Spotlight on grant recipient

New report we funded:

Using new media & work-family issues

To organize women & young workers

How useful are online media and work-family issues in organizing? To find out, a Berger-Marks grant helped researchers interview 23 organizers about how they use new media and whether they highlight family and work issues in their campaigns.

The study confirmed that "some of the most exciting and innovative strategies and tools are being developed by young organizers using new technology and social media."

They are using Internet websites to provide information; Facebook and MySpace to help workers connect and express opinions; and Twitter and texts to remind workers to take action. Nonetheless, those same organizers caution that new technology and social media are no substitute for personal contact, and that unions need to make sure they protect workers' security and privacy.

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In These Times, among others, featured the report

 

Media & groups spread the word
About 'Stepping Up, Stepping Back' report

The Berger-Marks Foundation's "Stepping Up, Stepping Back" report made quite a splash when it came off the press and onto our website.

Labor-oriented media from the AFL-CIO Now blog to WorkDay Minnesota picked up on the report and its conclusions that unions must change in order to attract and keep younger women activists. Many of the publications detailed the report's 10 recommendations.

In addition to union publications and websites like the CWA News and AFSCME's Information Highway, articles about "Stepping Up, Stepping Back" also found their way onto the Huffington Post website (twice) and the Working column of "In These Times." The Bureau of National Affairs released a story about the report to subscribers of its Daily Labor Report. Links to various articles that featured "Stepping Up, Stepping Back" are listed below.

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Damayan Migrant Workers lobbied for rights

Damayan Migrant Workers

 

In New York:

Domestic workers win Bill of Rights

After 6 years of organizing by domestic workers, with backing from unions, clergy and community groups, New York State passed a landmark bill giving basic rights to domestic workers. As N.Y. Governor Paterson prepared to sign the bill, he praised the "thousands of individual domestic worker who organized and fought for this legislation."

Passed on July 1, it makes New York the first state in the country to correct an scandalous lack of legal protections for domestic workers, who aren't covered by labor law and are often badly mistreated. Many have worked long hours without overtime pay or benefits. Finally, the more than 200,000 nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers who support New York families — and make their other work possible — are recognized as real workers under the law.

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UFCW wins at casino in NLRB election

Tribal owners still try to grab jurisdiction

UFCW organizing video

UFCW

Bartenders, beverage servers and other workers at the big Foxwoods Resort Casino in Meshantucket, Conn. voted 190-145 on July 30 to be represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 371.

The Native American tribe that owns the casino has filed an appeal, still claiming that tribal labor law should govern and that the election, held under the rules of the National Labor Relations Act, should be thrown out.

The casino's engineers had recently failed to unionize under tribal law even after a majority voted for the union. Up until now, the Mashantucket Pequot tribal rules said that a union couldn't win unless it got a majority of all eligible workers, not just those who voted. Food workers had also failed to gain their union in a previous vote under tribal rules.

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SEIU and Unite Here settle 18-month dispute

Clarify organizing rights

Workers in hotels and casinos can now unionize without being caught in a dispute between two rival unions. After 18 months of contested elections, the SEIU Service Employees union is fulfilling a promise by its new president, Mary Kay Henry, to end the rivalry between SEIU and Unite Here.

Unite Here has a long history of representing hotel and restaurant workers, and it recently organized workers at the Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California. But in early 2009 the merger between the two unions that had created UNITE HERE began to crumble. A group of its members – called Workers United -- split and joined SEIU.

Under the new agreement between SEIU and UNITE HERE, SEIU vows to no longer contest the right of Unite Here to organize hotel and casino workers. UNITE HERE has the undisputed right to organize private sector food service workers, while Workers United can organize government building food service workers. The two unions also set up procedures to clarify the status of other members, and they settled the financial confusion triggered by the breakaway.

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At University of California

6,500 researchers get first contract

96% vote 'yes'

On August 12, two years after they won the legal right to be represented by the UAW, 6,500 post-doctoral researchers (postdocs) wrested a first contract from the university that was approved by an overwhelming 96 percent "yes" vote.

"We are very proud of this contract," said Xiaoqing Cao, a cancer researcher from UCLA who served on the Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/UAW bargaining committee. "Not only will postdoc compensation at UC be among the best in the U.S., but UC postdocs will also have unprecedented rights and protections while carrying out the important work that makes UC the top academic research institution in the world."

They prevailed in the face of the draconian $2.5 billion in cuts that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to carve out of the California education budget.

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Do men understand ‘women’s issues?’

More men stressed by work-family juggling act

Information from by Tara Parker Pope

Derek K. Miller

Do men understand how hard it is to juggle work and family responsibilities?

