New Agreement Set for Sodexo Workers Worldwide
Elizabeth Boomer of the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department sends us this report.
Food service giant Sodexo, with 391,000 employees worldwide—including some 18,000 in the United States—and International Union of Food Workers (IUF), have signed an agreement confirming Sodexo’s commitment to respect fundamental rights at work, namely freedom of association and collective bargaining. The IUF includes 336 unions with 12 million members in 120 countries.
Known as an “international framework agreement (IFA),” it provides for a continual and progressive dialogue between Sodexo management, Sodexo employee representatives and the IUF. It is the first of its kind in the industry and IUF General Secretary Ron Oswald says:
This agreement provides a concrete tool to help ensure that Sodexo workers across the world have access to their fundamental rights. Read the rest of this entry »
ALEC’s Influence in Virginia Exposed
With the state legislative season set to get under way next month, Virginia offers us a preview of what working family activists are up against. A story in today’s The Washington Post explores some of the more than 50 bills “ghostwritten” for Republican state legislators by the extreme conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Anna Scholl, executive director of Progress VA, tells the Post that ALEC is:
a secretive organization funded by big corporations, has been writing bills that Virginia legislators are passing off as their own work on everything from education to health care to voting rights.
ALEC bills in Virginia have included new restrictions on voter rights, anti-immigrant legislation and right-wing bills on education, tax breaks for corporations and a new law the Post says “laid the legal groundwork” for Virginia’s lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Read more in ProgressVA’s report, ALEC Exposed: Who’s Writing Virginia’s Laws.
Along with the more than 2,000 extreme lawmakers from every state, ALEC membership includes more than 300 major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Kraft Foods, Bayer and Koch Industries. David and Charles Koch, the right-wing extremist billionaire brothers, are major funders of ALEC, according to a July article in The Nation. Read the rest of this entry »
NLRB Election Rule to Take Effect April 30
A new rule on the way union elections are conducted will take effect April 30, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced today. The rule will help alleviate the delays, inefficiencies, abuse of process and unnecessary litigation which plague the current system for workers who want to vote on whether to have a union. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says it’s “good news”that the NLRB has taken
this modest but important step to help ensure that workers who want to vote to form a union at their workplace get a fair opportunity to do so. Many more improvements are needed to protect workers’ rights. We hope the Board will quickly move to adopt the rest of its proposed reforms to modernize and streamline the election process.
The new rule, says NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston, gives workers who have petitioned for an election the Read the rest of this entry »
Romney Spouts Same Tired Old Anti-Union Rhetoric
If you’ve been following the race for the Republican presidential nomination—and who doesn’t love a circus—you’ve probably noticed that Mitt Romney is being portrayed as somewhat of a moderate in this collection of extreme conservatives. Not when it comes to workers’ rights.
In a statement on yesterday’s House vote to block some modest rule changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Romney hit all the right-wing Republican anti-union talking points.
He trotted out the tired old “union boss” line. He accused the NLRB of trampling “on the rights of workers” and job creators. He called the NLRB “out of control”—because, heaven forbid, the workers’ right agency acts to protect workers’ rights.
House Republicans Pass Bill to Cut Workers’ Rights
The House this evening passed (235-188) legislation (H.R. 3094) that gives employers new tools to combat and delay elections by workers who try to form unions. Dubbed the Election Prevention Act by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the bill is the congressional Republican effort to block some modest rule changes proposed earlier this year by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to reduce unnecessary litigation and modernize the way union elections are conducted.
Miller says the bill’s “singular goal is to delay”
and ultimately prevent union representation elections. Its aim is to deny workers the opportunity for a voice at work.
