div class=flexinode-body flexinode-1div class=flexinode-textarea-2div class=form-item
labelHeadlines:/labelbr /
ul
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10030WIN Week In Review December 5-7, 2008a//li
/ul
/div
/div/div
p WIN Week In Review December 5-7, 2008/p
p By Doug Cunningham/p
p[Gettelfinger]: “I believe that we could lose General Motors by the end of this month.” by the end of this month.”/p
p[Gov. Granholm]: “If we let these auto industries fail, it will turn a recession into a depression.”/p
pUAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm on the emergency faced by the U.S. auto industry.br /
After hearing more testimony Thursday, Congress may reconvene soon to provide federal loans to the beleaguered U.S. Auto industry. Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd says if Congress doesn’t act to save the industry, it’s playing Russian Roulette with an economy already in deep recession. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says bankruptcy for the Detroit Three is “not an option.” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger says workers and their unions are not to blame for the auto industry’s crisis./p
Eleanor Trice of Union Privilege, which provides consumer benefits to union members, tells us about a new offer.
As credit becomes increasingly difficult to obtain, it’s more important than ever for union members to know how lenders and credit issuers are judging them.
Through a special limited-time offer from Fair Isaac/myFICO, Union Plus is offering union members the ability to get their free FICO score online. A limited number of free FICO scores are available on a first-come, first-served basis to union members only. (FICO is a registered trademark of Fair Isaac and is the most used credit score.)
 |
||||
|
||||
Earlier this week, Zimbabwe police arrested more than 70 members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), including Secretary General Wellington Chibebe.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the ZCTU organized peaceful marches to protest against the financial crisis in Zimbabwe by delivering petitions to banks. Chibebe and ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo succeeded in handing the ZCTU petition to the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Chibebe was arrested, with nine other people, while he was addressing workers just after the delivery. Arrests and assaults were reported in the cities of Harare, Gweru, Zvishavane and Bulawayo as trade unionists delivered petitions to banks across the country.
The ZCTU announced late yesterday that 18 protestors, including Chibebe, had been released without charges.
After a yearlong effort, hospital workers at Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nev., now have a voice on the job after voting this week to join Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9413.
The 540 new union members include certified nursing assistants, environmental services staff, food service personnel, technicians, orderlies and other support staff.
The campaign to join a union was a major team effort. Strong support came from CWA District 9 staff and organizers from three CWA locals. Two CWA members at AT&T—Sophia Guadron and Lili Vega—took leave from their jobs to provide critical bilingual language assistance in several key areas during the campaign’s final months.
More than 2,000 Pittsburgh Port Authority workers won a new contract and more news here from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
Settlements
ATU, Port Authority: Some 2,300 Pittsburgh Port Authority workers, represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 85, reached a tentative agreement, four days after the national AFL-CIO began mediating the talks in Washington, D.C. The Port Authority previously planned to implement its final offer.
IFPTE, Boeing: Some 21,000 members of the Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) working at Boeing ratified new four-year contracts in Seattle, Utah, California and Oregon. Contract highlights include a 2 percent to 2.5 percent wage increase and a 5 percent increase in the “base salary fund” each year of the contract.
 |
|
Despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to push through Congress a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) this year, the reality is that Colombia has not stemmed the violence against trade unionists or brought those responsible to justice.
In short, Colombia has a long way to go before a free trade pact should be considered.
The head of Human Rights Watch recently wrote three top House leaders urging them to remain steadfast in insisting that Colombia clean up its act before approving any new trade deal. In the letter, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth says:
Free trade should be premised on fundamental respect for human rights, especially the rights of the workers producing the goods to be traded. In Colombia, workers cannot exercise their rights without fear of being threatened or killed.
 |
|
Congress and President Bush quickly signed off on a $700 billion, nearly no-strings-attached bailout to Wall Street and the nation’s financial industry. Now, says the UAW in a new TV commercial, it’s time to focus on Main Street. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger puts it this way:
Main Street deserves help just as much as the bankers on Wall Street. It is time for Congress to do its job to save millions of American jobs and prevent our nation from falling deeper in recession.
The ad, which began airing this week in the Washington, D.C., area, features UAW members urging Congress to approve a bridge loan to allow U.S. automakers to keep their assembly lines rolling. They tell viewers:
We don’t work on Wall Street…or for big insurance companies. We build quality cars and trucks. But we’ve been hit by the same financial crisis.
If we go out of business…so will thousands of other businesses….If we lose our jobs…so will millions of others….
 |
|
The United States is bleeding jobs: Today’s unemployment figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show a mind-numbing 533,000 jobs lost in November, the largest monthly jobs loss in 34 years. The already bad 6.5 percent unemployment rate worsened to 6.7 percent, and some 1.9 million workers have lost their jobs this year.
The number of workers who have lost their jobs in November is far larger than the 300,000 predicted by many economists, and doesn’t reflect drastic layoff plans announced by major corporations in recent days.
Yesterday, AT&T Inc., DuPont Co., Viacom Inc., Credit Suisse Group and Avis Budget Group announced job cuts that total 22,850, and earlier this week, financial firms such as The Carlyle Group said they’d cut a total of 3,000 jobs.
As bad as the November job loss numbers are, the unemployment situation is far worse than the latest figures show. First, many of the jobs lost aren’t coming back. According to the BLS:
Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their jobs and did not expect to be recalled to work increased by 298,000 to 4.7 million in November.
Recent Comments