Labor Union Blog

LL Bean is the most recent company to be hit by the recession. The outdoors outfitter based out of Maine announced on Friday it would be letting go of 200 to 240 workers in it’s home state. The company had offered voluntary retirement incentives in February, but according to a letter from CEO Chris McCormick it wasn’t enough to complete eliminate the need for layoffs. The company plans to start notifying workers who will be laid off as early as today. The company currently has a wage freeze in place. Maine won’t be immune to layoffs. LL Bean expects it will be necessary to make additiona

LL Bean is the most recent company to be hit by the recession. The outdoors outfitter based out of Maine announced on Friday it would be letting go of 200 to 240 workers in it’s home state. The company had offered voluntary retirement incentives in February, but according to a letter from CEO Chris McCormick it wasn’t enough to complete eliminate the need for layoffs. The company plans to start notifying workers who will be laid off as early as today. The company currently has a wage freeze in place. Maine won’t be immune to layoffs. LL Bean expects it will be necessary to make additiona

Lede: Reforming temporary worker programs is the goal of legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

The H1-B and L-1 Visa Reform Act would change the temporary worker programs by stepping up U.S. worker recruitment and investment, improving wage standards and strengthening the Department of Labor’s ability to prevent and penalize obvious fraud in the programs among other changes. The AFL-CIO says under current law unscrupulous employers are given license to abuse the programs by exploiting workers. The result is that labor standards are driven down and U.S.

Lede: Reforming temporary worker programs is the goal of legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

The H1-B and L-1 Visa Reform Act would change the temporary worker programs by stepping up U.S. worker recruitment and investment, improving wage standards and strengthening the Department of Labor’s ability to prevent and penalize obvious fraud in the programs among other changes. The AFL-CIO says under current law unscrupulous employers are given license to abuse the programs by exploiting workers. The result is that labor standards are driven down and U.S.

On Tuesday, construction workers rallied in Albany, Ne to show their support for legislation that would establish a prevailing wage for projects funded with public money. New York State Senator Neil Breslin spoke at the event and said New York workers shouldn’t have to sit home while their tax dollars are being spent on projects paying substandard wages.

[Breslin]: Don’t want any of my union brothers and sisters to be denied that prevailing wage and to sit home with your faimly knowing your taxes are paying for wages that don’t provide the dignity of fair pay…the dignity

The legislation was carried over from the previous New York legislature and organized labor in the state is sure it has a chance of passing. Senator Roy MacDonald is a former steelworker:

Grandstanding is a favorite pastime of the former speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich. Truth, however, has never played a big role in his self-trumpeting. 

In a recent Politico column, Gingrich advances a laundry list of falsehoods about the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s the latest grab at public attention in his angling for a place in the 2012 elections. 

First, he pushes the lie that the Employee Free Choice Act takes away the secret ballot process for workers deciding whether to form a union. The Employee Free Choice Act does not take away the secret ballot. It gives to workers the right to use an already legal process for deciding on unionization—a streamlined process called majority sign-up, or card check. 

The bill adds choice for workers, who will decide which process to use. The Employee Free Choice Act is an amendment to existing federal labor law that makes no change whatsoever in the current election procedures.

So, Newt: How about reading the Employee Free Choice Act text and pointing out where it says the secret ballot is taken away? Hint: You won’t be able to find it because it doesn’t exist. 

After this straw man argument, Gingrich purports to have found another insidious provision of the bill—binding arbitration. He’s referring to a portion of the Employee Free Choice Act that would guarantee that workers at the bargaining table are able to achieve a contract. 

The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process for helping parties in a newly formed union bargain a contract through mediation and arbitration, if necessary, to resolve outstanding disputes. These tools are necessary because 44 percent of newly formed unions never reach a first contract.

Current law actually provides an incentive for companies that fail to reach a contract.  Managers negotiating a first contract with employees drag out the process as long as they can, sometimes literally for years. 

Newt should talk with employees like Johanna Moon, a 25-year veteran of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Despite joining the UAW two years ago, Moon and her colleagues still do not have a contract. The workers formed a union because, despite many years on the job, they were living paycheck to paycheck, and some had no health coverage. If the Employee Free Choice Act was law, these workers would have a contract. Clearly, they need one badly. 

Newt then sheds crocodile tears for the workers who didn’t vote for a union, saying a contract would be foisted upon them under the Employee Free Choice Act. Guess what, Newt? Probably not many workers would reject better wages and affordable health care. Would you? 

