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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Hour Headlines 4-13-01 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
14 Apr 2001
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Headlines from the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM. |
Bush/Cheney Disclose Incomes
President Bush and Vice President Cheney released their incomes this weekend. While earning only $70,000 in actual salary for his work as Governor, Bush claimed nine hundred thousand dollars in income, most of it coming from interest on millions of dollars in investments, plus one hundred forty thousand dollars in capital gains. Cheney\'s income dwarfed Bush\'s. Without releasing his actual return, Cheney said that he earned thirty six million dollars last year, most of it in stock options for his position with Haliburton, Corporation which provides services to oil companies. Under Bush\'s proposed tax cut, Bush would receive forty thousand dollars, and Cheney would receive approximately 2.3 million dollars.
Rowhouse fire kills seven in Philadelphia
In other national news, seven people were killed in an illegal Philadelphia row house where the elderly and disabled lived. Five men and two women died from smoke inhalation and an 11-year-old girl, Sabrina Allen, was badly burned and remained in critical condition early Saturday at The Children\'s Hospital of Philadelphia. Neighbors said she was the adopted daughter of Christine Proctor, who managed the home. Neighbors and a former caretaker said that Proctor had managed the home the for more than 15 years and that she collected rent from those who could pay and arranged for residents\' meals. News reports indicate that the building was a home-of-last-resort for disabled and elderly people who had nowhere else to turn.
Three Oil Workers Critically Injured in New Mexico
A twenty-four year old man named Charles Williams, a twenty-eight year old named Curry Powell, and a forty-year old man named Dennie Bailey were in critical condition at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas after the oil platform on which they were working exploded. The three men were contract workers on an oil rig in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Efforts to extinguish the fire are still underway. Pogo Producing is a two hundred seventy five million dollar corporation whose size has nearly doubled in the past five years. Pogo has offices in Texas, Canada, and Thailand.
Slave Ship Returns to Benin
The Reuters News Agency reported on Friday that aid agencies in the West African country of Benin are preparing to assist the cargo of a ship. The ship reportedly holds two hundred fifty children who have been sold into slavery. The children, from Benin and neighboring Togo are believed to be caught up in a lucrative slave trade wherein children are sold by poor families and forced to work on plantations or as domestic servants after being taken from the country. A United Nations spokesperson said that the children were probably taken from their families with false promises that once put to work, they would send cash home regularly. But most families never hear from their children again, and they receive little or no money. The children are purchased for sums estimated to reach $340 per child, and frequently end up working on plantations producing cocoa and other cash crops in Gabon and Ivory Coast. In other words, chocolate produced with West African cocoa may have been produced using slave labor. The UN says that the full extent of the slave trade is difficult to asses.
NAACP to Challenge Federal Funding
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is taking action in two Illinois cities to improve minority representation on the police forces. The Springfield branch of the NAACP will ask the federal government to stop awarding grants to the city\'s police and fire departments until more minorities are hired by those departments. The branch president said that in the last 10 years the fire department has been 1% minority and the police department ranged from 3-5% minority in a city where minorities make up about 15% of the population. A spokesperson for the city said a cutoff of federal funding would not affect the fire department but could have a serious impact on the police department.
The president of the Alton branch of the NAACP said that he expects to go to court this week to force the city to raise minority hiring levels in the police department. The NAACP obtained court decrees in 1973 and 1994 that mandated an 18% level for minority hiring in the police and fire departments. The decrees were partially successful: the fire department has maintained that level but the police department staff is only 6% minority. Alton\'s mayor said that the city is doing everything it can to recruit minority applicants.
Firings in Lisle Fuel Controversy
Dot com\'s may be new to the economy, but they use familiar old tactics when firing time comes around. In January, A company called Computer Associates in Lisle fired 314 out of a total of 475 employees, saying the employees had poor performance, but some employees who were fired say that this was a pretext the company used so it would not have to make severance payments. They say that their negative performance reviews were trumped-up. Some fired workers say that they had never been notified of performance problems until they were fired and that it was rumored that performance review scores were manipulated in order to meet firing quotas. The company says it will review the cases of fired workers.
Byron Nuke Plant Workers Treated After Being Exposed to Fumes
A safety incident occurred at a nuclear power plant formerly owned by Commonwealth Edison. Seven contract workers at Exelon Corporation\'s Byron nuclear plant were treated at a hospital for dizziness and difficulty in breathing after exposure to hydrazine, a chemical used to extract oxygen in water pipes that condense steam back into water. The company says it\'s investigating the incident, in which the workers were building a scaffold inside a condenser at the plant and evacuated it when an oxygen-monitor sounded. Exelon is a twelve billion dollar corporation, formed out of the merger of three utility companies, including Commonwealth Edison.
Meatpackers Reach Tentative Deal
Leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers\' union are celebrating the conclusion of a three-week strike in Rochelle, Illinois that led to an average 2.7 percent wage increase. The strike at meatpacking company Rochelle Foods was over wages and company efforts to increase employee health insurance payments. The strike began on March 16 and ended with an overwhelming vote to return to work last Sunday. The five year contract includes wage increases totaling $1.40, taking the workers from ten dollars and forty cents per hour to eleven dollars and fifty five cents per hour. When the contract expired in February, the company insisted on wage increases half that size. Despite the fact that the contract barely provides for inflationary wage increases, UFCW Vice President and Packinghouse Director Bill Schmitz claimed that packinghouse workers across the country should look to the Rochelle workers as role models for solidarity, courage, and commitment. UFCW Local 1540 represents about 900 workers at the plant.
HTTP://www.zwire.com/news/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1654825&BRD=1174&PAG=461
Operating Engineers Local 2 Strikes Azcon
The St. Louis and Southern Illinois Labor Tribune reports that workers at Azcon Scrap Corp. in Alton, who are represented by Operating Engineers Local 2, went on strike last week after rejecting the company\'s latest offer. At issue in the negotiations are wage increases, benefits, and working conditions. The local\'s picket lines are being honored by unionized longshoremen and teamsters.
Operator of Two Local Cub Foods Stores Faces Fines
A regional food retailer has been charged with pushing child labor laws past their limits. The U.S. Department of Labor has fined Niemann Foods Inc., the operator of 2 Cub Foods stores in Springfield, $87,000 for violations of child labor laws. Violations were also found at company-operated County Market stores in Urbana, Pekin, Pittsfield, Pontiac, and Quincy. The Department charged that the supermarket chain unlawfully allowed workers under 18 years old to operate forklifts, motor vehicles, and paper balers as well as not observing work hours limitations for workers under 16 years old. The company will appeal the fines.
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See also:
http://www.ilir.uiuc.edu/lii/
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