Archive for April, 2007
The Ugly Face of Union-Busting
This is a cross post from the Firedoglake blog.
Jen Jason started out in the union movement with an internship at the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute and later put the skills she learned to work for UNITE HERE, a union that represents primarily textile and hotel workers. But in the middle of a union organizing campaign, Jason left to become an anti-union management consultant, working for Cintas, whose workers she ostensibly was organizing. Seems she could make a lot more money—her firm made $225,000 the first year she set it up. And she certainly makes a lot more than the laundry workers at Cintas, who are paid between $7 and $9 an hour.
In the high-paid world of union-busting, Jason is a small fry. The so-called “union avoidance” industry is at minimum, a $4 billion-a-year business. But Jason is the modern face of union-busting. At the turn of the 20th century, union-busting took the form of Pinkertons inciting riots on picket lines so the government would have a reason to bash heads and break up strikes. At the turn of the 21st century, the practice is just as ugly—only much more subtle.
Two Trapped Miners Found Dead
The Associated Press is reporting that the bodies of two mineworkers have been found buried deep in a western Maryland open-pit coal mine. The two men, one found in a backhoe and the other in a bulldozer, were trapped when a wall section collapse left them buried under at least 45 feet of debris.
Tale of Two Workers Shows Need for Employee Free Choice Act
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| Asela Espiritu | |
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| Daniel Luevano |
Two workers, Asela Espiritu from California and Dan Luevano from Colorado, stopped by the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., this week to talk about what happened when they and their co-workers sought to form unions and win a better life. They were in the District of Columbia for the annual Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Awards, given by the worker advocacy group American Rights at Work. Espiritu and Luevano’s stories couldn’t have been more different.
It’s all because Espiritu’s freedom to organize was respected by her employer, while the opposite was true for Luevano. The contrast between the two is another powerful example of why it’s so vital to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which will level the playing field for millions of workers like Luevano seeking to form unions. The U.S. House passed the Employee Free Choice Act on March 1, and it’s now in the Senate.
Espiritu is a registered nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center-Orange County in Anaheim. After patients are out of surgery, she cares for them in the recovery room. Espiritu says when she and her colleagues sought to join United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP), which is part of AFSCME,
[w]e were treated decently by the management. We organized our union without resistance from them.
That’s because Kaiser has a nationwide policy of neutrality in union organizing campaigns—unlike the union-busting practices of many employers who try to intimidate, harass and even fire employees who want a union—and Kaiser also respects majority representation (card-check). In other words, if a majority of workers in a Kaiser facility sign cards saying they want to be represented by a union, they get their union fair and square, without having to go through the meat grinder-like National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) process.
AFSCME Librarian Wins Top Children’s Book Honor
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If you have kids, it’s your Lucky day. Susan Patron, a senior librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library and a member of AFSCME Local 2626, is the winner of the 2007 Newbery Award for the most distinguished children’s book published in 2006.
The 35-year AFSCME veteran and author of five other children’s books was honored for her young person’s novel, The Higher Power of Lucky. The book tells the story of 10-year-old Lucky Trimble and her life among the peculiar characters of the California desert community of Hard Pan (population 43).
According to the Newbery website, Lucky eavesdrops on 12-step program meetings from her hiding place behind Hard Pan’s Found Object Wind Chime Museum & Visitor Center. Eccentric characters and quirky details spice up Lucky’s life just as her guardian Brigitte’s fresh parsley embellishes her French cuisine.
Dozens of Allies Join in Employee Free Choice Act Strategy Session
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| Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington, D.C., bureau, was among union allies strategizing on the Employee Free Choice Act at the AFL-CIO. |
Katrina Blomdahl with the AFL-CIO Voice@Work campaign describes an event here yesterday in which community and union leaders discussed strategies for moving the Employee Free Choice Act through the U.S. Senate.
More than 70 community leaders representing 50 organizations met at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., yesterday to strategize on building a national grassroots campaign for a filibuster-proof passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. The U.S. House passed the bill March 1.
The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field between workers and management, making it easier for workers to get ahead economically by uniting with their co-workers to bargain for better wages and benefits.
Stanford, UMass Latest Students to Demand Living Wages
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A college degree can help graduates earn big salaries, yet the people who make the school run every day are taking home pennies. This week, students at Stanford University are in the midst of a hunger strike to urge the university pay living wages to cafeteria and other contract workers on campus. And after 14 weeks of fruitless bargaining, University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate employees, members of Graduate Employee Organization/UAW (GEO/UAW) Local 2322, are taking their concerns over wages directly to the chancellor.
At Stanford, 12 people, including members of the Stanford Labor Action Coalition (SLAC), alumni and workers, have been on a hunger strike since April 12. Even though the university has a living wage policy, school officials have used loopholes to pay less to hundreds of workers. SLAC is demanding that the university pay all workers—contract workers and those who work directly for the school—a living wage. Currently, students on about 15 campuses are engaged in living wage campaigns, according to ACORN’s Living Wage Resource Center.
Take Action en Español for Justice in FLOC Organizer’s Murder
Thousands of workers around the world are outraged by the brutal murder of Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz in Monterrey, Mexico, April 9 and are taking action to demand that the Mexican authorities bring his killers to justice.
Now the action materials are available for workers who speak Spanish on the AFL-CIO’s Spanish site. The site contains an action alert, a protest letter and a press release. To download and read an action alert in Spanish, click here. For a sample letter in Spanish to the governor of Nuevo León (the province where Monterrey is located) and its attorney general’s office, click here. For a copy of a press release in Spanish on the incident, click here.
Bush Anti-Terror Rules for Chemical Plants Leave Big Security Holes
The Bush administration’s new anti-terrorism rules covering chemical plants fail to offer comprehensive protection for workers and their communities against terrorist attacks that could lead to explosions or theft of toxic and deadly chemicals, according to an analysis issued yesterday by the United Steelworkers (USW). Says USW President Leo Gerard.
The Homeland Security rules for the nation’s high risk chemical plants fall far short of what is needed to truly make facilities safe from terrorist attacks. It’s another example of the Bush administration’s attempt to appear as if it is taking care of industrial safety problems. Security actions alone are insufficient to protect workers and communities.
Virtual Picket Can Help Solve Real Pension Attack
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There are days—usually cold, rainy and snowy—when even the most dedicated union activists would rather not draw picket duty. That’s no excuse now.
You can grab a picket sign and throw your support to the mostly female members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 35—who are fighting for their pensions—and march in front of the Miller Brewing Co. headquarters in Milwaukee, without leaving the comfort of your cozy computer room.
Northwest Execs Gain from Employees’ Pain
Flight attendants and pilots at Northwest Airlines (NWA) and machinists are livid over a decision by the carrier’s top executives to reward themselves with nearly $400 million in bonuses after the company emerges from bankruptcy. While Northwest CEOs get bonuses, the employees whose wage and benefit concessions and hard work brought the company back from the brink of collapse are being left out in the cold.
Today, at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, members of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), the Air Line Pilots (ALPA) and the Machinists (IAM) will hold an informational picket and rally to highlight the need for fair and equitable treatment of Northwest employees.
