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reach out to Latina workers

How can you create a more diverse union? What are the challenges faced by Latinas, women and immigrants, and how can Latina workers overcome them and become leaders? STITCH, fortified by  a Berger-Marks grant and years of experience with women workers in Central America, is ready and willing to help.

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Milwaukee gives all workers paid sick days

If you work in Milwaukee you’re now guaranteed the right to take time off when you or a close family member gets sick, and you’ll get paid for it . That’s because voters this fall overwhelmingly approved — two to one — a ballot measure giving all workers paid sick time.

How much you get depends on how many hours you’ve worked and where you work. Full time workers for large businesses are guaranteed 9 days, and even at small businesses with fewer than 10 employees, fill-time workers get five days of paid sick time a year. The coalition that mobilized for the new workers’ rights includes the National Partnership for Women & Families and 9to5, National Association of Working Women.

San Francisco and Washington, D.C. had earlier passed similar laws. But there’s lots more work to be done – Nation-wide, nearly half of private sector workers get  no paid sick days, and more than three in four have no paid sick days they can use to care for a sick child. “The problem is especially acute for low-income workers, many of whom work in food service, child care, health care, retail and other fields that put them in frequent contact with the public,” says the National Partnership for Women & Families. They want  Congress to extend similar rights to all workers by passing the Healthy Families Act. Find out more and join the movement at this wonderful  web site: everyonegetssick.org.

Corporate leaders who want people to show up at work or lose their pay, no matter how sick they are, have claimed that paid sick days would hurt business. But after San Francisco passed it law, jobs grew at a healthy pace – and more so than in surrounding counties. Get the facts.

Colorado says 'yes' to affirmative action

When a ban on affirmative action has been deceptively packaged as a “civil rights” measure, voters in states like Michigan and California have snapped at the bait. In past elections they voted to outlaw sensible measures that help give women and minorities a break and bring diversity to workplaces. And so it went in Nebraska this year. Those state bans endanger scholarships and job opportunities for minorities and women and undercut funding for domestic violence and women’s health initiatives.

But not in Colorado. Voters there became the first in the nation to defend state affirmative action programs, narrowly defeating a measure that California businessman Ward Connerly had pushed into law in four other states.

“I have to say, I am in shock,” Melissa Hart, a law professor at the University of Colorado who defended affirmative action confessed to the New York Times. “The pundits told us it would be impossible to defeat this initiative, and our past experiences told us it was impossible, too.” What made the difference, she said, was a huge grass-roots campaign that involved hundreds of volunteers. Ward Connerly blamed his defeat on this year's “Obama tsunami” of new voters.

Women charged much more than men

For health plans with identical coverage

Greenberger defending women's rights last year

"We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, when she got the news.

"Our health care system is broken," agrees Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation. "The individual market does an inadequate job of providing quality, affordable health insurance to women, oftentimes not covering basic health needs such as maternity care."

Their outrage was provoked by October 30 New York Times revelations that women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies with the same coverage. In Iowa, for example, a 30-year-old woman pays 48 percent more a month than a man of her age for one of Wellmark’s Select Enhanced plans. “Some insurance executives expressed surprise at the size and prevalence of the disparities, which can make a woman’s insurance cost hundreds of dollars a year more than a man’s," said the Times. "Members of Congress have begun to question the justification for them. . .These findings are not easily explained away.”

Insurers claim that women in their child-bearing years use more medical care, but even plans that don’t cover maternity care cost women more. In any case, “There’s a strong public policy reason to prohibit gender-based rates," protested Mila Kofman, Maine's  insurance superintendent. "Only women can bear children. There’s an expense to that. But having babies benefits communities and society as a whole. Women should not have to bear the entire expense.”

Smithfield agrees to union vote, negotiated rules

Drops lawsuit against UFCW union

Twice in the 1990’s Smithfield Foods pulled every dirty  trick  in the book to keep 4,650  meat cutters from voting union at its huge pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C. Its abuses were so bad that the NLRB finally ruled, in 2005, that the company had violated the law and ordered a new election, and courts upheld the ruling. Smithfield had to pay $1.5 million in back pay and interest to 10 workers it illegally fired for actively supporting the union.

