Channel: Collective Bargaining
Arizona Tea Party Legislature Proposes Budget So Bad Arizona Even Jan Brewer Objects
Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at Democratic Diva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.
Imagine a plant in your state announcing it was closing and taking 5,000 jobs with it. That is the shock to the economy that Arizona can expect with budget bills introduced yesterday by the Republican tea party majority legislature. The bills were rushed through committee hearings with less than 24 hours notice to the public. The 5,000 state jobs cut or lost through attrition is just the start of it. Here are some other lowlights of the GOP proposed budget:
- 28 million in cuts to K-12 education.
- Refusal to fund Gov. Jan Brewer’s request for assistance to third graders not reading at grade level.
- Elimination of a program to study effectiveness of private vs. public prisons. (Arizona has had many problems with private prisons, including an escape in 2010 in which the escapees murdered two people in New Mexico.)
- Refusal to reinstate drastic reimbursement cuts to caregivers of severely disabled residents.
(If you live in Arizona, call your elected leaders and let them know you oppose these attacks on working families. Click here to find out how to contact your state senator and representatives.)
Brewer is also a Republican and not known for supporting generous government programs. But this budget plan is so harsh that Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson called it “short-sighted and reckless.” Read the rest of this entry »
New Hampshire Labor Committee Passes Slew of Union-Busting Bills
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this.
At a time when the tea party-driven Republican agenda in New Hampshire’s state capitol is more unpopular than ever with voters on both sides of the aisle, Republican House Labor Committee Chairman Gary Daniels and his allies have ramped up their attacks on working people. In a work session yesterday, the House Labor Committee took another step towards dismantling New Hampshire’s collective bargaining rights law by voting no fewer than five anti-worker bills ‘ought to pass.’
The bills voted out of committee included:
- A new right-to-work for less bill similar to last year’s bill.
- A second right-to-work bill that is a backup in case HB 1677 fails.
- A bill that once repealed collective bargaining rights for teachers, firefighters and other public workers; was stripped and amended in committee to allow employers to lead decertifications of public unions.
- A bill that strips the requirement for a union to be the exclusive representative of a bargaining unit out of the collective bargaining law.
- A bill that gives the Legislature veto power over state and municipal employee contracts.
- A bill that prohibits automatic payroll deduction of union dues, but was stripped and amended to split increases in health insurance 50-50 between employers and employees if a contract expires. Read the rest of this entry »
Workers at SoCal Carwashes Win First Contracts
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Workers at two more Southern California carwashes won their first contracts with carwash owners after they voted last year to join the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675.
The workers at Vermont Carwash and Nava’s Carwash in South Los Angeles came together in the CLEAN Carwash Campaign to fight for their rights. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign is a coalition supported by the USW, the AFL-CIO and more than 100 community, faith and labor organizations in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.cleancarwashla.org.
Today, the carwasheros celebrated their victory at a ceremony with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Says Trumka:
The headline should read: “Carwash workers make history in LA.” The labor movement and Los Angeles community stand shoulder to shoulder with them and their brother and sister carwash workers across LA who are working to follow in their path. Read the rest of this entry »
From Fargo to Findlay, Locked-Out Workers Journey for Justice
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Locked-out workers from American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire will begin a 1,000 mile Journey for Justice tomorrow from Fargo, N.D., to Findlay, Ohio. The journey will highlight the corporate greed that marks their lockouts, and the growing drive by corporate CEOs to drive down wages and benefits to pad their own pockets.
More than 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers–members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM)–have been locked out of seven facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa since last August. More than 1,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members were locked out of their jobs at Cooper Tire’s Findlay, Ohio plant in November.
The justice trek kicks off with a rally in Fargo and then workers and their allies will deliver tens of thousands of signatures on a petition to American Crystal CEO David Berg at company headquarters in Moorhead, Minn. The six-day journey will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, before concluding in Findlay, with a “hands around the plant” action. There will be rallies, fundraisers for the locked out workers and their families and other actions along the way. Read the rest of this entry »
34th Great Labor Arts Exchange Set for June
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Mark your calendars for the 34th Annual Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative Organizing. This year’s event—June 22-25—is happening at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Md.
Sponsored by Labor Heritage Foundation, the Great Labor Arts Exchange celebrates the rich cultural heritage of working people and serves as a forum that brings together talented labor artists, activists, cultural workers, educators and students.
They share experiences and offer advice on how to combine union mobilization and outreach with songs, skits, art, poetry, theater, posters, cartoons and film.
Participants will learn to use cultural tools to combat fear, get members involved, attract media attention, integrate contemporary or pop culture into organizing strategies and inject excitement into union and political campaign.
For more information, you may e-mail info@laborheritage.org, call 202-639-6204 or visit www.laborheritage.org.
New Study Shows Labor-Management Partnerships Improve Patient Care
Patient care improves and costs come down as a result of labor and management partnerships, according to a new Cornell University study.
