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 »
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.
Big Business Likes Arbitration—If It Can Control the Process
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, desperate in their efforts to kill the proposed legislation that would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions, have come up with another line of attack. They are making a lot of noise over the bill’s arbitration provision. The argument is just another straw-man attempt at gutting legislation that would enable more workers to have a voice on the job. (And one more sign of desperation—to wit, the trotting out of widely loathed figures like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to attack the Employee Free Choice Act.)
Here’s the deal. Even after employees select a union to represent them, they need to bargain a first contract. But there’s no incentive for management to bargain in good faith. The longer contract negotiations are dragged out, the less likely one will ever be settled. In fact, nearly half of workers are denied a first contract, even when they’ve won their union.
