DEC. 10 GIVES WORKERS’ RIGHTS FIGHT NEW MOMENTUM
In the largest workers’ rights mobilization in 15 years, the union movement worldwide gained new momentum as some 60,000 people took to the streets in more than 120 events during the week leading up to International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10. International Human Rights Day commemorates the anniversary of the ratification of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the right of people in every nation to form unions and bargain contracts.
In Hong Kong Dec. 10, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney joined with trade union leaders from around the world to rally and deliver a proposal to the World Trade Organization for global trade rules that respect workers’ freedom to form unions. “Workplace rights and workplace democracy are fundamental to any true democracy,” Sweeney said. “Workers need to have the right in their workplace to bargain with their employer to ensure that they receive fair and just treatment. Without workplace democracy there can be no democracy.”
In Cambodia, members of eight labor federations, 18 nongovernmental organizations, four student and youth associations and one law firm held a mass rally Dec. 10 to call for workers’ rights as human rights.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, workers marked 10 years of peace Dec. 10 by focusing the country’s attention on workers’ rights as human rights. Unions in the Upper Drina region launched a joint organizing program aimed at reaching out to workers of all nationalities within the region.
In the United States, the Mine Workers announced a new organizing campaign Dec. 9 at St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company (see Mining for a Union at Peabody below).
In Washington, D.C., thousands of workers on Dec. 8 marched to the White House to tell President George W. Bush they will not accept his proposals to take collective bargaining rights from 650,000 civilian Defense Department workers and 160,000 Homeland Security employees. They delivered a petition signed by nearly 100,000 workers calling on the president to honor workers’ freedom to form unions. A wide array of union leaders took part in the march and rally, including AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, Presidents John Gage of AFGE, Gerald McEntee of AFSCME, Capt. Duane Woerth of the Air Line Pilots and Reg Weaver of the unaffiliated National Education Association and Antonia Cortese, executive vice president of AFT.
In New York City, workers celebrated a new model agreement between Lifespire, a nonprofit agency serving people with developmental disabilities, and the Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME Local 1000. After a bitter 10-month battle, the company agreed to remain neutral in the organizing campaign and recognize the union if a majority of the more than 1,000 workers signs authorization cards.
In Boston, 4,000 workers from across New England rallied and marched to several locations, including a department store where union/community alliances successfully fought off attempts by Wal-Mart to locate in downtown Boston. They also marched to a Verizon Wireless office, where the company harasses and intimidates members of the Electrical Workers, Communications Workers of America and other unions in an effort to break the union.
In Philadelphia, Republican members of Congress Reps. Michael Fitzpatrick and Curt Weldon signed on Dec. 6 as co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 842 and H.R. 1696), which would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to form unions by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation. So far 207 representatives and 42 senators have signed on as co-sponsors. Workers in New York and Philadelphia also rallied in support of graduate assistants at New York University (see NYU Strikers Determined to Win below) and the University of Pennsylvania seeking recognition of their choice of a union.
In Oakland, Calif., hundreds of workers marched Dec. 6 to City Hall, where they highlighted the struggle Comcast workers face in their efforts to join CWA.
In other working family news...
CHILD CARE WORKERS CHOOSE AFSCME—In Newark, Ohio, 51 Licking County (Ohio) Child Support Enforcement Agency workers voted Dec. 6 to join AFSCME Local 2963.
MECHANICS TUNE UP FOR UNION—Automotive mechanics, service employees and parts workers at dealerships in Connecticut and Ohio voted recently to join the Machinists. At Bob Townsend Colerain Ford in Cincinnati, 23 workers voted to join IAM Local 804 and seven workers at County Line BMW, Inc., in Watertown, Conn., also voted to join IAM.
MINING FOR A UNION AT PEABODY—More than 1,100 workers and activists marched on the headquarters of Peabody Energy and the offices of Gov. Matt Blunt (R) in St. Louis as the Mine Workers launched the largest organizing campaign in the nation’s coalfields in decades on Dec. 9 with workers at Peabody Energy. Peabody miners are seeking to form a union to win safety improvements and better pay and benefits. “I’d like a voice about my job,” said Greg Arnold, who works in a Peabody mine in Indiana. Arnold was joined at a St. Louis press conference by UMWA President Cecil Roberts and John Maitland, national secretary of Australia’s Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. St. Louis-based Peabody is the world’s largest coal company with 2004 revenues of $3.6 billion. Earlier in the week, the AFL-CIO called on Peabody to reform its elections for directors of its board. Last May, 70 percent of shareholders voted in favor of an AFL-CIO-sponsored resolution to elect directors annually but Peabody management has yet to implement the resolution.
NYU STRIKERS DETERMINED TO WIN—As the strike by graduate teaching and research assistants at NYU nears the six-week mark, the assistants said they will not end their strike until the university recognizes their union, despite threats by NYU’s president to suspend their stipends. Michael Palm, president of the Student Organizing Committee/UAW Local 2110, said the graduate employees are prepared to continue their strike into next semester. The 1,000 graduate employees walked out Nov. 9 to protest the university’s refusal to bargain a second contract. More than 500 professors have joined the protest by teaching classes off campus during the strike. The school announced Aug. 5 it no longer would recognize the union and let the contract lapse. In 2004, the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a Clinton administration ruling and abolished federal labor law protections for graduate employees at private universities. But nothing in the NLRB ruling prevents NYU and other universities from voluntarily recognizing the union. To learn more about the graduate assistants’ fight for a second contract, click on www.2110uaw.org/gsoc.
