Throughout the United States, corporations are driving profound changes in employment relationships that affect all workers. Shedding responsibilities to their communities and escaping obligations to working women and men and their families. Changing full-time jobs into temporary work. Reclassifying long-time workers as independent contractors. Outsourcing to firms that pay low wages and provide few, if any, benefits. All in the pursuit of short-term profits. That's why working families, their unions and their communities are joining together to demand that corporations live up to their responsibilities.
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From America@work, May 1999. |
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Unions heading for the bargaining table this year will be holding employers accountable for maintaining good jobs. A new organization of high-tech workers, WashTech/Communications Workers, is organizing a powerful alliance of temporary workers and independent contractors in Washington State's booming technology industries. Union-community efforts to pass living wage laws are giving a critical boost to working families in cities and counties across the nation. The South Bay Labor Council in San Jose, Calif., has established a union-based temp agency that seeks to raise the pay and benefits for temporary workers. To preserve good jobs in the global market, Steelworkers have been waging a campaign to combat steel dumping on U.S. shores. And unions in every industry are taking an active role in shaping their investments to ensure their money is put to work in the long-term interest of union shareholders.
