Employee

Free Choice

      Act

 

Dim lights

Dim lights

  I would never walk
across the union picketline

   Friday Folklore

 

Dim lights

Detroit News Editorials

By Mark Gaffney, President
Michigan AFL-CIO

Click Here

gaffney_mark

Look for the Union Label

union_Lable

 

We have Office Space to Lease

Click Here

Greater Lansing Area

            United Way

                Kickoff

DSC04607

        The Union

     Bulletin Board
 

boardboard

   Send posting to:
miaflcio@miaflcio.org

Login Form



Labor Now

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG
News for working families
  • House Republicans Block Medical Help for 9/11 Heroes

    House Republicans last night blocked a bill that would provide long-term medical care and monitoring for the nearly 60,000 Sept. 11 rescue and recovery workers and community members whose health is at serious risk from their exposure to the contaminated and toxic rubble at Ground Zero of the World Trade Center.

    AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the vote a deep disappointment and said:

    Helping the thousands of 9/11 responders and others who are now sick as a result of their exposures at the World Trade Center should not be a partisan issue. But sadly, the majority of House Republicans voted against this bill.

    The 255-159 vote in favor of the bill included 12 Republicans. But because the bill was on what is known as the suspension calendar used for non-controversial bills, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. What’s controversial about helping 9/11 heroes who faced toxic mix of chemicals, jet fuel, asbestos, lead, glass fragments and other debris?

    Trumka noted that the cost of the bill was paid for by closing tax loopholes for foreign companies operating in the United States.

    It appears that some Republicans and business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, are more concerned with protecting the interests of the foreign based companies who try to avoid paying taxes than helping those who answered the nation’s call on 9/11.

    Rep. Michael E. McMahon (D-N.Y.) said the Republican arguments against the bill are “ridiculous and baseless.”

    It is utterly unconscionable to me that my Republican colleagues decided to put their own petty, partisan agenda ahead of the solemn moral obligation to help the countless volunteers who were there for us in our nation’s greatest hour of need. Shame on them.

    Rep. Carol Maloney (D-N.Y), one of the bill’s chief sponsors, said she expects the House to take up the 9/11 medical aid bill when it returns from its August recess under normal rules that require just a simple majority for passage.

    Nine long years after the attacks, the living victims of 9/11 are still suffering. We must pass this bill. It is the least we can do as a grateful nation.

  • Better Access to WARN Act Information Needed for Workers, Communities

    Last year, more than 2.8 million workers were victims of mass layoffs or plant closings that should have fallen under the 1988 WARN Act, which requires employers to give workers and communities advance notice before shutting down. But, as a new AFL-CIO report reveals, the plant closing “has proven severely flawed.”

    Numerous reports have concluded that most layoffs are not subject to WARN Act requirements; few employers act in compliance with the law; and penalties for noncompliance are so lax that they do not act as deterrents.

    The AFL-CIO report, “The Public Availability of WARN Notices: Lack of Accessibility and Disclosure Calls for Reform,” examines the difficulty in obtaining WARN notice information that can be vital in planning for the economic and jobs impact of a mass layoff or plant closure.

    With access to comprehensive and easy-to-use data bases of past layoffs and plant closures, organizations working to increase employment in states can look for trends in past economic dislocations as they chart their paths forward.

    We presented the report to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration today.

    Essentially, the WARN Act requires employers with more than 100 full-time workers to provide 60 days advance notice of a plant closing to local and state officials, the workers and their union.

    Community leaders and workers who are given this advance notice can then work to mitigate the effects of the job losses by offering retraining programs, providing social services and working to avoid layoffs altogether.

    But nearly each state has its own set of rules and regulations on handling WARN notices, which the report describes as a:

    flawed jumble of websites, offices, and email accounts, which organizations and individuals must keep track of to obtain information on economic dislocations across the country.

