|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Illinois Labor Hour Headlines - July 6, 2002 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Michael Feltes
Email: mfeltes (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified!) |
06 Jul 2002
|
|
Headlines from the Illinois Labor Hour, broadcast at 11 AM on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign, IL. 21,000 Municpal Workers Strike City of Toronto, Illinois Teacher Elected President of NEA, Springfield Municipal Insurance Fund Close To Bankruptcy, UAW Workers Laid Off At Decatur Caterpillar, European Court of Human Rights Defends British Unions, Statue of Margaret Thatcher Beheaded |
21,000 workers in the City of Toronto are walking picket lines in the largest municipal strike in Canadian history. Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees who work indoors struck last Thursday, joining the outdoor workers who walked out last week. Virtually all city services have been paralyzed; welfare offices, city parks, day care centers and pools are closed. Restaurant and building inspectors, garbage collectors, and ferry operators are off the job.
The main issues of the strike center around job security. “The city says we want jobs for life,” said Anne Dembinski, president of CUPE Local 79, the indoor workers' local. “City workers do not have jobs for life. There is no such thing. What we have had is an agreement that permanent employees with 10 years or more service cannot be laid off because of contracting out. Now, the city wants to get rid of that language because it wants to privatize city services and contract out our work.”
Some members of the union are prohibited from striking by Ontario law. CUPE Local 416, the outdoor workers' union, must maintain three-quarters of the paramedic staff, and three thousand members of CUPE Local 79 who work in nursing homes and as ambulance dispatchers are also required to stay on the job. Police and firefighters are represented by seperate unions and are still on the job.
Leaders in the Ontario legislature have prepared legislation that would break the strike, but will refrain from using it unless a public health emergency is declared due to the lack of garbage collection. Members of CUPE Local 416, which represents library workers in Toronto, reached a tentative agreement with the Toronto Public Library board this past Thursday and will not walk out.
In related news, members of CUPE local 873-02, who work as ambulance dispatchers in southern British Columbia, marked their 365th day out yesterday in a dispute over overtime, sick time, wages and benefits. Also, Canadian Auto Workers Local 127 is still out at the Navistar/International Truck plant in Chatham, Ontario. Last week, we reported on the injury of CAW members walking a picket line at the plant by a vehicle transporting replacement workers into the plant. No further information has been made public as to the criminal charges against the driver or the status of the workers injured.
Reg Weaver, a former middle-school science teacher in Harvey, Illinois, was elected president of the National Education Association on July 3. Mr. Weaver, a native of Danville, has taught for 35 years. He was the first African-American to be elected president of the Illinois Education Association, and, since 1996, he has been the national vice-president of the NEA. Ebony Magazine has honored him with its award for Influential Black Educator Award.
“The honor I received from the delegates today, the expression of trust they placed in me, is both humbling and uplifting,’’ Weaver said. “Public education and public educators are faced with enormous challenges that require our immediate attention. We must focus on an education reform package largely developed without our input,” Weaver added, presumably referring to President Bush’s education policies, which feature mandatory standardized testing.
Mr. Weaver’s 3-year term begins in September.
From the Springfield State-Journal Register:
Unless changes are made that could cost employees more money, the fund that pays health insurance costs for employees of the city of Springfield will go broke around Sept. 1. The city is self-insured, and the mayor says that, unless negotiations with the police and firefighters succeed in raising their payments to the level of other city workers, there will not be enough money coming in to pay the premiums. The police union and the city have been negotiating for 18 months on a new contract, which would include any health insurance premium changes, without success, and the contract is to go to arbitration soon. Holding up a settlement with the firefighters is a delay in the selection of an arbitrator. An attorney for the firefighters union said that the fund has historically been underfunded and that premiums would have to be about 4 times what they are now to make it solvent. The city plans to meet with other city employee union leaders to see how the fund can be kept afloat until the police and firefighter contracts are settled.
From the Decatur Herald & Review:
DECATUR -- Twenty-two supplemental employees have been laid off at the Decatur plant of Caterpillar Inc. during the past two weeks, an action the company views as "a fluctuation in seasonal demands."
Company spokesperson Kelly Wojda said that no salaried employees or hourly United Auto Workers employees were among those terminated. She said the workers were employed on a supplemental basis and their departure was nothing more than adjustments because of regular business activity.
Karen Verhusen, president of UAW Local 751 in Decatur, said the laid-off workers did pay union dues.
"Some had 24 months at Caterpillar, but they received no benefits or holidays," Verhusen said. "The company has converted some of these supplemental employees to full-time employees in the past. Some were hoping to get hired full time."
The European Court of Human Rights unanimously defended the right of British unions to be secure in their collective bargaining contracts on Tuesday, issuing a judgment against yellow-dog contracts that promised higher wage rates to workers who would opt out of union-negotiated contracts. In a case involving 11 grievants in two separate trade unions, the court ruled that such attacks on unions violate Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to assembly and association.
David Wilson, who writes for the Daily Mail of London, brought one of the complaints, in conjunction with his union, the National Union of Journalists. The other complaint was brought by ten shipbuilders of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers against Associated British Ports.
The National Union of Journalists was, from 1912, the recognized union for writers at the Daily Mail until November 1989. That month, the management of the newspaper offered 4.5 percent pay increases to any member who would accept decertification of the union. Mr. Wilson refused to do so; while his employment was not threatened, his pay level never rose to that of his colleagues who did accept the yellow dog contracts.
In a similar situation, Associated British Ports employees in Southampton and Cardiff were offered 8 to 9 percent pay increases and private health insurance if they would agree to sign personal contracts, bypassing their union (parenthetically, we should note that yesterday marked the 54th anniversary of the establishment of the NHS, which provides health care to all inhabitants of Great Britain). The employees in Cardiff who refused saw their fellow workers who did sign gain increases of 8 to 9 percent more than they enjoyed in annual pay raises, while the Southampton management unilaterally refused to recognize the union in 1992.
UK law does not provide for mandatory recognition of unions. Recognition by employers is wholly voluntary. The plaintiffs and their unions were awarded fees and a small amount in damages. While the Court cannot change British law, the unanimous ruling does set precedent that can be used across Europe in future cases.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
LONDON--The man who decapitated a white marble statue of Margaret Thatcher, causing potentially irreparable damage, said Thursday that he did it to save his 2-year-old son from global capitalism.
Paul Kelleher, 37, who styles himself a theatrical producer, admitted attacking the eight-foot tall statue in the Guildhall Library in London with a cricket bat.
When that failed to damage the sculpture, he picked up a metal pole and knocked its head off with that.
Despite confessing to vandalizing the statue--which took Neil Simmons, the sculptor, eight months to create--Kelleher denied a charge of criminal damage before City of London magistrates.
|
