Labor Union Blog

After six months without a contract, the employees and management at three California supermarket chains reached a tentative agreement today. The agreement came just hours after a deadline set by the employees to strike if no progress had been made in contract talks.

The 62,000 grocery workers have been working without a contract since March, while in discussions with negotiators for The Vons Cos. Inc.; Ralphs Grocery Co., a subsidiary of The Kroger Co.; and Albertsons, owned by Supervalu Inc.

Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement:

This could not have happened, first and foremost, without the willingness of rank and file grocery workers to go on strike.
 
It also could not have happened with the hundreds of delegations and actions done by local unions, community allies, clergy and elected officials.

The supermarket workers received strong support from California union members and community leaders.

A ratification vote is scheduled for later this week. The grocery employees are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Jon Ross of Union Privilege lets us know about the new Union Plus prepaid credit card.

Union Plus, the consumer benefits arm of the AFL-CIO, is helping union members make the most of their savings while avoiding hidden fees with the new Union Plus prepaid Visa card.

For union members with a checking or savings account, the Union Plus prepaid card does not charge insufficient funds or overdraft fees. It also offers a savings account featuring an annual percentage yield  (APY) of 5.10 percent on account balances, compared with 0.15 percent nationally.

Union members without a bank account can use the card anywhere debit cards are accepted to buy gas, rent a car, shop online or make any purchase. Since the prepaid card is not a credit card, there’s no credit check and a bank or checking account is not needed to apply.

The Union Plus prepaid card features: 

• No activation fees or monthly minimums to maintain.
• Savings account with a 5.10 percent APY (up to $5,000).
• No fee for using the card for purchases.
• Manage money by phone, mobile phone, email and the Internet.
• Easy to reload at 50,000 locations.
• FDIC insured, up to $250,000.
• All customer support calls answered in the United States.

Visit MyUnionPrepaid.com to learn more or get a card today.

Children’s Oakland RN Martha Kuhl, front, with other Children’s, Kaiser and Sutter RNs in a rally at the NNU Convention in San Francisco last week.

Nearly 23,000 registered nurses will hold a one-day strike Thursday, Sept. 22, at 34 Northern and Central California hospitals. They are speaking out for their patients and against cuts in health care or retiree coverage for nurses and other hospital employees.

The walkout affects Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital in Oakland. The RNs are members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (NNU).

Sutter nurses will protest up to 200 sweeping demands for concessions they say would restrict their ability to effectively advocate for patients. They say Sutter managers’ focus on the bottom line effectively forces nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.

Additionally, Sutter management is proposing to reduce nurses’ health care coverage and retiree health benefits.

“We staunchly refuse to be silenced on patient care protections,” said Sharon Tobin, an RN at Sutter Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame.

As nurses, we speak up, and we insist on standards that safeguard our patients, but Sutter doesn’t want to hear about anything that might cut into their huge profits.

At Kaiser, the RNs are walking out in a solidarity with Kaiser co-workers who are facing management demands for deep cuts in their health coverage and retirement plans.

Children’s Oakland RNs will be on strike for the third time in a year over what they call punitive management efforts to cut their health coverage with demands they say would make it too expensive for nurses to bring their own children to get care at the hospital where they work.

Children’s RN Martha Kuhl says:

Everyone deserves health care and if nurses can’t afford health care, who will be able to? I am a caregiver and patient advocate and that extends into my community as well.

This is a cross-post from the Palm Beach-Treasure Coast, AFL-CIO, by Chrissy Cassata, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison with United Way of Palm Beach County.

John Gall, president of Machinists (IAM) Local 971, writes: Brent Bonar, IAM Local 971 Community Service Committee person, along with 450 students and volunteers from Christ Fellowship Church went to the Belle Glade area to build community gardens for the local residents to grow their own food. They also built playgrounds, painted houses and cooked meals.

In total, they completed 27 gardens, built two tire playgrounds, painted 14 houses and, if that isn’t enough, they cooked 600 pounds of chicken and beans for the local residents.

Unions play an important role in the community. Member involvement in projects such as these showcases the generosity and community-mindedness of our locals. It gives the community the chance to see what we as unions are all about; bettering the lives of working families and improving the community in which we live and work.

Nicole Gentile, a teacher with the  Cleveland Metropolitan School District and an AFT member, wrote this message to Ohio working families about the job-killing ramifications of S.B. 5, a new law that attacks the collective bargaining rights of workers seeking to maintain a middle-class living. Together with thousands of Ohioans, Gentile is working to repeal the law in the November elections.

I just got home from Marion-Sterling Elementary School. I might not be there much longer.

