Verizon Workers Take Struggle for Middle-Class Jobs to CEO’s Upscale Neighborhood
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Hundreds of Verizon workers who have been striking for middle-class jobs last night took their message to the posh upper-class New Jersey neighborhood where Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam lives, to “mourn the death of good middle-class jobs.”
During the past four years, Verizon paid its top executives more than $258 million—surely enough that they are not worrying about mortgage payments in neighborhoods like McAdam’s. But Verizon, which made more than $20 billion in profits during the past few years, is demanding $1 billion in concessions from its 45,000 union workers, or about $20,000 per worker.
At the candlelight vigil outside McAdam’s home, the members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and their allies chanted, ‘What’s disgusting? Union busting!”
Lawsuits Aim to Stop Anti-Worker Laws
The battles against anti-worker laws across the country have turned to the ballot boxes and courtrooms. As voters go to the polls next week in high profile recall elections in Wisconsin, workers in other states and their lawyers will argue before judges that some anti-worker laws should be struck down.
In New Jersey, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1033 filed a lawsuit this week over the failure by Gov. Chris Christie to make payments to the state’s pension funds. The suit claims that the failure by Christie and his predecessors to make payments to the funds violated a constitutional prohibition against the “impairment of contracts” a lawyer for the union said.
Working men and women also are suing to stop new laws in Idaho. One would prohibit project labor agreements (PLAs). These pre-hire agreements between labor and management require all construction jobs to 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. They protect taxpayers by eliminating costly delays due to labor conflicts or shortages of skilled workers
N.J.’s Christie Poised to Sign Bill Ending Health Care Bargaining for 500,000
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) will join the rogue’s gallery of governors that includes Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and others who have attacked the collective bargaining rights of public service workers when he signs a bill this week that takes way the rights of half a million public employees to bargain for health care.
The bill won final approval from the state legislature Thursday in what New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech called “a terrible moment for New Jersey’s working class.”
This is bad public policy for teachers, police, firefighters, state and local government workers, and all middle-class workers who serve our communities through public service.
In state Senate testimony earlier this month Wowkanech told lawmakers that today’s harsh economic conditions “were not created by the middle class, they were created by the greed of Wall Street profiteers, yet it is our members that are being blamed.” Read the rest of this entry »
New Jersey Union Members Arrested Protesting Bill to End Collective Bargaining
This is a cross-post from the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
Thousands of working men and women protested the New Jersey Statehouse today against legislation that would effectively eliminate public employee collective bargaining rights over health care benefits. Chanting “Kill the bill” and “Worker rights are human rights,” 25 union members, including New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech and Secretary-Treasurer Laurel Brennan, were arrested for disorderly conduct.
“It is with a heavy heart that we even had to be here today to testify against a piece of legislation that would destroy collective bargaining rights for thousands of taxpaying working men and women,” Wowkanech said.
…we had to stand up for the right to collectively bargain, just as we did for project labor agreements, paid family leave, prevailing wage and card check in the public sector.
New Jersey High Court Rejects Christie Education Cuts
Education cuts made last year by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) were so large that the state Supreme Court today ruled they violated the state’s constitutional requirement to provide a “thorough and efficient system of free public schools.”
The court’s ruling on Abbott v. Burke requires the state to allocate an additional $500 million to 31 lower-income districts in New Jersey in the coming fiscal year. Christie has indicated he will comply with the court order, but his attempts to balance the state budget on the backs of children and working families continue. On May 21, more than 35,000 working people protested Christie’s budget cuts at one of the largest-ever demonstrations at the state Capitol in Trenton.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO said the additional funds will go to the state’s neediest students, an important step forward in promoting equal access to quality education in New Jersey.
Join the Fight to ‘Save Collective Bargaining’ on Facebook
This is a cross-post from the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
In New Jersey and across the nation collective bargaining rights are under attack, working families are being blamed for an economic disaster manufactured on Wall Street, and the assault on collective bargaining threatens the foundation of our middle class.
