Archive for April, 2008
Airline Workers Demand Place at Table in Northwest-Delta Merger
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For the past several years, flight attendants, pilots and other airline workers have sacrificed pay, benefits and working conditions through a long series of bankruptcies, restructurings, mergers, layoffs and threatened liquidations. And on Thursday, airline unions told Congress workers must have a voice at the table when the biggest merger in the industry is being discussed.
The proposed merger between Delta and Northwest Airlines would create the nation’s largest carrier. But without key protections, the workers at both companies could suffer, and they urged Congress to send a strong message to the carriers that the merger cannot be an excuse to bust unions or abrogate contracts.
Missouri Union Members Get Ready for 2008 Elections
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Randy Kiser, director of the Missouri AFL-CIO, reports on Labor 2008 training in St. Louis.
More than 50 local union coordinators from across Missouri and nearly a dozen more from across the country are participating in a two-day political training for Labor 2008, the AFL-CIO union movement’s political program.
The local union coordinator training includes workshops on member-to-member organizing, volunteer recruitment and media training. With the presidential race, a governor’s race, contested congressional races and dozens of state and local races, working families in Missouri are facing high stakes in 2008.
AFSCME Wins Food Service Outsourcing Fight at University of California–Davis
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Kevin Christensen, lead researcher in the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, writes about a great victory for food service workers and custodians with AFSCME at the University of California-Davis.
AFSCME Local 3299 has won a four-year fight to end outsourcing of food service work in the 10-campus University of California (UC) system, after UC-Davis announced last week that nearly 200 workers currently employed by Sodexho will be eligible to apply for university employment, and so become AFSCME members.
Newsrooms Shrinking as Publishers Race to Bottom Line
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Are you tired of reading about which celebrity is having a baby or who was eliminated from “Dancing With the Stars” in your daily newspaper—while critical issues like plunging wages and the rising cost of feeding a family is pushed to back pages? One big reason is there are fewer journalists around to write the news. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reported last month that newsroom staffs have been cut 7 percent overall since 2000, with some slashed as much as 40 percent.
The union movement has argued for years that increased consolidation of media ownership is leading to a lack of diversity and quality in the gathering and reporting of news. As more newspapers—facing stiff competition from TV and online news services—cut back on newsroom staff and coverage, the news quality likely will continue to deteriorate as hard news loses out in favor of covering celebrities.
African Trade Unions Stop ‘Shipment of Death’
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A Chinese cargo ship packed with rocket grenades, mortar rounds and 3 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition destined for strife-torn Zimbabwe is now reported to be returning its cargo to China. South African trade unionists refused to unload the ship Friday and other African unions have made similar vows in other ports.
Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe have a long record of worker and human rights violations. On March 29, Zimbabwe held a presidential election where the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is reported to have received more votes.
More than three weeks after the balloting, the results have yet to be released and independent observers and human and worker rights leaders say that’s because Mugabe’s ruling party—in power for 28 years—lost. There has been a new wave of violence and arrests against unions and other regime opponents in the past several weeks following the elections. The arms on the Chinese ship would have arrived just as a crackdown against those demanding democracy in Zimbabwe is occurring.
Resurrection Health Care Faces Prosecution over Back Pay
After four years of stalling, delays and appeals, Resurrection Health Care system may finally have to pay back wages to 64 employees. This week, the Illinois Department of Labor forwarded the employees’ wage complaint to the state’s attorney general for prosecution. The Labor Department previously ruled that Resurrection owes $381,000 in back wages to the employees, who work in the Home Health Services division.
The workers filed complaints with the state Labor Department in 2003 charging the chain’s “fee-for-visit” system consistently failed to pay them for hours worked beyond their normal schedule. Resurrection Health Care is the second-largest health care system in the Chicago metropolitan area and the largest Catholic health care system in Illinois.
IFPTE Endorses Obama
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The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) union has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.
The IFPTE Executive Council voted unanimously yesterday to endorse Obama. The union represents more than 75,000 engineers, technicians and scientists across the public and private sector.
IFPTE President Gregory Junemann says the IFPTE Executive Council believes in Obama’s ability to be a leader on health care, retirement security, protecting workers from privatization and outsourcing, ensuring worker-friendly trade and passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
While IFPTE applauds both Democratic candidates, our union’s internal polling results, coupled with Senator Obama’s unblemished record of support for the critical issues facing IFPTE, prompted our action to endorse Senator Obama. IFPTE’s Executive Council agreed that Senator Obama is the candidate best suited to address the major concerns of America’s working men and women.
Pay Discrimination OK by McCain
So it seems Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thinks it’s just fine if women workers can almost never get redress for pay inequities they suffer on the job.
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to vote on a bill that would have enabled women who are paid less than their co-workers doing the same job to challenge the inequity. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama took time from their campaigns to vote for the Fair Pay Restoration Act.
McCain didn’t show up. But he did make it a point to say that had he bothered to vote (McCain has cast the fewest votes in the Senate of any senator not seriously ill), he would have opposed it.
New Home Sales Tank Big Time and McCain Loves NAFTA
Here are a few news items worth noting.
- New home sales in March plunged to the lowest level in 17 years, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures out this morning, far more than forecast. The median sales price slumped 13.3 percent from the same time last year, the most in almost four decades. This bad news follows a report showing home values dropped 2.4 percent in February from a year earlier, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Meanwhile, sales of previously owned homes, which account for about 85 percent of the market, fell 2 percent in March, according to the National Association of Realtors—the seventh decline in eight months. The AFL-CIO has been calling for an immediate moratorium on home foreclosures as a first step to address this rolling crisis.
- Yet as recently as this week, George W. Bush repeated that the nation is not in a recession: “We’re in a slowdown.” Just don’t tell that to working families. Or to an economist. As the BBC reports:
…it’s still hard to find an economist who doesn’t believe the U.S. is either in recession or so close it’s not worth arguing about….
Mine Workers Confront McCain in Kentucky
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Inez, Ky., a rural town tucked deep in Appalachia, is home to a few hundred people struggling with the challenges of a brutal economy. Between fundraisers, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) paid a visit there yesterday and was met by workers seeking answers to the nation’s economic crisis that has hit them hard.
Once again, McCain talked about the problems facing America, but he failed to offer answers to the real questions confronting the country. Working families need help now, and it was clear yesterday as it’s been clear throughout recent weeks, McCain isn’t offering a plan.
More than 40 members of the Mine Workers (UMWA) traveled from around eastern Kentucky to let McCain know he can’t hide from workers.
William Chapman, a miner from Martin County, took McCain to task for his lack of concern for working families and his lack of concrete proposals to tackle the economic crisis.
