Headlines:
General Motors plans to slash 1,000 salaried jobs by the end of the month. The announcement comes after 1,900 non-union workers accepted an early-retirement package. The buy out provided senior workers with a stronger benefits package and newer employees with up to six months pay and benefits. On Friday the company sent out a message to some workers that a pay cut implemented in May that shaved anywhere from 3 to 7 percent off of white collar wages would be restored as of the first of this month. GM said it is making the move after letting go of so many employees so it can retain those who stayed behind.
General Motors plans to slash 1,000 salaried jobs by the end of the month. The announcement comes after 1,900 non-union workers accepted an early-retirement package. The buy out provided senior workers with a stronger benefits package and newer employees with up to six months pay and benefits. On Friday the company sent out a message to some workers that a pay cut implemented in May that shaved anywhere from 3 to 7 percent off of white collar wages would be restored as of the first of this month. GM said it is making the move after letting go of so many employees so it can retain those who stayed behind.
The Los Angeles City Council approved a measure last week that will help provide health care for more than 5,000 workers at Los Angeles International Airport. Private contractors at the airport have the option of paying workers $14.80 per hour or $10.30 per hour with a $4.50 contribution to a health insurance plan. Also under the measure if an employer offers a health care plan that does not call on the employee to make any out-of-pocket expenses employees can not opt out of the coverage.
The Los Angeles City Council approved a measure last week that will help provide health care for more than 5,000 workers at Los Angeles International Airport. Private contractors at the airport have the option of paying workers $14.80 per hour or $10.30 per hour with a $4.50 contribution to a health insurance plan. Also under the measure if an employer offers a health care plan that does not call on the employee to make any out-of-pocket expenses employees can not opt out of the coverage.
Chipotle Mexican Grill is the most recent fast food chain to agree to increase the wages of tomato pickers in Florida. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has previously reached agreements from McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell, and others through concentrated campaigns. Once the agreement is activated, workers will see wages jump from 50 cents per 32-pound tomato bucket to 82 cents per tomato bucket. The Chipotle move is significant because the East Coast Growers and Packers quit the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange so they could make the deal happen. The Exchange has threatened to fine members who take part in deals reached with the Coaltion. East Coast Growers is a family-owned tomato grower and by quitting the Exchange they could possibly attract other fast food restaurants that have agreed to pay workers better wages.
Last year workers at Republic Windows and Doors near Chicago held a sit-in that made headlines and helped them win owed health care and severance pay. The union representing the workers had previously alleged company owners moved machinery from the plant when it was closed – a violation of labor laws. On Thursday the former CEO of Republic Richard Gillman appeared in court and was hit with a $10 million bond. According to prosecutors Gillman allegedly attempted to defraud the company’s creditors by using a shell corporation to move money around. The CEO was also hit with the accusations previously made by the union when prosecutors said he moved trucks and machinery to a factory in Iowa.
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| AFL-CIO President John Sweeney gives his final keynote to convention delegates. |
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| Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George (above) and former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris (below) help open the AFL-CIO Convention. |
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With the convening of the 26th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention this afternoon in Pittsburgh, nearly 2,000 delegates, alternates and guests took part in the formal opening ceremony and paid tribute to retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Following greetings by Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George, Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County [Pittsburgh] Labor Council, and former Pittsburgh Steelers player Franco Harris, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka welcomed everyone, noting how great it is to be in Pittsburgh, “the city of bridges.”
And bridges are the perfect illustration of what we’ll be talking about over the next few days. Bridges that connect diverse people, diverse unions, diverse communities and diverse nations. Bridges to cross together, so we can turn around America….Some of the bridges America needs have been burnt—destroyed by years of a rampant corporate agenda embraced by the Bush administration. It’s hard to overstate just how damaging those years have been.
Our unions and the workers we represent are suffering in a historic collapse. But at the very same time, we have historic opportunities. New bridges with a new administration, a new Congress and rivers of hope flowing through the people of our country. Our Convention has a theme for today: We are many, we are one.
That’s our power—and it’s our joy.
Women, minorities and LGBT comprise up 43 percent of convention delegates—making up the most diverse ever AFL-CIO Convention and meeting the requirements of a convention resolution passed in 2005 that stated delegates must represent the composition of their unions. After the resounding hymns of the Solidarity Chorus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid greeted the convention by video.
