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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Headlines 12-01-01 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller and Nick Berveiler
Email: peterm (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
02 Dec 2001
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As broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign.
Fast Track Up for Vote This Thursday, Steelworkers, LTV Strike a Deal, Illinois budget cuts may hurt workers, Legislature Helps Broadcast Employees, Sun-Times Cancels Talks After Union's Warning, GEO Walkout. . .; Prison Privatization (Nick B.) |
Fast Track Up for Vote This Thursday
Globalization takes the focus this week, as Fast Track or Trade Promotion Authority will be up for a vote on Thursday, December 6. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives set the date, even though they are not assured of victory on the vote that oberservers inside and outside the US say could determine the fate of corporate globalization for the next fifteen years. The vote is important enough that, like President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush has said he cleared his calendar for the coming week to lobby for the bill's passage. But Bush's late arrival to the debate has frustrated business sources who opined that the white house was missing in action. Nonetheless, republican leaders including House Majority Leader Dick Armey, say that they expect the votes to be there, and that momentum is moving in the direction of the free-trade business lobby. Many remain critical of the president's economic priorities. After approving a massive bailout to the airline industry after September 11, a bailout which did not prevent airlines from firing 150,000 workers, the Senate rejected a much smaller proposal to help displaced airline workers with unemployment and health insurance extensions. Then, the president proposed an economic stimulus package that consists mainly of tax cuts for the most wealthy americans and to the largest corporations. Even conservative democrats and moderate republicans who support corporate globalization say that improving unemployment benefits for displaced workers is necessary to ensure their support for the fast track bill, and the topic was the central focus of a meeting between moderates and the US Trade Representative last week. It is possible that unemployment assistance could be added to the bill before the vote on Thursday. Even if it is added, though, it may not assure the passage of fast track. For instance, a staff member for Charles Rangel, the ranking democrat on the house ways and means committee, who normally supports free trade bills, has said that his support cannot be purchased with unemployment benefits. Some agricultural interests also remain opposed to the fast track bill. Republicans in Florida seek to protect the citrus industry from free trade bills after the industry was hurt by NAFTA, but while Bush administration officials have met with those legislators, they have not offered concrete solutions. The Florida republicans want to keep trade barriers in place to protect import-sensitive products. After the United States agreed to allow US anti-dumping laws protecting the domestic steel industry to be negotiated in world trade organization negotiations -- a concession that may further jeopardize the declining US steel industry -- labor remains more opposed than ever to trade promotion authority. The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations maintains its call to union members to contact their US representatives asking them to vote against fast track. More information may be found at the AFL-CIO website, www.aflcio.org.
Steelworkers, LTV Strike a Deal
Negotiations have saved steel factories in Cleveland, Ohio, East Chicago, and Hennipin, Illinois from being closed. A renegotiated contract was agreed to on November 27 by the United Steelworkers of America and creditors of LTV Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy last December. The revised 5-year contract includes a total of $150 million in savings from wage cuts, delayed pay increases, and health care savings. Exact details of the agreement were being withheld pending ratification by the union membership. LTV produces steel for the automotive and appliance industries at its Hennepin plant. Despite the agreement, Steelworkers' president Leo Gerard called for the replacement of the corporation's leadership, who announced closure of the factories only one week before reaching a final agreement. The Steelworkers called the announcement reckless and said that the action showed that executives would rather sacrifice the living standards and well-being of 85,000 steelworkers, steelworker retirees, and dependents than fight to save the company. The steelworkers also say that millions of dollars in bonuses paid to executives during the crisis were inappropriate.