A historical social movement is sweeping across the nation with protests in many states, including Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio and Indiana. To defend workers’ rights we must continue this fight together.
It will take working families, union members, faith groups, civil rights advocates, community allies, students, progressives and people of all races—all of whom are taxpayers and committed to budget solutions, which respect the middle class.
Working Families United for New Jersey will launch, on Sunday, March 6, a Facebook page called “Save Collective Bargaining” to build a grassroots network dedicated to issue education and the fight to save collective bargaining.
4,000 in New Jersey Show Support for Wisconsin Public Employees
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This is a crosspost from the New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
The unity rally at the State House was a tremendous success, and you made it happen. Union members from across the state and nation, from all sectors of our labor movement, joined with our community partners and stood together – over 4,000 strong – to show solidarity for the Wisconsin workers. (CLICK HERE for photos of the rally and to see solidarity in action.)
Everyone who believes in solidarity and knows what’s at risk for the middle class was there. Although the rain started falling, a little downpour was not cause for hesitation; it simply meant that we were more determined than ever to stand together. Our signs were held higher, and a swell of umbrellas joined the concert of colors which swept across the crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder at the rally were bakery workers and iron workers, teachers and laborers, nurses and electricians, firefighters and plumbers, painters and social workers, carpenters and grocery workers, teamsters and bus drivers, secretaries and steelworkers, professors and sheet metal workers, police officers and plasterers, toll collectors, and asbestos workers, a wide range of state workers, and the list goes on. Read the rest of this entry »
With Jersey Deep in Snow, Gov. Christie Had Fun in Sun
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Meaning no disrespect to the world’s most famous and lovable rodent, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) response to last week’s massive snow storm that hammered the Garden State and other East Coast states was literally Mickey Mouse.
While tough and dedicated New Jersey state workers—the same workers Christie has spent his tenure attacking—cleared snow-covered roads and worked to keep residents safe and warm, Christie was vacationing at Disney World.
In fact, he’s out of the state so frequently a new website, “Where’s Chris Christie,” chronicles his vagabond ways for New Jersey voters. The website was launched by Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). In an e-mail to some 19,000 New Jersey members, PCCC co-founder and New Jersey native Adam Green writes:
Partying with Mickey Mouse while serious incidents are happening back home isn’t leadership. This is just the latest time that Christie has left the state at a critical moment—putting his own interests above New Jersey’s.
35,000 Rally Against New Jersey Budget Cuts
More than 35,000 people—including workers from dozens of unions and activists from more than 100 community groups—last Saturday told New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie that he cannot balance the state’s budget on the backs of the middle class.
The “Stand Up” rally, one of the largest-ever protests at the state capitol in Trenton, sent a clear message that New Jersey working people reject Christie’s budget cuts and believe the path to getting the state back on track is through job growth and doing more to help the state’s most vulnerable families.
Carrying signs with messages such as “Restore The Cuts” and “Christie’s Budget Cuts Hurt the Vulnerable, Helps the Millionaires,” marchers filled the square in front of the state House as far as you could see.
New Jersey Votes for Governor—More Ethics Questions for Christie
New Jersey voters are heading to the polls today in a critical and tight race for governor between AFL-CIO-endorsed Gov. Jon Corzine, a supporter of working families, and his opponent, former George W. Bush political appointee Chris Christie.
It’s a fight that will determine whether New Jersey will move forward with Corzine’s agenda that helps working families, or whether New Jersey will be taken backward with Christie’s failed ideas on health care, education and workers’ rights.
Meanwhile, even more ethics questions are emerging about Christie. An investigation at the blog Blue Jersey—complete with phone records—into Christie’s conduct as U.S. attorney, suggests that Christie used his position to aid his political party, including
slipping information damaging to Democrats to the press while holding tight to information that could hurt Republicans.