After nine years teaching in Cleveland public schools, I along with 350 others, received a layoff notice due to cuts by Gov. John Kasich to public education funding.

Instead of investing in our children by funding schools like Marion-Sterling, Kasich chose to cut our budgets first. That’s not all—he and his political allies passed Senate Bill 5, now Issue 2, a bill that bans teachers from negotiating with school districts around basic issues such as class sizes.

They’re attacking teachers and public workers, but this isn’t just about that.

We’re fighting for our children’s future.

This weekend, we’re going door to door to talk to Ohioans about how S.B.  5 hurts our children’s future.

Their actions will result in larger class sizes that make it more difficult for kids to learn and create a revolving door of teachers who are hired or fired, according to budget levels.

Rather than attacking working Ohioans, Kasich ought to pass policies that create jobs and keep teachers in the classroom.

What I love most about teaching are the “aha” moments—when you’re teaching students something they’ve never understood before—and suddenly something clicks. They “get it.”

Days in the classroom can be difficult or challenging—but every teacher knows that these moments make the job worthwhile.

I’m working to defeat Issue 2 so that those moments can continue—for teachers, parents, families and school children across Ohio.

All week I’ve been calling friends and neighbors, and on Saturday I’m going door to door in my community to talk with people about voting “no” on Issue 2.

The only way we’ll defeat Issue 2 is if we work together. Click here to sign up as volunteer for the campaign.

Thanks so much for supporting us teachers and the children we teach.

The AFL-CIO, together with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations, filed a complaint today against the United States under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) on behalf of immigrant workers brought to the United States under the H-2B visa program.

The workers have attempted under U.S. law to gain redress with no success so, they are using NAALC, a  supplemental agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement, to hold their employer accountable.

According to the complaint, the United States allowed companies to routinely pay H-2B workers less than the minimum hourly wage and deny them overtime and reimbursement for travel, visa and recruitment costs.

“When domestic labor laws are not enforced, it is not only the workers who are harmed,” said Rachel Micah-Jones, executive director of CDM, the first transnational workers’ rights law center based in Mexico.

Competing employers are placed at an economic disadvantage, free trade is disrupted, and employees everywhere are detrimentally affected. 

The workers named in the complaint worked for J&J Amusements Inc.  in 2007 and Reithoffer Shows Inc. in 2008 on H-2B visas. While employed in the United States, the complaint says, they ­­were consistently paid below the federal minimum wage, they ­­were denied overtime wages and some were not paid for all the hours they worked.

Workers employed by J&J, including those named in the complaint, earned about $20 per day and worked at least 12 hours each day. Taking into account other expenses related to work, the J&J workers earned a net wage of about $1.61 per hour. 

The complaint also alleges that several H-2B employers who put on fairs fined workers for arriving as few as five minutes late to work, for “bad behavior,” in this case, using the bathroom while not on an authorized break, and for complaining about rights violations.  Reithoffer Shows, for example, fined one of the workers in the complaint $30 for arriving as few as five minutes late to his job and $40 for using the bathroom. 

“For nearly a decade under the Bush administration, corporations had unbridled power to use the H-2B program to drive down wages and working conditions in the United States,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. 

[U.S. Labor] Secretary [Hilda] Solis has made some progress toward re-establishing the rule of law in this program, but much more needs to be done, including giving workers the power to hold their employers accountable through domestic law as well as international law. As long as corporations have a steady pool of workers they can exploit, workplace conditions for workers everywhere suffer.   

A new film documents the story of how a town’s residents took a stand after a hate crime killing devastated their community. “Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness,” debuts Wed., Sept. 21, at 10 p.m. EDT on PBS.

The film will air during the Not In Our Town’s National Week of Action. Between Sept. 18-24, communities across the country will host screenings, events and discussions around hate crime prevention, working to develop new ways to make their towns safer. Public media stations in 20 markets, along with partner organizations, will use the film to initiate dialogue about issues of intolerance in their communities.

Narrated by Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard, the documentary describes how the residents of the Long Island, N.Y., town of Patchogue responded to a series of attacks by a group of seven local teenagers against Latino residents. The attacks ended with the killing of 37-year-old Marcelo Lucero. An Ecuadorian immigrant, Lucero had been a Patchogue resident for 13 years.

The film follows Mayor Paul Pontieri, the victim’s brother Joselo Lucero, diverse community leaders, residents and students as they openly address the underlying causes of the violence, work to heal divisions and initiate ongoing action to ensure everyone in their village will be safe and respected.   

For more information, visit www.niot.org/LightInTheDarkness.

President Obama today outlined a proposal to add $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue to pay for his proposed American Jobs Act to put Americans back to work. In a speech this morning from the White House, he said lawmakers need to focus first and foremost on creating jobs and challenged Congress to do so. 

