Labor Union Blog

The Starbucks Workers Union plans to step up for Martin Luther King in 2008. The New York City based union is asking the international chain to pay employees the holiday premium on January 21 – Martin Luther King Day.

The National Labor Relations Board handed down a major blow to union organizing during the Christmas break. The board ruled 3-2 that an employer could have a policy prohibiting employees from using the company’s email network for union activities. A company had punished an employee for sending union related emails via the company’s network. The NLRB found that while the company had allowed for some other non-work related emails in the past it had never allowed email use to solicit for groups or organizations. Two of the three emails sent by the employee were viewed as solicitation by the board so they violated company policy.

FedEx learned two weeks ago that misclassifying workers as independent contractors is illegal. The Internal Revenue Service hit the package delivery company with a $319 million fine when it determined that FedEx ground workers were employees. In a statement Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said “It’s game over for FedEx’s independent contract scam.”

New York City nearly started the New Year with 26,000 workers on the picket lines around the city. A tentative four year contract reached with more than 1000 city office buildings by the Service Employees International Union Local 32bj averted a strike that was set to go down at midnight on Tuesday. The SEIU had been seeking a pay increase higher than the inflation rate – that goal was achieved when the building owners agreed to a basic wage that would increase over four years from $19.15 per hour to $22.65.

Regardless of the writer’s strike most of the late night talk show hosts will be returning to the air in early January, however, David Letterman will have one thing the rest won’t – writers. The host of Late Night has negotiated a separate contract with the Writer’s Guild of America via his production company Worldwide Pants. Letterman has been off the air since November 5, but will return to broadcasting on January 2. The new contract negotiated between the Guild and Worldwide Pants offers provisions that will pay writers for work distributed via emerging media distribution technologies such as the Internet.

Regardless of the writer’s strike most of the late night talk show hosts will be returning to the air in early January, however, David Letterman will have one thing the rest won’t – writers. The host of Late Night has negotiated a separate contract with the Writer’s Guild of America via his production company Worldwide Pants. Letterman has been off the air since November 5, but will return to broadcasting on January 2. The new contract negotiated between the guild and Worldwide Pants offers provisions that will pay writers for work distributed via emerging media distribution technologies such as the Internet.

Thanks to their Republican friends, big drug companies can continue to gouge seniors for prescription drugs after the Senate killed a bill in April to give Medicare the right to negotiate for lower prices.

From a brand new Congress taking the reins on Capitol Hill in January to the AFL-CIO’s first-ever global organizing conference in December, working families have seen some significant victories, unfortunate setbacks and a lot of unfinished business this year. We take a look back at 2007 in a series of posts. Today in Part 2, a quick glance at top items from April through June. Click here to read Part 1.

April