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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Labor Hour Headlines 4-28-01 |
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by Peter Miller
Email: peterm (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
28 Apr 2001
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Headlines as broadcast on the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturday at 11 a.m. on WEFT 90.1 FM. |
Saturday, April 28 is Workers\' Memorial Day
Electrical Accident Injures Worker
A worker at the Tenneco Packaging plant in Wheeling is in critical condition after suffering electrical burns while installing a gate at the plant on April 20. The worker was guiding a 28-foot wide metal gate onto a sliding track when the gate touched a high-tension wire about 20 feet above ground carrying 34,000 volts of electricity.
Labor Secretary Hedges on Ergonomics Rules
During a hearing on Thursday, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao offered no specifics about when new workplace safety rules could be implemented, thus continuing the long delay in implementing ergonomic standards. Speaking before a senate subcommittee, Chao promised a solid, comprehensive approach to repetitive stress injuries, but said that she wanted to build consensus on the issue. Since the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Chamber of Commerce bitterly oppose any enforceable workplace safety rules, Chao\'s statements suggest that no rules will be implemented in the foreseeable future. After stalling on the issue for years, President Clinton approved new safety standards during his last days in office. President Bush promptly repealed the standards. The regulations were to take effect this fall and cover 102 million workers at 6.1 million work sites.
Reports Shows Large Decline in Workplace Deaths
The federal government helped reduce workplace deaths by nearly half over the past twenty years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For 1997, the latest year for which data is available, workplace deaths fell to 5,300-or 4.1 deaths per hundred thousand workers. That\'s down 45 percent from 7.4 deaths per hundred thousand workers in 1980. The CDC credited strict safety regulations, new technology, and a shift in the economy toward less-dangerous jobs as reasons for the drop in fatalities. The CDC says its numbers under-estimate the total number of deaths, but that they suffice to accurately describe safety trends.
Unemployment Claims Rise to 5-year High
Unemployment claims reached their highest level in five years, according to a government report released on Thursday. The report provides further evidence that the US economy is headed toward a recession. The Labor Department said that first-time jobless claims rose 4.6 percent to 408,000, the highest level since March 1996 when the level stood at 428,000. Business reports state that stock analysts were surprised by the dramatic increase.
Hollywood Strike Approaches
As the potential for strikes in Hollywood increases, the entertainment industry has already begun shutting down, as seen in the empty parking lots at the major studios and the lack of new movies being produced. Hollywood analysts say that the only films now being shot around the country began production months ago. Studios have halted new productions because there isn\'t time to get films written and shot before the strike deadlines. The contract between the studios and the Writers Guild of America is set to expire on Tuesday. A separate contract with the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists expires June 30. Writers have been negotiating with the studios since January over fair compensation for writers when programs are rebroadcast, or distributed on video, DVD and the internet. In response, studios have been stockpiling their products by ordering scripts ahead and rushing films into production. Metro Goldwyn Mayer recently said it has 18 finished films in hand as preparation for a possible walkout. An independent report prepared for Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan concluded that 130,000 jobs could be lost if writers and actors went on strike and the walkouts lasted several months. But the writers\' guild says that they agreed to accept bargain basement prices for their work when the DVD and internet distribution were in their infancy, and that it\'s time for the industry to pay them for the true value of their work.
Knight-Ridder Fires Staff to Support Profits
Newspaper chain Knight-Ridder showed that shareholders are more important than the company\'s employees in a statement released on Friday. At the company\'s annual meeting last Tuesday, Tony Ridder, the company\'s CEO, said that workers will be fired at most of its 32 daily newspapers in order to keep profits near last year\'s level of 310 million dollars. Knight-Ridder has already fired newsroom staff at the San Jose Mercury News and the Akron, Ohio, Beacon Journal, and will cut jobs at other papers it owns, including the Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stock buyers showed their approval of profits before people by sending the value of Knight Ridder stock upward by 36 cents.
UAW Membership Drops Dramatically
Membership in the United Auto Workers union dropped by 12 percent in 2000, continuing a 20-year trend. In financial statements filed with the Department of Labor, the UAW said its membership stood at 672,000, a drop of 91,000 from the previous year. UAW membership peaked at 1.5 million in 1979, but has dropped as the big three automakers outsource the manufacture of parts and as those suppliers have resisted union efforts. Some parts companies have moved out of the country. A case in point is Delphi Automotive Systems, which is both the world\'s largest auto parts maker and the largest private employer in Mexico.
Airline Labor Update
While some airline workers have successfully negotiated contracts with their ever-shrinking number of employers, other airline unions continue to face difficulty. Pilots at Delta airlines recently settled a contract with the best wages in the nation, even surpassing the trend-setters at United. Delta pilots struggled to receive raises from 24 to 34 percent over four years, plus raises of 63 percent for pilots at Delta Express. Meanwhile, Delta is taking a hard line against pilots at its regional subsidiary Comair, where pilots have been striking since March 26 for pay equity with larger carriers. Last week, Comair announced that it will fire 200 pilots, and 2,000 workers overall, by May 13. The union remains on strike and committed to negotiations. All flights at the airline have been canceled since the strike began. Finally, it\'s reported that flight attendants at Delta are also considering unionization as a way to protect and improve their jobs. If United Airlines is allowed to buy USAirways, Delta will likely try to buy other airlines to keep up. And that leaves Delta\'s 22,000 flight attendants-the only major air crew without a union-nervous about their future. Delta flight attendants are considering joining the Association of Flight Attendants.
Union Workers Blast Trade Pact
On April 21, several hundred steelworkers and their supporters rallied at the Hendrickson Spring Co. plant at 48th and Western in Chicago to protest the hemispheric free trade agreement currently being negotiated by government leaders at a meeting in Canada. Hendrickson is closing the Chicago plant and moving operations to Mexico. USW leaders said the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas only makes it easier for firms to move capital and jobs out of the United States. They blamed NAFTA for the loss of 750,000 jobs in the industry and warned that an agreement extending NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere would only exacerbate the problem.
Organizing victories reported by the AFL-CIO last week include the following.
After a joint organizing campaign by four unions, the 2,600 employees of Greektown Casino in Detroit have a voice at work through the Detroit Casino Council (DCC) after a card-check. Under card-check, an employer agrees to recognize a union when a majority of workers sign union authorization cards. UAW President Steve Yokich remarked, quote, \"It was refreshing to work with employers who genuinely respect the right of workers to join unions.\" Besides UAW, the unions in the Casino Council are Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees, Operating Engineers and Teamsters.
By a better than 3-to-1 margin, the 1,500 graduate employees at Michigan State University voted April 20 to join the American Federation of Teachers. And in another breakthrough win, some 600 faculty members at the University of Vermont voted April 18 for a voice at work through United Academics, a joint organization of AFT and the American Association of University Professors.
Part-timers and temps won union representation in Santa Cruz, California when the 550 lifeguards, library technicians, park and recreation staff members and other service workers voted for a union on March 2. The temporary workers are now represented by Service Employees International Union Local 415 and look forward to receiving benefits along with their hourly wages.
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