They not only feel the pressure, but "fathers also seem more unhappy than mothers with the juggling act: In dual-earner couples, 59 percent of fathers report some level of ‘work-life conflict,’ compared with about 45 percent of women," announced a study from the Families and Work Institute in New York in 2008.

Half the men surveyed claimed that they did at least half the family child care and housework. But do they? Only 31 percent of women thought men did an equal amount of child care, and seven out of ten wives believed they were doing all the housework.

What's the truth? When both husband and wife work outside the home, the woman spends about 28 hours a week on housework, while her husband does only about 16 hours, says a survey by the University of Wisconsin. And of course among single parents, the gap is much wider. Yet there's no doubt that men take more responsibility for the kids and the housework than their fathers did. In 1970, two out of three married couples had a spouse (usually the wife) working at home full-time. But today three out of five families have no stay-at-home spouse.

Those changing roles should make it easier to get men on board to help make workplaces more responsive to family needs.

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It pays for immigrant women to be union

Study shows advantage for Asian Pacific American women

Well, they did it again. Researchers came out with hard facts that again show the pay advantage that union women have over other women workers.

Being a member of a union adds about $2 an hour to an Asian Pacific American woman’s paycheck, compared with her nonunion counterpart. That’s the big news from a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

It jibes with another CEPR study, "Unions and Upward Mobility for Immigrant Workers," that found a big union advantage in pay and benefits for all immigrant workers.

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Chamber spins poll numbers

But small business not so anti-union

Information from PAI article and American Rights at Work

ARW Exec. Director Kimberly Freeman Brown

It’s no secret to organizers that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is hostile to unions, and it often can be found lobbying against worker rights. But when the Chamber surveyed small businesses to gather ammo against unions, it had to fudge the results.

At a "Jobs Summit" the Chamber hosted -- without inviting workers or the Obama Administration -- it released an early-July survey of 300 small businesses.

Claim: "While 30% of small business owners feel unions have a positive impact on job creation in the U.S., a plurality (46%) feel unions have a negative impact, and 17% of small business owners feel that way ‘strongly,’" announced the Chamber.

Reality: If you add the 30% who say unions have a positive impact to the 22% who say the union impact is neither positive nor negative, that’s a majority of 52% who do NOT think unions have a negative impact. And 8% of the businesses said unions are strongly positive in creating jobs.

American Rights at Work found small businesses are often positive toward unions.

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Non-union hotel workers stage one-day strike

Fed up with not getting breaks promised by law

Workers picket outside the Embassy Suites Hotel

Unite Here Local 11

Fed up with a hotel management that won't even let them take the 10-minute breaks they're guaranteed under California law, workers at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Irvine California filed a complaint with the state. And the next week, on August 9, dozens also walked off the job for a day.

Half the hotel's 60 non-management employees had signed the complaint, saying they are owed $180,000 in back pay for break time that some have been denied for as long as 10 years. Many are also determined to join UNITE HERE Local 11 – the same local that earlier this year dressed up as Walt Disney characters and held a hunger strike to fight Disney's attempt to slash their health benefits.

The Embassy Suites workers complain of short staffing, poverty wages and a health care plan they can't afford. A Local 11 spokeswoman says that 70 percent of the workers have signed union cards to get UNITE HERE to represent them. But Embassy Suites won't recognize the union until they go through an election, which could mean a long, nasty battle.

Many workers picketed the hotel during their strike, and then continued to picket each day. "This company has robbed us of our time in order to make higher profits," a hotel houseman told the People's World. "We went on strike to show them we know our rights, and we are fed up. We demand change."

New federal Whistleblower Protection site

Protects worker rights to reveal unsafe conditions

Can a worker who reports dangerous conditions to the feds be fired or punished? The law says no -- people who blow the whistle on illegal employers are protected. To make sure such "whistleblowers" know and exercise their rights, the Obama Administration launched a new website for "The Whistleblower Protection Program" at whistleblowers.gov.

People who report safety violations and other illegal practices "play an important role in assuring compliance with federal laws, " asserts the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

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Delta flight attendants one step closer to historic vote

Veda Shook

On August 17, the National Mediation Board (NMB) granted the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA's (AFA-CWA) request to declare that the Delta/Northwest merger has created a single transportation system. That's a key step toward triggering a representation election. For the first time, the over 20,000 flight attendants at the merged carrier will likely have the opportunity to vote for AFA-CWA representation under new, more democratic rules. Read more about their battle for democratic rights.

If the Flight Attendants prove that there's enough interest to warrant an election within 14 days, the date will be set for the vote. Proof of interest would be a combination of AFA-CWA's pre-merger Northwest membership plus signed authorization cards from pre-merger Delta employees totaling at least 35 percent of all eligible flight attendants.

Veda Shook, who participated in the Berger-Marks summit this March, was elected AFA-CWA's new president in April.