Gingrich also sounds the [false] alarm over companies going out of business with unionized workforces. Here’s a little history lesson for you, Newt: The 1950s, a decade in which the United States saw its greatest unionization rate, was also, not coincidentally, among the most prosperous decades of American history. 

Gingrich uses a discredited study by corporate mouthpiece Anna Layne-Farrar to assert that greater unionization would worsen unemployment. Economist Lawrence Mishel calls this “crackpot economics.” Mishel says that using the study’s logic, the United States would have “negative unemployment” as a result of the decrease in union membership over the past 30 years. In fact, many other countries, including England, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway, have higher unionization and lower unemployment than the United States. 

Here’s someone else Newt needs to talk with: Colorado small business owner Larry Martinez. He’s one of the hundreds of business owners across the country who knows the freedom to form unions and bargain isn’t just good for workers—it’s good for the whole economy. Says Martinez: 

I believe this bill is a smart piece of legislation, which makes it easier for workers to have a voice at the workplace. I am not frightened in the least by the concept of sitting with employees and negotiating around wages and benefits. Employee buy-in for making my company more profitable is in my best interest and that of my employees. 

Profits. That’s an all-American concept we can all support, one that companies with unionized workers see more of because of the high productivity of a unionized workforce. 

Newt then plays up the supposed bogeyman of government intervention in the private sector. But guess what, Newt: Those secret ballots are gathered by and counted by the government. The government already is in the process.

As for those billions Gingrich erroneously cites as being spent by unions on behalf of the Employee Free Choice Act? It isn’t the union movement spending that kind of money. It’s Gingrich’s corporate buddies who have launched a mega-million-dollar campaign to fight workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. 

The bottom line is that Gingrich is spewing more red herring arguments that aren’t based in fact and that serve only one bottom line: His political ambitions to ingratiate himself with reactionaries.

Union members march for Employee Free Choice in Stockton, California.

Many of America’s veterans have come out in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, among them, active and retired union members who have served in the armed forces. In Arkansas, these vets got together Wednesday for a briefing to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act. They discussed how the freedom to form a union and fairness and respect in the workplace are among the values for which they fought. 

David Anderson, a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran and president of the Arkansas State Association of Letter Carriers, said the Employee Free Choice Act is needed to give workers who serve their country and community the opportunities they deserve: 

The same workers who helped make these companies successful are intimidated and sometimes fired for trying to organize the workers in their job. What a sad way to treat those workers, especially the veterans.

Across the country, union members continue to write their senators in support of Employee Free Choice.
Arkansas workers find out how they can join the fight for the freedom to form unions.

Larry Martinez of Colorado is one of the hundreds of small business owners across the country who knows that the freedom to form unions and bargain isn’t just good for workers—it’s good for the whole economy. 

“I believe this bill is a smart piece of legislation, which makes it easier for workers to have a voice at the workplace. I am not frightened in the least by the concept of sitting with employees and negotiating around wages and benefits. Employee buy-in for making my company more profitable is in my best interest and that of my employees.” 

In advance of April 28, Pay Equity Day, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) is supporting Employee Free Choice with valuable resources showing how women benefit from the formation of unions. Carol Rosenblatt, CLUW’s executive director, took part in a radio interview on why this bill is so critical—you can listen here. 

Elsewhere around the country, union members are thanking their lawmakers for supporting the Employee Free Choice Act and urging others to do so.

In Louisiana, union members delivered hundreds of letters in support of the legislation to Sen. Mary Landrieu.

In Virginia, union members and allies delivered their thanks to Reps. Gerry Connolly and Jim Moran, two co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Letter-writing efforts to senators continue in Montana, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska. In Colorado, union members are taking part in town meetings and door-to-door canvassing to get the word out. 

In Indiana, community groups and union members across the state are engaged in the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act, pushing back against corporate anti-worker disinformation campaigns. In Indianapolis, UAW Local 933 President Allen Harris says now is the time to restore the freedom to form unions:

The Employee Free Choice Act is what America needs. Those people that are brave enough to stand up for their co-workers need protection from firings and harassment, and this bill will do just that. We all need to step up and get involved in this campaign because this is our best shot to reform the current laws.

Florida workers protest a corporate union-busting seminar.

Paul Pimentel, research director for the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA), reports on the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

As the debate heats up in the U.S. Congress over passage of the Employee Free Choice Act—a bill that would allow workers’ freedom to bargain with corporations for better wages and benefits—Big Business is spending millions of dollars to kill the bill with a disingenuous disinformation campaign that includes TV and radio advertisements, lobbying members of Congress and holding nationwide seminars like the one held earlier today by the South Florida Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) Association. 

