Workers Join AFSCME, Machinists and IUE-CWA in Recent Campaigns
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Some 2,600 family child care providers in New Mexico recently voted to join Child Care Providers Together (CCPT)/New Mexico, an AFSCME affiliate. Meanwhile, aerospace workers in Georgia voted for Machinists (IAM) representation and car rental workers in Boston chose IUE-CWA.
In New Mexico, the child care workers—who care for children whose parents are eligible for state child care assistance—topped off their three-year fight for a voice at work last week when their vote to join CCPT was certified.
In April, Gov. Bill Richardson (D) signed legislation the workers had fought for since 2006 to win the right to join a union to improve their lives and the quality of home child care services in the state.
Rite Aid’s Wrong, Workers Tell Shareholders
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Rite Aid workers at the drug chain’s distribution center in Lancaster, Calif., took their years-long fight for justice to New York City yesterday, where they urged the company’s shareholders to fire management’s hired-gun, union-busting consultants.
At a Times Square rally, the workers got a boost of solidarity from their New York union brothers and sisters.
At the firm’s annual shareholder meeting, Angel Warner, a veteran Rite Aid employee and member of Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 26, charged Rite Aid with “abusive, disrespectful and illegal treatment” before and after more than 600 workers voted to join the IWLU in March 2008.
Hundreds of Workers Join AFSCME, IAM and CWA
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Flight service specialists, health care employees and aluminum mill workers are among the latest workers to win a voice at work and a union card with AFL-CIO unions. Meanwhile in New Mexico, child care workers have just won the right to join unions and bargain for better lives.
More than 800 Automated Flight Service Specialists at Lockheed Martin voted to join the Machinists (IAM). The Flight Service Specialists work at 12 sites and three hub facilities across the continental United States and Hawaii.
Their duties include pre-flight, in-flight, operational and special services, en route communications, search and rescue and pre- and in-flight meteorological and aeronautical briefings. Says IAM Vice President Rich Michalski:
This is a great victory for them and a strong signal that in these tough economic times, workers want the benefits of union representation—job security, a secure retirement and the pay and benefits that support a healthy middle class.
CNA/NNOC, SEIU Agree to Work Together in Bringing Voice to Health Care Workers
The nation’s two largest health care unions today signed a dramatic new agreement to work together to bring a voice to health care workers around the country and ramp up efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
The agreement between the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and SEIU, says CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro,
provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge health care industry layoffs and attacks on Registered Nurse (RN) economic and professional standards and patient care conditions. It will also strengthen the ability of all direct-care RNs to fight for real health care reform and advocate for improved patient care conditions and stronger patient safety legislation from coast to coast.
Some Anti-Worker CEOs Not Working with a Full Deck
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Denise Bowyer, vice president of American Income Life Insurance Co. and secretary of American Income Life’s Labor Advisory Board, says casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is playing the wrong cards when it comes to the Employee Free Choice Act.
In recent days, Sheldon Adelson, casino billionaire, had this to say about the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that if enacted, would level the playing field for workers seeking to join unions:
The Employee Free Choice Act is one of the two fundamental threats to society. [The other is "radical Islam.]
Give me a break: Employees choosing to form and how to form a union is not a threat to society. Truth be told, Sheldon Adelson, the fiercely anti-union billionaire casino mogul knows that passing the Employee Free Choice Act is a high-stakes game, and the only fundamental threat is to his bottom line.