Illinois budget cuts may hurt workers
A crisis in the state's budget led Governor George Ryan to make dramatic cuts last week to cover a five hundred million dollar shortfall in revenues. The crisis was caused by declining state revenues, and higher-than-expected costs in two insurance programs run by the state. One program is a health insurance plan for retired teachers, and the other is the Quality Care health insurance plan available to state employees, including state university employees. For several months, legislators and teacher advocates have been trying to prevent an eighty percent increase in premiums for retired teachers, which was due to take effect on January 1. Last week the legislature approved a temporary solution that requires active teachers, school districts, and the state to make larger contributions to the insurance fund. It also takes a loan of $40 million from the teachers' retirement fund, and it appoints a panel to find a long-term solution to the problem. While the retired teachers' insurance plan solution may not please many people, it's only the tip of the iceberg. In part because Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan refused to cooperate in identifying budget cuts, Governor Ryan made his largest cuts in Medicaid, the health insurance for poor people. He cut one hundred twenty million dollars from that program. In addition, Ryan canceled cost of living increases for private agencies that provide social services, temporarily halted construction of the post-genomics research facility at the University of Illinois, proposed that state employees work a day without pay, reduced the budget of the department of corrections--including a hiring freeze, and suggested privatizing food and housekeeping services in prisons, mental health centers, and developmental disability facilities. State universities were asked to make mid-year budget reductions and to help pay employee insurance costs that the state would normally cover. Julie Curry, a democrat in the state House of Representatives, proposed that elected officials and directors of state agencies all reduce their own pay by one week since other state employees were being asked to reduce their pay. Unions representing state employees oppose Ryan's plans. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees says that Ryan's proposed temporary layoffs would disrupt vital services, put thousands of food service and support service workers on the unemployment lines, jeopardize the safety of handicapped children, and jeopardize public safety. As an alternative to Ryan's proposed cuts, AFSCME says the state could save half the needed money by changing the way the state buys prescription medications. AFSCME also wants the governor to close a corporate tax loophole that unfairly advantages some businesses over others, saving another hundred million. AFSCME also supports the federal economic stimulus package that has been proposed in the democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, which would provide $300 million of relief for the Illinois budget.
http://www.afscme31.org/press/pressDetail.asp?objectID=190
Legislature Helps Broadcast Employees
Television and radio reporters and anchors won a victory in the state legislature during the Illinois Legislature's fall session, which ended yesterday. Overriding a veto by Governor George Ryan, the state house and senate both voted to prohibit non-compete agreements in contracts with television and radio stations. Non-compete agreements bar employees from getting another broadcast job in a specific geographic area for a period of time after leaving that job. State Representative Judy Erwin was quoted by the News-Gazette as saying that non-compete agreements are wholly unfair because they force media employees, most of whom do not make a lot of money, to basically sign away their right to work, even if they get fired.
Sun-Times Cancels Talks After Union's Warning
A letter to advertisers warning of a possible strike at the Chicago Sun-Times led to managers canceling contract negotiations with its reporters and editors. The letter, dated November 19, was distributed by the Chicago Newspaper Guild to put pressure on the Sun-Times. The Guild's contract expired on September 30, and despite the assistance of a federal mediator, the Chicago Tribune reports that no agreement seems near. Issues in the negotiations include staffing levels, as well as wages and pension benefits. The paper is proposing a four-year contract which contains wage freezes in two years, and one percent raises in the other two years. Managers are also trying to eliminate the company's pension plan in favor of individually-managed stock-market based savings plans.
GEO Walkout. . .
State house passed resolution in favor of GEO
Rain, cold
5 buildings
Pickets attended for two days
Gov. Ryan to privatize prisons in budget cuts
Gov. Ryan's recent budget cut proposals include privatizing food and housekeeping services at state correctional centers and mental health and developmental disability facilities. With massive cuts in spending throughout Illinois, the mainstream media has ignored the privatization issue. The Pantagraph has been the only newspaper to publish concerns from AFSCME. Gov. Ryan claims this will save the state more than $2 million in FY 2002.
Henry Bayer, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, said a proposed prescription drug plan bottled up in the Senate for more than a year could save the state upwards of $200 million annually, staving off the need for some cuts.
Bayer also said Ryan earlier rejected plans to privatize services at state prisons, but now is talking about privatizing housekeeping and food service programs at state facilities, including those in Dwight, Pontiac and Lincoln.
"There are real security issues involved in having private contractors bringing minimum wage workers into prisons to supervise prisoners who have access to knives, heavy kitchen objects and other implements," Bayer said.
Students Against Sweatshops have also demonstrated opposition to private prisons by asking their universities to dump Sodexho-Mariott from their cafeterias. Sodexho-Mariott is a major national provider of food services to universities, public schools, hospitals and prisons and is associated with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest owner and operator of private prisons.
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