Labor Union Blog

At events on college campuses across the nation today, UNITEHERE!, the largest worker organization for food workers in the United States, is making the connection between healthy, sustainable food and working standards for those employed in the food service industry.

Celebrations will take place at colleges and universities in California, Connecticut, Illnois, Maryland and Massachusetts to make the case that food workers want to prepare fresh, sustainably grown food they can serve with pride to their customers and deserve the compensation and benefits that allow them to feed their families in a healthy fashion. The gatherings bring together students, faculty, food workers and community food groups for a day of cooking, eating and talking together about ways to improve the nation’s food system. In conjunction with today’s Food Day events, UNITEHERE! launched a new website, Real Food, Real Jobs, that explores the relationship between sustainable food and workplace fairness.

A great irony for food workers is that one in four of those employed in the food services industry lives in households described as “food-insecure” by social science reseachers, according to a release from UNITEHERE!:

For example, because of poverty wages paid by the food service industry, many food workers are unable to afford enough food to feed their families: 13% of food service workers lived in households that utilized food stamps at some point during the year, nearly double the national average.

Food service workers who have union representation fare significantly better, earning wages and benefites that are 18 percent higher than those without a union. Sonja Edwards, who works in food service at Loyala Marymount University in Los Angeles, where food service workers recently won their first union contract, told UNITEHERE!:

[Th]e difference the union has made in my life is of course the pay increase. That’s extra money I can put towards fresh groceries.

Nearly one-third of food workers are at risk for diet-related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease—the highest rate in any occupational sector. As reported by UNITEHERE!, food workers are not ignorant of the risks to their own health posed by a worklife in which they often have to work more than one job in order to make ends meet. Gladys Burrell, a food worker at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, explains what it’s like to live in what policy wonks often describe as “food deserts” in the parts of the urban landscape inhabited by low-income workers:

There is a real barrier to getting good, real food for folks in our communities….Sometimes the cost of unhealthy food is less than it is for healthy food. And bad food is everywhere, like drive-thru fast food places.

 UNITEHERE! represents more than 90,000 food service workers employed in corporate cafeterias, airports, universities, school districts, sports stadiums and event centers, amusement parks, cultural institutions, and national parks, as well as tens of thousands of restaurant workers in hotels and casinos.

Ed Schultz has been a champion of America’s working- and middle-class for years, most recently on MSNBC where he had a 6 p.m. and then a 10 p.m. time slot.

Starting today, the Ed Schultz Show moves to prime-time viewing, and will broadcast live at 8 p.m., ET, prime time for millions of viewers.

As Schultz says in this video clip: “If you’re a wage earner, I’m your guy.”

Follow Schultz on twitter @edshow and on facebook (facebook.com/edshow) and at ed.msnbc.com

AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards sends us the latest from Ohio.

Thousands of Ohio working families went door to door canvassing across the state over the weekend to get out the vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5. With a little more than two weeks left until Election Day, Nov. 8, Ohioans are working furiously to talk with as many Ohioans about how Issue 2/S.B. 5 is unsafe, unfair and has hurt our communities because it takes away the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life. In Cincinnati, Ohio Federation of Teachers/AFT President Sue Taylor joined workers and community members to kick off a get-out-the-vote event before working families fanned out across the area to knock on doors.

(If you’re in Ohio, pledge to vote “NO” on Issue 2 and vote early. Click here.)

Issue 2/S.B.5 is an “entirely political attack,” says Taylor. 

If allowed to go into effect, it will eliminate our ability to advocate on behalf of the children that we serve. There will be no voice advocating for smaller classes that we know will benefit  students, no more advocating for safe schools, buses or safe buildings and no more advocating staffing levels that are safest for ourselves, for our students, for our clients and our communities.

Columbus working families packed into the Ohio AFL-CIO on Saturday for an early vote event organized by Working America. Former Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, state Rep. Ted Celeste, Working America Ohio State Director Dan Stewart and Working America Regional Director Dan Heck and others spoke to volunteers before marching to the Columbus Board of Elections office to vote. After voting, volunteers hit the doors and phones. Says Stewart:

We have a great opportunity to fight the fight and get people to go out to vote today. We need to hit those doors, get on the phones and do everything we can to make sure Issue 2/S.B. 5 goes down on Nov. 8.

Dwight Landis, a Working America member since 2004, volunteered Saturday in Columbus. He has been in the fight against Issue 2/S.B. 5 since it first was introduced, attended all of the statehouse demonstrations, gathered signatures at the doors with his daughter and, for the past two months, has phone banked against Issue 2/S.B. 5.

I have a vested interest in seeing this bad bill go down. My wife is a teacher, and my son works for the Columbus Police Department. I don’t want my son caught in the line of fire and his life at risk. If S.B. 5 passes, police officers will not be able to bargain for the best available safety equipment they need to keep the community and themselves safe.

More than 300 walked and phone banked Saturday morning in Cleveland.  At the Laborers’ Local 310 hall, Loree Soggs, executive secretary of the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council; Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore Labor Council; Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) State Vice President Davida Russell; and Kelly Trautner, deputy executive officer for labor relations with the Ohio Nurses Association, joined with working families before hitting the doors. Says Trautner:

Issue 2 will impact the safe delivery of patient care and that’s why nurses are urging people today to vote ‘NO’ on Issue 2,” said Trautner.  Nurses in a number of settings like school nurses, home health professionals and maternity consultants will suffer under Issue 2.  Our members are extremely concerned and motivated as a result.