The union launched a two-year “consumer education” campaign to protest  the company’s dirty tricks and agitate for a card check to determine whether workers want a union. But in October 2007, Smithfield struck back with a lawsuit filed under the anti-racketeering RICO law, claiming that the union's community organizing amounted to illegal extortion under state law. The company sued the UFCW international union and Local 400, the Change to Win federation, Research Associates of America, Jobs with Justice, and seven individuals. Smithfield claimed that it suffered $900 million in damages, including lost profits and expenses in combating the campaign.

Things didn’t look good, as the judge made one ruling after another in favor of the company. He even barred the union from entering into evidence a New York Times article about conditions in the plant that inspired the campaign. But then the judge made a crucial ruling, saying the company couldn't win without with clear and convincing evidence that union statements were false and made with actual malice or an intention to deceive. On Oct. 24 Judge Payne even changed his tune about excluding the New York Times article.

In a surprise move that gave unionists new hope, Smithfield dropped the lawsuit on Oct. 27, two hours before it was scheduled to go to trial, and agreed to a new union vote on Dec. 10-11. The vote takes place under new rules the union hammered out with the company. The union agreed to end its public campaign, but both sides agreed not to publicize other details. The settlement was approved by a Virginia judge, and both sides are legally bound to stick  to it. Smithfield and UFCW also agreed to set up a  jointly-funded “feed the hungry program.” Stay tuned. . .

How women’s vote clinched Obama victory

– Especially union women

We’ve all seen it happen. A guy in power promotes a token woman for a job about which she doesn’t have a clue. That seems to be the safe choice for men who are under pressure to “diversify” but feel threatened by women with real savvy. Then they turn around and expect competent women to cheer their gesture.

Enter John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. But the McCain strategy to attract women voters by choosing Sarah Palin for vice president simply didn’t wash.

The women behind the man

Union women ringing doorbells for Obama

In fact, Barack Obama owes much of his success in the 2008 presidential election to women voters and activists.  Women voters outnumbered men 53% - 47%, and 56 percent of those women chose Obama as the new president, compared to  just under half (49%) of male voters. 

Union women played a huge role – a Peter Hart poll reveals that an overwhelming 79% of them  voted for Obama, vs 20% for McCain.

And we flexed our organizing skills. Unionists distributed 76 million literature pieces, knocked on 10 million doors and distributed 27 million worksite fliers. In the top-tier battleground states, says the AFL-CIO, union members favored Barack Obama by a 41-point margin, 69 to 28. Members of Working America, an AFL-CIO sponsored group for working families, backed Obama almost as strongly, 67 to 30 percent.

Why women weren’t fooled

Barack Obama “spoke directly to women's issues like pay equity, paid leave, and early childhood development," said Erica Williams, Study Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Just as important was the fact that McCain had voted against health insurance for children and scoffed at the Fair Pay Act that would have given clout to laws against pay discrimination.

Erica Williams

The women’s vote was especially important in key battleground states. In North Carolina, which went Democratic in the presidential race for the first time since Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, CNN says an astounding 100 percent of African American women voted for Obama, compared to 87 percent of African American men. Overall, there was a 12% gap between the voting preference of men and women in that state.

“Latina women were also an important voice this year,” remarked Ms. Williams. Seventy-two percent of Latina women in New Mexico preferred Obama, compared to 65% of Latina men.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg, as pro-union candidates defeated anti-union Republicans across the nation.

Record numbers of women elected to Congress

Americans also chose more women than ever to represent us. By electing two women to the Senate we brought the total to a new record high of 17. Even when North Carolina voters kicked out Republican Elizabeth Dole, they replaced her with a more progressive woman, Democrat Kay Hagan.

At least ten new women were elected to  the House of Representatives, bringing the total to a record high of at least 77, three more than in the previous Congress. Of that number, 60 are Democrats. One big upset was the ousting of John Sununu of New Hampshire by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, who directs Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

CNN must rehire, with back pay, 110 workers fired when it tried to dump the union

It took five years to reverse subcontracting ploy

Information  from an AFL-CIO blog by James Parks

It might not make  CNN “Headline News,” but five years after CNN fired 110 union members, an administrative law judge ordered the network to not only rehire them, but to also recognize the workers’ union, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA (NABET-CWA).

