Michigan Utility Workers Help Kids Ward Off Winter Winds
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Michael J. Smith, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison for United Way of Monroe County (Mich.), sends us this report.
Kids in Monroe, Mich., will be able to bundle up against the cold Michigan winter with new coats, thanks to Utility Workers (UWUA) Local 223 and DTE Energy. The workers and management at the Monroe Power Plant raised $1,600 to purchase coats that were then donated to the Salvation Army’s Coats for Kids program.
During the 11 years that the local union has taken part in the program, it has donated more than 1,000 coats, says Pete Burkit, co-chair of Community Action Committee.
In addition to collecting donations from the workers, including onsite Building Trades workers, the committee works with local merchants to get a discount, “so we can stretch our dollars,” says Linda Schmidt, the other co-chair of the committee.
Along with the new coats, 21 “gently used” were donated and then cleaned free of charge by a local dry cleaner.
Public Employees Aiding Residents Throughout Irene
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From the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose employess are represented by AFGE, to local workers answering emergency calls, government workers have been playing a major role in the cleanup effort of Hurricane Irene. Two of those workers, one in Rutland, Vt., and one in Princeton, N.J., lost their lives while trying to help keep their communiteis safe during the storm.
State and local officials throughout the East Coast are praising public employees as they spearhead the cleanup after the massive storm and return communities to normal as soon as possible.
NLRB Hearing on Proposed Rules Change: Employers Game the System
Amid a cacophony of complaints by management lawyers, Scott Pedigo’s voice broke through the rhetoric and laid out for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) what it’s really like to try and form a union in today’s economic environment.
Pedigo, president of Utility Workers Local 304 in West Virginia, was the only rank-and-file worker to appear this morning before the NLRB’s two-day hearing on proposed changes in the way union representation elections are conducted. He supports the NLRB rules changes, which help eliminate delaying tactics for workers who have filed a petition to vote on whether to form a union. Right now, he said, employers have ample opporunity to intimidate and browbeat workers who favor a union.
Pedigo and several academic speakers rebutted the often-repeated management complaints that cleaning up the election procedures would not give employers time to exercise their free speech right to argue against voting for a union. Based on his experience, Pedigo said:
French Water Company Problems Highlight What Happens Under Privatization
The Utility Workers (UWUA), along with the safe food advocacy group Food & Water Watch, this week filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over the labor and environmental practices of United Water, a U.S. water utility and a subsidiary of French multinational Suez Environment.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO met with the labor attaché from the French Embassy to raise concerns about Suez Environment and to discuss the OECD compliant.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued complaints charging United Water with illegal bargaining tactics. As UWUA President Michael Langford says:
Utility workers have been astonished at the bad faith conduct of United Water in labor negotiations in the U.S.
Dying to Work
This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post by Stewart Acuff, Utility Workers (UWUA) chief of staff and assistant to the president.
It is 9 p.m. on a very cold Philadelphia night as I sit down to write this. I’ve just returned from a closed casket viewing of my 19-year-old union brother Mark Keely who was blown up in a gas main explosion three nights ago. Three other union members of his work crew were burned from head to toe.
Brother Mark was 19 and had been on the job just five months.
Death and horrible injury is a daily possibility for members of the Utility Workers Union of America. Our members are the first of the first responders cutting off the electricity and gas so firefighters and police officers can do their jobs.
No one knows how many lives Brother Keely and his crew saved with their ultimate sacrifice.
From D.C. to San Diego, Workers Choose Unions
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Capitol Hill tour guides, power plant workers, law enforcement and municipal employees and auto and jet mechanics all won a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions recently.
In Montgomery County, Pa., 245 county employees voted to form a union with AFSCME Council 13. The workers include deputy sheriffs and administrative support personnel in the sheriff’s department, clerk of courts, district attorney’s office, public defender, coroner and other offices.
In Washington, D.C., workers at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center voted overwhelmingly to join AFSCME Council 26. Carl Goldman, Council 26 executive director, says the 140 tour guides and visitor assistants are
very dedicated to serving Congress and the public. They want their views to be taken seriously by management. They want to be given the tools to do their jobs.
Blue Green Alliance Bus Tour to Demand Action on Clean Energy Jobs
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To remind lawmakers that Congress has stalled on legislation that would create and save millions of jobs across the country by building a clean energy economy—while nations like China are forging ahead—the Blue Green Alliance today kicked off a three-week, 17-state, 30-city bus tour. The “Job’s Not Done Tour” began in Los Angeles and will end Sept. 3 in Richmond, Va.
Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), says:
By failing to take action on these important clean energy policies, we are missing a huge opportunity to create good jobs now. Currently we are 16th in the world in the percentage of citizens with access to broadband. Expansion will not only create jobs, save Americans money and make our country more efficient, it will lead to the sustainable communities that are such an important part of our future.
Nearly 1,000 Say ‘Thank You’ to Lawmakers Who Backed Health Care
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Health care reform became the law of the land because enough congressional Democrats “had courage and stood with working families,” United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard told nearly 1,000 union activists at a Capitol Hill rally this afternoon. These lawmakers ”stood for what’s morally right and against the Big Insurance industry and their nearly $1 billion campaign” to kill the bill.
The USW organized the rally with the support for the AFL-CIO, Utility Workers (UWUA) and the SEIU to say “Thank you” to the lawmakers who voted for health care reform, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned the tables a bit when she told the crowd,
The thanks go to you for all your help that made this victory possible.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that during the course of months-long battle to bring health insurance coverage to nearly 32 million uninsured Americans and end insurance company abuses, “there were no easy votes.”
The insurance industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to kill us, and to slander and defame the members of Congress who had the courage to do the right thing.
But our Democratic heroes had the courage to tell insurance companies, “No more.” No more refusing to cover our children. No more denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. No more cutting people off when they get sick. No more second-guessing our doctors, and no more telling people you can go ahead and die.
Join Us in Our ‘Thanks for Health Care’ Rally on Capitol Hill
Tomorrow, more than 1,000 union members will deliver a short and sweet message to the U.S. senators and representatives who had the courage to take the side of working families over big insurance companies and vote for health care reform:
Thank You!
The noon Capitol Hill rally, led by the United Steelworkers (USW) with the support of the AFL-CIO, Utility Workers (UWUA) and SEIU, also will combat the lingering lies spread by Big Business Republicans about the landmark health care reform law that extends coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans.
The message contrasts with the often vicious and angry rhetoric characterizing the other side of the health care debate.
Speakers are expected to include AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, USW President Leo W. Gerard, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and workers and retirees.
In Covanta Struggle, Utility Workers Go Global
In 2008, after some 140 workers at Covanta Energy Corp.’s Rochester, Mass., plant voted to join the Utility Workers (UWUA), the “green” energy company started a two-year-long campaign of delay, “intolerable” contract demands and other bargaining table stalls. As UWUA President Michael Langford says:
They thought we’d just go away.
Well, they didn’t go away. They went global. Now, UWUA Local 369 members in Rochester have a contract signed just last week and the union may be on the verge of winning an agreement that would allow Covanta workers at its 30 U.S. facilities, as well as its overseas operations, to choose to join a union without management interference (more below).