    Most states have Rapid Response Teams to assist employers, workers and communities during a mass layoff or plant closing. But the report  found that in many cases when those coordinators tried to push for easier and more WARN notice public disclosure, the coordinators reported they had:

    encountered pressure from businesses and politicians when they tried to push for disclosure on websites.

    The report examines states with difficult or flawed disclosure rules and states with best practices and makes a series of recommendations to the Labor Department, including:

    • Issuing a regulation, training and employment notice or guidance letter requiring states to forward any WARN notices received to the Department of Labor for inclusion in a centralized, publicly accessible database.
    • Developing a standardized format for WARN notices and conducting an educational campaign to encourage adoption of the format in the submission of notices.
    • Adopting the best practices described within this report for the handling of WARN information within that centralized database.
    • Connecting WARN data to other site-specific employment information using unique, site-specific nine-digit identification numbers.

    Click here for a copy of the full report.

                                  Click Here For The Full Blog 

     greenbanner

www.bluegreenalliance.org

Facebook   Twitter    YouTube

          Good Jobs, Green Jobs

      National Conference
 

Today in Labor History


 Union Communication Services

   www.unionist.com

Hello,     

Here is the Big Labor preview for the upcoming week.   

 In unity,

 Chris Rolling
Mgr. - Tech. & Design
UCS, Inc.
410.626.1400

 

*************************************************************
Labor quote for the week of July 26, 2010

"I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not.  I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere.”

--Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States; 1860

Quote sources include:
Great Labor Quotations: Sourcebook and Reader, by Peter Bollen
The Great Quotations, by George Seldes
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations

*************************************************************
Today in labor history for the week of July 26, 2010 

 

 

July 26 
In Chicago, 30 workers are killed by federal troops, more than 100 wounded at the "Battle of the Viaduct" during the Great Railroad Strike - 1877

President Grover Cleveland appoints a United States Strike Committee to investigate the causes of the Pullman strike and the subsequent strike by the American Railway Union. Later that year the commission issues its report, absolving the strikers and blaming Pullman and the railroads for the conflict - 1894

Battle of Mucklow, W.Va. in coal strike. An estimated 100,000 shots were fired; 12 miners and four guards were killed - 1912

President Truman issues Executive Order 9981, directing equality of opportunity in armed forces - 1948

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) took effect today. It requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to qualified disabled employees and bans discrimination against such workers - 1992

July 27
William Sylvis, founder of the National Labor Union, died - 1869

July 28
Women shoemakers in Lynn, Mass. create Daughters of St. Crispin, demand pay equal to that of men - 1869

Harry Bridges is born in Australia. He came to America as a sailor at age 19 and went on to help form and lead the militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union for more than 40 years - 1901

A strike by Paterson, N.J. silk workers for an eight-hour day, improved working conditions ends after six months, with the workers’ demands unmet. During the course of the strike, approximately 1,800 strikers were arrested, including Wobblie leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - 1913

Federal troops burn the shantytown built near the U.S. Capitol by thousands of unemployed WWI veterans, camping there to demand a bonus they had been promised but never received - 1932

Nine miners are rescued in Sommerset, Pa. after being trapped for 77 hours 240 feet underground in the flooded Quecreek Mine - 2002

July 29
The Coast Seamen's Union merges with the Steamship Sailor's Union to form the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific - 1891

A preliminary delegation from Mother Jones' March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, publicizing the harsh conditions of child labor, arrives today. They are not allowed through the gates - 1903

Following a five-year table grape boycott, Delano-area growers file into the United Farm Workers union hall in Delano, Calif. to sign their first union contracts - 1970

July 30
President Lyndon Johnson signs the Medicare Act, providing federally-funded health insurance for senior citizens - 1964

Former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears. Presumed to be dead, his body has never been found - 1975

United Airlines agrees to offer domestic-partner benefits to employees and retirees worldwide - 1999

