Update from the AFL-CIO Web site
New members reported in this week’s WIP: 1,576
New members reported in WIP, year to date: 197,121
IT’S PERMANENT—After a three-year trial affiliation, members of Transit Supervisors Organization Local 106 in New York City recently voted for permanent affiliation with the Transport Workers. Local 106 represents more than 1,100 supervisory and clerical workers at the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Operations Authority and the New York City Transit Authority.
JUSTICE IN THE CARDS—Some 295 clerical workers at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., joined SEIU 1199Upstate July 5 after a card-check, in which the employer agrees to recognize the union if a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to join the union.
A RENAISSANCE IN PITTSBURGH—The city of Pittsburgh July 12 upheld Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Local 57’s right to represent 161 workers at the new Marriott Corp.-affiliated Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel. A majority of the workers chose a voice at work in a June card-check procedure conducted under a neutrality agreement between the union and management. The agreement was tied to the city giving the development tax breaks worth $3.6 million.
CVS CHOOSES UFCW—Twenty CVS drugstore workers in Middletown, Ohio, stood up for better benefits and chose a voice at work with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1099 in a July 16 election.
AFSCME ORGANIZES—AFSCME will host its first-ever organizing conference in September in Los Angeles. Under the banner of “Organize: It’s Up to Us!”, activists will gather to develop new strategies to marshal the union’s political, legislative and bargaining strength, along with the energy of its members, to continue its growth. The registration deadline is Aug. 3 and more information is available at www.afscme.org.
FINDING COMMON GROUND—Mexican President Vicente Fox, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa and UAW President Stephen Yokich met in Detroit July 16 for a wide-ranging discussion about improving wages, benefits and working conditions by organizing workers, trade relations, cross-border trucking and other working family issues. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles July 17, Jorge Castenada, Mexico’s foreign minister, addressed delegates at the HERE convention, praising the union movement’s call for legalization for undocumented immigrants. HERE President John Wilhelm told The New York Times, “Immigrants are in every workplace in the United States and they are not leaving. We have to make it clear that we are on their side.”
GOING TO COURT—The Steelworkers filed a petition July 6 with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The USWA originally filed suit in July 1998, charging NAFTA is unconstitutional because it is by definition a treaty and therefore requires a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate before being implemented. This past February, a federal appeals court ruled the challenge raised a “political question” beyond its jurisdiction.
DOL CAN RUN, BUT NOT HIDE—Chicago, hundreds of union, community, student and faith activists joined injured workers to protest the second of three sham forums held by the U.S. Department of Labor on such workplace ergonomic injuries as carpal tunnel syndrome. The July 20 rally—like the July 16 demonstration prior to a forum in suburban Washington, D.C.—slammed the Labor Department’s decision to stack the witness list in favor of Big Business interests while excluding such groups as the National Academy of Sciences and more than 100 workers who requested to testify. Workplace safety experts accuse the Bush administration of using the forums to deflect criticism from its March scuttling of a standard to protect workers against the workplace injuries.
BUSH’S SCARE TACTICS—A new report from President George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization commission uses scare tactics and half-truths to alarm the public unnecessarily about the country’s most effective family support program and lay the groundwork for private accounts, critics charge. In a draft report released July 19, the commission paints a “disingenuous and inflammatory critique of the program,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “If any doubts remain about how zealously President Bush’s Social Security privatization commission would prosecute its case against Social Security and for privatized individual investment accounts, the draft report will dispel them,” Sweeney said. The commission deliberately resorted to “scare tactics to persuade women and minority workers, in particular, that the program is failing them,” Sweeney said. In what may come as a shock to working families, the commission said neither workers nor retirees have legal ownership of their Social Security benefits. “Instead, what they have is a political promise that can be changed at any time, by any amount for any reason,” the commission wrote in a preface to the report. Bush’s privatization commission—stacked with financial industry and corporate executives, anti-government ideologues and retired politicians—plans to meet July 24 in Washington, D.C., to discuss the report. The panel is due to issue final recommendations in September. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/socialsecurity.
QUALITY CARE AND QUALITY JOBS—Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest HMOs, announced July 19 it will increase nurse staffing in its California hospitals. The move backs a proposal submitted to California regulators by the United Nurses Associates of California (UNAC), AFSCME and the SEIU Nurse Alliance, and results from a labor-management partnership between 26 unions and the HMO. Under a 1999 law, the state must issue minimum patient-nurse ratio regulations this year. UNAC President Kathy Sackman RN said, “There are three issues on the mind of every working nurse: staffing, staffing and staffing….With the labor-management partnership, we’ve created a new way to achieve real improvements in quality care and quality jobs.”
‘USEFUL’ TALKS—AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Carpenters President Doug McCarron plan to continue their “frank, friendly and useful discussions” about the Carpenters’ decision to leave the federation, according to a joint July 16 statement. Former Labor Secretary John Dunlop has been involved in several meetings and Building and Construction Trades President Edward Sullivan has been consulted. The two organizations are committed to try to resolve issues and achieve unity, they said.
UTU, BLE PLAN MERGER—The unaffiliated United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers announced July 23 the unions have reached a merger agreement, pending rank-and-file ratification. “The merged union would produce substantial financial savings by ending hostilities that have distracted both of us from doing what we are paid to do--represent our members’ interests with railroads and other transportation companies. Most importantly, the new union would vastly enhance our power and influence at the bargaining table,” and with lawmakers, said BLE President Edward Dubroski and UTU President Byron A. Boyd Jr. Ballots will be sent shortly to the unions’ 185,000 members in the United States and Canada.
WORKING TOGETHER—More than 20 local unions of the Electrical Workers, PACE International Union, IBT and three unaffiliated unions representing workers at ExxonMobil met recently to develop a coordinated strategy to address major issues at the merged energy giant. “We are deeply concerned that ExxonMobil will adopt the lowest standards rather than the highest in dealing with the combined workforce of the two companies,” said Ken Evans, chair of the newly formed ExxonMobil Union Council. |
