L.A. Transportation PLA Offers Lifeline for Long-Term Jobless, Homeless
 |
This is a cross-post from Chaz Bolte of the We Party Blog.
The city of Los Angeles and its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, have been leading the national push for Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) to help create jobs for local workers. This trend continued last Thursday as the city and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that PLAs have been entered into to ensure that 40 percent of the work hours performed on most MTA projects moving forward will be done by people who live in economically disadvantaged communities.
[Project labor agreements are pre-hire agreements between labor and management that require all construction jobs be filled by local workers; include diversity requirements; establish wages and work rules covering overtime, working hours and dispute resolution; and ensure that safety guidelines on the job site are enforced.]
In addition, at least 10 percent of the work hours are to be reserved for people suffering from homelessness, chronic unemployment and other challenges. This kind of pro-active approach to tackling multiple societal ills through infrastructure development is commendable and needs to be mimicked nationwide.
From the LA Times blog L.A. Now:
“I am proud that the MTA board voted unanimously to become the first transit agency in the nation to use federal and local dollars to create jobs targeted at economically disadvantaged communities and individuals,” Villaraigosa said. “This landmark program is part of a strategy to deliver public transit projects while creating jobs that will lift people out of poverty and into the middle class.”
Judge Rolls Back Idaho’s Expanded RTW
Memo to Indiana lawmakers pushing “right to work” for less law in that state.
A federal judge has invalidated both the anti-union laws pushed through by Idaho GOP lawmakers last session, saying they violate federal law, according to the Spokesman-Review.
The measures…both expansions of Idaho’s Right-to-Work law, sought to ban “job targeting programs” that use union dues funds to subsidize members’ wages as a way to help contractors win bids, and to ban “project labor agreements” through which contractors sign agreements with unionized workers while bidding on public works projects.
One Union Worker from Omaha Says: We Need ‘Made in America’
 |
Bill Redler of Omaha, Neb., knows both the hard times of the American construction worker today and the right way forward.
The union plumber, whose first child is on the way, tries not to spend a penny on anything, unless it’s made in America.
“I’ve gotten militant about it, and it turns out that it’s not that hard. We’ve got to quit buying from China. We’ve got to start taxing companies if they want to send jobs to China and then sell products here. That’s the bottom line. We need to be building everything here….Made in America,” he said.
Judge Blocks Idaho Anti-Union Law
Earlier this year, the Idaho Attorney General warned Republican legislators that an anti-union bill they were pushing was likely illegal and would be overturned. But with the same anti-worker fanaticism that has infected state lawmakers around the nation, they passed the bill anyway.
The Attorney General was right.
Last week in Boise, a federal judge blocked the new state law that was due to go into effect that day, saying that it conflicted with federal labor law.
The Idaho and the Southwest Idaho Building and Construction Trades Councils, AFL-CIO, filed suit against the law that would have banned unions from subsidizing workers’ wages to help union contractors win bids, a practice known as job targeting and permitted by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Read the rest of this entry »
With Union Volunteers, Rebuilding Continues in New Orleans
 |
AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this report from New Orleans.
In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Southeast Louisiana Building and Construction Trades Council and the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO have regularly pitched in to repair and rebuild the community.
Last week, union members joined with the St. Bernard Project’s Rebuilding Program to work on a house in New Orleans East at the home of a retired disabled Electrical Workers (IBEW) member from the embattled Avondale Shipyard. The work included re-wiring the electrical of the entire home and plumbing. Volunteers included members from IBEW Local 130, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) Local 60 and United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-447.
After inspections are passed, volunteers will hang sheetrock and paint. Says Tiger Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans Central Labor Council:
We’re always ready to extend a hand to someone in need. This last project was especially important, though. Any time we can help one of brothers or sisters out, we’ll always be there…that’s what the union is all about.
From Honolulu to Savannah, We Are One Actions Continue
 |
|
 |
We Are One solidarity actions in support of workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and everywhere middle-class jobs are under attack continue throughout the nation this week. The events coincide with the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Tenn., 43 years ago this week when he was helping sanitation workers fight for justice, workers’ rights and a voice with AFSCME.
Speaking with more than 2,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “Just about every bill imaginable that undermines working people and our unions has been piled onto a legislative calendar somewhere.”
But, he said, instead of breaking the will and spirit of working people, those attacks created “a massive groundswell—a true working class and middle class uprising—demanding basic rights for workers, and a fair share of America’s economic bounty.”
This spark, this uprising hasn’t happened because one union called on members to turn out. It isn’t because the AFL-CIO made the call. It isn’t the Democratic Party, or the Obama organization. This is a bottom-up, grassroots movement with its own momentum, a true spontaneous outcry against our winner-take-all political culture.
Project Agreements: Best Value for Construction Dollars
At a time when construction owners are looking to get the best value for their dollar, they are increasingly turning to what they know works—project labor agreements (PLAs)—to ensure the work is on time and on budget.
The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) reports that this year alone nearly 100 major public and private construction projects worth more than $80 billion have used PLAs, including the first two U.S. nuclear power plant construction projects in more than 40 years.
PLAs are pre-hire agreements between labor and management. The agreements require all construction jobs to be filled by local workers, includes diversity requirements, establishes wages and work rules covering overtime, working hours and dispute resolution and ensures that safety guidelines on the job site are enforced.
Building and Construction Trade Dept. Reaches Out to Jobless Workers
The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) launched a “Back on the Job“ campaign in recent days to help unemployed workers make their voices heard. The Machinists (IAM) and Working America also have made reaching jobless workers a priority, with IAM’s U-Cubed site organizing workers online and Working America’s Unemployment Lifeline offering information and support.
With unemployment in the construction industry at 20 percent nationwide, the BCTD campaign is a national education and lobbying effort to capture the attention of elected officials of all political parties and spur them into action.
There Is No Tomorrow—America Needs Jobs Now
The nation’s unemployment crisis threatens the very core of the United States—entire communities, rural and metropolitan, are going under.
Writing at Huffington Post, Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, says the United States must immediately build on the successes of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and use scarce federal dollars in the most efficient way to boost demand and get jobless workers back to work. There is no time to waste, Ayers says.
Our nation can no longer afford to ignore the suffering of the unemployed who so desperately want to get back to productive work. Nor can we afford to indulge our leaders’ penchant for delay and political posturing, which comes at the expense of millions of working American families who are hurting. What we need now are bold approaches to economic recovery that will produce jobs.
Read Ayers’ entire post here.
St. Louis Electrical Workers Seek to Protect Quality Standards
AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) unions are urging St. Louis Carpenters Local 57 to stop performing electrical work the Electrical Workers (IBEW) union says undercuts union standards of quality, safety and wages.
IBEW members are trained in five-year apprenticeships that certify them as master electricians. But Local 57, formed two years ago by the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis, did not comply with federal standards on apprenticeship programs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
IBEW President Ed Hill says:
When an IBEW member is on a site, customers can be assured that the job will be done right. When you’re working with high-voltage electricity, why would you want anyone else? Read the rest of this entry »
