Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

Older worker unemployment rates are on the rise. The unemployment rate for 55 year olds and older jumped by 4.4 percent from May to June in comparison to an increase of 1 percent among those under the age of 55. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of time older workers are unemployed is 29.9 weeks. That’s eight weeks longer than the amount of unemployment time for younger workers.

Economic Report:

Older worker unemployment rates are on the rise. The unemployment rate for 55 year olds and older jumped by 4.4 percent from May to June in comparison to an increase of 1 percent among those under the age of 55. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of time older workers are unemployed is 29.9 weeks. That’s eight weeks longer than the amount of unemployment time for younger workers.

Autoworkers in Fenton, Missouri are ready to fight for their jobs and are calling on the community to join them. Workers of an assembly plant in Fenton that watched as the last Dodge Ram was assembled more than a week ago are planning a “Keep jobs in America” rally on July 24. The jobs at the Fenton plant are being sent to Mexico and Michigan. Overall Chrysler is closing eight plants and part of the rally will be protesting the company taking billions in bailout money as it shifts those jobs out of the United States.

The Service Employees International Union continues to make strides when it comes to organizing hospitals and healthcare facilities in Massachusetts. Last week more than 400 workers at Union Hospital in Lynn voted to join the Local 1199 branch of the union. The successful organizing vote comes on the heels of a victory last month when the SEIU was granted the right to represent nearly 500 workers at Carney Hospital in Boston and three months ago 800 workers at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center voted in favor of joining the union. The successful votes represent a sea change in the Boston area where for decades no hospitals were unionized.

In August 2008, some 5,800 University of California (UC) postdoctoral researchers—”postdocs”—chose to join the UAW. But nearly a year later, they are still without a contract. A recent bargaining update on the Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/UAW (PRO/UAW) website said UC was “stalling and delaying” talks. 

Union negotiators told the San Diego Union-Tribune that major issues, including wages, benefits, workload and workers’ rights are still on the table after months of negotiations. A UC spokesman told the paper talks were expected to go on for several more months.

The postdocs formed their union through majority sign-up and avoided the kind of anti-union campaign of intimidation and harassment that more and more employers use to thwart workers’ choice of joining a union. 

But the slow pace of negotiations highlights the need for another provision of the Employee Free Choice Act.  

Studies show that when workers vote for unions, fewer than half of them have a contract a full year later—and in more than a third of cases, workers still don’t have a contract after two years. Despite exercising their freedom to form unions against great obstacles, workers are unable to bargain for health coverage, retirement security, fair wages and safe workplace conditions. 

The Employee Free Choice Act  would provide a process to help bargainers reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. Arbitration would occur only under the Employee Free Choice Act if either side requests it, after months of negotiations. 

The postdocs typically work for five years in a faculty supervisor’s lab after receiving a doctorate or equivalent degree. They perform basic research on cures for major diseases and developing new technologies. They also publish scholarly articles and write grant proposals, all of which have helped bring hundreds of millions in grants and contracts to the university last year, the union said.

Donna Smith, a community organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), was recently honored as the National Organization for Women’s (NOW’s) 2009 Woman of Action. 

Smith first came to the public’s attention in Michael Moore’s 2007 movie, “SICKO.” Despite having health insurance and even a health savings account, Donna and her husband Larry were forced to move into their daughter’s basement after being unable to pay staggering health care costs—and were left in financial ruin. 

Donna’s husband, Larry, suffered three heart attacks and Donna was diagnosed and treated for uterine cancer. There is even a scene in the movie “SICKO” where Michael Moore takes Donna to Cuba to get the necessary treatment their insurance wouldn’t pay for. 

After the film was released, Smith became a health care activist, taking her story and those of other victims of the badly broken health care system around the country at rallies, teach-ins, seminars and demonstrations. She is a founder of the health care advocacy group American Patients United. 

At the group’s recent national conference, NOW President Kim Gandy said Smith “epitomizes how to best confront the injustices in this world.” 

Donna is speaking out, organizing, pressuring and advocating for solutions to fix the long-standing crisis produced by our unfair for-profit health care system. 

