From January – March 1, 2011

Time to apply for 2011 Berger-Marks grants

Once the presents are unwrapped and decorations squirreled away for next year, the Berger-Marks Foundation will begin a new round of academic and organizational grants. The official notice of request for grant proposals is being issued in January, 2011. Deadline for receipt of completed academic and organizational grant applications is March 1, 2011.

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Nurses & other hospital workers vote yes, go union

Strike threat gets hospital to bargain

Taken in part from an AFL-CIO blog

Nurses at Washington Hospital Center in the nation's capitol got the attention of management with a strong union vote and a strike threat. Some 1,500 registered nurses voted to join the National Nurses United (NNU) in October, after the administration tried to impose its "last offer" – including wage and benefit cuts – on the previous union, which was not affiliated with a national union. Then in November, nine out of ten nurses voted to strike the day before Thanksgiving over the hospital’s illegal labor practices.

They didn’t have to walk out. Administrators saw the light and began seriously negotiating Nov. 29, with oversight from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

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Can workers get fired for dissing the employer on Facebook or Twitter?

Photo by Rishi Bandopadhay

People are often shocked to find that if they work for a private employer, they can get fired for what they say – even if it’s outside of the workplace -- and that only government employers have to honor our constitutional right to free speech.

But as the National Labor Relations Board recently confirmed, private workers who want to organize and/or discuss workplace conditions have special protection. Workers have the right to engage in protected "concerted activity," which can include discussions, meetings, or trying to initiate group action. (Some workers might also be protected for exposing certain corporate wrong-doing by whistle-blower laws.)

After worker Dawnmarie Souza got fired by American Medical Response, an ambulance Service, for sounding off about her boss on Facebook, the NLRB Regional Director in Hartford, Connecticut said the firing violated labor law’s protection of "concerted activity" for the "mutual aid and protection" of workers.

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New NLRB majority is making a difference

More respect for workers' right to organize

NLRB

After nearly two years of trying to operate with just two members, the National Labor Relations Board finally has a quorum, with a majority that’s a far cry from the corporate attorneys who used to rule the roost. Although labor reform hasn't made it through Congress, the Board is making moves to restore worker rights.

Back-pay awards now include compounded interest

It's still true that if a worker is illegally fired, the money she makes while waiting for the NLRB to rule on the firing can end up in the pocket of the employer, because it’s deducted from the back pay the fired worker is owed.

But a new ruling does make it more expensive for companies to unjustly fire workers. With a 4-0 decision on October 25, the NLRB ruled that employers have to pay interest, compounded daily, on any back pay they owe to illegally fired workers.

That's in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling "that delay injures back pay claimants" and that the board is "not required to place the consequences of its own delay… upon wronged employees to the benefit of wrongdoing employers,’" says the NLRB decision.

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3,000 agents at Piedmont Airlines win union

2-1 vote for CWA defeats vicious union-busters

Piedmont management confiscated two "CWA Vote Yes" cakes union supporters brought to a meeting

In November fleet and passenger service agents at Piedmont Airlines voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the Communications Workers of America. The CWA had already represented passenger service professionals at parent company US Airways for over a decade, and every other major workgroup at Piedmont was union.

But that didn’t stop the company from hiring one of the most notorious union-busters and using every tool at their disposal to try to keep Piedmont agents out of the union. They forced workers to attend captive audience meetings full of anti-union propaganda, and had supervisors tear up union materials and harass union supporters. The union-busting company, Labor Relations Institute, promised management it would defeat the union "or your money back."

Piedmont agents stood their ground, and won a sweet victory.

Number of union elections grew in early 2010

With the best win rate in manufacturing since 1990

There were 220 more union elections in the first half of 2010 than in the same period in 2009, says the Bureau of National Affairs. Many were at smaller companies; More than two-thirds of the elections for the first half of 2010 occurred in units with less than 50 employees.

Unions won about 69% of private sector elections, slightly down from a 73% win rate for the same period in 2009. In the private manufacturing section, unions won more than half the representation elections for the first time since 1990.

The most active union was the Teamsters; the most successful union was the Service Employees International Union. SEIU organized almost 6,000 workers during the first half of 2010 and won 70% of its elections. Meanwhile, decertification elections dropped slightly from 2009.

Wisconsin caves in, ends ban on captive-audience meetings

But Oregon ban survives challenge – so far

In May, Wisconsin became the second state in the nation to make it illegal for companies to force workers to attend "captive-audience" meetings during union drives, where the "primary purpose" of the meeting is to present the employer’s "opinion" about whether they should join or support a union.

Employer groups rushed to the courts to fight the law, and in November, a district judge did their bidding. He declared the law to be unconstitutional and said that since the National Labor Relations Act allows such meetings, the states are powerless to prevent them. But Wisconsin never tried to defend the law – instead it immediately settled with the business groups that sued and agreed to pay their legal fees. The court based its ruling on that agreement.