Obama’s proposals would ensure the extremely wealthy pay their fair share—what he calls the “Buffett Rule,” after billionaire investor Warren Buffett who has repeatedly stated that individuals such as himself should be taxed at a much higher level. Buffett argues that millionaires and billionaires pay a much lower percentage of tax on their wealth than do the vast majority of working people. Buffett is joined in his call for more equitable taxation by the group Patriotic Millionaires, a group of 200 who have repeatedly asked Congress to raise their taxes.

Obama also proposed  savings of $1 trillion from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, which the Super Committee could use to avoid any cuts in Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. He said Social Security does not contribute one dime to the deficit and Social Security benefits must not be cut. Obama also vowed to veto any bill that cut Medicare benefits without raising revenue.

Any reform plan must include revenue increases, Obama said.

It is wrong that in the United States of America that a teacher or construction worker making $50,000 should pay more than someone who makes $50 million.

The president’s plan would repeal the Bush-era tax rates for couples making more than $250,000, limit deductions for the wealthiest and end certain corporate loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies.

Hailing Obama’s emphasis on jobs, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on Congress to:

immediately pass the President’s proposal for job-creating investments, to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share, to focus on the true causes of our long-term deficits, to reject any cuts to Medicaid or Social Security or Medicare benefits, and to stop scapegoating federal and postal employees and retirees for problems they did not cause. 

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

In too many of our state legislatures, the start of the legislative session means the start of another round of attacks on workers. That’s been true throughout the Midwest and across the country, but the Missouri special session has the potential to be a major exception. There’s a great opportunity for elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, to make an investment in the kind of good jobs that are so hard to find right now.

The Missouri Senate passed the “Made in Missouri” jobs package this month with strong bipartisan support. It would be a major step toward revitalizing manufacturing in the state, putting Missourians back to work: making things, and in the process making our economy stronger.  

Here’s what the jobs package will do:

• Invest in exporting Missouri products across the globe. This will bolster Missouri’s manufacturing industry and create thousands of jobs for working families. Jobs will be created for truck drivers, electricians, laborers, pipe fitters and machinists, just to name a few.
• Bring new science and technology companies to the state, which will create countless jobs for the future—from Ph.D-level jobs to lab technicians and support staff. 
• Build high-tech computer centers that will create construction jobs across the state. Large companies across the world now store their data in large computer warehouses. We can build and maintain those warehouses here.

Especially heartening, the bill will bolster and streamline job-training programs for jobless workers. To get past this jobs crisis, we need to make sure all workers have the skills needed to compete in a modern workforce. With business leaders and labor leaders, Republicans and Democrats, there’s a broad coalition supporting this bold initiative to get the state working. 

There’s not much time left for this special session, though. While families struggle during these tough times, we’re counting on the Missouri House to act immediately to pass the “Made in Missouri” jobs package. Investments in our community renewing our economic focus on the state and local levels as well as in Washington, D.C., are needed NOW. Our elected officials need to work together to invest in creating good jobs and solve the real problems we face.

Farm workers who toil in the tobacco fields of North Carolina often spend hours in the blistering sun and get paid less than the minimum wage. They are exposed to toxic chemicals just to do their jobs, according to a new report issued yesterday.

The report, “A State of Fear,” shows that one in four tobacco farm workers is paid less than the federal minimum wage. Many suffer from nicotine poisoning after absorbing nicotine through their bare skin. After a long day at work, they return to squalid living conditions such as overcrowded rooms with insect-infested mattresses and nonfunctioning toilets and showers.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and Oxfam America released the report at a rally in Dudley, N.C., where farm workers and community supporters gathered for a series of meetings.

“This is nothing short of an indictment of the tobacco industry,” said FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez, who spent a week in 2008 in the fields as a tobacco farm worker so he could see firsthand what the workers face. 

 It’s stunning what these workers have to go through. The tobacco companies need to step up and change this abhorrent system.

The report calls for:

• - Manufacturers to respect the internationally recognized human rights of workers, including the right to freedom of association.
• - Industry leaders to create a council that brings together manufacturers, growers, farm workers and their chosen representatives to address conditions.
• - Manufacturers to work to ensure a stable industry by allowing more grower input in their pricing formulas.

Click here to read the full report.

“This should be a wakeup call to all of the actors in the tobacco supply chain.  Hidden in plain view are the thousands of workers suffering daily indignities, ” said Minor Sinclair, director of Oxfam America’s U.S. Regional office. 

A safe and humane working environment is not a radical vision—it should be the minimum standard upheld by all who produce and benefit from tobacco.