Donna’s story is remarkable—from illness, bankruptcy, financial ruin—to fighting back and becoming an icon to millions as a health insurance reform advocate. We salute Donna for her hard work and tenacity.

Members of Congress soon will cast votes that show us where they stand on the Employee Free Choice Act. As key senators engage in negotiations over the bill, supporters of workers’ freedom to form unions aren’t backing down on three key principles:

* Workers need to have a real choice to form a union and bargain for a better life, free from intimidation.

* We have to stop the endless delays and make sure workers can get a fair first contract.

* There have to be real penalties for violating the law.

Over the past few months, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have more than once declared the bill dead, but in fact we’re still working hard to to ensure labor law reform happens this year. We’ve come along way from where we were several years ago.

Here’s a timeline from 2003, when the AFL-CIO Executive Council offered a resolution in support of labor law reform, to yesterday’s seating of Sen. Al Franken, whose first move was to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act.

• Feb. 26, 2003: The AFL-CIO Executive Council approves a resolution, “An Unprecedented Labor Movement Campaign in Support of the Freedom of Workers to Choose a Voice at Work,” which declares the union movement’s intention to do what is necessary for:

…legal reform that protects the free and fair choice of employees to form a union without interference from management and enables more workers to enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining.

• Nov. 21, 2003: Rep. George Miller introduces H.R. 3169, the Employee Free Choice Act, in the House. Sen. Edward Kennedy introduces the same bill as S. 1925 in the Senate. Both were denied a committee vote by the Republican majority.
   
• Dec. 10, 2003: Tens of thousands of union members, elected officials, religious leaders and community activists across the nation took part in more than 90 events in 72 cities, united by one message: Workers’ rights are human rights. The nationwide mobilization is the first in a series of annual actions in support of the Employee Free Choice Act held on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
   
• April 19, 2005: Miller introduces the Employee Free Choice Act as H.R. 1696 in the House and Kennedy introduces it as S. 842 in the Senate. Again, both bills are blocked by the Republican majority and don’t receive a committee vote.
   
• Dec. 10, 2005: Thousands of union members rally across the country in support of the workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain to commemorate International Human Rights Day.
   
• Nov. 7, 2006: In the 2006 congressional elections, the union movement makes big strides in electing pro-working family, pro-Employee Free Choice Act candidates, with new pro-worker majorities in both the House and Senate.
   
• Dec. 8-9, 2006: The fight for the Employee Free Choice Act takes center stage at the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit.
   
• Feb 5, 2007: Miller introduces H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007, in the House.
   
• March 29, 2007: Kennedy introduces S. 1041, the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007 in the Senate.
   
• March 1, 2007: U.S. House passes the Employee Free Choice Act in a 241-185 vote.
   
• June 26, 2007: U.S. Senate votes 51-48 for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow it to be considered for a simple majority vote on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, 60 votes were required for cloture (agreement to vote on a bill), so a Republican minority in the Senate was able to block consideration of the bill.
   
• March 4, 2008: The union movement kicks off the Million Member Mobilization campaign to gather support for the Employee Free Choice Act.
   
• Nov. 4, 2008: Despite a desperate multi-million dollar corporate campaign against pro-worker candidates, the union movement wages its most successful-ever political mobilization campaign, helping to elect even more working-family friendly lawmakers to the House and Senate and Barack Obama, a Senate co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, to the White House.
   
• Feb. 4, 2009: Union members and allies deliver some of the 1.5 million signatures they’ve gathered in support of the Employee Free Choice Act to Capitol Hill—exceeding the goals of the Million Member Mobilization campaign.
   
• March 10, 2009: Employee Free Choice Act introduced in the House (as H.R. 1409), with 225 co-sponsors, and as S. 560 in the Senate, with 41 co-sponsors.

In short, we’ve pursued this critical legislative since Bush ran the nation along with a Republican Senate majority in Congress, until today, when our nationwide political mobilization resulted in the election of President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and appointment of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, all of whom expressed support for the bill. 

