Search Results for 'resurrection'
Legislation & Politics |
Oct 2 |
Vigil Participants to Resurrection: ‘Respect Workers’ Rights’
 |
|
| Laura Buenrostro, a registered nurse, is one of many workers seeking to form a union at Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center. |
Robert Malgieri of AFSCME Council 31 reports on Resurrection Health Care workers’ ongoing fight to form a union.
For 36 hours non-stop, Resurrection Health Care workers and their supporters kept a spirited vigil outside the giant health care system’s headquarters to press Resurrection to end its aggressive anti-union campaign and follow new guidelines for fair union organizing in Catholic hospitals.
Vigil participants came in waves beginning at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, Sept. 25, and continuing until 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, all the while holding candles, singing songs, joining in prayers led by area clergy and marching in processions.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Jul 17 |
AFSCME Preparing Next Wave of Union Leaders
 |
||||
|
||||
AFSCME is hard at work preparing the next generation of union leaders. Last month, more than 500 AFSCME members, age 35 and under, met in Chicago for the union’s first national Next Wave Conference—three days of activism, strategizing and learning about the union movement.
During an electronic town meeting, the young AFSCME members talked about their goals and expectations as union activists and ideas on how to promote participation in their local unions.
At workshops, attendees learned how to address the media, conduct local union meetings, develop leadership skills and understand the country’s financial crisis. There even were some sessions for “older and wiser” activists and leaders who are playing a role in mentoring new and young activists.
Legislation & Politics |
Apr 3 |
Moyers Highlights Jobs with Justice Organizer, Employee Free Choice
 |
|
On this past week’s “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS, Moyers took a look at the battle for worker freedom during our current economic crisis. It’s a great segment that highlights James Thindwa, head of the Chicago chapter of Jobs with Justice (JwJ), and the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
The segment follows Thindwa, a Zimbabwe-born community organizer who has worked for years to help workers in his community—from the nurses of Resurrection Health Care to the sit-in strikers at Republic Windows. He helps community members get involved in rallies, contact their elected leaders and participate in campaigns to improve their lives and those of their neighbors. As Moyers says, Thindwa’s tireless efforts are:
All in a day’s work for a man who spends his days organizing people to tackle issues they face in the workplace, from low wages and meager benefits, to corporate behavior.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Apr 24 |
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.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Mar 10 |
Resurrection Health Care ‘Tried to Silence Me’
 |
|
For the past five years, management at the Resurrection Health Care System has conducted a vicious anti-union campaign to stop its employees from freely joining a union. That anti-union campaign has spawned 15 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) unfair labor practice complaints.
The latest complaint, which was scheduled to be heard March 12, was settled late last week. The complaint charged Resurrection with trying to silence a union supporter at its West Suburban Medical Center. The health care chain has settled all the complaints without admitting any guilt.
Legislation & Politics, Organizing & Bargaining |
Dec 11 |
Global Summit: Employer Resistance Drives Down Union Membership in U.S., Around World
The United States has the lowest level of union membership and collective bargaining of any industrial nation—and now the oppressive culture that deters workers from freely forming unions here is being exported around the world.
A study released today by John Logan, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, points out that anti-worker governments are the main cause of the decline in union membership in several countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, but that in the United States there is the added factor of “aggressive and often-illegal employer opposition.”
The intensity of employer opposition and government hostility to collective bargaining in the United States is unique among developed nations.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Dec 10 |
On International Human Rights Day, Workers Demand Their Rights Be Restored
 |
||||
|
||||
 |
||||
|
While some 220 union leaders from 63 countries kick off the historic global union organizing summit today, workers from Wall Street to Main Street are commemorating International Human Rights Day through marches, rallies and informational pickets.
Dec. 10 is the anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Workers’ rights are an integral part of the declaration, which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association” and “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
The Dec. 10 actions come as the number of U.S. workers in unions has reached the lowest level among developed nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the same time, collective bargaining coverage has increased significantly in several new and emerging democracies over the past few decades.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Dec 6 |
AFL-CIO Hosting Historic Global Summit on Organizing
 |
||||
|
||||
Anti-worker governments here and around the world, together with U.S.-based multinationals, are assaulting workers’ freedom to form unions and have a voice at work. Starting Monday, union leaders from around the world are coming together here to identify the problems and discuss what we can do, together, to fight back.
The AFL-CIO will host a historic conference Dec. 10–11 involving more than 200 trade union leaders from the United States and 63 countries at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The delegates will lay the groundwork for and discuss global strategies to help workers join unions. The summit opens on International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), a time when
U.S. unions traditionally mobilize to restore the freedom to join unions.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Oct 5 |
Resurrection Health Care Cited as Major Violator of Workers’ Rights
We reported earlier on the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC’s) annual survey of trade union rights violations, which listed the most dangerous countries for union members. The report also pointed out there is growing government hostility to fundamental workers’ rights in some industrialized countries, including the United States.
In the United States, the report says many employers launch fierce union-busting campaigns to defeat workers’ desire to form a union. It mentions that more than 30 million workers are still denied basic collective bargaining rights by law, including 40 percent of all federal public-sector workers.
Organizing & Bargaining |
Sep 28 |
AFL-CIO’s Acuff Takes on Union-Busters in Debate
 |
||||
|
||||
Katrina Blomdahl, the AFL-CIO Voice@Work communications specialist, describes a debate that highlighted the impoverishment of the anti-union cause.
Yesterday in Chicago, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff hit one out of the park for working people in a debate over the freedom to form unions and the Employee Free Choice Act when he went toe to toe with a member of the nation’s multibillion dollar union-busting industry.
Although the debate was not structured to result in an official “winner,” one audience member described Acuff’s opponent, Michael Flaherty—partner of the infamous union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis—as “out of his league.” As Acuff said after the debate:
The truth is that none of the disingenuous legal mumbo-jumbo of union-busting law firms makes any sense to people who are trying to form a union to bargain for a better life.