Laid-off CNN workers rallied outside CNN’s parent Time Warner in 2004

Judge Arthur Amchan said CNN violated the rights of more than 250 employees at the network’s bureaus in Washington, D.C., and New York City when it ended its subcontract with Team Video Services (TVS), where technicians were represented by NABET-CWA. The union had protested that TVS and the workers were dumped because they were union. The judge also ruled that CNN discriminated against TVS employees who wanted to continue working for CNN’s bureaus.

For more than 20 years, CNN had subcontracted video and sound work to companies where workers were always represented by NABET-CWA. But in 2003 and 2004, CNN terminated its deal with the last subcontractor, TVS, and announced that the network would instead hire its own employees.

In his 169-page decision, the judge found that CNN and TVS were actually joint employers of the workers, so they had to recognize the union and bargain over the decision to terminate the subcontract, as well as the decision to hire new employees. Amchan also ordered the network to give full back pay to more than 110 workers, and to train those rehired, as necessary.

The victory was sweet, but as Ed McEwan, president of Local 11, pointed out, it “took far too long to achieve because of our broken labor laws… From the very beginning we promised our members that ’we will not forget.’ We didn’t, and we’re keeping up the fight until fairness is fully won.”

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Photo by Delia Perez

Organizers recharge their batteries

At National Organizers Alliance Gathering VI

A few months before community and union organizers helped Barack Obama get elected, the NOA Gathering VI took place at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, June 29 - July 2. It had been seven years since Gathering V in Sonoma, California.

Photo by Delia Perez

Many of the 115 organizers who came from all over the country to pick up new ideas and exchange experiences got scholarships funded partly by the Berger-Marks Foundation. In total, 48 participants , most of them women and half of them people of color, benefited from over $18,563 in scholarship assistance.

"We are at a real crossroads where policy choices will shape the future for decades to come," NOA Chair Idida Perez said when she greeted the participants. "We celebrate a profession that lifts up and honors the work of community and labor organizations seeking real change. Have a good time. Build relationships. Change the world. Make a home for organizers." The conference offered organizers a chance to talk about their craft and reach across the lines of race, gender, geography, sexual orientation, age, labor, community and issues.

One highlight of the conference was a workshop, “Building Power from the Bottom Up: What Would a National Coalition of the Eager look like?” There presentations from new coalitions in Pittsburgh and Newark provided the spark for small-group discussions about how to link organizations to exert power nation-wide. Another highlight was a talent show that showcased the richness of organizers' artistic talent.

Every session at the Gathering, from Voting Rights to Immigrant Rights to Housing and Global Justice, related to the concerns of working people and the need for stronger unions.

What happens to women who lose their jobs in this recession?

Years of progress make them more vulnerable

Is women’s work recession-proof? That might have seemed partly true when the 2001 recession hit factory workers hard, but left intact many of the low-wage service jobs that women hold.  But this recession is different, warns Rebecca Blank, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and it could be devastating for low-wage women and their families.

Low-income women made steady gains

Rebecca Blank

Blank details how low-income women moved into the labor force even as the proportion of men with jobs fell, from1979 on. In her paper, "Economic Change and the Structure of Opportunity for Less-Skilled Workers," she also shows how the wage gap between less-educated men and women narrowed, with those women getting 78 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned by 2006, compared to just 59 cents in 1979. (While the highest-paid and most-educated  workers also made progress, wages for middle-income workers with a college degree stagnated.) “Wages among less-skilled women are higher than at any previous point in history,” says Blank, even while “wages among less-skilled men remain below where they were in the 1970s.”

Single moms depend more on jobs than ever

Single mothers really need those jobs for their livelihoods,  especially because of welfare reform in the mid-1990s and stronger benefits from the Earned Income Tax Credit. While 44 percent of women high school dropouts were in the labor force from 1979 to 1994, more than half of them were by 2000. (That percent had dropped slightly to 47.8 percent by 2006.)

What safety net?

But few women are protected by union contracts. Just 8.5 percent of women workers were in unions in 2007, compared to 14 percent in 1985.

