Voices At Work

Hyatt Regency Waikiki workers staged a one-day strike on Thursday. Jesse Russell reports.

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By Doug Cunningham

Honeywell is continuing its lockout of United Steel Workers members at a uranium conversion plant in Metropolis, Illinois. It’s one of just two plants in North America that converts uranium ore to UF-6 gas for use in nuclear power plants. USW Local 7-669’s Steven Lech says in June Honeywell locked out 230 United Steel Workers members when they refused to agree to major concessions – even though Honeywell is a profitable company.

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By Doug Cunningham

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The explosion and fire on an offshore petroleum platform in the Gulf of Mexico today shows “we need to make sure all these rigs in the Gulf are safe to operate before we put personnel back to work on them,” United  Steelworkers (USW) Vice President Gary Beevers said.

One person was injured in the explosion on a platform owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc.

Beevers, who heads the union’s National Oil Bargaining division, said in a statement:

I would hate to see a worker killed in our haste to reopen the Gulf to drilling. We need to give the government adequate time to do its inspections and ensure adequate health and safety provisions are in place.

It’s ironic, Beevers said, the explosion happened one day after the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry’s trade association, held rallies to lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf.

Instead of holding political protests, the API and the industry should be helping the government ensure all the rigs are safe to operate so the moratorium can be removed sooner.

We want drilling to return to the Gulf just like everyone else in the industry, but we have to make sure these rigs are safe first. We don’t need another oil explosion and oil spill.

Meanwhile, Beevers adds, offshore workers and the businesses affected by the moratorium that came as a result of the BP explosion and oil spill, should be given “adequate assistance.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka yesterday described the upcoming elections this way:

This election is about economic patriots, and it’s also about corporate traitors.

Economic patriotism resonates among working people and the millions ofAmerica’s  jobless workers–and corporate traitors is an all-too apt description of many in Big Business, such as anti-patriotic corporations moving jobs out of this country.  A graf buried in an a New York Times article on Wall Street this week me hard:

Just last week, Paul S. Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said at a dinner at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute that “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

Mr. Otellini has overseen two big acquisitions in the last two weeks — the $7.7 billion takeover of the security software maker McAfee and the $1.4 billion deal for the wireless chip unit of Infineon Technologies. If he is true to his word, those deals will most likely lead to job cuts in the United States, not job creation.

Otellini is not an outlier. Reports this week say Citigroup–which received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds–now is creating 12,000 jobs. In China.

Also this week, a new report shows that between November 2008 April 2010, the CEOs of the top 50 job-cutting companies made $598 million in compensation. The top 50 layoff firms reported a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009, the Institute for Policy Studies report said.

Calling out such behaviors and casting them for what they are–unpatriotic, anti-American–can help us take back the ground grabbed by reactionaries for so long, with the Tea Party just the latest manifestation of such warped usage of the red, white and blue.

Patriotism means more than lip service. It means taking action to ensure that working families have the good jobs they need to support their families–creating an environment that’s worthy of our American Dream.

     

Cathy Sherwin, AFL-CIO communications director for Missouri, describes why union members in a conservative county support Robin Carnahan for Senate.

Cape Girardeau, Mo., probably isn’t the first place you’d think of as a union town. It’s the  hometown of Rush Limbaugh, and residents of Cape County haven’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since 1964. It is a Red city in a Purple state. When it comes to the union movement, however, there is more to Cape Girardeau than meets the eye.

The folks in the Southeast Missouri Central Labor Council work hard to build unity among all the members in the region. President Mark Baker and a dedicated crew of activists have been organizing our Labor Picnic for four years to give members a chance to relax with their families and friends in beautiful Cape Girardeau County Park. Along with the fishing tournament and the tug of war, candidates and elected officials flock to get a chance to meet with union members.

There’s a big struggle for the Missouri Senate seat that’s been held by a Republican since 1986. Roy Blunt, longtime Republican congressman from southern Missouri, has saturated the airwaves using big-dollar corporate donations. So given Blunt’s big-bucks backing, when 500 union members got together in a Republican county for an early Labor Day picnic in late August, what sort of reception is there for Senate candidate Robin Carnahan?

From the minute Carnahan arrived at the picnic, union members from the gamut of trades and industries greeted her and offered their help. Electricians, painters, roofers, operating engineers, communications and sheet metal workers and union retirees. Roy Gunter, an IBEW activist, pledged his support and mentioned he’d already been phone banking for Robin all morning.

All the union members pointed to the same issue as their top concern: jobs. Our picnic banner, “American Jobs Now!” reflected the statements of many who said we need more jobs in this state, and we need a senator who will work for jobs and support those still out of work. Clearly, the crowd of union workers here in southeast Missouri were united to get folks working again, and united in their support for Robin Carnahan. They said Missouri needs a senator who would stop giving tax dollars to corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas and support manufacturing and industries here at home.

