Sixth Republican Senator Faces Wisconsin Recall

by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2011

Wisconsin activists today filed more than 26,000 signatures today to recall the sixth Republican state senator—Robert Cowles of Green Bay—who voted for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) bill to eliminate collective bargaining rights of public employees.

All the petitions have carried far more signatures than the minimum needed to qualify, which must equal 25 percent of the total vote for governor in November’s election in each Senate district. The Cowles petition needed just 15,960 signatures and the 26,524 represents 166 percent of the requirement.

Along with Cowles, recall petitions have been filed for Alberta Darling of River Hills, Shelia Harsdof of River Falls, Luther Olsen of Ripon, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse and Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac. Democrats need to win three seats to take control of the Senate.

Republicans targeted eight Democratic senators for recall, but filed petitions for just three and those have yet to be verified. They fell short and missed the deadline for four others. They still have a few days to file against their last target.

People’s Budget Outperforms Republican Plan

by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2011

Congress is back in town next week and the budget battle will take top billing. Republicans are standing solidly behind their Paul Ryan-crafted House plan that forces seniors to pay more for health care by replacing Medicare with underfunded vouchers, cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding, repeals health care reform and slashes up to 2 million jobs.

They claim their fiscal plan is the centerpiece of the deficit-reduction strategy, but with $4.3 trillion in spending cuts and $4.2 trillion in tax giveaways, mostly to the wealthy and corporations, that’s not much of down payment on the deficit.

Today the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a Snapshot of the 10-year deficit-reduction projections for the Republican plan, the budget framework outlined by President Obama and the “People’s Budget” developed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. While the Republican and Obama plans do achieve a reduction in the deficit over the next decade, the People’s Budget goes a step further by creating a budget surplus by 2021.

EPI says the Ryan plan’s savings come mostly from domestic spending cuts, cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. Obama’s framework cuts the deficit through some domestic spending cuts and slight reductions in defense spending, and saves money through health care reform and broad-based tax reform.

In contrast, the People’s Budget achieves deficit reduction mainly by shifting the tax burden more fairly to high-income individuals and corporations: Its proposals include rolling back the Bush tax cuts, taxing capital gains as ordinary income, raising the payroll tax cap and enacting a financial transactions tax. The plan also cuts defense spending, enacts a public option for health care coverage and makes room for $1.4 trillion in vital investments in infrastructure, education and innovation over the next decade.

Click here for the full Snapshot and here for the AFL-CIO Principles for the FY 2012 Budget.

Fix the Hazards; Don’t Blame the Workers

by Leo W. Gerard, Apr 28, 2011

The Clearwater Paper Corp. in Lewistown, Idaho, chose the king cobra to symbolize its workplace safety program. A cobra. One of the deadliest snakes on the planet.

Every day on his way to and from work at Clearwater, John Bergen III drove past a billboard in the company parking lot sporting a picture of a king cobra and the explanation that it represented the company’s behavior-based safety program – Changing Our Behavior Reduces Accidents – COBRA.

Bergen, a devoted father, a gifted artist and a conscientious worker who urged everyone to observe safety rules, died last summer after inadvertently stepping through a gaping opening in the floor of the Clearwater Paper mill.

Behavior-based workplace safety programs like COBRA are attempts by corporations to shirk responsibility to eliminate hazards by blaming workers instead. When workers die, behavior-based programs disrespect the deceased by blaming them for their own deaths. These safety programs say to Bergen’s young son, “Your daddy’s dead because he wasn’t careful enough.”

These programs are cruel. They don’t work. And they must stop. This Workers Memorial Day, a day on which we honor those killed in the workplace and recommit ourselves to ending the slaughter, workers and their families across America demand an end to “blame the worker” safety programs.

Last year, among those killed on the job were 44 members of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW), which represents industrial workers including those in the paper sector. That is nearly one a week. Bergen was among them. His friends Jesse and Nigell Hutson wrote after his death:

Such a tragic loss for everyone. He will be missed more than words can say. We love you, John.

Over the past 18 years, the number of Steelworkers who died on the job has remained tragically constant, at about one every 10 to 12 days. So far this year, 11 Steelworkers died at work.

The stubborn consistency of the death toll demonstrates that the corporate-favored behavior-based safety programs achieve nothing.