But at the heart and center of today’s events was the tribute to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who has devoted more than 50 years to improving the lives of America’s working families. From Vice President Joe Biden to Working America regional director Jenn Jannon, famous leaders and everyday workers talked in the video about how Sweeney strengthened the union movement through his outreach to diverse groups of workers and through massive member political mobilization that reshaped Congress and the White House.
Sweeney, raised in the Bronx, learned the importance of unions as a child, seeing the difference between the wages and working conditions of his father, a member of the transit union, and his mother, who worked as a domestic without a union. Sweeney began his lifelong devotion to organizing when, as a teenage caddy working at a country club golf course, he organized fellow caddies to successfully demand a raise.
His first job in the labor movement was with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, which later merged with the Clothing and Textile Workers Union. He joined SEIU Local 32B in New York City in 1961 as a union representative. Sweeney was elected president of Local 32B in 1976 and led two citywide strikes of apartment maintenance workers during the 1970s. In 1980, he became president of SEIU and has led the AFL-CIO since 1995. Following a moving video tribute to Sweeney, he said in his keynote address:
I’ve loved our labor movement all my life. There is no greater honor than the opportunity to serve working people, and the best thing about this job has been all of you. You are the magic of our movement, the source of my spirit and the iron will that moves us forward.
Under Sweeney’s leadership the AFL-CIO became the nation’s strongest grassroots political action movement to work for progressive change. He enlarged the labor movement by founding Working America, an affiliate for people without a union on the job that now has 3 million members. He forged new alliances with communities of faith, academics, students and more—and through new partnerships with worker centers and workers who are doing groundbreaking organizing on their own. For Sweeney, his life’s work has been underlined by the driving force of the union movement: solidarity. To thunderous applause and several standing ovations, Sweeney delivered his final keynote address as AFL-CIO president.
For us, solidarity is more than just a strategy, it’s a way of life. We believe in helping each other. We care about our brothers and sisters.
Solidarity is what gives workers the collective courage to form a union, to fight back against a greedy employer.
Solidarity is what compelled thousands of first responders and construction workers to risk their lives at Ground Zero eight years ago last Friday.
Solidarity is what saved 155 airline passengers who could have drowned in the icy waters of the Hudson River.
Solidarity is what compels a firefighter to dive into an inferno to save a stranger, a teacher to refuse to give up on a child or back off from a battle with a school board.
Your solidarity is what pulled us through when our federation split apart—you cared more about our common purpose than your own self-interest—and proved that: “We are many, we are one.”
Solidarity, the heart and soul of America’s labor movement—and the core of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s life mission.
The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention just got a message from the top leaders in Congress: We stand with you and with America’s workers.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the leader of the U.S. House, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) each delivered a video message to the opening session of the convention.
Pelosi thanked outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the union movement, crediting union members with taking the lead in winning a pro-worker Congress and giving them the momentum needed to pass legislation that really changed lives. Pelosi said:
On behalf of the Congress, I thank all of you for your leadership for America’s working families.
Pelosi pointed to the minimum wage, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as successes for all workers that would have been impossible without the work of the union movement. She noted that, with President Barack Obama as a partner, we’re closer than ever to the long-term goals of making the economy and the health care system work for everyone again:
Today, you are organizing, marching, and leading the charge in the fight of our lives, to provide affordable, quality and accessible health care to everyone, and we will win.
Thank you to the AFL-CIO, for your commitment to progress and prosperity. Onward to victory.
Reid said that, thanks to the hard work of union members around the country, we’re making real progress to fixing an economy that was leaving too many behind:
We demanded a new direction for our country. Together we stood up…we knew the challenges we faced were not created in a day, and we knew they would not be fixed overnight. We also knew we had no time to waste.
We’ve made a good start, but we have so much more to do.
Reid pointed to successes in creating jobs, in helping children get health care and helping students go to college. He also said he wants to swiftly pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
I’m as committed today as ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it law.
It’s a sign of the changes the union movement has helped to make in this country that the top leaders in Congress are so enthusiastic to offer thanks to union members at this Convention.
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