Hyatt Seeks to Slash Chicago Workers’ Health Care
Since 2009, more than 1,500 employees of four Hyatt hotels in Chicago have been fighting for a fair contract. Now the company is threatening to strip away their health coverage if they don’t abandon their fight and call off their boycotts.
Represented by UNITEHERE! Local 1, the workers have stood firm on demands to curb subcontracting and ease working conditions for housekeepers—demands met by Hilton and other Chicago hotel employers.
Christian Toro, a Hyatt banquet server, says: Read the rest of this entry »
Eagles Fans Learn About Verizon Greed from Striking Workers, Union Allies
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Liz McElroy of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO and AFL-CIO field communications staffer Nora Frederickson send us this report about a Verizon action in Philadelphia.
As 45,000 members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and Electrical Workers (IBEW) on the East Coast continue their strike against Verizon to maintain quality, middle-class jobs, union locals in southeastern Pennsylvania decided to take their message directly to the public – at the local ballgame.
More than 500 CWA Local 13000 and Local 13500 members and their allies showed up for the Philadelphia Eagles pre-season game at Lincoln Financial Field in South Philadelphia last night–not to tailgate but to educate Eagles fans about the real reasons behind their strike at Verizon.
Members of the local unions there as elsewhere in New England and south through Virginia, have been on strike since Sunday. Rather than reward the hard work of Verizon employees who have provided the quality service that earned the company more than $32.5 billion in revenue over the past three years, management continues to insist on cuts that total $1 billion. That’s about $20,000 per Verizon family. These workers have played by the rules—and now Verizon wants to break them. Read the rest of this entry »
45,000 Verizon Workers on Strike
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UPDATE: Tomorrow morning, Aug. 8, thousands of striking workers will join mass picket lines and rallies at more than 100 Verizon work locations across New York and New Jersey to push the highly profitable company to back off its sweeping demands. The list of picket lines and rallies is here.
And in the Washington, D.C., area, you can show your support for striking workers at a mobilization rally Monday at noon at the Chesapeake Complex, 13100 Columbia Pike, Silver Spring.
More than 45,000 workers from New England to Virginia went on strike just after midnight today at Verizon Communications. Since bargaining began July 22, Verizon has refused to move from a long list of concession demands. As the contract expired, Verizon, a $100 billion company, still was looking for $1 billion in concessions from 45,000 workers and families. That’s about $20,000 in givebacks for every family, nearly 100 concessionary proposals remained on the table.
Bayer Workers Kick Off New Workers’ Council with Solidarity Day
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| USW Local President Franklin Troyer (center) led the Solidarity Day action in Mishawaka, Ind., with support from Melony Winkel, unit secretary at the plant, and Jeff Fizer, a worker who volunteered to assist with the action. |
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| Maintenance workers Joe La Maestra and Austin Colvard joined their ILWU Local 6 brothers and sisters in the Solidarity Day action at the Bayer Berkeley plant. |
Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section reports on upcoming contract negotiations at Bayer.
With a contract that expires on Aug. 24, more than 420 workers at the Berkeley facility of the giant Bayer pharmaceutical and health care conglomerate have been preparing for bargaining for several months with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 6. Union leaders have held trainings for rank-and-file leaders, collected suggestions for bargaining proposals and held house meetings to prepare members for action to back up the bargaining team.
ILWU Local 6 members also have reached out to other unions that represent Bayer workers in the United States. Since early June, United Steelworkers Local 12273, Machinists locals 656 and 598, Chemical Workers/UFCW locals 566C and 832C and ILWU Local 6 have formed a Bayer Workers Council. Now the unions are beginning to support each other around shared bargaining and representation issues.
The Bayer Workers Council has carried out several joint actions to deliver the message to Bayer that unionized Bayer workers around the country support them in their efforts to win a good contract. In June, with the help of the AFL-CIO, the council unions distributed leaflets at key pharmaceutical industry events where Bayer executives were making presentations.
Panel Rules for 35,000 NY Bus and Subway Workers—and More Bargaining News
A panel of judges unanimously ruled that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority must pay a 3 percent raise to some 35,000 bus and subway workers, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS:
TWU, Metropolitan Transportation Authority: In New York City, a panel of judges unanimously ruled that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must pay a 3 percent raise to some 35,000 bus and subway workers. The ruling reaffirms last year’s decision by an arbitrator in the ongoing discussion between MTA and Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100.
Twin Cities Nurses Vote to Strike
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Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera reports on the strike vote by 12,000 Twin City nurses.
Amid chants of “Safe Patient Care,” members of the Minnesota Nurses Association announced they have authorized a strike of Twin Cities hospitals—the largest nursing walkout in U.S. history.
More than 12,000 registered nurses are ready to walk off the job in a one-day strike if a new agreement with six Twin Cities hospital systems can’t be reached before June 1, when the current contract expires, the union said. Nurses had been in talks with 14 Twin Cities hospitals for months, but the union says the hospitals are using the weak economy as an excuse to make cuts that would ultimately hurt patients.
The walkout would affect 14 hospitals in the North Memorial, HealthEast, Allina, Methodist, Children’s and Fairview systems.
Of the 9,000-plus Twin Cities RNs who voted Wednesday, more than 90 percent rejected the labor contracts and pension proposals from the hospitals, the union said. Read the rest of this entry »
Going Gaga Over Workers’ Rights
Lady Gaga recently made an unexpected appearance at the Westin Saint Francis hotel in San Francisco—in the form of a flash mob singing a pro-worker version of lyrics to her “Bad Romance.” Replete with tuba, trombone, snare drum and a couple dozen dancing activists, the group materialized in the hotel’s lobby to denounce the chain’s poor treatment of its employees and urge people to “Boycott, boycott,” this “bad, bad hotel.”
Sponsored by the San Francisco chapter of Pride At Work, an AFL-CIO constituency group for LGBTQ workers, the action demonstrated support for the more than 9,000 workers in the area who have been working without a contract since August 2009 at several Hyatt, Hilton, Starwood and InterContinental Hotels (the Westin is owned by Starwood). The activists created the song and dance routine to tell the hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people from across the country coming to San Francisco in June for Pride Week to honor the worker-called boycott.
America’s Real Patriot Act: The Employee Free Choice Act
When America’s founders crafted the Constitution, they knew more was needed to ensure the survival of democracy. So they created the Bill of Rights. They made sure that at the top of the list, the First Amendment included such rights as the freedom of assembly. That is, the freedom of all of us to gather together in groups of our choosing. Like, say, unions.
Some opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions seem to have forgotten that forming groups outside government—and corporate—purview is critical to a free nation. In Big Brother-speak, these corporate hacks are attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act—which would enable more employees and workers to have the freedom to form unions—as unconstitutional.
Here’s what’s really outrageous:
- Managers following employees and workers to the bathroom and around the workplace to harass them for seeking to form a union.
- Workers so intimidated by employers, they become scared of voting in a ballot for a union so they vote against the union or don’t vote at all, fearing that if they do, they’ll lose their job.