The premise of behavior-based safety is that employees can work around hazards if they are just careful enough — if they are ever vigilant. “You are looking at the person responsible for your safety,” these programs proclaim on stickers attached to workplace mirrors. One behavior-based safety consultant actually counseled that if there were an opening in the shop floor, the employer should leave it there because repairing it would give workers a false sense of security.

Will Public Workers and Immigrants March Together on May Day?

On May Day in 2007, immigrants and their supporters marched through the streets of Kennett Square, Pa.

In this cross-post from “In These Times,” photojournalist and author David Bacon says immigrant workers and public service workers have a lot in common this May Day.

One sign carried in almost every May Day march of the last few years says it all: “We are Workers, not Criminals!” Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they’d just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes.

The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they’ve found here.

This year, those marchers will be joined by the public service workers we saw in the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, whose message was the same: we all work, we all contribute to our communities and we all have the right to a job, a union and a decent life. Past May Day protests have responded to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself, for undocumented people. The defenders of these proposals have used a brutal logic: if people cannot legally work, they will leave.

But undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They cannot simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the United States have historically fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they’ve come. The North American Free Trade Agreement alone deepened poverty in Mexico so greatly that, since it took effect, 6 million people came to the United States to work because they had no alternative.

Instead of recognizing this reality, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Thousands of workers have already been fired, with many more to come. We have seen workers sent to prison for inventing a Social Security number just to get a job. Yet they stole nothing and the money they’ve paid into Social Security funds now subsidizes every Social Security pension or disability payment.

Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor-their inherent contribution to society. Past years’ marches have supported legalization for the 12 million undocumented people in the United States. In addition, immigrants, unions and community groups have called for repealing the law making work a crime, ending guest worker programs, and guaranteeing human rights in communities along the U.S./Mexico border.

The truth is that undocumented workers and public workers in Wisconsin have a lot in common. In this year’s May Day marches, they could all hold the same signs. With unemployment at almost 9 percent, all working families need the federal government to set up jobs programs, like those Franklin Roosevelt pushed through Congress in the 1930s. If General Electric alone paid its fair share of taxes, and if the troops came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, we could put to work every person wanting a job. Our roads, schools, hospitals and communities would all benefit.

At the same time, immigrants and public workers need strong unions that can push wages up, and guarantee pensions for seniors and health care for the sick and disabled. A street cleaner whose job is outsourced, and an undocumented worker fired from a fast food restaurant both need protection for their right to work and support their families.

Instead, some states like Arizona, and now Georgia, have passed measures allowing police to stop any “foreign looking” person on the street, and question their immigration status. Arizona passed a law requiring employers to fire workers whose names are flagged by Social Security. In Mississippi an undocumented worker accused of holding a job can get jail time of 1-5 years, and fines of up to $10,000.

The states and politicians that go after immigrants are the same ones calling for firing public workers and eliminating their union rights. Now a teacher educating our children has no more secure future in her job than an immigrant cleaning an office building at night. The difference between their problems is just one of degree.
But going after workers has produced a huge popular response. We saw it in Madison in the capitol building. We saw it in the May Day marches when millions of immigrants walked peacefully through the streets. Working people are not asleep. Helped by networks like May Day United, they remember that this holiday itself was born in the fight for the eight-hour day in Chicago more than a century ago.

In those tumultuous events, immigrants and the native born saw they needed the same thing, and reached out to each other. This May Day, will we see them walking together in the streets again?

For information about where May Day marches are scheduled to take place this Sunday, visit the May Day United website here.

Case Against Boeing Draws National Attention

Thu. April 28, 2011

The nation’s largest newspapers are weighing in on last week’s complaint by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charging Boeing with multiple violations of federal labor law.

The case, which has implications for union members in all 50 states, centers on a decision by Boeing to open a 787 assembly line in South Carolina. According to the board, the decision was crafted primarily to retaliate against Boeing workers who have in the past, or may in the future, exercise their lawful right to concerted activity.

While the facts and the law in the case are undisputed, newspaper editorials are all over the map. The New York Times describes the NLRB complaint as “a welcome effort to defend workers’ right to collective bargaining.” Meanwhile, the Seattle Times came out against the NLRB ruling, saying Boeing’s decision to move should not be reversed by the federal government.

