Bargaining Wins for Public Employees in Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Kentucky
Public employees across the country have been battling bruising attacks on their jobs and paychecks as cities and states sink into red ink. No more so than in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger achieved through budget cuts what he couldn’t in state referendums voted down by voters in 2008, a drastic reduction in state services. Yet in Los Angeles, city workers—members of several unions—ratified a new contract that averts furloughs and layoffs. State employees in Pennsylvania and Kentucky also have good news after mobilizing successfully to protect their paychecks and turn back cuts in benefits.
The Los Angeles city budget, adopted in May, called for layoffs and 26 furlough days per worker—amounting to a 10 percent cut in services and pay for every city program and every worker. Since then, members of the Coalition of LA City Unions in Los Angeles overwhelmingly approved a new contract with the city that preserves city services and avoids layoffs and furloughs. The new agreement will save more than half a billion dollars over the next three years, primarily through a retirement incentive program and delays in scheduled wage increases.
IUOE Project Shows Union Workers Ready for Green Jobs
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Many of the green jobs of “the future” already exist and are performed by union members who make energy-efficient products and teach others how to conserve energy.
Take Operating Engineers Local 49, which represents workers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Members of the local recently built a wind turbine farm in the small town of Chandler, Minn. Crane operators from the local union hoisted the turbines into place as other members dug trenches for the transmission lines and did the grading.
Glen Johnson, business manager for Local 49, tells the Operating Engineers (IUOE) magazine, International Operating Engineer:
We’re green. We’ve been green a long time. When our operators are building roads and bridges, key environmental factors must be met.
Retirees Were Promised Health Care—GM Deal Breaks the Promise
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Workers and retirees have suspected for years that companies often use bankruptcy as an excuse to cheat retirees out of their promised benefits. Now, three unions say that’s exactly what the U.S. Treasury Department is doing to tens of thousands of General Motors (GM) retirees.
The IUE-CWA, United Steelworkers (USW) and the Operating Engineers (IUOE) plan to appeal a bankruptcy judge’s approval late last week of a plan to allow the new GM, which now is owned primarily by the taxpayers, to take away health coverage from 55,000 retirees at some GM and GM Delphi plants.
In a series of newspaper ads, the unions urge workers to call the White House at 202-456-1414 or send an e-mail to www.whitehouse.gov and ask President Obama to restore the GM retirees’ health care benefits. Click here to learn more about IUE-CWA’s campaign to save the retirees’ benefits.
The ads feature retirees like Debra Turner (see ad above), a GM retiree who suffers from multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. At 51, she’s not eligible for Medicare. Until now, her GM health care paid for most of the $3,400 a month in medicines she has to take.
5,300 Employees at Southwest Airlines Reach Tentative Pact, and More Bargaining News
Some 5,300 employees at Southwest Airlines reach a tentative pact, and more updates from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
SETTLEMENTS
IAM, Southwest Airlines: Some 5,300 customer service and reservation agents at Southwest Airlines, represented by the Machinists (IAM) District 142, reached a tentative four-year agreement. The agreement, which still needs ratification by workers, is retroactive to last year and runs through October 2012.