After all, in these tough times, even in the reddest of Republican strongholds, Missourians are getting to know the truth about Blunt. That he’s voted time and again against the minimum wage, and just this summer voted against unemployment benefits. A candidate so cozy with Wall Street that he wants to privatize Social Security and risk tax dollars on the stock market. And when thousands of teachers and firefighters in southeast Missouri were at risk of losing their jobs, Roy Blunt sat out the vote, too busy fighting for his own job.

Cape Girardeau union members working hard for a Democratic candidate for Senate? Just like that banner says: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

     

We’ve got a long Labor Day weekend in front of us and that means plenty of time to join American Rights at Work’s first-ever Labor Day Tweet-a-Thon along with celebrity union members—including actors, recording artists, Broadway performers, baseball players and broadcasters.

American Rights at Work’s Liz Cattaneo says the tweet-a-thon is a chance to “send a positive message about the value of unions.”

To showcase the strength, solidarity, diversity of our unions, we’re asking celebrities—along with anyone else who wants to show their union pride—to join us by sending a tweet with the hash tag #unionmember during Labor Day weekend. It’s a great opportunity to have well-known public figures frame unions in a positive light through a fun and influential medium.

You can start tweeting now through Labor Day, Sept. 6, and if enough of us join in, we can make #unionmember a trending topic on Twitter! So set aside a few minutes to send your 140 character-or-less message that promotes the union advantage to your followers and friends.

You also can include this link http://umem.us to American Rights at Work’s official Labor Day Tweet-a-Thon website where you can track the #unionmember trending topic and get a quick view of celebrity tweets.

Members of the Screen Actors (SAG), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Actors’ Equity (AEA), American Rights at Work and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBA) will be tweeting. Join us.

     

It’s no secret that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his colleagues are tight with their corporate chums. They even defend poor little old BP from the meanies working to hold the petroleum giant accountable for the Gulf oil spill.

One of Boehner’s trusted lieutenants, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), even went so far as to claim the Obama administration’s efforts to persuade BP to establish a $20 billion recovery fund for Gulf Coast residents was a “shakedown.” How dare they pick on BP like that?

To remind voters in Boehner’s home district of his loving relationship with BP and Big Oil, our friends at ActBlue have erected a second billboard, with our help and that of People For the American Way, that notes the golf-loving Boehner’s affection for BP is “Par for the Course.” Click here for more on Boehner and his golf jones.

Be sure to visit BeatBoehner.com, and click here to find out more about Justin Coussoule who is running with labor’s support to unseat Boehner in Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. He is a West Point graduate, a former Army captain, a lawyer and a small business owner.

Boehner’s so-called job creation strategy is to return to the Bush policies of tax cuts for the wealthy and Big Business and free rein on Wall Street. Tuesday in St. Louis, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka summed up Boehner’s jobs program.

His idea of job creation is to hire a second caddy.

     

Corporations that lead the way in creating fair working environments prosper—but too many employers and governments around the world are abusing workers’ rights, according to the findings of several reports released in time for Labor Day. You can check out all the reports on our Labor Day 2010 webpage here.  

• “Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work,” by American Rights at Work, profiles eight companies that promote positive labor-management relationships in the clean energy industry. The companies and union employees featured in the report are leading the way toward a sustainable economy in which businesses thrive, the planet prospers and workers share in the success they help create.

• A  Human Rights Watch (HRW) report reveals that many European companies which publicly embrace workers’ rights and follow global labor standards at home sometimes undermine workers’ rights in their U.S. operations. The 130-page report, “A Strange Case: Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations,” details how some European multinational firms have carried out aggressive campaigns to keep workers in the United States from organizing and bargaining, violating international standards and, often, U.S. labor laws.
• The HRW report has a long section on T-Mobile USA  as one company that operates on this double standard. In the report “Lowering the Bar or Setting the Standard? Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. Labor Practices,” released in December 2009 by American Rights at Work, John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University, found that T-Mobile is conducting a vicious anti-union campaign to prevent workers from joining the Communications Workers of America. This summer, T-Mobile USA workers visited Germany to tell shareholders at the company’s parent, Deutsche Telekom (DT), how the company denies its U.S. employees the freedom to join a union. Yet in many countries around the world, DT follows internationally recognized labor and human rights, including the freedom of association and the freedom to form a union. But not in the United States. 
• A Freedom House report found that the rights of working people and trade unions are under serious duress throughout much of the world, and authoritarian regimes are using increasingly sophisticated methods of control.  ”The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World” found that one-third of the global population lives in societies in which workers’ rights suffer a significant degree of repression.

Trent McNutt and Laura Jackson are hitting the streets and going door to door to make sure that candidates who will create real jobs are elected this fall—and they say every worker should join them because there’s too much at stake to stay home.

