Today, I'd like to introduce Marcy Rein, a retired member of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 29, who worked in the ILWU Organizing Department for most of the Blue Diamond campaign she describes below. The Blue Diamond workers' years-long effort to gain a union recently ended with a loss, and Rein vividly describes how that experience demonstrates yet again why we need passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

For four years, the workers on the Organizing Committee at the Blue Diamond Growers (BDG) plant in Sacramento, Calif., had done everything they could to avoid being where they were on the night of Nov. 19. They campaigned hard for a free and fair choice on whether to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). But there they were watching the vote count at the end of an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) run under the same old broken rules.

They stood around in the huge bare room where the election had taken place, in a cold storage building that doubles as the site of the annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. Sounds bounced off the concrete floor and disappeared on the way to the 40-foot ceiling—sighs, a stray cell phone quickly squelched, a hiccup of distress.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

More than 10,000 delegates and observers from around the world are gathered in Poznan, Poland, for the 12-day United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC). This ministerial meeting will build upon the framework negotiated in Bali, Indonesia, a year ago. Of the nearly 100 union delegates, more than 20 are from North America, including Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO Energy Task Force. Baugh sends us the first of a series of posts by members of the labor delegation.

The December 2007 climate change meeting in Bali marked the first time the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) achieved nongovernmental organization (NGO) status for the ongoing climate change negotiations.

With NGO status, ITUC representatives were recognized as official delegates and could participate directly in key working sessions of the conference. The Bali meetings helped put a negotiating framework in place for developing a new set of strategies to replace the current agreement on reducing global warming—known as the Kyoto Protocol—which expires in 2012. The target for achieving a new international agreement is 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by Seth Michaels, Dec 4, 2008

Election 2008 isn’t quite over yet. The closest Senate race in the country is still up in the air, as Minnesota is recounting ballots in the contest between Sen. Norm Coleman and AFL-CIO-endorsed Al Franken. While the recount is scheduled to finish tomorrow, final decisions on thousands of ballots are still pending, which means it could be another week before we know who will be the next senator from Minnesota.

On election night, the initial count showed that, out of some 2.86 million votes cast, just over 200 separated Coleman and Franken—a difference of less than 0.01 percent. Under Minnesota state law, a recount is required in any statewide race where the difference is less than half of 1 percent. The recount is under way and will be completed sometime tomorrow.

So who’s ahead, and who is likely to wind up leading when the counting is finished, as required under state law, tomorrow? That’s a good question, and one that nobody seems to be able to answer.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by James Parks, Dec 4, 2008

The Obama administration should make labor law reform and affordable, available health care top priorities when it takes office in January, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told two key members of the incoming Obama administration and community leaders from across the country.

Speaking at a roundtable today in Washington, D.C., on "Realizing the Promise: A Forum on Community, Faith and Democracy,” Holt Baker outlined the major changes needed to turn America around for working people. Roundtable participants included Melody Barnes and Valerie Jarrett, two top advisers to President-elect Barack Obama. Barnes has been designated as director of Obama’s Domestic Policy Council. Jarrett, who is co-chairing the transition, will be a senior adviser in the Obama White House.

Holt Baker told the more than 2,000 community leaders participating in the forum labor laws that deny workers the freedom to form unions and the high cost of health care are “undermining everything we need to be doing.”

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by James Parks, Dec 4, 2008

And the nominees are—no, it’s not the Grammies. It’s Jobs with Justice’s (JwJ's) Grinch of the Year contest, which for the past nine years has “honored” the CEO, corporation or politician whose greed and meanness demonstrate a heart that is at least “two sizes too small.”

This year’s nominees fit that description well. First, there’s the notorious anti-worker lobbyist Richard Berman, a hired gun for the alcohol, tobacco and the fast-food industry. Berman has mounted campaigns to relax drunken driving laws, downplay the public health impact of obesity and indoor tanning and prevent an increase in the minimum wage.

But he’s reserved his greatest venom for attacks on unions and working people. Berman most recently has spent his time—and millions in corporate cash—on a deceptive and outright false ad campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. During the recent elections, his PR blitzes smeared candidates who supported the bill in a multimillion-dollar campaign paid for by corporate special interests who want to deny their employees a fair wage, health care benefits and safety on the job. According to the Union Busting Network at the non-profit American Rights at Work, Berman runs several campaigns out of his offices in Washington, D.C., with corporate backers paying huge fees to his lobbying firm.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by Mike Hall, Dec 4, 2008

Most of us have—generally with some reluctance—agreed to help friends or acquaintances move, hauling furniture and boxes into a rental truck for trips across town or the country.

But if someone asked, "Want to help President Bush move out of the White House?" most of us would jump at the opportunity to send Bush packing. That's exactly what the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) is offering visitors to its new website www.sendbushpacking.com.

The site was inspired by Bush's last-minute rush of rules and regulations, many of which will adversely impact health care services and workplace safety. It offers an interactive game highlighting some of the "midnight rules"—last-minute regulatory changes—the Bush administration is seeking to cement in place in its waning days.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by James Parks, Dec 3, 2008

A new study confirms the union advantage for working women. After controlling for several factors apart from union membership (education, age, industry and state), women who belong to unions earn, on average, 11.2 percent more—about $2 an hour—than their nonunion peers. That’s equivalent to what a woman worker would gain by spending a year in college.

In addition, women in unions in 2007 "were about 19 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and about 25 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension," according to the study, Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers, by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)

by Mike Hall, Dec 3, 2008

If Congress does not soon approve emergency loan legislation to keep Detroit's Big Three automakers operating as they ride out the nation's financial crisis, job losses will ripple not just through the auto industry but through the entire economy, warned UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

At a news conference today following an emergency meeting with UAW local and regional leaders, Gettelfinger said the union is willing to "take the extra step" to aid the industry. Union leaders, he said, have agreed to delay automakers' payments to a union-administered health care fund and to modify the union's job banks program that provides laid-off workers with a portion of their wages and benefits.

But he reiterated that UAW members already have agreed to wage and benefit concessions that have lowered labor costs at the Big Three.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (6)

by Seth Michaels, Dec 3, 2008

In yesterday’s runoff election for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, working family-friendly candidate Jim Martin made a strong effort but wasn’t able to unseat incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss won with 57 percent of the vote, while Martin took 43 percent.

Martin’s presence in the runoff and the votes he won last night are thanks, in part, to the efforts of hundreds of union volunteers who have been working hard contacting active and retired members around the state. Union volunteers knocked on 100,000 doors, sent 300,000 pieces of union mail and leafleted more than 150 worksites. Union phone bankers made more than 300,000 phone calls, and Martin himself took part in a union phone bank as the election approached.

Throughout the race, union volunteers identified and mobilized union voters. Though they weren’t successful this time, they’ll be ready to turn out votes in future Georgia races.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (1)

by James Parks, Dec 3, 2008

Félie and thousands of children like him work every day and are not in schools.

On a typical day, more than 400 workers younger than 18 are hurt on the job in the United States and one is killed every 10 days. At the same time, the number of federal child labor investigations has declined by half since the Bush administration took office eight years ago.

In a two-part series last week, the Charlotte Observer revealed that employers are ignoring federal child labor laws and getting away with it. As part of its investigation, the Observer interviewed more than 20 current and former House of Raeford Farms workers who said the North Carolina-based poultry company often hired underage workers. Click here and here to read the series.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) told the Observer:

It's hard to believe that's going on in this century and in this state….You're really talking about a form of child abuse here.

More >>

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)