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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Headlines 4-6-02 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
Email: peterm (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
07 Apr 2002
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Headlines as broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. British Teachers Vote for "Work to Rule", S. Korean Workers Call off National Strike, Unemployment Rises-Esp. for Black Workers, FedEx Pilots Re-Join ALPA, New Workplace Safety Rules Criticized, Steelworkers Lose Health Insurance, Pipefitters Local Ordered to Pay $155,000 in Racial Harassment Suit Brought by EEOC, Bill Lets State Workers Drop Insurance, Adjunct Professors at ISU Talk About Union, Urbana Commits to Living Wage |
British Teachers Vote for "Work to Rule"
British teachers are tired of overwhelming paperwork and long hours that are wrecking their personal lives. So last Monday, the largest teachers' union in the United Kingdom voted to take collective action. Their goal is a 35-hour work week, but they won't go on strike to obtain it. Instead, they have voted to implement a "work to rule" program, where teachers refuse to perform the many unpaid duties they conduct, such as agreeing to sit in for absent colleagues, attending evening meetings or helping with out-of-school activities or clubs. The teachers might also boycott paperwork. Teachers work an average of 53 hours a week, according to an independent review of teachers' workload. The teachers' refusal to go the extra mile is a response to education being given a low priority by the government, according to spokespeople for the National Union of Teachers, which rejected a proposal for more militant action. The more moderate Association of Teachers and Lecturers had earlier voted to use "work to rule" to achieve more reasonable work hours. The ruling Labor Party's education secretary, Estelle Morris, was outraged by the union's vote, and she said that such an action would hurt students, although the BBC reported that the government is now discussing proposals to give teachers more preparation time.
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/default.asp?PageID=4070
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_1903000/1903941.stm
S. Korea Calls off National Strike
The second largest union confederation in South Korea called off a national strike on Tuesday after the government agreed to negotiate with electric utility workers who returned to work after a 38-day strike. Terms of the return to work agreement remain unclear. The workers went on strike to oppose privatization of South Korea's electric utilities, and the agreement reached Tuesday states that there will be no negotiation over privatization. Union leaders interpret this to mean that utilities will not be privatized, while business and government leaders take it as a green light to continue privatization. Also unclear is whether 340 workers who were fired during the strike will get their jobs back. Four thousand people had been on strike. Internal disagreement over the ending of the utility strike has led to a mass resignation among top leaders of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. The Korea Times reported that the top leadership resigned en masse on Thursday after being accused of making too many concessions in ending the electric utility strike. The KCTU has fought hard against economic restructuring demanded by the International Monetary Fund that has resulted in the sell off of national industries, huge job losses, and rapidly growing economic inequality.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/kt_nation/200204/t2002040417191541110.htm
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020403/afp/020403035610asiapacificnews.html
Unemployment Rises, Esp. for Black Workers
Economic indicators suggest that the economy isn't in as strong condition as many had hoped. The labor department reported that unemployment rose to 5.7 percent last month, reversing a trend in place since January. The increase was particularly sharp among blacks, whose unemployment rate jumped more than a percentage point, to 10.7 percent, the highest level in nearly five years. The economy did add new jobs in March, with one third in the private sector, and the remaining two thirds in the public sector, mainly in public schools. Private sector job growth last month was confined almost entirely to the service sector, and in particular to temporary-help agencies. Apart from temp workers and health service employment, nearly every sector suffered losses. That even included the construction industry, which lost 37,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis despite a continued boom in home building. The associated press also reported that the retail sector suffered major job losses with over fifty thousand jobs being cut this year. That's nearly twice the pace of retail job cuts during 2001.
FedEx Pilots Re-Join ALPA
Airline pilots for FedEx voted overwhelmingly to re-join the AFL-CIO-affiliated Air Line Pilots Association on Monday. About 91 percent of FedEx's pilots cast ballots for ALPA. Pilots at the Memphis-based overnight delivery corporation joined ALPA in the early 1990s but ditched the nation's largest pilot union three years later for an independent group they thought would be more acceptable to management of the company. No other FedEx employees have union representation. FedEx's 4,100 pilots now say the independent union lacked the resources to negotiate a favorable contract, and they vowed to be prepared for adversarial negotiations when their contract becomes amendable in 2004. A spokesman for FedEx said, quote "We'll continue to work with the pilots' elected representatives as we have in the past." Pilots at rival United Parcel Service are represented by the Independent Pilots Association.
