By Doug Cunningham
UNITE-HERE says the Intercontinental Chicago O'Hare Hotel is signing a collective bargaining agreement covering about a hundred service workers today. The agreement boosts wages and benefits and provides employer paid health care and pensions.
By Doug Cunningham
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association is urging the Senate to quickly pass the FAA Re-Authorization bill. The union says it addresses many key issues safety and efficiency issues to modernize and improve the country's air traffic control system.
By Doug Cunningham
As health care reform works its way through Congress the California Nurses Association is hailing a key amendment in the House. The amendment allows states to enact their own versions of single-payer Medicare-for-all healthcare reforms. The CNA's Rose Ann Demoro says this important amendment allows single-payer activists to work in state capitals to pass single-payer bills. The California Nurses Association believes single payer is the strongest, most effective solution to the health care crisis.
Minimum wage workers across the country will see a bump in pay on Friday. That’s when the federal minimum is set to increase to $7.25 per hour. According to estimates more than 2 million workers will see an extra $120 per month in their paychecks. West Virginia has one of the highest percentages of minimum wage workers in the nation. Rick Wilson of the American Friends Service Committee West Virginia Economic Justice Project told the West Virginia News Service the extra money in their pockets will go right back into the economy.
[Wilson]: “West Virginia has a really high percentage of workers who’ll be affected by this. One figure I saw was close to 13 percent of the state’s workforce "I don’t think you see a lot of cobwebs accumulating on any increased wages that low-income people get. It’s not going to sit around in a bank account very long and it’s not going to be invested overseas."
By Doug Cunningham
UAW workers at Bell Helicopter will return to work July 27th after voting to accept a new contract ending their five week strike. Bell made a new offer to the union workers Tuesday and the workers voted to accept it Wednesday. The new contract is a four year deal. The UAW has not yet released details of the agreement, but workers will see a 3 percent wage increase in years two, three, and four.
Wal-Mart will pay $35 million to settle a class action lawsuit in Washington state. Jesse Russell reports:
A lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart and covering 88,000 Washington state Wal-Mart workers will be settled for $35 million. The workers claim they were denied meal and rest breaks and were often forced to work off the clock. Judge Julie Spector oversaw the case and on Monday ordered the world’s largest retailer to pay $10.5 million in legal fees and create policies that will prevent future wage violations in the company’s 50 Washington stores. Employees have until August 19 to claim a portion of the money.
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The future of the union and social justice movements lies in reaching out to college students, young workers and young voters who are energized by the election of Barack Obama.
Last week, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) took a big step toward uniting the younger generation and the union movement by bringing together more than 400 union members, community allies and student leaders to discuss the best strategies for working together.
“Generations United, Organizing for Change,” the theme for APALA’s 10th Biennial Convention in Las Vegas last week, emphasized the first national gathering of Asian Pacific American workers and students. The convention provided participants with a renewed sense of optimism for multigenerational leadership in the union movement as well as in the broader struggle for social and economic justice, convention organizers say.
Here’s APALA President John Delloro:
This convention marks a historic juncture for APALA and the labor movement. We have an opportunity, and indeed an obligation, to continue building stronger worker and student alliances in the fight for worker’s rights.
Delloro, a member of AFT, says it’s clear young people feel a call to activism. Young voters played a big role in changing the nation in the 2008 elections, and college students have been involved in major worker campaigns over the past two years.
To make the real changes we need, the leadership will come from working with a new generation.
Delloro, 37, represents that change as well. He led a slate that increased the number of APALA executive board members under the age of 40 from two to 10.
“APALA’s commitment to advocate for worker, immigrant and civil rights requires new energy, new ideas and a renewed commitment from the next generation of Asian Pacific American leaders,” said Amado Uno, APALA’s executive director.
Young workers and college students embraced this challenge and are poised to work hand in hand…to help revitalize the labor movement.
Some of the strategies launched at the convention are already bearing fruit. An APALA Facebook page has picked up 400 “friends” in a week, says Uno.
Delloro, who teaches community college in California, says 18 of his students came with him to the APALA convention. Even though they are not yet in the workforce, they saw the problems they will face when they get out of school. And now they, too, are energized to work for change. And that, he says, is what it’s all about.