“This recession is really hitting those jobs,” Blank warns. “What will happen to that group of women? Is there a safety net?” Low-wage-earning women often can’t get unemployment benefits, especially in states that don’t allow part-time workers to collect. In many states, you also need to have had a job for a full year and a half. “The other safety net for this group of workers is the traditional welfare program,” Ms. Blank said. “On that front, the news is not promising at all.”

Today’s low-income single mothers – and their families -- are more vulnerable to economic fluctuations, and as the economy tanks, Blank is sounding the alarm: "Economic prospects could look much worse for low-income families, especially female-headed families.”

Girl Scouts help girls learn to negotiate

No, not just by selling cookies. The Girl Scouts are working with Linda Babcock, professor of economics at the H. John Heinz III College, on a pilot program to teach girls negotiation skills. Babcock, who is also co-author of "Women Don’t Ask" (see above),  has been researching the differences between men and women when they negotiate, and looked into what holds women back from asking for what they need and want. She’s now eager to teach girls at an early age the kind of negotiating that's taught in professional schools.

"It's not the stereotypical, macho I-win-you-lose approach, but the cooperative style that's more productive for both men and women," said Babcock.

The Scouts are so enthusiastic about the idea that they’ve teamed up with Babcock and Carnegie-Mellon University's Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society to develop a "win-win badge" for Junior Girl Scouts ages 8-11. To earn the badge, the Scouts will learn why and how negotiation can be useful and observe adults in their communities bargaining, whether in flea markets, car dealerships or office situations. They'll practice negotiation in their own lives, perhaps when it comes to chores or bedtimes — and yes, even cookie sales.

Young people get shafted

More than ever, the best protection is a union

If you’re young and have a job, you make only 90 cents for every dollar a young worker made back in 1979. But if you belong to a union, you’re in luck – you  make $1.12 for every dollar a non-union worker of the same age (18 to 24) gets. You’re also much more likely to get health insurance and other benefits from your employer.

Click here to read a new study that details the difference that  unionization makes for young workers. Right now, the best thing they can do for their future is to help lobby for the Employee Free Choice Act and put some teeth behind their rights to unionize.

The American Labor Studies Center also aims to help – check out “Your Rights on the Job, an Employment Guide For Young Workers" on its web site.

Unions gear up to organize biggest airline

The ‘New Delta’ vows to be union-free

Taken from PAI information

Flight Attendants President Pat Friend testifying on Capitol Hill

When Delta Airlines took over Northwest to create what could be the world’s largest airline, with 75,000 employees, it inherited a wall-to-wall unionized Northwest workforce of 31,000 people. At Delta, only the pilots were unionized. Both the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) and the Machinists (IAM) unions vow to organize all workers, to make the new Delta “the world’s largest unionized airline,” as IAM Vice President Robert Roach put it.

AFA-CWA had lost two union elections at Delta, both times after vicious company anti-union campaigns. In each case, AFA-CWA got an overwhelming majority of all votes cast.  But under the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline labor relations, a union needs an absolute majority of 50%+1 of all covered workers to win the right to represent them -- not just a majority of those voting. Thus every worker who neglects to vote counts as a “no.”

The combined airline “provides an enormous opportunity to advance the profession of over 21,000 flight attendants," AFA-CWA President Pat Friend said. "With such vast opportunity also comes a great responsibility to protect the 60 years of collective bargaining rights that Northwest flight attendants have long fought to maintain."

Anti-union meat-packer cut its own throat

Did the nation’s biggest Kosher meat-packing company, Agriprocessors, mend its ways after its Postville, Iowa plant was raided because of immigrant workers it hired illegally? After it was slammed with $10 million in fines for 9,311 charges of child-labor law violations, the CEO was forced out (see earlier article); but apparently it’s too late. The company itself continues to bleed from misdeeds that also include deceiving creditors.

Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy after it defaulted on a $35 million loan, and creditors sued to foreclose on the plant. A human resources manager also pleaded guilty  to helping illegal immigrant workers obtain false identification to get hired at the plant, and faces a prison sentence of two to 12 years and fines of up to $500,000; other managers could face the same fate. Meanwhile, the man who ran the plant for decades was arrested on a federal bank-fraud charge.

Agriprocessors has given up producing beef, and many of the new Palauan immigrants it has hired to process chickens told the Des Moines Register that conditions were so intolerable they were forced to quit.