Another view of the issue came from Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, who applauded the decision by the board and cited the 1935 law protecting workers’ rights and the NLRB’s obligation to enforce it.

“If Boeing or the Chamber of Commerce or the South Carolina political establishment wants to change or repeal the law, it is certainly within their rights to try,” wrote Pearlstein. “After 75 years, it would be a useful debate for the country to have again. But given the further consolidation of corporate power and two decades of stagnant wages, I’m not sure they’ll like how it turns out.”

The next step in the process will be a hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge in Seattle, set for June 14, when all parties will have an opportunity to present evidence and arguments.

Global Anti-Regulation Agenda Threatens Health and Safety at Work

by James Parks, Apr 28, 2011

On Workers Memorial Day, the global union movement is warning that more lives will be lost at work if business groups and companies around the world succeed in reducing legal protections against hazardous jobs. In the United States, Big Business and congressional Republicans have launched campaigns to turn back health and safety regulations, claiming they hinder competitiveness.

Workers Memorial Day is observed by trade unions around the globe and today there are observances in more than 50 countries. To find out what’s going on around the world for Workers Memorial Day, click here.

Trade unions are challenging the rigged statistics and bogus arguments being used by business interests that care more about profit than the lives of the people who work for them, said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

“Consider the devastation wrought a year ago by the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Burrow says.

Eleven lives lost, environmental devastation and economic costs to the economy in the billions—all down to an appalling disregard for safety aided and abetted by an absence of effective regulation and official oversight. Lessons from this and other disasters like the Fukushima complex in Japan show how critically important regulation and enforcement is. Added to this, “slow burn” disasters like asbestos mean today’s failures to regulate can have a deadly legacy spanning two generations and killing millions.

The AFL-CIO “Death on the Jobs” report, released yesterday, showed that in 2009 (the latest figures available), 4,340 workers were killed on the job in the United States—an average of 12 workers a day—and an estimated 50,000 died of occupational diseases. More than 4.1 million workplace injuries and illnesses were reported in private and state and local workplaces. But the report says the 4.1 million “understates the problem,” and the actual number is more likely 8 million to 12 million. Click here for the full report.

The report also backs the ITUC call for strong health and safety regulations:

The nation must renew the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death and make this a high priority. Employers must meet their responsibilities to protect workers and be held accountable if they put workers in danger. Only then can the promise of safe jobs for all of America’s workers be fulfilled.

While accidents at work kill hundreds of thousands each year around the globe, this total is dwarfed by the number of deaths from occupational diseases such as work-related cancers. The World Health Organization estimates the annual toll from asbestos-related diseases alone at 107,000 deaths a year. Burrow says:

There is plenty of evidence to show the importance and value of proper regulation and enforcement. Lives are saved, and the huge economic costs of occupational accidents and disease are reduced. Studies indicate that possibly more than 20 per cent of major killers worldwide, including cancers, heart and respiratory disease, are related to work. All these are preventable.

Vibrant unions, tough regulation and effective enforcement can ensure safer workplaces, Burrow says.

Harnessing the on-the-ground knowledge of workers, backed by their unions, is crucial for preventing death and illness. Protection, including through respect for workers’ rights to trade union representation, should be expanded and not curtailed in an outbreak of deregulatory fever. Removing or weakening regulations, and depriving workers of union protection costs lives.

Flight Attendant Webcast Available for Viewing

Thu. April 28, 2011

The IAM is inviting all United, Continental and Continental Micronesia Flight Attendants to view an IAM Virtual Road Show. The show, which was broadcast live over the Internet, features United and Continental Flight Attendants answering questions and providing information about the United/Continental merger, the upcoming representation election and the negotiations that will follow.

Click here to view the broadcast and for additional information about the campaign.

IAM Remembers the Fallen

Machinists Union International President Tom Buffenbarger speaks at the annual IAM Workers’ Memorial service for friends and family of IAM members who perished from workplace illness or injuries.

Thu. April 28, 2011

Families, friends and fellow IAM members gathered at the William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center as part of a national observance of Workers’ Memorial Day to honor the memory of those who perished on the job or from work-related diseases.