McNutt, an unemployed member of  the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), and Jackson, a Communications Workers of America (CWA) member, told a press conference at  the AFL-CIO  yesterday that working people have a lot at stake in this election to stay at home.    

McNutt lost his job last November when the company in Toledo, Ohio, where he had worked for 11 years went out of business. Now the married father of two young children has to make due working occasionally with a local contractor.

This year I’m on pace to make a third of what I’ve made in years past. You never really expect something as drastic as what we’re going through—we’ve worked so hard for everything we have.  But we know a lot of other families are worse off.  Over the past few months work has started to pick up, but I’m fearful it will taper off again. 

He says he is motivated to get out and work for candidates who support working family issues like job creation because of people like his father, a retired sheet metal worker, who taught him a strong work ethic and spirit of volunteerism. 

I’m not sure what we’ll do if things don’t turn around and we don’t put the right people in office. That’s why I’m going to do everything I can with my union brothers and sisters to make a difference this election because there’s just too much at stake.

At  the press conference, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka outlined plans for an aggressive and massive mobilization of working people beginning this Labor Day weekend for the fall election. Trumka also announced the AFL-CIO will run TV and radio ads Labor Day weekend in key markets around Major League Baseball games, NASCAR and college football games.

For Jackson, a social services worker in Moberly, Mo., this election comes down to making sure America’s working families can make ends meet.

That’s why this election is even more important than the last election. We want to continue the progress we’ve made and elect candidates that will put workers at the center.  The number one issue is jobs, so we definitely need to make sure that the people making the decisions make that their top priority. I’m going to do all I can to make sure that happens, including getting the message out to my family, union members and anyone who will listen.

    The performers and musicians of “Oklahoma Speaks.”        

Stuart Elliott from the Wichita/Hutchinson Labor Federation of Central Kansas reports on the Oklahoma Laborfest, Aug. 26-28 in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City rocked for three days with the sounds of a celebration of working people. The big show: the premiere of “Oklahoma Speaks,” a performance that brought the state’s dramatic labor history to life.

The production spotlighted the tremendous impact of the union movement in Oklahoma. The state’s motto is ‘Labor Omnia Vincitÿ”—“Labor Conquers All”—a phrase commonly used by former AFL President Samuel Gompers. Union members, in alliance with tenant farmers, won majority support for 24 demands at the state’s constitutional convention in 1906. Oklahoma’s legislature eventually passed laws prohibiting child labor and mandating compulsory school attendance, established state mining and factory inspectors, regulated the use of strike breakers during labor disputes and outlawed the blacklisting of union sympathizers by employers.

The dramatic readings in “Oklahoma Speaks” were matched by musical selections and featured the voices of both leaders and everyday people who lived through powerful historic changes.

As the program for the show puts it:

Each of these voices reminds us that the struggle for justice is a noble fight that is central to Oklahoma’s identity. Each of these voices tells us about who we are and where we come from and encourages us from across the years to keep the struggle going for the good of labor, our state, and our people.

But there was much more going on at Laborfest than “Oklahoma Speaks.” Nationally known and local poets joined in an evening of readings about working-class life. Muralist Carlos Tello painted a mural in front of a live audience during a few hours on Saturday afternoon.

Film screenings included two new documentaries, “Tar Creek,” which examined the human cost of the nation’s top EPA superfund hazardous waste site in Picher, Okla. “Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Programÿ,”  a 2010 documentary, tells  about millions of Mexican men and women who experienced the temporary contract worker program known as the Bracero Program.

Other events included panel discussions, a writers’ workshop, an open musicians’ circle jam and sing-a-long, performances, a labor poster art contest and children’s activities. Speakers included author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Stewart Acuff, chief of staff for the Utility Workers (UWUA). Several unions held information booths, including the Letter Carriers (NALC), Electrical Workers (IBEW), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Central Oklahoma Federation of Labor, firefighters and other union and community groups.

Kathy Cummings, communications director for the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) sends us this video of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) rallying union activists yesterday to ramp up their election action enthusiasm.

“You need to be fired up, and you need to feel it, and you need to convey it to your bothers and sisters. Apathy is our biggest adversary in this election….The issue in this campaign is are we going to put the car in R? When you put the car in R, you go backwards and we have a lot of work left to do.”

He told the crowd that the two congressional candidates sharing the podium, Suzan DelBene and Denny Heck, are “two extraordinary candidates.”

I want you excited about them because they will make a difference….The character of our country is at issue in this election….Our priorities are at issue in this election.

Take a few minutes and watch the full video. Learn more about Labor 2010 in Washington State here.

Coca-Cola workers striking in Washington state are going back to work. The nearly 500 workers have been on strike since August 24. When the workers went on strike the soft drink manufacturer suspended health benefits. Those benefits will be restored and prorated, but attorneys plan to follow through with a lawsuit alleging Coca-Cola violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.