Thanks to Roger Kerson of the UAW for letting us know about the victory of Bally’s Atlantic City casino workers who are seeking a better life by joining a union. Bally’s had appealed the workers’ decision to join UAW to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Here is UAW’s announcement of the win:
A rally by community leaders to support collective bargaining rights for dealers and other casino workers turned into an impromptu victory celebration Wednesday when the NLRB confirmed a June 2007 election victory at Bally’s and certified the UAW as the union chosen by full- and part-time dealers, keno and simulcast workers.
“This is great news!” said Chun Zhu, a dealer at Bally’s.
Workers and their unions continue to reach across borders to create lasting relationships that will build strength to help balance the struggle between the rich and working people in the global economy.
Today, the AFL-CIO and Enlace, a network of workers’ rights groups in the United States and Mexico, took an important step in helping low-wage workers by entering into a new partnership agreement to promote and advance social and economic justice in both nations.
Enlace, which means “link” in Spanish, is a network of 21 worker centers, unions and organizing groups representing approximately 300,000 low-wage workers in the United States and Mexico.
Mother’s Day is one of the biggest days in the year for flower sales. But the thousands of women who pick most of the flowers we give proudly to our mothers will not enjoy that day.
More than 60 percent of the flowers sold in the United States come from Colombia. Two-thirds of the nearly 100,000 flower workers in Colombia are women, many of them working mothers. They often are required to work 12-to-15-hour days with few breaks, especially in the weeks before holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. As a result, many have been injured on the job and suffer health problems related to overexposure to pesticides and humiliating and degrading treatment by management. All for paltry poverty-level wages.
This year, U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), an advocacy group for working women in Latin America, has come up with a way you can support the flower workers in Colombia and give your mother a great gift.
When union members from the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s (BCTD‘s) National Legislative Conference hit Capitol Hill on Tuesday, one of the bills they urged their lawmakers to back had just been introduced that day.
The legislation (H.R. 5804) would put a halt to what the BCTD calls a “scam of unprecedented magnitude”—by eliminating the provision in the tax code that allows employers to escape paying employment taxes when they misclassify workers as independent contractors instead of employees. The problem is especially prevalent in the construction industry.
More than 200,000 jobless workers a month run out of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits without finding new jobs. Some 3.5 million unemployed workers are expected to exhaust their benefits this year.
That’s six months without work or prospects for a new job in an economy that is shedding jobs and on a downward spiral that most economists say isn’t even close to bottoming out.
Yesterday, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee took the first step to helping the long-term jobless when it passed a bill (H.R. 5749) to provide an additional 13 weeks of UI benefits for jobless workers in every state and an additional 13 weeks to those in states with high unemployment rates.
By Doug Cunningham
Responding to a restraining order obtained by the California Nurses Association against SEIU, SEIU President Andy Stern says that “under no circumstances have SEIU members or staff harassed CNA members or leadership. “ Stern says nurses and hospital workers from Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) have “bravely led a national effort to engage CNA leadership in a dialogue about their vicious “vote no” campaign in Ohio and are committed to continue these efforts.”
Stern says the CAN insists on presenting what Stern calls misleading and inaccurate stories about members and staff of SEIU.
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