282 Cablevision Workers Join CWA
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Yesterday, 282 Cablevision technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn voted to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1109 in a union election administered by the National Labor Relations Board, overcoming a vigorous anti-union campaign led by Cablevision. They are the first Cablevision workers to join a union. Cable TV is an overwhelmingly nonunion industry while the traditional telecommunications industry remains highly unionized.
“I’ve waited 13 years for this,” said Cablevision technician Clarence Adams. “United, as members of Communications Workers of America, we now have the power to negotiate a fair contract that will give us the dignity and respect on the job we deserve.”
Cablevision workers are currently subject to arbitrary discipline and favoritism by managers, their health care coverage is inadequate, their workload is unreasonable and they have insufficient 401(k) retirement plans. Cablevision workers also make at least one-third less than Verizon workers, who are represented by CWA.
The Cablevision 99% Votes Today
Today, 285 Brooklyn-based Cablevision workers—the Cablevision 99%—will vote in a election for union representation.
According to the New York State AFL-CIO,
the workers have withstood a blistering assault on their right to form a union. Rather than coming to the table and discussing the merits of union representation in the open, Cablevision management is truly taking the low road, by pressuring workers with misinformation in endless “captive audience meetings.”
Despite this enormous pressure from the management 1 percent, the Cablevision 99% have been standing strong.
Check out the workers’ powerful video here. Then follow the directions on the action page to e-mail Cablevision management and let them know their workers have the right to organize free from harassment and intimidation.
According to their website, Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Miss Live Webcast of AFL-CIO Future of Work Forum
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Tune in TODAY from 3-5 p.m. EDT, for a live webcast of the special AFL-CIO forum on The Future of Work and New Ways to Build Power. You can click here for the webcast and follow on twitter with the hashtag #thefutureofwork.
The forum will feature AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Boston University professor David Weil and leaders from unions who are developing new organizing strategies:
- Bill Cruice of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP);
- Bhairavi Desai of the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA);
- Justin Molito of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE); and
- Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA).
The new National Taxi Workers Alliance will receive its AFL-CIO charter.
23,000 California Nurses to Strike for Better Patient Care
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Nearly 23,000 registered nurses will hold a one-day strike Thursday, Sept. 22, at 34 Northern and Central California hospitals. They are speaking out for their patients and against cuts in health care or retiree coverage for nurses and other hospital employees.
The walkout affects Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital in Oakland. The RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (NNU).
Sutter nurses will protest up to 200 sweeping demands for concessions they say would restrict their ability to effectively advocate for patients. They say Sutter managers’ focus on the bottom line effectively forces nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.
Additionally, Sutter management is proposing to reduce nurses’ health care coverage and retiree health benefits.
Organizing 2.0 Offers Free Communications, Organizing Consultations
Throughout September, Organizing 2.0, the online collective of communicators and online organizers working for unions and social justice activists, is offering expert-level pro-bono (free) consultant services on a wide range of communications, technology and organizing issues.
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This is a unique opportunity for leaders and staff with any North American union, labor organization—such as central labor councils and state federations—or grassroots economic justice group.
Organizing 2.0 has lined up dozens of volunteer consultants who are donating an hour of their time for this project to answer questions on Web development, social media training, blogging, creating and using online video, new member organizing campaigns, local political campaigns, online small donor fundraising and more.
Hyatt Workers on Strike in Four Cities
Thousands of Hyatt hotel workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu walked out this morning, striking for a fair contract at their own hotels and to take a stand against Hyatt’s poor treatment of hotel workers in cities across the country.
You can tell Hyatt to treat workers with respect. Click here to send a letter to Hyatt management demanding that they treat housekeepers fairly and with respect. Click here to send a message of solidarity to the strikers. If you live in one of the cities where workers are on strike, you can click here to join a picket line.
Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper in Los Angeles, says:
I’m picketing today because I don’t mind working hard but I won’t be abused. I believe in hard work but living in pain is a different story. I have to take medication regularly because my wrists and shoulders hurt from having to lift mattresses to change the sheets. Since I started working at the Hyatt my quality of life has diminished greatly. Hyatt must stop abusing housekeepers.
Allstate Agents Vote to Join OPEIU
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Members of the National Association of Professional Allstate Agents (NAPAA) voted overwhelmingly today to join the AFL-CIO-affiliated Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU).
Ballots were mailed to all 1,200 members of NAPAA and, when they were tallied, more than 94 percent had voted in favor of affiliating with OPEIU. The vote was administered by the American Arbitration Association.
The NAPAA Board of Directors is expected to meet in the near future to formally approve the affiliation. Once the agreement is approved, NAPAA members will become members in OPEIU, the AFL-CIO and all state federations.
Rabbis Declare Hyatt ‘Not Kosher’
A group of 21 rabbis and other community faith leaders have declared several Hyatt hotels to be “not kosher” and have vowed to avoid the hotels until they provide decent wages and safe conditions for all their workers, expecially housekeepers.
Meanwhile, in California, pressure is building on the giant hotel chain to drop its opposition to legislation that would require companies to adopt a few common-sense practices to protect housekeepers from getting hurt.
The bill would require California hotels to provide housekeepers with fitted sheets (so housekeepers don’t have to lift 100-pound mattresses to tuck the bottom sheets underneath) and mops (so they don’t have to scrub bathroom floors by hand).
Farm Workers Call on Trader Joe’s to Join Fair Food Program
Ja-Rei Wang, a fellow in the AFL-CIO Public Affairs Department, sends us this report about a protest at Trader Joe’s in Washington, D.C.
Several dozen students, activists, farm workers, musicians and community members came together yesterday outside of the Trader Joe’s in downtown Washington, D.C., to demand the supermarket chain stop supporting exploitation of farm workers and, instead, help build a food system that respects workers’ rights. The protest was one of the first such actions across the Northeast.
Chanting to the beat of live san jarocho music and marching with tomato-shaped posters, protestors called on Trader Joe’s to join the other companies that have signed onto the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food program, which calls for a penny-per-pound premium on tomatoes, fairer wages and a strict code of conduct for better working conditions.
The protestors delivered a letter to store management urging them to join the effort to provide a better life for the workers who supply their tomatoes.
Workers Make the ‘Write’ Choice Again: Choose WGAE Twice in One Week
Employees who write and produce nonfiction TV shows, including “Monsters Inside Me,” “Samantha Brown’s Great Weekends” and “Worst Cooks in America” for the production company Optomen Television, voted to be represented by the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE).
This is the second time this week workers chose WGAE. The comedy writers at the Onion News Network (ONN) chose the union on Monday. Employees at three other nonfiction TV production companies also voted recently for WGAE representation. First contract negotiations at two of the companies, Atlas Media and Lion Television, are set to begin Aug. 4 and Aug. 8, respectively.
WGAE President Michael Winship says:
We are excited that the talented people of Optomen have voted to join the Writers Guild, East. Theirs is the latest in a series of Guild election victories in the realm of non-fiction television. We look forward to working with them and to continue reaching out to the many creative men and women of non-fiction production.
The National Labor Relations Board election at Optomen took place in December 2010 but a final vote count was hung up in procedural delays.