The Cleveland Teachers Union (CTU)/AFT continued to mobilize their members against Issue 2/S.B. 5 after a week that saw more than a hundred CTU/AFT volunteers phone bank.  

“My husband is a firefighter, and I am proud to say I’m a teacher,” said Kathy Schmitt with the Cleveland Teachers Union and a high school teacher of computer technology. 

Our family has a big stake in this fight, as do all working people in Ohio.  We are already suffering from oversized classes in our schools.  Issue 2 will make that situation worse if it passes and we’re not going to allow that to happen.  

In Toledo, Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga launched walks with executive secretary of the Greater Northwest Central Labor Council George Tucker and hundreds of volunteers at the Teamsters Local 20 hall. As Burga said:

Over the next 17 days, if we do it like we know we can do in the trade union movement; if we walk a little bit faster, knock a little bit louder, call a little bit more, leaflet the worksites as we know we can, talk to our friends and families…if we show this sort of energy, we will win.

Over the weekend, Chicago police tore down a first aid station at Occupy Chicago, and nurses were among the 130 protesters arrested in a massive sweep against those taking a stance against Wall Street greed.

About 1,500 people gathered Saturday in Grant Park hoping to make it the movement’s permanent home, according to The Washington Post.

Along the way, marchers chanted “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” and held signs that read “Greed Sucks” and “No War But The Class War” while police on horses blocked them from walking on the street on Michigan Avenue, leaving them with just the sidewalks to occupy.

The protest was peaceful, but demonstrators were taken away one by one and handcuffed with white plastic ties. As the Post noted, some on the scene shouted: “This is what democracy looks like!”

Paulina Jasczuk, a 24-year-old dental receptionist, watched as her boyfriend, Philip Devon, was led away in the night hours. She threw him a white sweater against the chill of a fall night in Chicago.

“I’m proud of everyone who got arrested tonight,” she told [The Associated Press], adding she hoped they would inspire more demonstrators to join in the movement in the weeks ahead.

Protesting the arrests and destruction of the first aid station, nurses and their allies picketed outside the mayor’s office at City Hall this morning. From the Post:

“This movement will not be a serious movement until we take a stand, and getting arrested is just one way of taking a stand,” said Max Farrar, 20, a junior political science major at DePaul University, speaking Saturday to a reporter.

National Nurses United (NNU) also has first aid stations at Occupy protests in New York’s Zuccotti Park, as well as in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Detroit and plan more in coming days.

Cory McCray, an IBEW Local 24 member and founder of the Metro Baltimore Council AFL-CIO Young Trade Unionists, describes how his IBEW apprenticeship helped ensure he entered adulthood with a firm footing in the middle class. In the video here (on the left), McCray elaborates on his experience. 

As I anticipate my 29th birthday, I realize how one decade can drastically change a person’s life. I find it impossible not to give thanks to God for providing me with a family, community and, most of all, the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 24, for placing direction in my path.

As I reminisce about my trials and tribulations as a young adult, I pay homage to those who helped me overcome the self-inflicting wounds that we call experience. Those experiences are what play a big part in my decision making skills today, and the IBEW Local 24 was able to give me a clear foundation and structure to move in the right direction.

The IBEW offered a five-year apprenticeship program. My class went to school one day every two weeks, while the rest of the time was spent on the job with contractors such as Gill-Simpson, Enterprise Electric and Brown & Heim Inc. While on the job, I started out with an earnest wage of $12.50 an hour while receiving my yearly apprenticeship raise until I advanced to the journeyman status, with a $32.50 an hour wage. Might I add that the $3-$4 raises a year offered a great opportunity to help save for the future. We also received the regular cost of living raise twice a year, for which the entire local union bargained.

Toward the end of the apprenticeship, I began to grow in family size and very much appreciated the affordable family health care that was bargained for by the members before my time. Even though I may not now be enjoying the full benefits of the pension and annuity, which also was bargained before my time, I know that 30 years from now, I will humbly understand why those before us fought so hard to make sure that my brothers and sisters in the IBEW would have the opportunity to retire with dignity.

I must add that this entire opportunity was free, all that was required was for me to study hard while attending school, give the contractors a day’s work for a day’s pay, learn as much as possible from my journeyman while on the job and take away the meaning of true brotherhood.

From that foundation I have learned hard work, dedication and commitment. I know what it is to be a middle-class family and the importance of fighting for the middle class and ensuring the IBEW grows as well, so we all can live the American Dream.

I would encourage any young male or female to enjoy the On-Job and In-Classroom training through the IBEW. “How did I come across the IBEW?” some may ask. It must have been fate that a mother from Baltimore, Md., one day called the Department of Labor and asked for all the apprenticeships in Maryland. From that opportunity, I stumbled into the IBEW Local 24 apprenticeship building and was accepted after the interview process. I hope that all young adults can get the opportunities of the IBEW or, if not the IBEW, something similar.