TVA Engineers Join IFPTE
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By a nearly 10-to-1 margin, members of the Tennessee Valley Authority Engineering Association (EA), employees at the nation’s largest public power supplier, voted to affiliate with the Professional and Technical Engineers union (IFPTE) today.
The EA includes more than 2,600 scientists, engineers, technicians and other professional TVA employees.
EA President Gay Henson says joining IFPTE will make EA a more effective advocate for its members:
“We are extremely excited about moving forward together with the IFPTE. This partnership provides us with new connections to Washington, to the labor movement and to other engineers and professionals. IFPTE also will lend expertise to help us with legislation and negotiations. As a result of today’s vote, it’s a new day for the EA.”
IFPTE represents more than 80,000 professional employees in both the public and private sector, including technical experts and skilled workers at power-generation facilities across he country. IFPTE President Greg Junemann says he’s honored that EA, first formed in 1937, decided to affiliate with IFPTE.
Karen See Elected to Lead CLUW
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Delegates to the 15th Bienneial Convention of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) earlier this month looked to the future by electing a new slate of officers. Karen See, a member of the Postal Workers (APWU), was elected president, succeeding Marsha Zakowski.
More than 600 delegates and observers at the convention in Los Angeles discussed strategies for building the organization and recruiting younger members.
See says the convention theme, “The Rising Tide of Change: Activism, Leadership–Union Women!!” summarizes her goal of rejuvenating CLUW and getting union women more involved in the leadership of the union movement.
Defense Employees Celebrate Repeal of Anti-Worker Personnel System
After a tough six-year battle, U.S. Department of Defense employees are celebrating a major victory today. The 2010 Defense authorization congressional conference committee yesterday repealed the anti-worker National Security Personnel System (NSPS).
Created by the Bush administration, the NSPS was fatally flawed from the beginning. The personnel system took away Defense Department workers’ right to collective bargaining and personnel appeals. After the last Republican-led Congress refused to block the NSPS, the United Department of Defense Workers Coalition (UDWC) worked tirelessly to restore fairness and equity to the workplace. Members of the coalition, made up of the 36 unions that represent Defense Department workers, helped get out the vote to ensure a Democratic majority in Congress and that majority restored the Defense workers’ collective bargaining rights as part of the 2009 Defense authorization bill.
Legal Services Workers Vote to Join IFPTE
By an overwhelming 26-1 vote, a group of lawyers and professional staff at the Legal Services Corp. (LSC) voted to join the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees (IFPTE). The LSC, which receives federal funding, provides legal services to the poor.
The Sept. 15 vote to form a union came following the LSC’s refusal to recognize the workers’ choice after 95 percent of the bargaining unit signed union authorization cards and after the LSC hired an anti-union law firm to fight the workers’ choice.
Earlier this month, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, criticized the agency’s anti-union action. In a letter to the LSC President Helaine Barnett, Harkin wrote:
Not to support the employees’ desire to unionize is troubling. The card-check process is a fair and unbiased way for employees to choose a union. I am disappointed that an organization committed to protecting the rights of our most vulnerable citizens did not support the free choice of its workers to organize through this process.
Taking the Next Steps to Build Strength Through Diversity
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The diversity of the union movement is its strength. Building on the success of the historic Resolution 2 passed in 2005, the AFL-CIO Convention adopted a far-ranging policy to create more inclusive unions and a more diverse leadership.
The resolutions, “A Diverse and Democratic Labor Movement” and “Unions Should Give People with Disabilities a Voice and a Face,” call on unions to reach out at every level to build diversity.
The resolutions require every state federation and central local bodies to establish concrete goals for expanding diversity in their leadership. We also will increase our commitment to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and workers with disabilities at all levels. And to secure the future of the union movement, we will actively recruit, train and include young workers in all activities and programs and provide opportunities for leadership.
AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy said the union movement stands on the threshold of a crusade to rebuild the middle class. The progress made in including new workers in union leadership has chipped away at one more source of divisiveness in our movement. He praised the unions for successfully carrying out the mandate of Resolution 2 to make convention delegations more inclusive—43 percent of delegates are women or people of color.
The Time Is Now for Health Care Reform, Safe Workplaces
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The nation’s health care system is broken and now is the time to act to gain real health care reform. With a vote on health care reform coming soon to Congress, delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention today passed two strong resolutions to provide quality affordable health care and another to ensure safe and healthy workplaces.
They also took immediate action on the floor to mobilize against the insurance industry that is profiting by denying health care to patients who need it and raising premiums.
