Trumka to UMWA: Keep Fighting
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka traveled to West Virginia yesterday to celebrate a new term for Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts and Secretary-Treasurer Daniel Kane and to recognize the contributions of the union where he got his start.
Trumka talked about the crippling effects of the economic crisis and the need for a strong, energetic union movement to turn it around not just for individual workers and their families, but for the whole country.
Reaching back through the long history of the UMWA and the union movement, Trumka said the power of workers, uniting together, helped pull the country out of the 1930s Depression. With unemployment at a 26-year high and housing and health care increasingly hard for families to afford, we need that spirit now, Trumka said:
There’s only one way working people have ever won in the past; and only one way we ever will win in the future. And, sisters and brothers, it’s not by begging for it. It’s not by pleading for it. And it’s not even by praying for it. It’s by standing up and fighting for it.
West Virginia Striking Nurses Win Benefits
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Here’s a great news report from Katrina Blomdahl, writer-researcher for RNs Working Together, a coalition of 10 AFL-CIO unions representing more than 200,000 registered nurses nationally.
In this tough economy, West Virginia nurses at the Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) system are breathing a sigh of relief after the Kanawha County Circuit Court rejected an appeal by their employer to deny unemployment benefits to the nurses who walked the picket line from October to December 2007.
Turns out the hospital blew a filing deadline that the courts apparently intend to enforce.
To the nurses of the West Virginia Nurses Association/UAN it’s a real vindication. Not only did the court refuse to allow the employer to skirt the law for its own convenience—it jammed up the hospital system’s union-busting practices.
West Virginia Nurses Association’s Economic and General Welfare Chair Rue Hairston, RN, says the nurses
are ecstatic about the decision because it’s the David and Goliath story. Goliath keeps coming and David keeps winning.
Mine Worker Punished for Trying to Form a Union
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As the battle for the Employee Free Choice Act gets fought out in the press and the political arena, it’s worth remembering why we’re fighting for this bill in the first place: because far too many workers can’t exercise their freedom to form a union. Heath Coleman, a heavy-equipment operator from West Virginia, tried to form a union and found his safety endangered by management pressure. His story shows why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
Says Coleman:
I’ve had to put my family’s well-being at stake just to exercise my rights as an American. People shouldn’t have to live the way we’ve had to live for the last year.
Coleman works at the Fola Coal Co. in Indore, W.Va. When another company, Consol, bought Fola, it slashed health benefits and wouldn’t provide information about the pension plan to workers. So along with other workers, Coleman sought to form a union with the Mine Workers (UMWA) to get a say in the workplace. Consol then began to intimidate and pressure workers individually and in group meetings.
Management didn’t stop there, says Coleman.
The company told us that if it went union, they’d shut down because they couldn’t afford to work union.
Pilots Soar with New Spirit Air Settlement, and More Bargaining News
Spirit Airlines agreed to stop shortchanging the number of days off pilots receive—and more updates here 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.
NEGOTIATIONS
ALPA, Spirit Airlines: Spirit pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots (ALPA), celebrated a much anticipated System Board of Adjustment decision, which orders Spirit management to cease shortchanging the number of days off that pilots receive after a scheduled sequence of trips. Under the collective bargaining agreement, pilots are entitled to receive up to five days off after the conclusion of a sequence of trips with no intervening days off.
