Archive for January, 2008
Stars at SAG Awards Pay Tribute to Striking Writers
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| Julie Christie won SAG’s Actor® Award for her performance in the movie “Away From Her.” |
Amid all the glitz at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards, actors took time to remember their brothers and sisters in the Writers Guild strike. Julie Christie, who received the award for best performance by a female actor in a leading role, paid tribute to the union in her acceptance speech:
It’s lovely to receive an award from your own union. Especially at a time when they’re being so forcefully reminded how important unions are.
In an interview later, she said :
All unions are important. Think of the fight to form unions. Without them, we wouldn’t have anyone to represent our injustices.
The actors have been some of the strongest supporters of the writers’ strike, marching on the picket line and refusing to cross the line to appear on talk shows that have not signed deals with the writers. The striking writers, citing the tremendous support and solidarity from SAG members, agreed not to picket the SAG Awards. Today, many of the SAG Award winners and nominees will join a picket at Fox Studios in Hollywood to demand a fair contract for the writers.
Exiled Colombian Union Supporter Says ‘Just Vote No’ on Free Trade Deal
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Thanks to the United Steelworkers (USW) for alerting us to this blog by Gerardo Cajamarca, an exiled Colombian community leader and union supporter now living in Minnesota. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in Colombia with a congressional delegation, called for passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Reportedly, one stop on the legislators’ tour was a polo club—where better to meet the ordinary Colombian? As Cajamarca demonstrates in this crosspost from the Huffington Post, the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will not help the workers in his native country.
When I heard that some Bush Administration dignitaries were planning to offer Congressmen junkets to Bogotá to win their votes for the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement, I began to daydream about the tours of my home country that I’d like to give lawmakers to explain why the pact is so wrong for both nations.
Even ‘The Onion’ Couldn’t Predict How Bad the Bush Years Would Be
Tonight is President Bush’s last State of the Union address. (Question: Does anyone know why The Washington Post repeatedly has written it’s “probably” his final State of the Union address? Do the editors know about a coup the rest of us don’t?)
Bush says he’s not making this State of the Union address a “legacy” speech. No wonder. With a legacy like his, who would?
46,000 Freight Rail Workers Win Wage Increases and More Bargaining News
Some 46,000 freight rail workers have a new contract that improves wages, topping Bargaining Digest highlights the week of Jan. 25. The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
Settlements
UTU, National Carriers Conference Committee: On Jan. 23, the United Transportation Union (UTU) and National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), the national bargaining agent for more than 30 of the major U.S. freight railroads, reached a tentative agreement providing some 46,000 freight rail workers with general wage increases totaling 17 percent over five years. UTU had been negotiating with the NCCC for about three years, since the current contract became amendable in November 2004. Under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), rail contracts become amendable but do not expire. The tentative agreement applies to UTU conductors, brakemen, engineers, firemen, hostlers, switchmen and yardmasters employed by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and some smaller railroads.
America’s Health Care System Killing Us
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More than 13,000 people around the country have participated in the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey, and more than 3,900 have submitted their own personal stories since the survey was launched a little more than a week ago.
The survey offers a unique opportunity for working families to make our voices heard on the cost of health insurance, quality of health care, access to prescription drugs and the gamut of health care problems we all face—and impress upon candidates for the White House, Congress and all public offices just how important health care is as a voting issue in 2008.
The survey results will be given to the presidential, congressional, state and local candidates to ensure that candidates at every level will understand what working families are experiencing. (Check out a comparison of 2008 presidential candidates’ health care proposals here.)
Along with specific questions on affordability and quality, experiences with insurance companies, hospitals and doctors and suggested remedies, the survey gives you the chance to tell your own story. (Click here to fill out the survey and tell your health care story. You can vote here on the stories you think make the most impact.)
Ludlow Massacre Site Should Be a National Historic Landmark
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One of the bloodiest chapters in American labor history is the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, where 20 innocent men, women and children were murdered by the state militia acting on behalf of coal companies. Colorado miners had been trying for years to organize with the Mine Workers (UMWA).