The report, “How Labor-Management Partnerships Improve Patient Care, Control Costs, and Labor Relations,” profiles joint work involving front-line staff, unions and management at Kaiser Permanente’s San Rafael and San Diego medical centers in California, Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont and the Contact Center at Montefiore Medical Center’s Care Management Corp. (CMO) in New York.
At the four facilities studied, joint labor-management activities have resulted in:
- Improved turnaround time for test results.
- Increased awareness about workplace safety.
- Improved patient satisfaction scores.
- Quicker access to home care services.
- Less staff turnover.
Peter Lazes, director of Cornell’s Healthcare Transformation Project, says: Read the rest of this entry »
Jazz Musicians Faced Historic Abuse
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Jazz musicians have been—and continue to be—among the most abused of professional performers, writes Todd Bryant Weeks in a Black History Month feature for the latest edition of Allegro, the magazine of American Federatoin of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) Local 802 in New York.
From the days of traveling vaudeville and tent shows through to the civil rights movement and beyond, jazz musicians—especially black musicians—have been subjected to second-class citizenship, particularly in the Deep South.
Some of the greatest figures of the past century were among the most exploited, or were effectively discarded when they grew old and could not earn a living.
Managers, promoters, agents, producers and club owners regularly stole from performers by claiming writing, arranging and other recording credits, shorting players on royalties and other payments, Weeks writes. In 1938, the legendary Joe “King” Oliver,
perhaps the most influential American jazz musician before Louis Armstrong, a renowned performer with an international reputation, was discovered in Atlanta, destitute and working as a street vendor.
But even today, jazz musicians continue to face hardships. In New York City, jazz club owners, who are beneficiaries of a tax relief bill championed by Local 802 that was expected to be used to help fund musicians’ pensions and other benefits, have refused to put the money toward benefits.
Read Weeks’ entire article here and find out more at Justice for Jazz Artists here.
Join TWU’s ‘I Support American Jobs’ Campaign
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Earlier this month, American Airlines announced plans to eliminate the jobs of 13,000 workers and dump pension plans for nearly 90,000 workers as part of its bankruptcy plan. Roughly 9,000 Transport Workers (TWU) members are employed at American.
You can show your support for American Airlines employees by signing TWU’s “I Support American Jobs” pledge to support the workers by telling public officials, the news media and community leaders that employees at American Airlines and regional carrier American Eagle and all workers dependent on these airlines must be treated fairly.
In this latest “I Support American Jobs” video, William Keys, a retired fleet service clerk and Army veteran, says:
When I started for American they promised they would be there when I retired to help me out, now I’m not sure they’re going to be there. How do I get a job, I haven’t got the shoulders and the knees left for hard work like digging ditches. Do I have to start again? Click here to add tour name to the nearly 15,000 people who have signed the “I Support American Jobs” pledge.
Click here to add tour name to the nearly 15,000 people who have signed the “I Support American Jobs” pledge.
Remembering. As We Move Wisconsin Forward
This is a cross-post from the Defend Wisconsin blog, by Jill Hopke, a doctoral student at UW-Madison and a member of the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA).
A year ago the system of social trust in Wisconsin began to come unraveled. Feb. 11 marks the one-year anniversary of Gov. Walker’s announcement of the Budget Repair Bill, now Wisconsin Act 10, effectively ending 50 years of public sector collective bargaining rights.
I believed a year ago that we would “kill the bill.” I believed if we made our voices heard, we could appeal reason on the part of lawmakers. If we spoke about the hardships this bill would cause around the state for families, for students, for ordinary Wisconsinites that go to work everyday with faith in the system, our government would listen to us.
But more than that, I had faith in the democratic process. I had faith in a fair democratic system in which we could appeal to a deeper sense of justice. This is what had broken down in our state over the course of the past year. This is what John Rawls, in outlining the idea of “justice as fairness,” writes is the “idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation,” meaning on a most basic level that in a pluralist political system individuals may not agree with the outcome of any given decision, but they can trust the process by which decisions are made is fair, that democratic institutions uphold what we can agree on as “democracy.” That means playing by the rules, not bending them to suit a national right-wing political agenda. That means having a truly independent judiciary system to check the power of the legislative and executive branches of government. It means not making it harder for those who are more likely to disagree with you to vote.
February Marks 44th Anniversary of Historic Memphis Sanitation Strike
February is Black History Month and one of the noteworthy events in African American history is the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike that began Feb. 11, 1968. It was on that day that, after years of discrimination and injustice, the African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., began their strike for economic justice and dignity. They sought to join AFSCME Local 1733.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. championed the workers’ cause. Two months later, King was gunned down in Memphis as he prepared to lead a massive demonstration with the striking workers.
Click here to see the AFSCME video “I’m a Man” that looks at the strike and King’s murder and includes interviews with the striking workers and here for an excerpt featuring comments from several of the workers honored at a White House ceremony last year.
