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Labor Now

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG
News for working families
  • USW: Hold Off Drilling in Gulf Until It’s Safe

    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. The Associated Press reported a one-mile oil sheen was visible spreading from the burning rig.

    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.”

  • Wanted: Economic Patriots to Save American Dream

    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.

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Today in Labor History


 Union Communication Services

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Hello,   

Here is the Big Labor preview for the upcoming week.  

In unity,

 Chris Rolling
Mgr. - Tech. & Design
UCS, Inc.
410.626.1400

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Labor quote for the week of September 6, 2010

"Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy."

-- Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor

Quote sources include:
Great Labor Quotations: Sourcebook and Reader, by Peter Bollen
The Great Quotations, by George Seldes
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

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Today in labor history for the week of September 6, 2010 

   September 06
One of the worst disasters in the history of U.S. anthracite mining occurred at the Avondale Mine, near Scranton, Pa., when a fire originating from a furnace at the bottom of a 237 foot shaft roared up the shaft, killing 110 miners - 1869

Tony Boyle, former president of the United Mine Workers, is charged with murder in the 1969 deaths of former UMW rival Joseph A. Yablonski and his wife and daughter - 1973

September 07
Federal employees win the right to receive Workers' Compensation insurance - 1916

September 08
Employers give in to the demands of striking miners in McKees Rock, Pa., agree to improved working conditions, 15 percent hike in wages and elimination of a "pool system" that gave foremen control over each worker’s pay - 1909

Workers give up their Labor Day weekend holidays to keep the munitions factories working to aid in the war effort. Most Labor Day parades are canceled in respect for members of the Armed Services - 1942

United Farm Workers union begins historic national grape boycott and strike, Delano, Calif. - 1965

Some 2,600 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers begin what is to be a successful six-day strike for higher pay and against a two-tier wage system - 1997

September 09
In convention at Topeka, Kansas, delegates create the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America. The men who repaired the nation's rail cars were paid 10 or 15 cents an hour, working 12 hours a day, often seven days a week - 1890

More than 1,000 Boston police officers strike after 19 union leaders are fired for organizing activities. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge announced that none of the strikers would be rehired, mobilized the state police, and recruited an entirely new police force from among unemployed veterans of the Great War (World War I) - 1919

Sixteen striking Filipino sugar workers on the Hawiian island of Kauai are killed by police; four police died as well. Many of the surviving strikers were jailed, then deported - 1924

September 10
Polish, Lithuanian and Slovak miners are gunned down—19 dead, more than 50 wounded—by the Lattimer Mine's sheriff deputies in Hazelton, Pa. Most were shot in the back. The miners were marching peacefully and without weapons for collective bargaining and civil liberty - 1897

September 11
Some 75,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia end a ten-week strike after winning an eight hour day, semi-monthly pay, and the abolition of overpriced company-owned stores, where they had been forced to shop. (Remember the song, "16 Tons," by coal miner’s son Merle Travis, in which there’s this line: "I owe my soul to the company store.") - 1897

More than 3,000 people died when suicide highjackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.  Among the dead were 634 union members, the majority of them New York City firefighters and police on the scene when the towers fell - 2001

Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life Norma Rae of the movies, dies at age 68. She worked at a J.P. Stevens textile plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. when low pay and poor working conditions led her to become a union activist - 2009

September 12
Eugene V. Debs, labor leader and socialist, sentenced to 10 years for opposing World War I. While in jail Debs received 1 million votes for president - 1918

Jobless workers march on grocery stores and seize food in Toledo, Ohio - 1932

United Rubber Workers formed in Akron, Ohio - 1935

Forty-nine people are killed, 200 injured in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey - 1940

New York City’s Union Square, the site of the first Labor Day in 1882, is officially named a national historic landmark. The square has long been a focal point for working class protest and political expression - 1998 

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

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Labor joke for the week of September 6, 2010

Speaketh the Boss

"We are going to continue having these meetings, every day, until I find out why no work is getting done."

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Member tip for the week of September 6, 2010 

A Note of Caution About Insubordination

You may find yourself being told by your supervisor to do something that he or she has no right to insist on under the union contract.  The natural temptation is to say, “I know my rights, I’m not doing it!”  But be forewarned about the “work now, grieve later” rule.  This is the generally accepted notion in the world of labor relations that you do not have the right to disobey an employer directive, even if that directive is in violation of the collective bargaining agreement.  The required response is to do what the employer says, under protest, and then to pursue relief through the grievance procedure.  While there are exceptions – such as for dangerous health and safety violations – think twice before risking discipline for insubordination.  

Adapted from The Union Members Complete Guide, by Michael Mauer

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Steward tip for the week of September 6, 2010

The Qualities of a Good Steward

You will encounter all sorts in your steward work.  You won’t have all the answers for all their problems.  You don’t even have to like them all.  But you must respect them and be able to deal with them at their own level.  That means you’ll take a different approach with the scared worker than you will with the workplace big mouth.  Patience and the ability to listen are key attributes for this work.  Here are some of the other qualities you’ll need.

· Willingness to do the right thing:  The right thing is what benefits the union as a whole.

· Willingness to deal with bureaucracy:  This is probably the least palatable of your tasks.  You must be willing to deal with red tape – with the goal of using it, cutting through it or going around it to the union’s advantage.

· A sense of humor:  If you can’t laugh at yourself, at management and with your co-workers, you won’t survive a week.  Remember to take the issues seriously, but not yourself.

Adapted from The Union Steward’s Complete Guide, 2nd Edition, edited by David Prosten

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Labor video for the week of September 6, 2010

Construction worker in South Africa throws cement -- and the shovel that holds it -- to a co-worker.  They need a union! 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGj-KkjwXJY&feature=related