RICH WIN AGAIN WITH HOUSE TAX CUT—The nation’s wealthiest will get the biggest share of a massive $56 billion tax cut that U.S. House Republican leaders muscled through Dec. 8. The 234–197 vote came three weeks after the package failed to win support, but the Thanksgiving recess gave Republican leaders time to twist enough arms for passage. It also follows a $50 billion package of spending cuts in programs serving working families and the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and student loans, which Republican leaders pushed through by two votes Nov. 18. “The poor suffer. The rich benefit. The middle class pays the bill,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during debate on the tax cut. Three-quarters of the tax cuts’ benefits go to people with $100,000 or more and 40 percent goes to millionaires in tax cuts for capital gains and dividends. Last month the Senate passed smaller versions of the tax cut and spending cut bills. A House-Senate conference will meld the bills into a final package.
E-HEARING OPENS FOR GM AND DELPHI WORKERS—Current and retired workers at General Motors Corp. (GM) and Delphi Corp. can testify about the devastating personal impact of moves by those companies to cut jobs and benefits. Last week a dozen U.S. representatives launched an online “e-hearing” to solicit testimony from current and retired GM and Delphi workers. “Tens of thousands of U.S. autoworkers have received terrible news about wage and benefit cuts, plant closings and looming layoffs. The announcements from GM and Delphi are major economic tragedies, yet Congress has not scheduled a single hearing to examine their effects on workers,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). Comments can be submitted to autocrisis@mail.house.gov.
CWA, IBEW REACH DEAL WITH AT&T—CWA and the Electrical Workers reached a tentative agreement Dec. 11 with AT&T. If ratified, the new four-year deal would raise wages 11.2 percent over term, improve pensions and increase job security. The contract also maintains employer-paid health care premiums for active and retired members for the life of the agreement. The contract covers 12,000 workers nationwide. This is the first contract for the workers since SBC Communications bought AT&T earlier this year and adopted the AT&T name.
WORKERS’ COMP LAWS CHALLENGED—Seventy unions and building trades councils in Missouri filed suit Nov. 30 asking a state court to throw out a package of workers’ compensation law changes passed by the 2005 legislature. The suit charges the new corporate-backed laws impose unreasonable barriers to employees seeking remedy for workplace injuries and are unconstitutional.
PASSENGER SERVICE DEAL REACHED—The Passenger Service Employees Association, an alliance of the CWA and the unaffiliated Teamsters, reached agreement with US Airways on outstanding issues raised by the merger of the airline with America West Airlines. The agreement, reached Dec. 6, provides wage increases beginning in April. By the end of 2007 all agents will be on the same salary scale. After two years, under the unified contract, CWA will represent agents in the eastern part of the country and IBT will represent those in the western states.
CEOS GET RICHER, WORKERS MAKE LESS FOR MORE WORK—CEO pay is rising at an astronomical pace while workers’ wages are dropping or stagnating, according to new reports. The average CEO made 431 times the salary of a production worker in 2004, up from 301-to-1 in 2003 and 24-to-1 in the mid-1960s, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. While CEOs get richer, workers are producing more and taking home less pay. Worker productivity increased 4.7 percent during the third quarter of 2005, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, while real hourly wages and benefits decreased by 1.4 percent, compared with an even higher 3.1 percent decrease in the previous quarter. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/ or visit www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/index.cfm to see how CEO pay has been growing at the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch website.
ACT NOW TO AID JOBLESS HURRICANE SURVIVORS—Your help is urgently needed to help families left jobless by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita collect extra disaster benefits they desperately need to pay their bills. Call or e-mail your senators and representative and urge them to support bringing to the floor and passage of the Gulf Coast Recovery Act (H.R. 4438) before Congress leaves for its holiday recess Dec. 16. A House subcommittee approved the bipartisan bill, which would extend and increase federal disaster unemployment insurance for families that run out of their limited 26 weeks of federal assistance. Tell your lawmakers to demand that the bill come to the floor before Dec. 16. Contact information for lawmakers is available at www.house.gov/ and www.senate.gov/.
HURRICANE HOUSING HELP—The AFL-CIO, the Louisiana AFL-CIO, ACORN, the Consumer Federation of America and other consumer and fair lending groups are urging the financial service industry to grant homeowners affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita another 90-day extension on home loan payments. In the days following the hurricanes, many banks and other lenders granted homeowners mortgage payment extensions and other flexible options as the area began its recovery and rebuilding. Some lenders have indicated they may begin demanding payment soon despite the slow pace of economic recovery in the region. Also, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced Dec. 5 it is establishing a mortgage relief program for hurricane-area homeowners with FHA loans. For more information on the FHA program, visit www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr05-164.cfm.
AFGE BACKS 9/11 SECURITY REPORT—A scathing report on the Bush administration’s failure to improve the nation’s security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “is extremely worrisome and only reinforces AFGE’s assertions that the administration is not doing enough to protect the American public,” said AFGE National Homeland Security Council President Charles Showalter. The final report by the 9/11 Commission gave the Bush administration twice as many Cs, Ds and Fs as it did As or Bs for its efforts to improve security against possible terrorism. “That simply is unacceptable. How can we trust this administration on any issues when it’s proven unable to meet our security needs?” asked Showalter. AFGE called on Congress and the Bush administration to immediately implement the 9/11 Commission’s suggestions on improving national security.
PICK THE GRINCH—Jobs with Justice’s fifth annual online Grinch of the Year contest will determine which greedy Grinch has done the most harm to working families this year. Nominees are: Verizon Wireless, which has engaged in a massive anti-union campaign against its workers trying to exercise the right to form a union and bargain for a fair contract; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for his effort to strip more than 600,000 federal employees of their collective bargaining rights in the largest denial of union rights in U.S. history; Wal-Mart, for its poverty-level wages that leave more than 600,000 Wal-Mart workers with no company health care, forcing nearly one out of every two children of Wal-Mart workers to be uninsured or rely on public programs and for trampling workers’ rights to join a union.