That southern Colorado site may soon become a National Historic Landmark. Last week, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said he plans to introduce legislation to give the tent-city massacre site Landmark status. As Salazar writes in a letter to the National Park Service:
The site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre is central to our nation’s understanding and memory of the labor struggles of the early 20th century, to the region’s identity and to the descendents of all those involved in the 1913–1914 strike and other labor conflicts of the era. It is fully deserving of National Landmark status.
In 1917, the UMWA erected a monument at the site “in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.” But there has been no state or national commemoration of the site.
In 1913, southern Colorado miners and their families walked out of the mines and mining camps striking for adequate wages, enforcement of state mining laws and union recognition. For more than a year, they lived in tent colonies near the mines.
King’s Legacy: Living Wage and Freedom to Join a Union
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Forty years after his death, we should remember Martin Luther King Jr. not only for his “I Have a Dream” speech and his leadership of the civil rights revolution, but for his quest for economic equality.
In a Point of View column on the AFL-CIO website, historian Michael Honey says what’s missing from the discussions of King’s life is the fact that he always stressed economic equality and workers’ rights up until his last day on earth. Click here to read “Forty Years Since King: Labor Rights Are Human Rights.”
What the nation mostly remembers about Memphis in 1968 is King’s death there, but few seem to know that he died in the midst of a struggle for the right to belong to a union, which the mayor and the City Council resisted at all costs. Unionization, they feared, would open up the floodgates of demands by African Americans, who constituted nearly 40 percent of the local population of 500,000 in the mid-1960s.
Stars Will Shine at Screen Actors Guild Awards
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This Sunday, spend some quality time with Nikki Blonsky, Josh Bolin, Steve Carell, Russell Crowe, Ruby Dee, Kate Hudson, Tommy Lee Jones, John Travolta and Vanessa Williams. These union members will honor winners at the nation’s only all-union awards show—the 14th Annual SAG Awards
SAG is America’s largest union representing working actors, with 120,000 members in film, television, commercials, video games, music videos and other new media. The SAG Awards is the only nationally televised awards show of any kind that honors the work of union members.
The show will air this Sunday, Jan.27, on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. EST and PST, and at 7 p.m. elsewhere.
SAG members also know what solidarity is all about. The actors have been some of the strongest supporters of the Writers Guild strike, marching on the picket line and refusing to cross the line to appear on talk shows that have not signed deals with the writers. The striking writers, citing the tremendous support and solidarity from SAG members, agreed not to picket the SAG Awards.
Bush Official Cashes in on Anti-Labor Department
More than six years working for the Bush administration’s Department of Labor seems to be great training for a cushy, and likely well-paid, top post in one of the largest and loudest anti-union groups around: the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).
It certainly worked out that way for Emily DeRocco, former assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Employment and Training Administration. She’s now president of NAM’s National Center for the American Workforce and a senior vice president of the group.
DeRocco’s experience highlights the Alice-in-Wonderland backward Bush world, where unlike most countries, a department of labor exists not to ensure that workers’ rights are enforced, that they are paid fairly or that workplaces are made safe.
Report: Construction Defects Common in Pulte and Del Webb Homes
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A report out today details construction defects in Pulte and Del Webb homes—and traces them to the poor working conditions of the major homebuilders’ low-wage workforce. Katrina Blomdahl, AFL-CIO Voice@Work communications specialist, has more here.
Homeowners in newly built Pulte homes are outraged about nearly every aspect of their homes, from faulty electrical wiring, to peeling paint, to bad air conditioners, according to a new study released at a press conference today at the Arizona State Capitol. John Smirk, business manager of Painters and Allied Trades of District (IUPAT) Council 15, said at the Capitol today:
We’re not surprised by the results of the survey. Workers on these jobs tell us they are dealing with unpaid wages and pressure to work through break times as well as a lack of drinking water and proper safety equipment.
