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Bargaining Digest Weekly |
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The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 800 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
With the Tigers and Cardinals in the World Series, baseball fans will be pleased that negotiators have worked out a new five-year tentative deal that, if ratified, will keep baseball strike free.
Some 1,100 Machinists (IAM) union members in Wichita, Kan., ratified a new four-year contract at Bombardier ending their strike. The narrow ratification margin reflected unhappiness with terms that failed to make up for concessions in the last agreement when the company was in trouble.
Another two-week strike ended in North Dakota, with the United Steelworkers (USW) at Bobcat ratifying a new contract. In LaPorte, Ind., 150 USW members on strike since Oct. 16 at Lewis Bakeries agreed to a new three-year contract that raises their pay and limits health care contributions.
UAW workers on strike for seven months at ESAB Welding reached a tentative agreement in Pennsylvania that returns all strikers to their jobs.
After initially balking, the Nuclear Fuel Services Co. accepted a Steelworkers return to work offer in Tennessee. The Steelworkers also reached a new three-year agreement with Graphic Packaging after working 14 months without a contract.
Some 50,000 L.A. County union workers won pay increases in a new three-year agreement.
Writers on strike seeking recognition by ‘Americas Top Model’ producers have stopped picketing and are seeking other jobs.
In the strongest statement yet, Air Line Pilots (ALPA) President Capt. Duane Woerth said that the bankruptcy court has trampled on the right of members of ALPA who work at Mesaba Airlines by blocking a strike by the workers and allowing the company to impose pay cuts. Unions at Mesaba will appeal the ruling. Even though the bankruptcy court gave them the right to impose conditions, Mesaba delays doing so and keeps negotiating with ALPA, AFA-CWA and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association.
ALPA members say US Airways management is dragging its feet in negotiations to integrate the former America West pilots into the US Airways unit. The pilots are rankled by the company’s payout of huge bonuses to management while negotiations drag on beyond one year.
Despite the strike by 15,000 workers at 16 plants and reduction in financial ratings by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, Goodyear stock is doing well. Wall Street expects the workers to eventually make big concessions. At the Lincoln plant, workers and hundreds of supporters held a rally to mark the 17th day of the strike on Sunday. Delphi UAW members from Lockport, New York joined pickets at the Goodyear/Dunlop plant in Tonawanda. More news on the effect of the Goodyear strike on workers’ tighter budgets here.
The USW reached a deal with buyer of a former G-P paper plant in Maine near Bangor. The new owners plan to reopen the plant.
The USW, busy at the table recently, also signed a multi-year deal with A.M. Castle & Co. covering workers at three plants in Illinois, Ohio and Missouri.
Qwest Communications, which has two straight quarters in the black and has initiated a $2 billion stock buyback program, is cutting health care benefits for thousands of retirees. Management and nonunion employees who retired after 1990 will have to pay all future cost increases.
The biggest provider of Medicare drug benefits, UnitedHealth Group, estimates 11 percent of its customers will be affected by the Medicare Part D donut hole this year. Also, AARP has come out with a new survey showing the public strongly opposes Social Security privatization and shows which congressional candidates agree.
Here’s a good short summary of the NLRB decision expanding the definitions of supervisor. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch laid the wood to the NLRB over the Kentucky River ruling, saying that it violates international labor and human rights laws.
AK Steel locked out 2,100 workers eight months ago, then went to court to win an injunction limiting pickets. The Machinists in Middletown reached an agreement with the company on picketing activities for the remainder of the lockout. The company says it has no plans to make the replacement workers permanent.
In Indiana, the UAW workers on strike at Bach Instruments also got slapped with a court order limiting pickets to only two per entrance.
UAN nurses at Wilcox Hospital in Kauai tentatively agreed to a new contract ending a strike that began June 24.
OPEIU helicopter pilots on strike in Louisiana since September 20 want to go back to the table with a mediator, but the employer, PHI, refuses to sit reopen talks, citing unnamed adversarial actions by the union.
In Philadelphia, the Enquirer and Daily News unions brought in a federal mediator to help them get to an agreement for a new contract. The current agreement expires on Halloween.
Speaking this week at the Life Insurers convention, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said one of the most important things the Bush administration has done to promote retirement security is to cut taxes. In order to stimulate growth.
A New York Times column compares the job destruction arguments against passing the Social Security legislation in 1935 to similar arguments against the minimum wage referenda on the ballot in six states November 7. David Leonhardt points out that the arguments just fall flat when jobs are bountiful and pay isn’t.
More than 150 companies are under investigation for their schemes to boost executive pay through backdating stock options. Executives for these companies exposed the plans by exercising their options and reporting the income in company financial reports. Now that the big boys have their money, some of these companies have blocked regular workers from exercising their 401(k) stock options.
A new Gallup Poll of the most trusted occupations put nurses at the top of the honesty list. Teachers, as the first non-health care occupation, finished 4th, union leaders 14th and business executives finished 16th. In last place: car salesmen and telemarketers.
Newsweek has an analytical piece how Wal-Mart adjusted its business practices as it moved into China.
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