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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Hour Headlines 6-30-01 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
Email: peterm (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
01 Jul 2001
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Headlines as broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign. |
Bunge-Lauhoff Strikers to Vote on Proposal
Workers at Bunge-Lauhoff will be voting on a new contract proposal, but bargaining team members say the new proposal is almost exactly the same as the old one. The vote will take place on Monday at 11 a.m. On May 16, about 200 union workers at the Bunge-Lauhoff grain processing company in Danville went on strike after rejecting the company\'s final offer by a vote of 184 to 3. The new proposal was reached after two meetings with a federal mediator, but the only change is a slight improvement in the pension plan. The new proposal still includes many other union give-backs on work hours, job security, and wages. Also last week, Bunge-Lauhoff managers sent a letter to all union members claiming that the union bargaining team is doing a bad job representing members in bargaining, and that the union is hiding information from the members. The letter angered many union members who viewed it as an attempt to divide and weaken their union. Some people mailed the letters back to the company, others threw it over the company fence, and others simply discarded it. In a late report this morning, people walking the picket line say that company representatives are at the plant, telling strikers that the company is asking for NO concessions in the contract, merely a restoration of the old contract. Bargaining team members say this is untrue. Workers at Bunge-Lauhoff are represented by Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers union local 6-0972.
Deere To Cut 1250 White-Collar Jobs
The Chicago Tribune reported that Deere & Co. in Moline announced that a downturn in demand for its farm and construction equipment is forcing the corporation to fire 1250 salaried, or white-collar, employees. Cuts will not only be made in clerical support staff positions, but also in administration, marketing, purchasing, and computer support positions. The reductions will be achieved through offering early retirement to workers whose age and years of service total 80 or more. In the past two years, the company has responded to the slowing economy by easing production schedules and shutting down production facilities for short periods of time. The cuts represent about 8% of the white-collar workers at Deere.
UC San Diego Succumbs to Pressure, Hires 48 Formerly-Contracted Janitors
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of California at San Diego will hire several dozen janitors who university administrators at one point tried to deport from the United States. The janitors were working for an anti-union contractor and were paid under seven dollars per hour, while union custodians at UC San Diego are paid between nine and twelve dollars per hour, plus benefits. For several months, students and professors had been pressuring the university to treat the contracted janitors fairly, but administrators refused. Then, after receiving an anonymous tip that some of the janitors were in the country illegally, administrators contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service, prompting a wave of protest from faculty and students. Ultimately, the administrators decided that hiring the contractor was more trouble than not, and the university directly hired the 48 janitors, including them in a bargaining unit represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/06/2001061903n.htm
Bus Driver Sues Laidlaw for Contract Breach
Apparently without support from his union, a bus driver for Laidlaw Transit Inc. in Springfield, which operates school buses for the district, filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board on June 21. The complaint charges that the company is not bargaining in good faith. The driver claims that Laidlaw placed ads in the local paper looking for new drivers who would earn more than the $8 an hour specified in the current collective bargaining agreement. New drivers would also receive a signing bonus of $500. The unfair labor practice charge states that by offering a higher starting pay, the company has unilaterally changed the terms of the contract. Laborers International Union Local 508, which represents Laidlaw bus drivers, was not involved in the complaint, and spokespersons for both the company and the union declined to comment.
Building Trades in Turmoil, Nationally
An article in the on-line construction industry journal, Engineering News Report, says that the Building and Construction Trades Division of the AFL-CIO may be facing another change. After the Carpenters pulled out of the AFL-CIO earlier this year, the Operating Engineers left the Building and Construction department soon thereafter. Both pullouts have left the department scrambling for resources necessary to continue its role as a coordinating body for building trades unions across the country. A top aide in the department says that administrative changes will be announced in the next couple months. On top of that, the journal reports that the Heavy and Highway Division may pull out of the Building and Construction Trades Department as well, just as major contracts, including a $250 million Colorado toll road is about to be built. Some say these recent changes are the culmination of several years of problems within the AFL-CIO\'s building and Construction Trades Department.
http://www.enr.com/news/enrbl_62501.asp
Deal Reached in Nurses\' Strike
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Nurses at two hospitals in Minneapolis and St. Paul voted to accept a new contract and end a three-week strike. More than 1,300 registered nurses at a hospital in Edina and at the Riverside campus of the University Medical Center in Minneapolis voted to ratify the proposed contract and return to work on Friday. The hospitals were the last two of 13 in the Twin Cities to approve their contract, which includes longevity bonuses, restrictions on heavy lifting and a twenty percent pay increase over three years. The contracts also allows for a unionized ``charge nurse\'\' to close a unit for up to two hours if staffing is insufficient. The Minnesota Nurses Association said that the contract passed by a healthy margin.
In a related story, nurses in Nova Scotia, Canada ended an illegal two-day strike saying that a recently-passed law making nurses strikes illegal would bankrupt the union. Nurses are threatening a mass resignation, but the province\'s health minister says she is not worried by the threat. The union says it will only deliver the resignation notices if 75 percent of nurses resign at the same time.
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/view?/news/2001/06/29/ns_nurses010629
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