New Workplace Safety Rules Criticized
The AFL-CIO blasted new workplace safety rules for addressing repetitive stress injuries. The new rules were announced by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao on Friday. The labor federation's president, John Sweeney, declared that the Bush administration is again catering to its corporate contributors at the expense of workers. While the Secretary Chao said that the new rules will have a large impact on reducing the 1.8 million repetitive stress injuries that occur on the job each year, worker advocates disagree. They note that George Bush quickly repealed ergonomics standards that Bill Clinton finally implemented in the final days of his presidency, November 2000. Those standards included mandatory requirements for workplace safety, but the Bush proposal is voluntary. The AFL-CIO said the voluntary rule is inadequate to protect workers and noted that Bush's budget proposal cuts job safety research by fifty percent, from $20 million to $10 million. Bush also appointed one of the industry's anti-ergonomic leaders, Eugene Scalia, as the Department of Labor's top lawyer.
http://www.osha.gov/ergonomics/index.html
http://www.aflcio.org/publ/press2002/pr0405.htm
http://www.nam.org/tertiary.asp?TrackID=&CategoryID=746&DocumentID=24581
Steelworkers Lose Health Insurance
The Chicago Tribune reports that thousands of Illinois and Indiana steelworkers--many suffering the health consequences of years spent working at hot, gritty and dangerous jobs--will be cut off from health-care benefits as of Monday. They are the former employees of bankrupt LTV Steel Co., the giant Cleveland-based steelmaker that began to shut down its mills in December. The company that bought the idled plants did not assume responsibility for LTV's health-care costs. Amid all that the steelworkers have suffered during decades of shrinkage in the industry, the loss of health insurance is particularly painful, especially for those too young to qualify for Medicare, too bedeviled by medical problems to easily find a new insurer or too strapped to afford insurance on their own. About 85,000 laid-off LTV workers, retirees and their dependents will be affected by Monday's cutoff, including at least 11,000 in Illinois and Indiana, according to the United Steel Workers union. They join at least 20,000 others nationwide whose health-care benefits were provided by eight steel companies that closed in the last year, union officials said. Thirty two steel firms are currently in bankruptcy, and 16 have already shut down. The steelworkers union has geared up for a fight to get the federal government to provide some form of protection for an estimated 600,000 retirees and dependents who rely on the U.S. steel industry for health-care benefits. When President Bush slapped tariffs on foreign steel products in early March, he disappointed the steelworkers union and many steel companies by not providing a solution to the hefty bill the industry faces for health-care costs. White House officials suggested at the time that Congress should address the issue.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0204010207apr01.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed
Pipefitters Local Ordered to Pay $155,000 in Racial Harassment Suit Brought by EEOC
The Daily Labor Report writes that Pipefitters Local 597 in Chicago was ordered by a federal judge on March 28 to pay 8 African American union members $155,000 as compensation for racial harassment they suffered while working on the construction of a waste-to-energy incinerator in Robbins. The harassment took the form of racist jokes and a hangman's noose displayed at different locations at the jobsite and racist and sexually explicit graffiti scrawled on the walls of portable toilets. The ruling said that the union knew from almost the first day of the racially hostile work environment and should have reported or sought to remedy the problem even without having received a complaint. The judge further ordered the union to provide substantial outreach and education to union members, develop a written policy against racial harassment and a means for receiving and evaluating harassment complaints, to mail notices to all union members of the outcome of the litigation, and to file compliance reports with the EEOC every six months.
Bill Lets State Workers Drop Insurance
The union representing state workers has won partial approval for a bill that will put $24 million back into the state's budget. On April 4, the Illinois Senate approved, by a vote of 56-0, a bill that would permit state employees to opt out of participation in the state's health insurance plan if they are covered by another insurer, for example under a spouse's health insurance plan. The bill, which was proposed by AFSCME and sponsored by Sen. Larry Bomke (R-Springfield), could save the state about $24 million in health insurance payments as well as save some employees the cost of insurance premiums. The bill now goes to the House for approval.
Adjunct Professors at ISU Talk About Union
The Illinois State University Nontenure-track Faculty Association, a group of non-tenured and part-time faculty at Illinois State University in Normal, announced on April 2 that it would seek representation with the Illinois Education Association. Gretchen Knapp, a spokesperson for the Faculty Association said that faculty are seeking higher pay, multiyear contracts, a grievance procedure, and participation in university governance structures. Knapp disagreed with a report approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education showing that most of the non-tenured and part-time faculty in the state are satisfied with their working conditions.
Urbana Commits to Living Wage
On April 1, the Urbana City Council unanimously approved a living wage ordinance for all full time employees of the city. All currently-employed full-time city employees are already paid above the living wage, which would be $8.70 an hour for next year. |
See also:
http://www.ilir.uiuc.edu/lii/
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