Labor Union Blog

Tim Ryan of the Solidarity Center (center) meets with Thai labor leaders Somsak Koosaisuk, left, and Sawit Kaewvarn.

Tim Ryan of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center recently visited Thailand and reports on that country’s railway union’s fight against efforts by management and business leaders to break the union.

Sawit Kaewvarn is general secretary of the State Railway Union of Thailand (SRUT) and the general secretary of the State Enterprises Workers’ Relations Confederation (SERC), the biggest and most powerful union confederation in Thailand. So even though he is the pre-eminent trade union leader in the country, he’s being attacked by the railways management and threatened with being fired.

Over the past year, SRUT, along with Thailand’s Supreme Court, have thwarted attacks on the union and stopped attempts to privatize the railways by politically connected business leaders.

A key concern for the workers is safety. Railway management refuses to provide the maintenance and safety devices required to run the trains safely. Not surprisingly, the workers refuse to run the trains without the safety devices. The employees are also being asked to work hours far in excess of what is safe to run the trains.

In most other countries, running the trains without the safety devices is cause for an employee to be disciplined. But in Thailand, it’s just the opposite. If you don’t run the trains without safety devices, management threatens to fire you.

In this environment, accidents are almost inevitable. A train derailment recently killed several people and injured 100 more. The workers were blamed and taken to court, but they remain unwilling to operate unsafe trains even though they are being punished for their stance.

The SRUT sees these actions as an excuse to break the union, which is the strongest force preventing the publicly run railroads from being handed to powerful, politically connected business leaders.

Sawit has reached out to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and the AFL-CIO for assistance. The ITF has contacted the Thai government and plans to send a delegation to Thailand in January to raise these issues and demonstrate solidarity with the workers. 

The AFL-CIO and the Solidarity Center also have voiced their support for the railway workers. We believe that while this looks like a technical matter of safety and privatization in the railways, it is, in effect, really an attack on the leadership of the Thai labor movement.

Nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center in Houston reaffirmed their 2008 vote to join a union.

In a dramatic expression of solidarity and support for a stronger voice to speak out for patients and themselves, nearly 300 registered nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center Hospital in Houston voted to remain members of National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state’s affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU).

The vote defeated a proposal to withdraw the union at the facility, the first private-sector hospital in the state to unionize. The nurses first voted in March 2008 to join the union.

Says Erica Ramhatal, an RN at the medical center:

We stand together to make a better workplace for our patients and for ourselves.  We are so proud to be part of NNU.

Last year a Cypress Fairbanks employee filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking the union’s decertification. Last June the NLRB conducted a decertification election among the same employees. The ballot count was delayed until this week, after several unfair labor practice charges were filed.

Click here and here to learn more.

Back in January, as the fight over health care reform was in high gear, the National Journal pinned down what most of us suspected all the time: The nation’s biggest health insurers had been funneling money—about $20 million—quietly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to air lie-filled, scare-mongering ads about health care reform.

That revelation flew in the face of the insurance industry’s claim that it really supported health care reform, but they were just dickering over the details. While the facts about the secret funds were on the record and not disputed, the big insurers didn’t address the issue.

That is, until Wednesday, when representatives from Health Care for America Now (HCAN) at CIGNA’s annual shareholder meeting in Philadelphia got a confession out of CIGNA CEO David Cordani. The HCAN members were admitted to the meeting in an arrangement with several shareholders and so could question Cordani.

Marc Stier, Pennsylvania state director of HCAN, said Cordani confirmed the company contributed secret funds over the past year to the industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and to the Chamber to wage a duplicitous anti-reform campaign while industry lobbyists were professing to support reform. But Cordani would not say how much CIGNA slipped to the Chamber for the propaganda blitz. Said Stier after the meeting:

Today, for the first time, CIGNA admitted to making secret payments to the Chamber. They won’t tell even their own stockholders how much money they sent through the Chamber, but there is now no question they did so.

Who knows why he “fessed up,” but they say confession is good for the soul. Maybe he was trying to salvage a little bit of CIGNA’s rep for dumping customers who file expensive claims, a practice known as “purging.” According to HCAN, Cordani told shareholders CIGNA will continue the practice.

Salvation may be a ways away.

The bodies of two coal miners killed in a roof fall at a western Kentucky mine have been recovered and removed from the mine. The two have been identified as Justin Travis, 27, and Michael Carter, 28. The roof collapsed late Wednesday night.

The nonunion Dotki Mine, about 150 miles west of Louisville, is owned by Alliance Coal Co. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) records, the roof at the mine collasped 19 times in the year before Wednesday’s incident, resulting in 13 injuries. MSHA has cited the mine 11 times this year for violations pertaining to roof support.

State inspectors also cited the mine for roof support problems, including placing roof bolts too far apart, according to the Associated Press. Roof bolts are metal rods drilled into overhead rock layers to help prevent the roof from falling.

Tony Oppegard, a former MSHA staffer and longtime mine safety lawyer in Kentucky, told Bloomberg Businessweek:

Roof falls are the No. 1 killer of coal miners. When you have a lot of roof violations, it is very troubling.

Last week, Businessweek reported Dotiki had the seventh highest number of significant and substantial safety violations—321—since January 2009, according to a list of the top 20 coal mines with high numbers of safety violations.

The New York Times reports Alliance Coal’s vice president of operations is Kenneth A. Murray, a former district manager for the Mine Safety and Health Administration in eastern Kentucky who led the investigation of a January 2006 fire that killed two men at Massey Energy Co.’s Aracoma mine in West Virginia.

Wednesday’s fatal roof collapse follows the April 5 explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine where 29 West Virginia coal miners were killed. On April 22, a 28-year-old coal miner died at the Pocahontas Mine in West Virginia.

MP3: 

LaborRadio043010.mp3

Transcript: 

LaborRadio043010.txt

Workers Independent News Labor Radio
Internet Radio Program 04/30/10
Producers: Doug Cunningham & Jesse Russell

Labor Radio Rundown:

1) WIN Newscast

2) April 28 marked Workers Memorial Day across the country. In New York City workers gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to remember those that have been injured or killed on the job. Mike Clifford was there.

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