing state legislators.
ON TO MIAMI–Tens of thousands of union members, community allies, workers’ and human rights activists and others are making final preparations for a massive “March to Miami: Stop the FTAA” to fight the Bush administration’s proposed Free Trade Areas of the Americas agreement (FTAA). The march and other planned activities Nov. 18-21 coincide with the Miami meeting of the 34 trade ministers from the nations in the proposed FTAA. FTAA would expand to the entire Western Hemisphere (except Cuba) the low wages, lax environmental laws and weak worker protections that flowed from the North American Free Trade Agreement. For more information, visit http://www.aflcio.org/stopftaa or http://www.marchtomiami.org .
COALITION FIGHTS CONTRACTING OUT–“The effort to sell government to Big Business cannot continue–particularly when it concerns privatizing public services that are inherently governmental,” said AFGE President John Gage Oct. 28 as a coalition of some 73 labor, social service, nonprofit and other groups urged Congress to stop the Bush administration’s new rules that make it easier to privatize government services. The new rules, known as Circular A-76, are part of Bush’s drive to privatize the jobs of some 850,000 federal workers. For more on “Selling Out the Government” see the October/November issue of “America@work,” online at http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/magazine .
NOT AN ACT–Hundreds of performers, stage managers and other union activists rallied with Actors’ Equity members in the heart of Broadway Oct. 29 to protest tours of the play “Miss Saigon” produced by Big League Theatricals. The theater company brings productions to major metropolitan theatrical hubs without providing fair wages and benefits to the actors and stage managers. At the rally, joined by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, union actors performed a one-act musical, “The Jobless Chronicles,” to dramatize the plight of laid-off and underpaid workers.
O.T. FATE UNDECIDED–The House and Senate conference committee deciding whether to protect overtime pay for as many as 8 million workers from Bush administration attempts to change overtime rules has yet to meet, according to reports. The overtime guarantee, an amendment to the fiscal year 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, would ban Bush’s Department of Labor from implementing a new rule to take away Fair Labor Standards Act overtime pay protections. While both the House and Senate voted to protect workers’ overtime pay, President George W. Bush has threatened to veto the bill if the overtime guarantee remains. Visit http://www.aflcio.org to send a message to Bush urging him to withdraw his attack on overtime pay.
FAA BILL SELLS OUT SAFETY–By a 211-207 vote Oct. 30, the House of Representatives approved a bill that allows the Bush administration to privatize the nation’s entire air traffic control system. While a provision in the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that allowed the privatization of 69 air traffic control towers was removed in a House and Senate conference, “[t]he dirty little secret is that there is language in the bill, Section 105, which will specifically allow privatization of air traffic control,” said John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. In addition, at the insistence of the airline industry, mandatory anti-terrorism training for flight attendants was stripped from the bill. The bill now goes to the Senate.
BUSH CHINA TRADE POLICIES FAIL–The Bush administration “failed to act effectively to stem the job losses resulting from the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit with China,…refused to take concrete steps to ensure that the Chinese government live up to its international obligations on trade, currency manipulation and human rights and has denied American businesses and workers import relief they are entitled to under the law,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told the House Ways and Means Committee Oct. 31. He urged the Bush administration to “take a stand for American jobs and act now to ensure China plays fair in the global economy.”
CAMPUS EQUITY WEEK–Between Oct. 27 and Oct. 31, AFT members across the country held rallies and workshops and launched political and organizing campaigns to mark Campus Equity Week. Activists are calling for fairness and equity for part-time and adjunct faculty members, who are teaching more courses at colleges and universities but receive low wages, few benefits and little respect on the job. For more information, visit http://www.aft.org/higher_ed/parttime/CEW_index.html .
COMMERCIAL PACT OK’D–Members of the Screen Actors and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract covering commercial ads. The contract, effective Oct. 30, raises employer contributions to both unions’ health and pension plans and includes increases in session fees for radio, television and Spanish-language commercials work.
UNIONS, ALLIES PREPARE FOR DEC. 10–Union leaders met with allies from national civil rights, religious and social justice groups at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., Oct. 28 to plan for the Dec. 10 day of action to mark International Human Rights Day and launch a long-term campaign to restore every workers’ right to a voice at work. Local coalitions are planning rallies, candlelight vigils and other events in cities nationwide. For more information or to order a toolkit, call 202-637-5102, e-mail dfenwick@aflcio.org or visit http://www.aflcio.org/December10 .
PENSION CONVERSIONS BLOCKED–The Senate Oct. 23 joined the House in blocking proposed U.S. Treasury Department regulations that would allow companies to convert traditional pension plans to cash-balance pensions, a change that often hurts older workers. By a voice vote, the Senate adopted an amendment by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to H.R. 2989, the Treasury and Transportation appropriations bill, that stops the proposed cash-balance regulations.
Work in Progress is also available on our website at http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/wip .