Other convention highlights included:
Young workers were involved in every activity of the convention, Amado Uno says. One plenary session focused on student/worker campaigns on college campuses. A young workers caucus also produced ideas to build the union movement.
Reaching out to young people is a top priority for the AFL-CIO. Speaking at the Texas state federation convention last week, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, a candidate for AFL-CIO president, said:
If there’s anything our labor movement needs, it’s an infusion of younger Americans—the people whose futures are taking a beating at the hands of the Wall Street hucksters and fast-buck artists who’ve driven our economy into a ditch.
The APALA convention comes a month after AFSCME held its first national Next Wave Conference, where more than 500 AFSCME members, age 35 and under, met in Chicago for three days of activism, strategizing and learning about the union movement.
Speakers at the APALA convention also included California Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, California Assemblyman Warren Furutani, Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) President Gregory Junemann, SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina, Nevada AFL-CIO Executive Secretary-Treasurer Danny Thompson and D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.
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Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) President Gregory Junemann today suspended his independent campaign for AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and endorsed the slate of Richard Trumka, Liz Shuler and Arlene Holt Baker.
In a joint statement, Junemann and the Trumka-led slate said:
“It has never been more critical for the labor movement to come together to support workers and their families, who are hard-strapped in an economy that is not working for them. Together we can focus on solving these economic problems, working with the Obama administration and Congress and strengthening union outreach, working with our affiliates and other unions.”
After meeting with Trumka, Junemann said he was confident the AFL-CIO under the new leadership team would address the financial issues he raised during his campaign.
We need financial stability and a labor federation that is transparent and responsive to its affiliates. Most importantly, we need to come together, to be one unified House of Labor.
The Junemann campaign also released a video interview with Junemann explaining in more detail his reasons for withdrawing from the secretary-treasurer race. You can view the video here.
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The union that represents correctional officers at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons says federal prisons—including the famed Supermax facility—are not safe and major steps must be taken soon to protect prison employees and the communities near the prisons.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security yesterday, Bryan Lowery and Phil Glover told lawmakers that budget cuts and short staffing increasingly pose a danger to officers, inmates and the 115 communities and small towns which surround the facilities.
Lowery is president of AFGE’s Council of Prison Locals, and Glover is the council’s legislative coordinator.
Earlier this year, AFGE successfully fought for a $545 million increase in Bureau of Prisons funding. But the agency’s top management repeatedly has refused to follow the direction of Congress and is unilaterally saying that none of the funds provided for increased staffing will be used for that purpose.
Lowery testified:
The blatant disregard for the safety of our federal correctional officers by the Bureau of Prisons management is inexcusable. The safety of correctional officers, inmates and our communities is at risk.
The Council of Prison Locals is circulating an online petition urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to order Bureau of Prisons management to use the appropriated funds to hire more officers, fire Bush-era Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin and hire 9,000 additional correctional officers. The council also has asked for a meeting with Holder to address the issues at the Bureau of Prisons.
Click here to sign the petition and send Holder the message.
Years of underfunding has created a serious understaffing situation in which correctional officers are outnumbered by inmates by 150-1 and correctional officers are unarmed inside the facilities. In a bureaucratic sleight of hand to cover over the shortstaffing, the Bureau of Prisons counts secretaries and administrative unit managers, among other nonguard correctional workers, in calculating its inmate-to-correctional staff ratio nationwide.
Some 206,000 inmates are confined in federal prisons today, up from 25,000 in 1980. By 2010, estimates project 215,000 inmates in these institutions.
The number of officers who staff federal prisons is failing to keep pace with the tremendous growth in the inmate population. Today, prison staffing is at an 86.6 percent level, compared with 95 percent staffing in the mid-1990s. The additional officers requested by the union would return staffing to 1997 levels.
The seriousness of the short staffing was underscored last month on the first anniversary of the murder of correctional officer Jose Rivera, who was stabbed to death in a federal prison in Atwater, Calif., while locking inmates into their cells. He was working alone because, the union says, that prison is severely understaffed.
In addition to fully funding and staffing the prisons, the union is seeking stab-resistant vests for correctional officers. Assaults on officers with homemade weapons have jumpred in recent years, said Lowery and Glover, who both are exposed to dangers in their jobs as correctional officers in federal lockups.
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