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News :: Labor |
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Labor Headlines 6-28-03 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
28 Jun 2003
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Headlines broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturday at 11 am on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. IMC EXTRA: Wal-Mart Meat Cutters Score Victory in Union Campaign, Supreme Court: Corporate Lies are not Free Speech, Income Gap Grows, Teamsters & UNITE Join Forces for Laundry Workers, SEIU Seeks to Organize Health Care Company, Union at Baltimore Sun OKs New Contract |
JUNE 2003 IS THE 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE LOCKOUT AT A.E. STALEY MANUFACTURING IN DECATUR ILLINOIS
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/staley.htm
IMC EXTRA: Wal-Mart Meat Cutters Score Victory in Union Campaign
For the first time in history for the world's largest corporation, Wal-Mart must bargain with a union. The order from the National Labor Relations Board came last week, and it requires that Wal-Mart recognize a union for meat cutters in Jacksonville, Texas. Shortly after the Jacksonville meat cutters voted for the union in 2000, Wal-Mart closed meat cutting operations in all of its stores across the country, a move widely understood to betray Wal-Mart's Stalinist resolve to keep workers isolated and weak. Meat cutters were transferred to less-skilled "sales associate" positions. The NLRB order, which comes more than three years after the original union election, states that the job change greatly affected both job satisfaction and future earning potential for the meat cutters, and it orders Wal-Mart to restore the meat cutting department to its prior structure. On Tuesday last week, Jimmy Rodriguez, president of UFCW Local 540 formally requested the start of bargaining with Wal-Mart. Such negotiations would mark the first time that Wal-Mart and the union would sit at the bargaining table. The meat cutters in Jacksonville became the first group of workers to vote for union representation at Wal-Mart in February, 2000. Just one month later—during a separate NLRB hearing on a union election at a meat department in Palestine, Tex.—Wal-Mart announced it had decided to replace freshly cut meat with case-ready meat-eliminating the need for meat cutters in every one of its stores. Wal-Mart has repeatedly stated that it will not bargain with any union, and has taken steps to prevent workers from organizing in stores across North America. Wal-Mart has said it will appeal the ruling by a NLRB administrative law judge.
http://www.ufcw.org/press/viewrelease.cfm?id=310
http://www.jacksonvilleprogress.com/articles/2003/06/20/news/news02.txt
Wal-Mart hasn't issued a statement about their loss at the NLRB, but this link shows the typical nature of their labor announcements:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/12521/index.php
(Do a search for "labor" or "UFCW" at Wal-Mart's news release website for an interesting view into anti-union propaganda: http://investor.walmartstores.com/)
Supreme Court: Corporate Lies are not Free Speech
In a blow to a wide range of conservative interests ranging from the Bush administration to the US Chamber of Commerce to a coalition of 40 large media corporations, the US Supreme Court gave a victory to a San Francisco anti-sweatshop activist and told Nike corporation that lying about its sweatshops is not protected free speech. Activist Marc Kasky sued Nike in 1998, under a California consumer law aimed at eliminating unfair competition and false advertising, but Nike argued that such a suit would restrict the corporation's first amendment free speech rights. Kasky claims that Nike has repeatedly misrepresented its employment practices in the Third World, and he maintains there is evidence, despite Nike's past descriptions of its workplaces in southeast Asia, that workers still endure deplorable conditions. With Thursday's decision, the question of whether Nike has deliberately misled consumers may go to trial.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,985941,00.html
http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/news/pressrelease.jhtml?year=2003&month=06&letter=f
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/nike/index.html
Income Gap Grows
The rich are definitely getting richer, according to the Wall Street Journal and the IRS. America's top 400 taxpayers reported income of nearly $70 billion for year 2000. In order to qualify for the top 400, an income of $87 million dollars was needed, a figure that rose $20 million from the previous year. In 1999, a rich person only needed income of $67 million. The rapid concentration of wealth is happening so quickly that the Wall Street Journal calls the trend "startling", and it points out that those 400 people take home over 1 percent of the nation's income, a doubling of their share of the nation's income from 1992. By far the largest portion of the top 400's income for 2000 came from net capital gains. The IRS study shows about $50 billion came from net capital gains for 2000. Since that time, George Bush has signed two tax cuts that reduce taxes on capital gains.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/dowjones/20030626/bs_dowjones/200306260137000198
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=CpVPVWeienJi3m1jPy2HPBLvtvgfRAw5NAq
Teamsters, UNITE Join Forces for Laundry Workers
Two large international unions are joining forces to help organize workers in the laundry and rental uniform industry. UNITE!, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees, and the Teamsters union announced on Wednesday that they are combining forces to organize workers at Cintas, the largest uniform rental provider and industrial launderer in North America. Hundreds of union members and Cintas workers joined the presidents of the two unions as they made the announcement at Teamsters City headquarters in Chicago. Under the partnership, drivers who deliver Cintas products will organize with the Teamsters, and productions workers will organize with UNITE. Despite corporate profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Cintas continues to pay 17,000 workers substandard wages and cheat drivers out of overtime pay, the unions say. Cintas is currently under investigation in the U.S. and Canada for over 100 violations of federal labor law. In March, Cintas drivers filed a national class action lawsuit alleging Cintas intentionally refused to pay drivers up to $100 million dollars in overtime pay. At the union rally, Cintas employee Santa Ana Ventura said quote, “They call us ‘partners’ but they treat us terribly. We have no rights, no voice on the job, and we are treated with no respect. I’m glad to know the Teamsters and UNITE will help us form a union, because we’re sick of Cintas breaking the law and cheating its workers.”
http://www.uniteunion.org/pressbox/release.cfm?ID=68
Union Seeks to Organize Health Care Company
The Chicago Tribune reported that the Service Employees International Union has begun an organizing drive at Advocate Health Care, one of the largest health care providers in the Chicago area. Company managers said that 3 meetings have been held with union representatives, but the company is not interested in having its workers organized. This year the SEIU has issued a series of reports on Advocate charging that the company charges higher prices to the uninsured than persons who have health insurance and that those prices are the highest in the area.
Union at Baltimore Sun OKs New Contract
Newspaper Guild members at the Baltimore Sun, a newspaper owned by the Chicago Tribune, approved a new 4-year contract on June 25 by a vote of 319-102, narrowly avoiding a strike. Many union members are unhappy with the terms of the new contract, which gives them salary increases smaller than they wanted and allows management a freer hand in transferring employees and using outside contractors. The new agreement provides for a pay freeze in the first year and $520 raises in each of the succeeding years. A ratification bonus of $1500 was included as well, and the company agreed to continue to use seniority as the controlling factor in layoffs.
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See also:
http://www.ilir.uiuc.edu/lii/
http://www.labourstart.org
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Two Labor Hour Interviews |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Jun 2003
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Staley Worker Lorell Patterson
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7319
Macalester College Prof. Peter Rachleff
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7321 |