House Republican leaders claim the legislation is part of their jobs creation agenda, although they’ve never been able to explain how trampling workers’ rights to fair elections creates jobs. It’s actually part of an overall attack on workers’ rights, the NLRB and essential workplace safety and health and environmental rules. Click here for more. Read the rest of this entry »
Attacks on NLRB Cut Into Heart of Middle Class
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The unprecedented Republican and corporate attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are a direct attack on workers’ rights and an effort to put the nation’s labor laws “into cold storage,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said during a special AFL-CIO forum today examining the assault on the NLRB and workers’ rights.
This is the right wing on steroids….They went to work immediately after the 2010 elections—not on jobs—but on taking rights away from American workers.
Since January, said Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, congressional Republicans have made nearly 50 separate assaults on the NLRB, from bills to gut its power and funding to hearings and subpoenas.
In fact later today, the House will vote on a bill that would deny workers the right to fair union elections by blocking the modest changes proposed by the NLRB earlier this year in the way union elections are conducted. As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told the audience: Read the rest of this entry »
Republican Jobs Plan? Gut Workers’ Rights, Safety and Health Laws
Time after time this year, congressional Republicans have voted against jobs-creating legislation, telling the fire fighters, teachers, construction workers and jobless Americans—“Don’t worry. We have our very own jobs plan.”
This week in the House, we get to see it in all its disingenuous glory. Here’s how congressional Republicans plan to create jobs—by attacking workers’ rights and gutting workplace and environmental safety and health laws. They really claim this is their jobs package.
The first bill (H.R. 3094) is scheduled to be voted on tomorrow. It would deny workers the right to fair union elections by blocking the modest changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) earlier this year in the way union elections are conducted. Read the rest of this entry »
Special Forum Nov. 30 Examines Attacks on NLRB, Workers’ Rights
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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the key agency in ensuring workers’ rights—is facing an unprecedented assault from partisan politicians and the 1 percent.
On Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m, panelists at a special forum at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., will look at how workers can challenge the attacks and highlight how this ongoing assault against the NLRB fits into the larger corporate-backed political agenda to degrade workers’ rights on the job, attack collective bargaining and gut middle-class jobs.
Veteran of Mexico City Workers’ Occupation Shares Strategy with Occupy DC
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Solidarity Center’s Lorraine Clewer sends us this report.
Humberto Montes de Oca, an union leader from the Mexican electrical workers union, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), knows a few things about long-term public occupations to protest injustice. He recently shared some of his knowledge with the activists of Occupy D.C., now nearing the two-month mark at McPherson Square Park in the nation’s capital.
In September, SME ended its six-month occupation of Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square. The action was one the strategies the union has employed since the Mexican government forcibly disbanded the union in 2009.
Montes de Oca visited the McPherson encampment with Julia Kahn from the Metropolitan D.C. Council, AFL-CIO. Despite the cold and rain, the pair drew a crowd of Occupiers who wanted to know how the long-term action was conducted.
He talked with the activists about the best ways to conduct community outreach, building sustainable ally networks and growing the occupation in a stressed-out city where people barely have time to stop and breath. Read the rest of this entry »
Mexican Electrical Workers Union Goes Global With Its Struggle
Leaders of the Mexican electrical workers union, along with the AFL-CIO and more than 100 global unions and human rights groups, are asking the U.S. government to negotiate with Mexico to stop the attacks on the union and workers or face sanctions. The Mexican government forcibly disbanded the union in 2009. The union movement has come under constant attack since Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office in 2006. Click here, here and here for more.
In a petition filed with the U.S. Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (TLA) Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) is asking that the United States find that the Mexican government has failed to enforce its own labor laws and protect workers’ rights. The Trade and Labor is the office within the Department of Labor that handles labor rights violations.
If the U.S. government finds that the Mexican government has failed to live up to its labor rights obligation under international labor and trade agreements, it would negotiate with the Mexican government. If talks fail to reach an agreement on enforcing labor and workers’ rights, sanctions could be applied.
A similar complaint was filed with the Canadian government in late October. This tri-national effort to win justice for thousands of SME members will be followed by a global call to action in solidarity with Mexican workers later this month.
