Archive for November, 2009
More than 1,000 Workers Win Voice with AFL-CIO Unions
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Illinois state employees and nurses, government-contracted tech workers, airport workers and helicopter pilots all have won a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions recently.
In Illinois, more than 500 Illinois state public service administrators won their fight for representation with AFSCME Council 31 after waiting more than a year and a half for their ballots to be counted. As Henry Bayer, Council 31 executive director, says: “In tough times, a strong union is essential.”
With AFSCME, all public service workers have the job security and decent wages and benefits only a strong union can provide.
The workers perform audits and other functions for many state agencies, primarily the Department of Revenue and the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Trumka, Union Leaders Headed to Jobs Summit Dec. 3
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President Barack Obama this week is convening a jobs summit to address the urgent need to create jobs for the more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed workers looking for work in an economy in which there are more than six workers for every one job.
An economy in which one in three Americans have either lost his or her job or live in a household with someone who has.
The summit, set for Thursday, Dec. 3, will include more than 100 experts and leaders from business, labor, government and community organizations, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.
Ten Years Ago Today: Seattle Protests Put Globalization on Center Stage
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Don McIntosh, associate editor of the Northwest Labor Press, writes about the 10th anniversary of the massive march against the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) meeting in Seattle and the continuing struggle to rebalance a global economy that now benefits only the wealthy. The article is excerpted from the Northwest Labor Press. To read the entire article, click here.
Ten years ago on Nov. 30, 50,000 people protested a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The protests succeeded in delaying the summit’s opening day and contributed to the collapse of plans for a new round of trade negotiations. It was one of those rare moments in history when ordinary people rise up and can no longer be ignored.
Before the Seattle protests, few people had ever heard of the WTO, a secretive organization that promotes and enforces multinational trade agreements. But the public was increasingly aware that growth in worldwide trade was not benefiting workers or the environment.
AFT, Save the Children Valentine Card Contest to Unite a Generation
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AFT and the children’s advocacy group Save the Children have partnered in a Valentine’s Day 2010 Card Contest as part of Save the Children’s campaign to end child poverty in the nation. You can help pick the winning cards.
The five winning designs—one each from kindergarten through grade 2; grades 3-5; 6-8; 9-10; and 11-12—will be printed on cards and used to create a Valentine’s Day card set. Those who donate to benefit Save the Children’s programs will receive the gift card set free. Each winning artist will receive a $500 U.S. savings bond.
Check Out UNITEHERE’s Hotel Guide Before You Travel
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If you have plans to travel this holiday season, check out the UNITEHERE! Union Hotel Guide before you book a room. The user-friendly online directory helps you identify union-staffed hotels across the country.
Just plug in city and state, and the site will display a list of hotels in the area that employ UNITEHERE! members and are doing right by their workers. You also can add the name of a hotel chain as part of the search. Click here for the Union Hotel Guide.
A link on the site also enables you to quickly see which hotels are on the union’s boycott list and where workers are on strike.
Start Your Holiday Shopping Today at The Union Shop Online™
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Support America’s workers and fill your holiday gift list all at the same time with one-stop shopping at the AFL-CIO’s The Union Shop Online.TM Start by checking out the great selection of holiday cards. For gift ideas, here are staff picks from the AFL-CIO online team.
Seth Michaels: There are a few great songwriters and musicians who have written about America’s workers and the everyday struggles they’ve gone through, but few have the long career, storytelling talent and appeal of Bruce Springsteen. Pick up “The Essential Bruce Springsteen” at The Union Shop OnlineTM for only $24.98, and you’ll find inspiration, heartbreak, joy and songs that don’t get old.
And if you’re up for supporting grassroots activism for social justice, why not do it in style? Get a Working America T-shirt!
ALPA, ILWU Pitch in with Aid for Pacific Disaster Victims
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Members of the Air Line Pilots (ALPA) and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) didn’t wait until Thanksgiving or some other holiday to show their generosity. Like union members across the nation who offer support and aid to their communities all year round, pilots at Hawaiian Airlines—ALPA members—contributed $15,000 to the Red Cross for recent tsunami and typhoon victims in American Samoa, Indonesia and the Philippines. And last month in Los Angeles, ILWU members donated their time and labor to load 15 containers of supplies for the tsunami victims. Click here to read more.
Overall, the Red Cross-sponsored Kokua for the Pacific fundraiser in Honolulu raised $155,000. (Kokua is a Hawaiian word that means offering generous help.) Says Capt. Eric Sampson, chairman of ALPA’s Hawaiian pilot group:
Our pilots and many of our fellow employees have friends and family who live and work in these areas. We feel a definite connection with them. ALPA members were among the first Hawaiian Airlines employees to come forward and donate their time as volunteers when the tsunami hit Samoa and Typhoon Ketsana devastated Manila. Now we want to extend our support for those affected families by making a financial contribution.
The Cost of ‘No’ and Other Health Care Perspectives
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Here’s the latest news from the fight for real health care reform:
• In the Baltimore Sun, Tom Schaller looks at how the nation’s broken health care system is undermining our economy. The cost of doing nothing to reform health care would be trillions of dollars, he says.
• In a great new piece at the Huffington Post, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) explains why he’s saying “Yes” to health care reform. We’re at a defining historical moment, Bennet says, and we can’t afford to continue the status quo.
• Think Progress looks at how insurance company bureaucrats are standing between patients and their doctors.
• The National Farmers Union has come out in support of health care reform, saying rural families need lower costs, more choices and better access to care. Senators from heavily rural states like Arkansas, Maine and Nebraska should pay attention.
Workers Rally to Shut Down School of Americas
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Hundreds of union members joined religious and human rights activists in a vigil and rally outside the gates of the School of the Americas (SOA) last weekend to demand that it be closed.
Graduates of the school, operated by the U.S. Department of Defense at Fort Benning, Ga., have been linked to human rights violations and suppression of popular movements in the Americas, according to the activist group SOA Watch.
Many targets of assassination and torture in Latin America are trade unionists. More union members are killed each year in Latin America than in the rest of the world combined, primarily due to extreme anti-worker violence in Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation.
Union members, young activists and religious groups joined in a labor caucus Nov. 22 and heard Colombian trade union members describe the dangerous conditions they live under daily. When 14 Colombian unionists were in the United States receiving training through the AFL-CIO over the past two months, four of their union colleagues back home were killed.
In Kenya, Workers in Tea and Flower Industries Find Strength in Solidarity
In this cross-post from Huffington Post, Bernard Pollock, who is taking a leave of absence from the AFL-CIO to travel through Africa, and Danielle Nierenberg report on the struggles of workers on Kenya’s tea and flower plantations to organize a union for a better life.
Lake Naivasha is known as a beautiful place to see wildlife, including thousands of pink flamingos. But just off the main road to the Naivasha National Park are hectares and hectares of greenhouses as far as the eye can see. They’re not growing food inside the greenhouses. Although Kenya, like other parts of Africa, is experiencing food shortages, malnutrition and hunger because of prolonged drought. They are growing flowers. The flower factory we visited—the Sher Karuturi plant—produces up to 1 million roses a day, which are sold at auction in Dubai and Holland and eventually make their way to the European Union and the United States.
