Avondale Rally to Spotlight Need for Permanent Shipbuilding Solution
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Workers, unions and lawmakers successfully mobilized to keep open Northrop Grumman’s Avondale, La., shipyard after the company announced plans to end its shipbuilding operations, with the U.S. Navy saying last week it will accelerate shipbuilding plans that will keep the yard open to 2014.
Tomorrow, Avondale workers will rally to celebrate the new construction plans and urge the shipyard to stay open beyond 2014. Joining them will be AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department President Ron Ault along with New Orleans community members.
More than 5,000 workers would be directly affected had the shipyard closed. Says Holt Baker:
The shipyard industry is a vital lifeline to the Gulf Coast region. This region has been pummeled by disaster after disaster, and the working community in Louisiana cannot afford the massive economic crisis that would result if this shipyard closes.
Five Years After Katrina: Frustration and Determination
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Unemployment in New Orleans is below the national average, but the poverty level is twice the national rate. The reasons behind that stark contrast tell the real story of what is going on five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Crescent City.
There’s lots of work that needs to be done in New Orleans. The problem is that nobody’s making a living off the work but the “chiefs and the thieves,” says Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.
Even though the federal government just announced a $1.8 billion school construction grant to the city, Hammond says workers will be hard pressed to get good-paying jobs out of the grant. The money is coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and doesn’t include Davis-Bacon requirements that workers be paid the prevailing local wage. What’s happening, says Hammond, is that construction workers are being deliberately misclassified as independent contractors so employers can pay them less than if they had a union contract. He adds:
It was hard enough to get a union job before Katrina. Now it’s even harder.
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.