As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff noted at a Netroots Nation event last month, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. But the opposition is well-funded and aggressive, and the broad coalition supporting the Employee Free Choice Act will need to fight harder than ever to make sure we get labor law reform that helps workers:

We started this six years ago, and I thought it was going to be a 20-year fight. We’ve accomplished so much in the face of such attacks, and all the money they’ve been able to spend has not been able to break it. 

The campaign is vibrant and active, and all the forces of corporate America can’t stop it—and they’ve tried everything in their playbook. 

Workers returned Tuesday to the job at Stella D’oro Biscuit Co. in the Bronx after a judge ordered the company reinstate the 136 employees who had remained strong throughout a brutal 11-month strike. But before they could even walk through the doors, they were greeted with the anti-union response by the company’s private equity firm owners, the 21st century’s mutation of the robber barons: Brynwood Partners announced it would shut down operations in October. (”Private equity firms” is the euphemism those leveraged buyout corporations adopted after leveraged buyout got a bad name in the 1980s.)

Established more than 75 years ago, Stella D’oro is a nationally known maker of specialty baked goods and until recently was a family-owned business. But a series of corporate buyouts ultimately resulted in Brynwood’s 2006 purchase of the company. And a private equity firm’s only reason for existing is to make money-lots of it. Even robber barons ultimately had to ensure they had enough workers on the job because those companies made money by making things. Not so for today’s private equity firms. Closing shop and making off with the profits is what they do.

In fact, the Greenwich, Conn.-based Brynwood admitted as much to the union’s attorney, Louis Nikolaidis, according to Juan Gonzales at the New York Daily News.

“Last year, they told us upfront, because we’re a hedge fund, our investors expect a higher rate of return, and your members should expect a wage cut,” Nikolaidis says.

A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge ordered the workers reinstated because the company refused to provide financial information justifying the 20 percent wage cuts, elimination of pensions and slashing of paid vacation days it demanded of the workers. The judge also found the company prematurely and illegally declared negotiations at an impasse, forcing workers to strike. In May, when workers made an offer to end the strike and return to work under the old contract, the company illegally insisted workers accept the concessions as a condition for returning.

The largely immigrant workforce, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 50, survived on $100 a week from the union’s strike fund. Most had been on the job between 10 and 20 years, and all are skilled workers. Yet, according to the union notes, Byrnwood has said that

many Stella D’oro workers should be earning a minimum wage since “anyone can do their job.”

Local 50 President Joyce Alston predicted that Brynwood Partners will close the Bronx bakery and reopen at a new location, according to the Bureau of National Affairs (subscription required).

“Our intention is to stop them from closing the plant down,” Alston told BNA July 8.

Alston attributed Brynwood’s decision to close the Bronx bakery as “retaliation” for the ALJ’s decision. “If it’s not being vindictive, then put the company up for sale and let a viable company buy it” so workers can keep their jobs, she urged Brynwood.

The workers at Stella D’oro demonstrated extraordinary solidarity in the face of painful financial circumstances, with no workers crossing the picket line. They received ongoing backing from the area’s union movement and daily “beeps” from the above-ground unionized subway drivers. As Gonzales writes:

Once the strike started, management brought in replacement workers, unilaterally instituted the cuts and offered jobs at the lower wages to any employee who crossed the line.

“They wanted to take us back to the dark ages,” said Mike Filippou, a bear-sized maintenance mechanic and a leader of the strike. “We told them, we weren’t going there.”

Not a single union member took up the company’s offer.

Local 50 says it will fight Stella D’oro’s decision to close the plant and soon file retaliation charges against the company with the NLRB.

Two lessons here: America’s workers desperately need labor law reform. The seating of Sen. Al Franken, who’s first act as senator was to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act, is a significant move toward passage of the bill.

Second lesson: The United States needs to return to an economy that makes its money by making things. Kevin Phillips, author, warned in early 2006 that the nation was heading for big trouble because the financial services sector had overtaken the production sector. Phillips wrote that America’s turn toward an economy based on financial services—insurance, banking, investment, credit—was the way Great Britain evolved toward the middle of the 20th century.

And then the bottom fell out and the sun set on the British empire.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.