The IAM honors its fallen brothers and sisters each year by inscribing their names on bricks that are placed at the memorial. Among this year’s list of inscribed bricks were: Sid Zimmermann of Local 1564, who died from an accidental fall from a ladder; Kenneth Crump of Local W246, who suffered a heart attack on the job; Steve Manwill of Local W246, who died from injuries sustained in a truck accident; Jerry Culuerhouse of Local 2003, who died in a helicopter crash; John Jefferies, District Lodge 4 Vice President, who died of natural causes; and Eduardo Tlatempa of Local 1759, who fell off a baggage loader lifter at Dulles Airport.

IAM Workers' Memorial

“The IAM remembers its fallen members today,” said IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger. “Like us, these brothers and sisters got up every morning, got dressed and headed off to work so that they may be able to provide for themselves and their families. Sadly one day these members did not return home. They are the reason we continue to fight. We fight so that not one more person will have to endure the pain and grief of losing a loved one on the job.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of OSHA and the right of workers to a safe job. With help from OSHA, unions have made great progress in making workplaces safer and protecting workers. But this progress didn’t just happen overnight. It happened because workers and their unions organized, fought and demanded action from employers and their government.

Reminders for 2011 IAM National Staff Conference

Thu. April 28, 2011

IAM representatives from the United States who are assigned to the 2011 National Staff Conference scheduled for June 12-16, 2011 in Toronto, Ontario, are reminded that they need a valid U.S. Passport enter Canada. If you do not have a current passport, you should apply for, or update, your Passport as soon as possible. Click here to go to the State Department website for the application form and further instructions.

Another concern is extra charges for international cell phone usage. Before leaving for the Staff Conference, contact your cell phone carrier about making and receiving calls while in Canada. Most major phone companies have ongoing or temporary service plans that allow you to make international calls. Call your carrier for specific information about your phone plan.

Also, you should call your credit card company to let them know the times you’ll be in Canada so they don’t put a hold on your account because they think your card has been stolen.

IAM Welcomes Single Carrier Ruling for Ramp/Fleet at United Airlines

Thu. April 28, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, D.C., April 28, 2011 – The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) welcomed today’s National Mediation Board (NMB) single carrier ruling for the Ramp and Fleet Service classifications at the recently combined United Airlines and Continental Airlines.

The NMB decision sets in motion a 14-day period during which the IAM will provide sufficient evidence of support for the NMB to call for a union representation election. The Board requires a “showing of interest” by at least 35 percent of the combined classification before an election will be scheduled. The NMB will set the time frame for an election after the IAM provides its showing of interest.

“We are very pleased with the NMB decision,” said IAM District 141 President and Directing General Chairman Rich Delaney. “This will allow Fleet/Ramp service employees to determine their future and allow the IAM to continue to negotiate from a position of even greater strength. As airlines continue to consolidate for their best interests it is equally important for airline employees to consolidate into a single group. This decision is the first step.”

The IAM has represented Ramp Service employees at United Airlines since 1948, negotiating collective bargaining agreements that repeatedly set compensation standards for the entire industry while providing solid careers for generations of workers at United.

“This is the first step towards bringing together the Fleet/Ramp service classifications at the new United under the banner of the IAM,” said New York Local 1322 President James Carlson. “The IAM has the knowledge, experience and strength to deliver a combined collective bargaining agreement that secures the wages, benefits and working conditions we deserve.”

“IAM members in Chicago are looking forward to the process that will welcome our brothers and sisters from Continental into the IAM family,” said Chicago Local 1487 President Tony Liccardi.

Fleet Service workers at Continental are also looking forward to the representation election. “The fact that the Machinists were the only union at United to secure a defined benefit pension for its members when the carrier went through bankruptcy is proof they can get the job done,” said Houston-based Continental Fleet Service worker David Otoya.

“The best job in the world isn’t worth much if it can be easily outsourced, subcontracted or drastically cut back,” said Newark, NJ-based Continental Fleet service worker Mitch Buckley. “The IAM contract has solid job security language that doesn’t have an expiration date.”

The IAM has represented United’s Ramp Service workers for more than 60 years while Continental and Continental Micronesia’s Fleet Service workers are currently represented by another union. The IAM is the largest airline union in North America. More information about the IAM campaign is available at www.voteiam.com.