July 31
Members of the National Football League Players Association begin what is to be a two-day strike, their first. The issues: pay, pensions, the right to arbitration and the right to have agents - 1970

Fifty-day baseball strike ends - 1981

The Great Shipyard Strike of 1999 ends after Steelworkers at Newport News Shipbuilding ratify a breakthrough agreement which nearly doubles pensions, increases security, ends inequality, and provides the highest wage increases in company and industry history to nearly 10,000 workers at the yard. The strike lasted 15 weeks - 1999

August 01
After organizing a strike of metal miners against the Anaconda Company, Wobblie organizer Frank Little is dragged by six masked men from his Butte, Mont. hotel room and hung from the Milwaukee Railroad trestle. Years later writer Dashiell Hammett would recall his early days as a Pinkerton detective agency operative and recount how a mine company representative offered him $5,000 to kill Little. Hammett says he quit the business that night - 1917

Sid Hatfield, police chief of Matewan, W. Va., a longtime supporter of the United Mine Workers union, is murdered by company goons. This soon led to the Battle of Blair Mountain, a labor uprising also referred to as the Red Neck War - 1921

Police in Hilo, Hawaii open fire on 200 demonstrators supporting striking waterfront workers. The attack became known as "the Hilo Massacre" - 1938

A 17-day, company-instigated wildcat strike in Philadelphia tries to bar eight African-American trolley operators from working. Transport Workers Union members stay on the job in support of the men - 1944

Government & Civic Employees Organizing Committee merges into State, County & Municipal Employees - 1956

Window Glass Cutters League of America merges with Glass Bottle Blowers - 1975

Ten-month strike against Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel wins agreement guaranteeing defined-benefit pensions for 4,500 Steelworkers - 1997

California School Employees Association affiliates with AFL-CIO - 2001

Sources:
Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council (graphics research).

*************************************************************
Labor joke for the week of July 26, 2010

Slaphappy

A male supervisor, a male union steward and two female workers found themselves sitting at the same table in a bar after work one evening. Suddenly there was a power failure and the room went pitch-black.

The silence was broken by the sound of a kiss, then a loud slap. When the lights went back on a few seconds later, the supervisor was sitting with a big red handprint across his cheek. The first woman thought, "Good, she slapped him." The second woman thought, "Good, she slapped him."

The supervisor thought, "Damn steward, he kisses one of the women and I get slapped." The steward, laughing to himself, thought, "How about that. I kiss the back of my hand, slap the supervisor and get away with it!"

*************************************************************
Member tip for the week of July 26, 2010 

Concluding an Agreement

Membership ratification voting on a tentative contract can take place through a mail ballot or at a union meeting where the vote may be by either open or secret ballot.  Almost always, only dues-paying members of the union get to vote on accepting or rejecting the contract.  And just as in elections for U.S. president or for legislative representatives, the outcome is determined by those who take the time and trouble to vote; when you choose not to cast a vote in the democratic process of contract ratification, you are letting others decide for you what law of the workplace you will live under.

Adapted from The Union Members Complete Guide, by Michael Mauer

*************************************************************
Steward tip for the week of July 26, 2010

Mobilize Your Members to Make Legislative Gains

Ask your union leadership for help in calling a meeting before or after work or at lunchtime to work on a legislative issue that directly affects your members.  Examples could include legislation involving fair trade, labor standards, health and safety or a community Living Wage standard.  At the meeting explain the issue and ask members to write letters to politicians, sign petitions or do other appropriate tasks.  Ask your local leadership for help in getting information on the subject at hand.

Adapted from The Union Steward’s Complete Guide, 2nd Edition, edited by David Prosten 

*************************************************************
Labor video for the week of July 26, 2010

United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez is interviewed by Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report.  Colbert asks third-generation American Rodriguez for his "papers," and accepts an invitation ("There's air conditioning, isn't there?") to work in the fields.  Funny.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/340925/july-08-2010/arturo-rodriguez?xrs=share_copy