Labor Union Blog

UPDATE: The death toll in the explosion at the Massey Energy Co. Upper Big Branch mine now stands at 25 miners. Four other coal miners are unaccounted for. High levels of methane gas and carbon monoxide forced rescue teams to leave the mine early this morning. It is unclear when rescue and recovery efforts will resume. Holes must be drilled from 1,200 feet above to help ventilate the mine.

An explosion at a Raleigh County, W.Va., coal mine late this afternoon killed six miners and 21 other coal miners remain unaccounted for, according to news reports. The Associated Press reports that the blast occurred at Massey Energy Co.’s Upper Big Branch mine

Mine rescue crews, including those from the Mine Workers (UMWA), were dispatched to the mine. There are no further reports about the missing miners.

The nonunion mine is operated by Massey subsidiary Performance Coal Co. In a statement, UMWA President Cecil Roberts says, “hearts and prayers of all UMWA members are with the families of those lost today. “

He says the mine rescue teams are “putting their lives on the line, entering a highly dangerous mine to bring any survivors to safety.”

As a mine operated by a subsidiary of Massey Energy, the Upper Big Branch mine is a nonunion mine. Nevertheless, I have dispatched highly trained and skilled UMWA personnel to the immediate vicinity of the mine, and they stand ready to offer any assistance they can to the families and the rescuers at this terrible and anxious time. We are all brothers and sisters in the coalfields at times like this.

The AP reports that three miners have been killed at the mine since 1998, the most recent in 2003, when an electrician died after being electrocuted while repairing a shuttle car there.

We will follow the rescue efforts and bring you updates.

The inability of the Senate to do the people’s business could see as many as 200,000 jobless workers losing benefits this week and the earliest they could see a reactivation of benefits is on April 12. Also expiring this week is a 65 percent subsidy of COBRA. Congress is expected to pass the extension when they return and that will include retroactive payments. However, that doesn’t help many unemployed workers who are getting by paycheck-to-paycheck. Oklahoma, Republican Sen.

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Workers vote to continue a strike at a boat manufacturing plant in Indiana. Jesse Russell reports:

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By Doug Cunningham

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Another contingent of National Nurses United (NNU) nurse volunteers is on its way to Haiti to help provide much needed medical care to the earthquake survivors. The 10 RNs are part of NNU’s RN Response Network (RNRN).

This group includes intensive care, medical/surgical and pediatric nurses from California, Massachusetts and Texas. NNU Co-President Deborah Burger is part of the volunteer group.

They will be working side by side with Haitian nurses and doctors at Sacre Coeur Hospital, in northern Haiti, which provides medical care for the region’s 225,000 residents. They leave on the nine-day deployment April 9 and the RNRN is working with hospital officials to organize continuing volunteer nurse rotations. NNU reports that thousands of nurses have volunteered to serve in Haiti.

Ashley Forsberg, RN, from Lansing, Mich., was one of the first RNRN volunteers after the January earthquake and served on the hospital ship USNS Comfort. After she returned home in February, Forsberg wrote on the group’s website:

We have to realize that just because the media has moved on and the emergency patients are taken care of doesn’t mean we’re finished in Haiti. The people there are facing a public health crisis that we can’t even imagine here in the United States.

Click here to read more from Forsberg and other volunteers.

Following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, trade unions around the world mobilized support on an unprecedented scale. The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center acted quickly to send needed supplies and support to its Haitian partners through a union-to-union effort that provides short-term emergency aid and builds toward long-term reconstruction and strengthening of Haiti’s union movement.

You can help by making a donation to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief for Haitian Workers‘ campaign. Union Plus will match your donation dollar for dollar, up to $100,000.

To learn about other union relief efforts since the quake, click here, here, here,  here and here.

In a 180-degreee turn from a Labor Department under the Bush administration that tried to gut overtime rules for millions of workers, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has unveiled a new campaign to inform workers about their pay rights and to put a stop to wage theft.

In Chicago last week before a group of union, community and faith activists, Solis said:

I have a message for those employers who break this nation’s labor laws and prey on vulnerable workers: It ends today. I’m here to tell you that your president, your secretary of labor and this department will not allow anyone to be denied his or her rightful pay—especially when so many in our nation are working long, hard and often dangerous hours.

The Labor Department’s “We Can Help” multi-lingual campaign is aimed at low-wage and vulnerable workers with a special focus on reaching employees in such industries as construction, janitorial work, hotel/motel services, food services and home health care. It also will address such topics as rights in the workplace and how to file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division to recover wages owed.

