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Good news in the Medco lockout, setback for Flight Attendants at Mesaba Airlines and more.
Remember, if you have news or comments, send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.
From Lynne Baker at USW International Union: Medco Health Solutions Inc. just reached a tentative agreement with USW and its Local 675 that covers its members in Las Vegas. Details will be announced after Local 675 members receive a contract summary and participate in a contract ratification meeting May 23.
Pia Tillis, USW unit chair for the Las Vegas Medco facility, says the tentative agreement followed strong public support for the workers:
Public pressure against the company for its illegal lockout affected our negotiations. Unions across the country denounced Medco and threatened to change prescription providers in a deluge of letters, phone calls and e-mails.
This illegal lockout of our members brought a lot of pressure from the labor community and our allies. After a six-week lockout, we’ve achieved the best Medco contract in our union’s history. This agreement is a radical improvement over the so-called “last, best and final offer” the company presented to us just prior to the illegal lockout.
Baker reports that if Medco had not agreed to end the lockout, the company would have “placed at risk over 25 percent of its total business.” More than 6 million union members and their families are covered under Medco’s prescription drug plans.
Two other USW-represented Medco sites have contracts that expire this month, including one for approximately 300 Medco call center workers in Tampa, Fla., and 800 members at Medco’s mail-order pharmacy in Columbus, Ohio.
The USW represents more than 5,100 workers at Medco facilities.
Find out more at: www.usw.org/rx.
This from Corey Caldwell in the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Communications Department:
Federal Bankruptcy Judge Gregory F. Kishel today rejected Mesaba Airlines 1113(c) motion to abrogate the labor contracts of the company’s more than 400 flight attendants, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA).
AFA is part of the 700,000-member strong CWA. Says Tim Evenson, AFA-CWA master executive council president for Masaba Airlines:
Our members have stood strong and will continue to fight for what they believe in and that is a fair and equitable contract. It is unfortunate that we had to go through this long and unproductive process. We have worked hard for what we have and are determined not to sit idly by and watch our company take away our livelihoods without a fight.
Mesaba Airlines previously asked its labor unions for a 19.4 percent wage and benefit cut for a period of six years and has been unwilling to discuss alternative cost savings. AFA-CWA has presented several proposals that met the projected concessions that were promptly dismissed by management.
Mesaba, a regional carrier for Northwest Airlines, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005. As a wholly owned subsidiary of MAIR Holdings, Mesaba is solely responsible for 95 percent of MAIR Holdings profits. MAIR Holdings is believed to currently have $120 million on hand and has not declared bankruptcy.
Blair Mays in Princeton, W.Va., says the Bush administration’s “surveillance state” tactics are misdirected:
The greatest enemy of the U.S. Constitution and the American middle-class way of life are not citizens, but U.S. global corporations. The threat posed by abandonment of labor standards through outsourcing and illegally (wink-wink) actively promoting an invasion of cheap labor threatens the very lifestyle of America where historically, high wages differentiated our system from those outside our borders. By encouraging innovation and capital investment, high wages led to the creation of the largest consumer market in the history of the world—now gravely in danger.
Massive looting of pension and retirement funds, the destruction of the middle class and a return to wholesale corporate polluting of the air, water and soil is accompanied by shameless monopolization of all infrastructure essentials including water, energy, health care and insurance almost assuring that competitive business in the U.S. has become impossible. Global corporations and their cheerleader stockholders are the greatest threat to Americanism, ever.
No surprise, the CEOs who run these corporations are making a ton of money: Check out the AFL-CIO PayWatch to see the pay and retirement packages of corporate chiefs like Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Lee Raymond, whose estimated annual retirement benefit is $6,500,000.
And speaking of corporate abuse, James Neely in Henderson, Nev., gives us another reminder of a really egregious offender of workers’ rights—Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart makes billions and pays below average wages, like unloaders of trucks, $9 an hour to unload a semi…that’s cheap pay for back-breaking work. And floor sales, $8.10 an hour. The need for labor union support to unionize a must for decent wages at Wal-Mart.
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