This time, scores of union activists and allies were on hand to greet seminar goers and get the truth out about the Employee Free Choice Act.

Seminars like the one held by the ABC are similar to one attended by Art Levine, an undercover reporter who now writes for The Huffington Post. In the seminar, an attorney from the infamous law firm Jackson Lewis remarked on handling pro-union supervisors: 

“You know what we do with a supervisor who comes to you and says, ‘Hey, boss, it wasn’t me, they said it was the company’?” asked Stieff. He jerked his tie upwards against his neck to suggest a hanging—the only time the lawyers openly hinted at lawbreaking.

What if we simply wanted to fire union organizers? That was possible to do, said Stieff, as long as you were careful to do so for other reasons. “Union sympathizers aren’t entitled to any more protection than other workers,” he explained. But the firing could not be linked to their union activity.”

Jackson Lewis made headlines recently when its efforts during a recent campaign led to more than 120 labor law violations and $7.75 million in fines. Its client, EnerSys, sued the firm for waging a “relentless and unlawful campaign to oust the union.”

SMWIA Local 32 and the unions of the South Florida AFL-CIO have made thousands of calls to Sen. Bill Nelson thanking him for co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act.  And they have also delivered more than 15,000 letters to Sens. Nelson and Mel Martinez, as well as the South Florida Congressional Delegation, asking them for their support of the bill.

The effort to bring justice to Southern California car wash workers took a step forward this week when a state legislative committee voted to renew the Golden State’s “Carwash Worker Law” after hearing from a Los Angeles car wash worker who testified about conditions on the job. The 6-1 vote in the Committee on Labor and Employment sends the bill (AB 236) to the Committee on Appropriations. If Appropriations approves, the bill will move to a floor vote.

Manuel Zuniga described for the committee the conditions at the Florence Car Wash in Los Angeles, where he worked for more than three years until he was fired last December after filing a claim with the state regarding stolen wages.

Zuniga told the committee he worked 10- and 11-hour days and was only paid between $35 and $48 per day. The state’s minimum wage is $8 per hour, and any hours worked in excess of eight must be paid at time and a half. Zuniga said:

I have a wife and children who need my support. I cannot pay for life’s necessities on those wages. There was so much injustice in our workplace. Some of my co-workers worked for tips only, getting no wages at all. Many times, the boss would not let us take breaks to rest or eat meals.

Zuniga said he was fired for telling state investigators the truth:

After some of us filed wage claims with the labor commissioner, there was an investigation. Our boss told us to lie to the investigator, to say that we were paid $8 per hour and that everything was okay at work. But I would not lie. Later on I was fired.

The car wash law is set to expire Dec. 31, 2009. The bill would renew the law and make it permanent.

Attorney Kevin Kish told the committee car wash workers are some of the most exploited workers in the state. He said employers routinely do not pay the legal minimum wage, do not grant workers meal or rest breaks and do not pay appropriate taxes or insurance premiums.

He added that the Carwash Worker Law has begun to level the playing field for workers as well as for law-abiding business owners who want the law to end the unfair competition in their industry.

The effort to gain justice for the “carwasheros” is being led by the Community-Labor-Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), a coalition of more than 130 organizations, including labor unions, to immigrant rights organizations and environmental and worker health and safety advocates, working to improve working conditions in the car wash industry. 

In February, Los Angeles city Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the city’s top prosecutor, filed criminal charges against two local car wash owners, four of their facilities and the manager of one of the city’s biggest car wash operations.

The complaint charges Benny and Nisan Pirian, the car wash owners, and Manuel Reyes, manager of the Pirian-owned Vermont Hand Wash, with 176 counts of criminal misconduct—including conspiracy, witness intimidation, grand theft, brandishing a deadly weapon, failure to pay wages and failure to comply with wage orders of the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission regulating workplace conditions.

Last year, the mostly immigrant car wash workers throughout Los Angeles had formed the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee (CWOC) of the United Steelworkers (USW) to raise their standard of living, secure basic workplace protections and address the serious environmental and safety hazards in their industry. 

California leads the nation in the number of car wash operations. The car washes are highly profitable with a typical return on investment of more than 40 percent, according to a CWOC report, “Cleaning Up the Carwash Industry: Empowering Workers and Protecting Communities.” However, the report says profits from this industry are largely derived from violations of workers’ legal rights, including rampant noncompliance with minimum wage, overtime, rest and meal period requirements. Car wash workers routinely work 50 to 60 hours a week and average $12,500 a year, with no benefits.