Last year, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the department’s Wage and Hour office, under former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, had failed miserably in enforcing minimum wage and overtime laws.  The division’s failure to act, says the report,

left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn.

A 2008 GAO report found that under the Bush administration, the number of wage and hour inspectors dropped from 942 to 732. At the same time, the number of investigations into employers’ refusal to pay minimum wage, overtime—or even any wages at all—has dropped from 47,000 in 1997 to 30,000 in 2008.

Since taking office, Solis has added 250 new inspectors to the wage and hour division, bringing the total to 949.

Solis said the We Can Help effort will work with unions, faith groups and community groups to get the information into work places and neighborhoods. Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) also offers a Wage Theft Online Resource Center, which includes a list of resources and information about the wage theft crisis. Says Solis:

If someone is stealing your wages, you can and should call the Department of Labor….We can help, and we will help. If you work in this country, you are protected by our laws. And you can count on the U.S. Department of Labor to see to it that those protections work for you.

There are also efforts on the state and local level to put halt to wage theft. Earlier this year, the Miami- Dade County Commission approved a country-wide wage theft ordinance. In New York State, a bill to toughen penalties for employers who steal workers wages is before the legislature.

In a column in today’s Albany Times Union, Amy Traub of the Drum Major Institute (DMI)  and Andrew Freidman of  Make the Road New York write:

Enforcement of workplace laws is so inadequate, and penalties are so low, that corrupt businesses often come out ahead. Unscrupulous employers simply factor the risk of getting caught breaking the law into their cost of doing business. Responsible business owners are put at a competitive disadvantage by rival companies that cut costs by cheating their employees.

The 1,500 striking Temple health care workers want the hospital to document the credentials of their replacements, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

WORK STOPPAGES & LEGAL ACTION
NNU-PASNAP, Temple University Hospital: The 1,500 striking nurses and other health care workers at Temple University Hospital, now on day six of their strike, are calling on the hospital to document the credentials of the 850 temporary staff it has hired. The members of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP-NNU) will hold a rally in front of the hospital tomorrow.

Multiple, U.S. Postal Service: The Letter Carriers (NALC), the Postal Workers (APWU), the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA-Ind.) and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU)  hope Congress will defeat a proposal to eliminate Saturday delivery by the U.S. Postal Service. The four unions suggest Congress address the U.S. Postal Service’s massive debt by modifying the current requirement for prefunding retiree health care costs.

UFCW, Shaw’s Supermarkets: United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 791 and Shaw’s Supermarkets failed to reach an agreement last Monday when they met with a federal mediator. The union says Shaw’s did not show up at the mediation to bargain but instead presented the same “inferior” offer rejected by workers earlier this month. Grocery workers and their supporters had planned to protest Shaw’s Supermarkets’ decision to stop providing health care for the 300 striking workers and their families. The union is disappointed at the company’s decision to cut health care, rather than bargain for a new agreement.

NEGOTIATIONS
IAM, Hawaiian Airlines: The Machinists (IAM) District 142 reached a tentative four-year agreement with Hawaiian Airlines. The contract would cover 600 mechanics and related workers and would provide a 15 percent wage increase over the term.

UNITEHERE!, Westin Providence: Some members of the cast and crew of the new television drama “Body of Evidence,” filming in Providence, R.I., switched hotels after learning of UNITEHERE! Local 217’s boycott of the Westin Providence. Hotel workers have been picketing the hotel since March 18, after management imposed a 20 percent pay cut and increased worker health care contributions. Actresses Dana Delaney and Jeri Ryan were among the members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) who honored the boycott. 

USW, Pinnacle Airlines: United Steelworkers (USW) Local 736 has reached a tentative agreement with Pinnacle Airlines for ground workers in Memphis, Tenn., and across the United States. USW will hold a ratification vote for the 930 workers who would be covered by the contract.

UAW, General Motors Corp.: UAW Local 167 members at a GM valve-lifter plant in western Michigan overwhelmingly rejected a Memorandum of Understanding that would have frozen wages and reduced the starting skilled pay by $3 an hour. As one worker put it, “[GM] underestimated their employees’ intelligence.”

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for your information only.  As it is compiled from published news reports, not from individual unions, we cannot vouch for either its completeness or accuracy; readers who desire further information should directly contact the union involved.