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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Headlines, 3-30-02 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
Email: peterm (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
30 Mar 2002
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Headlines as broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM. Up to Eleven Million Expected to Join Italian General Strike, S. Korean Power Strike May Escalate, Supreme Court Denies Rights to Undocumented Workers, Governor Begins Laying off State Employees, California State U. Faculty Ratify New Contract, Organizing Victories |
Up to Eleven Million Expected to Join Italian General Strike
Up to eleven million workers are expected to participate in a general strike in Italy, as Italy's three main trade unions mobilize their membership to protest a re-writing of the nation's labor laws. The eight-hour general strike will take place on April sixteenth and is expected to bring transportation, industrial production, and services to a halt in protest of conservative prime minister Sergio Berlusconi's plans to make labor markets more flexible. The announcement came three days after two MILLION workers gathered in Rome to protest the changes that Berlucsoni calls a "revolution." In response to last weekend's protests--which were completely ignored by the News-Gazette--some members of Berlusconi's government called the union members communists and terrorists.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20020323/ts_nm/italy_dc_15
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,674521,00.html
S. Korean Power Strike May Escalate
A six hundred thousand member trade union federation in South Korea is threatening to expand its strike against the Korean Electric Power Corporation. The month-old strike is in protest over the government's plans to privatize the electric industry, a move which will likely result in job cuts and higher electricity prices, and which is strongly supported by the International Monetary Fund. The bitter struggle is seen as a litmus test of whether South Korean elites will successfully break the nation's unions. According to the Reuters news agency, the nation's energy minister last week vowed to break the strike by emulating former British and US leaders Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Reagan fired all of the United States' striking air traffic controllers in 1980, leading to two decades of decline in the US labor movement. The government is currently training 400 soldiers and the company is hiring five hundred strike breakers to relieve management employees who have kept the power plants operating. The nation's larger trade union federation, the FKTU, has not joined in the strike.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&u=/nm/20020326/wl_nm/korea_labour_dc_10
Supreme Court Denies Rights to Undocumented Workers
The Supreme Court took away more rights from workers last week. In yet another five to four decision, the court ruled that undocumented migrant workers who are
* paid less than minimum wage,
* denied overtime pay, or
* fired for union activity
may not receive back pay as other workers may under US labor law. The decision revokes an enforcement tool that the National Labor Relations Board had been using to prevent employers from exploiting low-wage migrant workers. The court's decision was criticized by people and organizations ranging from immigrant rights groups to the National Organization for Women to President Bush. All argued that the threat of punishment was necessary to deter employers from exploiting undocumented workers. The case involved a firing which happened thirteen years ago when Jose Castro, a minimum wage worker at a chemical company was fired for trying to organize a union. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that he was entitled to nearly seventy thousand dollars in back pay, but last week's Supreme Court decision nullified that payment. The decision was made by the same court majority that elected George Bush to the presidency.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/00-1595.htm
Governor Begins Laying off State Employees
Layoffs of state employees began last week, with Illinois Governor George Ryan issuing layoff notices to 120 employees who supervise inmates during leisure periods. The layoffs will become effective as early as April. Ryan also laid off almost 900 other employees at prisons, human services facilities, and other state agencies, bringing the total to 1000. Layoffs for four hundred state mental health workers received layoff notices on Friday. Most of those workers help the mentally ill at facilities in Peoria, Rockford, and Elgin. Ryan claims that layoffs are his last possible option for balancing a budget with insufficient funds to pay for promises made by legislators nearly a year ago. But the target of Ryan's animosity, AFSCME council 31, which represents all of the laid-off employees, disagrees. AFSCME leaders say that Ryan is being dishonest and that the state's newspapers are helping him promote his legacy of corruption by publishing an opinion piece he authored which distorts the budget situation. AFSCME notes that even if state employees did accept a one-day unpaid leave and agree to give up their contractual 3.75% raise this summer, the savings would be only a small fraction of the state's deficit, and Ryan would still end up firing people in July. AFSCME says Ryan should do more to raise funds to cover the state's contractual obligations, and the union's leaders note that the state will suffer draconian service cuts under Ryan's leadership.
In other state employee news, state legislators will receive their raises this summer, since a 1990 law automatically grants the raises unless legislators vote to stop them. And a judge ruled against Governor Ryan's attempts to close a public health facility in Lincoln, saying that the closing is a major change in state health care, and that change needs to be processed by another state agency, first.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=chi%2D0203260004mar26
http://www.afscme31.org/press/index.asp
California State U. Faculty Ratify New Contract
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that faculty members at the California State University System have struck a deal with administrators on a three-year contract aimed at ending seven months of difficult negotiations, including a threatened strike. The contract would provide pay raises of two percent for each of the first two years. On Tuesday, the 22,000 member California Faculty Association officially ratified the agreement with 95 percent of its members approving the deal. The new contract also includes benefits for part-time and nontenure track faculty members, expanded health care coverate, and the freedom to negotiate another pay increase for the third year of the contract, which begins on July 1, 2003. Minimum salaries for faculty members currently range from $41,940 to $90,804, although a union spokesperson noted that a salary gap remains between Cal State professors and faculty at peer institutions.
Organizing Victories
The AFL-CIO reported a major organizing victory in this week's electronic newsletter, Work In Progress. After a yearlong struggle, nearly 1,500 workers at Verizon Information Services won union recognition with Communications Workers of America after the American Arbitration Association this month certified a card-check election, in which an employer agrees to recognize the union after a majority of workers sign union authorization cards. The telephone directory sales representatives, graphic artists and support personnel signed cards indicating their desire for a union one year ago, but the company used stalling tactics. Activists in five states mobilized in support of the workers.
Also reported last week were victories by 1000 home care workers in Marin County California who voted to join Service Employees Local 250, and by 500 workers at ATR Wire and Cable Company in Danville, Kentucky, who voted for representation with the Steelworkers. Organizer Randy Pidcock went on record saying, quote, "When a group of workers have made up their mind that they want a union, there is nothing the company, anti-union lawyers or chambers of commerce can do to stop them."
Announcements:
Michael Moore
April 17 in C-U
MICHAEL MOORE:
STUPID WHITE MEN TOUR ACROSS AMERICA
Info: www.michaelmoore.com/2002_0205.html
IMC
Living Wage
Teach-in
Coco Taylor benefit
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