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Unions grounded at Delta Airlines

Flight Attendants protest company interference

When Delta took over the highly unionized Northwest Airlines to became the world’s largest airline, hopes were high that all of Delta’s workers might finally enjoy union representation. At the pre-merger Delta only the pilots had enjoyed union representation – and tragically, that’s again true after a series of votes yielded no union victories for the Flight Attendants and Machinists at Delta.

When 18,760 flight attendants voted on whether to join the American Flight Attendants/CWA in an election that ended November 3, 49% of them chose union representation – just short of a majority. If 165 flight attendants had voted differently, they could have a union today.

Then ground workers also narrowly lost their bid to unionize with the Machinists union (IAM), with baggage handlers and other fleet-service workers voting 52.5% for no union. In two more union votes among other Delta workers that followed, the Machinists also lost.

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New resource for the 'Unemployed and Anxiously Employed'

Winner of Berger-Marks grant helps create web site

The next time you visit Facebook, check out the new page for The Unemployed and Anxiously Employed Workers' Initiative (UAEWI).

The UAEWI says it was launched in northern Indiana as a way for people to "come together and help one another in this economic crisis by creating our own representative voice and power." Its organizers want to build "a local network of people struggling to navigate this crisis." They want it to grow into a national and international network "to create a representative voice and power for the unemployed and anxiously employed."
 
 

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Union drives win with Teamsters

Flying high at Southeast Airlines

At Atlantic Southeast Airlines, 600 mechanics and related workers voted 2-1 to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in October. The Southeast mechanics were the first to win union representation under the new rule set by National Mediation Board that lets a majority of those voting carry the day.

First student school bus workers keep on voting union

The Teamster drive to help organize school bus drivers continues to roll across America, unit by unit. Next stop was Wichita, Kansas, where First Student school bus drivers and attendants voted themselves into Teamsters Local 795 by a better than 7-1 margin in October. First Student, owned by a British company, is the nation’s biggest private school bus company.

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Tomato workers win historic agreement

Pressure moves to supermarkets to support decent conditions

Tomatoes testify outside Trader Joe's in New York City

No matter how many times you’ve visited Florida, you probably never saw Immokalee. Just inland from the luxurious condos on the Gulf coast is another world where immigrant workers live in trailers and shacks along hot, dusty streets and work picking tomatoes under what have often been slave-like conditions.

This November, after more than 15 years of struggle, including support from students and other groups around the nation, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won a landmark agreement with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) that extends the CIW’s Fair Food principles to cover more than 90 percent of the Florida tomato industry.

The agreement includes a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a health and safety program, a worker-to-worker education process and the raise of a penny per pound of tomatoes picked that workers have long sought. But there's more work to be done to make sure you can buy those tomatoes in your local market.

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The other side of airport pat-downs

Maybe agents feel the same way!

Photo by By dmixo6 dugg simpson

Travelers who complain about pat-downs at airports might consider the plight of the beleaguered workers on the front lines of that policy – the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers who have to do the pat-downs. Even before that was added to their job duties, a September survey by the Partnership for Public Service found that when federal employees rank the best places to work for the government, the TSA ranks 220 out of 224 federal components.

"It is no secret that the morale of the TSO workforce is terrible as a result of favoritism, a lack of fair and respectful treatment from many managers, poor and unhealthy conditions in some airports, poor training and testing protocols, and a poor pay system," says John Gage, president of the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

It's common practice for new officers to have to work part-time making $14 an hour for two or more years before they can be considered for full-time jobs, and starting pay is just $29,000 a year. "Officers are having to go out and get second and third jobs," says Claude Newton, a retired TSA officer supervisor who now works for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

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Anti-union article pops up across the nation

Right-wing Heritage Foundation plants its poison

"Fliers, expect delay; TSA union also means less security." "Unionizing TSA a dangerous idea." "How to make air travel slower and less safe."

Whatever the headline, it was the same article, distributed by the McClatchy-Tribune News Service, that popped up in over a dozen newspapers across the country this November. In many cases it was revealed only by small print at the end of the article that author James Sherk is a policy honcho at the Heritage Foundation. That foundation openly boasts that its goal is "giving conservatives in Congress the facts and policy ideas to help them stand up for conservative principles" and that Rush Limbaugh is a key supporter.

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Dining workers at Loyola University Chicago join UNITEHERE!

Loyola dining workers applaud the union win

After months of organizing, more than 200 campus dining workers at Loyola University Chicago chose to join UNITEHERE! and won recognition of the union on November 16.

The previous month, a majority of the campus dining workers, backed by Loyola faculty, students, and clergy, had approached the employer to get union rights. They won a fair process to choose the union. Loyola’s dining workforce comes from 16 different countries, and many have been serving the student and faculty community for decades.