Both AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) told the convention the Senate will vote on a health care bill in the next few weeks. After passing the resolutions, delegates signed pledges to work for real health care reform when they get back home. Many used their cell phones to call their locals to march on the major health insurers between Sept. 22 and Oct. 2. AFT President Randi Weingarten, who was presiding over the debate, called the chief lobbyist for the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, her home local, while on the podium, and with the entire convention listening, convinced him to hold an action.
The mobilization is part of an AFL-CIO campaign to hold insurers accountable, Trumka said,
for denying care and shutting people out and using our members’ premium dollars.
CNA/NNOC Hosts Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ for AFL-CIO Convention
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Pittsburgh isn’t just hosting the AFL-CIO Convention next week: The city also will host a special showing of Michael Moore’s latest documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Monday night.
Moore, who most recently directed “Sicko,” now turns his lens on the U.S. financial and economic crisis. On Monday, Sept. 14, following the second day of the AFL-CIO Convention, AFL-CIO delegates and guests will get a chance to see the film.
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), says that the film is:
the best major labor film in years…an unabashed advocacy of working people and critique of an unjust system and the financial misdeeds that have led to the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
APALA Reaches Out to Young Workers
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The future of the union and social justice movements lies in reaching out to college students, young workers and young voters who are energized by the election of Barack Obama.
Last week, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) took a big step toward uniting the younger generation and the union movement by bringing together more than 400 union members, community allies and student leaders to discuss the best strategies for working together.
“Generations United, Organizing for Change,” the theme for APALA’s 10th Biennial Convention in Las Vegas last week, emphasized the first national gathering of Asian Pacific American workers and students. The convention provided participants with a renewed sense of optimism for multigenerational leadership in the union movement as well as in the broader struggle for social and economic justice, convention organizers say.
Junemann Suspends Secretary-Treasurer Campaign
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Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) President Gregory Junemann today suspended his independent campaign for AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and endorsed the slate of Richard Trumka, Liz Shuler and Arlene Holt Baker.
In a joint statement, Junemann and the Trumka-led slate said:
“It has never been more critical for the labor movement to come together to support workers and their families, who are hard-strapped in an economy that is not working for them. Together we can focus on solving these economic problems, working with the Obama administration and Congress and strengthening union outreach, working with our affiliates and other unions.”
After meeting with Trumka, Junemann said he was confident the AFL-CIO under the new leadership team would address the financial issues he raised during his campaign.
Trumka Announces Candidacy for AFL-CIO President
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AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka this morning announced his candidacy for president of the AFL-CIO to succeed the retiring John Sweeney. Trumka has served as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer since 1995.
Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), announced June 8 he is running for secretary-treasurer.
At a rally that drew several hundred supporters at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., Trumka also introduced his running mates. Joining Trumka on the ticket are Liz Shuler, executive assistant to the Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill, for secretary-treasurer and incumbent AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker for re-election. This marks the first time two women have run for the AFL-CIO’s top offices.
No other candidates for the top three leadership positions have announced. Earlier this year, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney announced he was retiring when his fourth term as president expires in September. Delegates to the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention meeting in Pittsburgh Sept. 13-17 will elect the AFL-CIO’s new officers.
In a joint statement, Trumka, Shuler and Holt Baker note that the labor movement “faces tremendous challenges,” including an unregulated global economy, labor laws that favor employers over workers and a political system in which the wealthy wield far too much influence.
At the same time, we have historic opportunity, with a president and Congress we elected, to overcome these challenges. Our most important task is to make sure our economy creates jobs. And we are keenly aware that we must look within our movement for answers about how we can create full employment, organize workers and make sure workers prosper in the 21st century.
Before being elected AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer in 1995, the same year Sweeney took the helm of the AFL-CIO, Trumka served as president of the Mine Workers (UMWA) from 1982 to 1995. He is a third-generation coal miner and graduate of Pennsylvania State University and holds a law degree from Villanova University Law School.
Shuler is the highest-ranking women in the IBEW and has served as Hill’s top assistant since 2004. In 1993, she joined IBEW Local 125 in Portland, Ore., where she worked as an organizer and state legislative and political director. In 1998, she was part of the IBEW’s international staff in Washington, D.C., as a legislative and political representative.
Holt Baker has served as AFL-CIO executive vice president since September 2007. The longtime AFSCME member and leader came to the federation in 1995 as executive assistant to Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, who was the first woman to become a top AFL-CIO officer. Holt Baker was AFSCME’s international union area director in California from the late 1980s to 1995 and also worked as an organizer and international representative.
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