Time to apply for a 2010 Berger-Marks grant!

Applications accepted Jan.- Feb. for groups & academics
(Individual organizers can apply for a grant at any time)

Our 2009 grants helped U.S. and cross-border organizing

Women's Institute for Labor Development

Unions, union-friendly groups and academics are invited to apply online between January 1 and February 28 for a 2010 Berger-Marks grant. Online application forms

What kinds of projects are we looking for?

Grants for organizations

We fund groups that help women workers organize into unions, either directly or indirectly. For example, last year we helped Arise Chicago train women in leadership and organizing skills to help immigrant workers know their rights and fight wage theft, such as not getting paid the legal minimum. And we helped a dynamic new web site, CanMyBossDoThat.com, educate workers on their rights by giving visitors a wealth of information and tools geared to their specific situations.

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and the AFL-CIO's Pride at Work group also got grants to train women in leadership skills. See more group projects funded in 2009

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Spotlight on grant recipient

Berger-Marks grant helps organizer

Union for freelance journalists goes public in California

Rebecca Rosen Lum

"The workplace is changing and we are changing with it," says Rebecca Rosen Lum, who won a Berger-Marks grant to help create the first-ever freelance unit linked to a Newspaper Guild-CWA local union.

"As newsrooms are shrinking, many former journalists prefer to remain in journalism and work independently, knowing how critical this work is to a democracy," explains Rosen Lum. "That's a brave thing to do; for many, that means laboring without health coverage or financial benefits."

She knows the job shouldn’t require so much bravery. "I believe mightily in the honor of work and the right of all working people to organize," asserts Rosen Lum, who helped unionize the Contra Costa Times when she worked there.

"I often hear newly-independent journalists lament the loss of the structure, stability, camaraderie and practical support the traditional news organization provided. I know the union can fill that gap," says Rosen Lum.

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USAS slide show

 

Huge union victory won by U.S. students

Russell Athletics forced to rehire 1200 fired workers, accept union

In Honduran factories

Russell Athletics, one of the nation's leading sportswear companies, thought it could get away with firing 1200 workers who had just unionized -- most of them women -- when it closed a big factory in January. After all, the factory was in Honduras, where workers have little protection.

What the company didn't count on was what the United Students against Sweatshops (USAS) proudly calls "the largest corporate campaign in the history of modern student activism." Thanks to USAS pressure on universities and across the U.S., the Workers Rights Consortium and the Honduran workers' SITRAJERZEESH union hammered out a historic agreement with the company this November.

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Short and tweet messages

Are you ready to Twitter?

From Twitter page by LabourStart

http://twitter.com/Labourstart

"Today, United Students Against Sweatshops is going to set another first for a national student organization," announced their November email, "by systematically using Twitter to strengthen our corporate campaign against Dick's Sporting Goods."

Twitter? For the overworked organizer, signing up for the latest web gimmick to communicate with people who talk about what they had for lunch might seem a bit crazy. Is Twitter really worth the time and trouble?

One answer comes from students who pressured Dick's Sporting Goods to drop Russell Athletic products after Russell fired 1200 worker in Honduras. Twitter was a novel way to get the attention of the company, which had ignored their phone calls and letters.

"Even if you don't like Twitter that much," a USAS email told supporters. "It is actually really fun to brand-bust corporations online. For example, you can 'follow' and send messages to Dick's Sporting Goods' Chief Marketing Officer."

USAS emailed simple instructions for using Twitter to its supporters, along with some suggested "tweets." See USAS' instructions and sample tweets

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Speaking of Twitter...

'Take a ticket' from SEIU to fight health care discrimination

http://www.seiu.org/ticket/

Are you fed up with the fact that women pay up to 48% more than men for the same insurance policies, and are denied coverage with "pre-existing conditions" like pregnancies and c-sections?

SEIU has launched an innovative online campaign to spread the word about that discrimination against women and pressure health insurance companies to stop discriminating.

You're invited to join in -- just visit a web site that invites you to "Take a number". The virtual ticket you get, by giving your zip code and email address, puts you in line to demand equal coverage for women. When we took a number, we got this message: " I'm 8820th against discrimination by health insurers." Try it yourself and see if the line has grown since then!

The message you get is designed as a "tweet" that you can post on Twitter or Facebook or email to friends with the click of a button.

New unemployment rules benefit women

Did you know that women collect far less unemployment insurance than men? That's because they often leave jobs for reasons that are considered "voluntary." Seven out of 10 women leave jobs because they lost their child care, their spouse relocated, or other work-family conflicts. In the majority of states, such workers are ineligible for unemployment insurance benefits because they are considered to have "voluntarily left the labor force."

But the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which President Barack Obama signed in February, could change that. It provides $7 billion to help states extend jobless benefits to low-income workers, part-time workers and those with work-family conflicts.

Mediation Board dumps old, un-democratic rule for airlines

Professor cites study funded by Berger-Marks to show need to act

Linda Puchala, former AFA-CWA union president, joined the Board last Spring

There's good news for airline and railroad workers! On November 2, the National Mediation Board took decisive action to get rid of ancient practices that have perverted union elections by, in effect, counting all non-voters as "no" votes. The NMB oversees union elections for transportation workers.

In September, shortly after the board got some fresh faces from President Obama's appointments (One of the replaced board members had been a lobbyist for Northwest Airlines), the AFL-CIO asked the board to update the election procedures. Unions noted that just because a worker does not cast a vote, it doesn't mean he or she does not want a union. It just means a worker didn't vote.

Delta Airlines, the most nonunion passenger airline in the skies, is leading the charge against changing those rules. At one point Delta flight attendants voted 40-1 for union representation, but the vote was thrown out because a majority of workers didn't fill out ballots. Now that Delta has swallowed up the unionized Northwest Airlines, the union is building for another vote..

The NMB voted 2 to 1 to change airline and rail election rules so that they mirror the rules that form the basis for every democratic election.

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School bus drivers accelerate into Teamsters

In Baumann drive, company collides with immigrants, community

First Student driver Pam Carlypic became a Teamster in October

schoolbusworkersunited.org

"We Won! We're Teamsters Now!" cried the Baumann Organizing Committee, in a flyer distributed to 1,700 school bus workers employed by the Baumann transportation companies on Long Island. "On Friday, November 20, we voted 906-644 to join Teamsters Local 1205! The vote turnout was overwhelming!"

Victory came just a month and a half after the union had filed for the election, even after, as one driver put it, "The owners spent a lot of money trying to have us not vote for the union -- that's a fact."

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Flight attendants finally get right to take family time off

Union pushed Congress to close huge loophole

http://www.afanet.org/

Congress just closed a huge gap in the 16-year-old Family and Medical Leave Act when the House voted on Dec. 2 to make the law cover flight attendants and pilots. The Airline Flight Crew Technical Corrections Act breezed through both houses of Congress with voice votes and strong, bipartisan support. They were voting on the version the Senate passed in November.

Sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the new legislation makes flight crews eligible for the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which guarantees most workers the right to take unpaid time off to deal with medical emergencies and new babies. Congress had never actually intended to leave flight crews up in the air when it passed the Act 16 years ago; but the courts had narrowed the law's coverage by insisting that it only applied to workers who put in more regular hours than flight attendants do, including standard 40-hour weeks or their equivalent.

Because the new Act explicitly sets a worktime standard that aircrews can meet, "We are happy to announce...no flight attendant will be left behind when it comes to FMLA coverage anymore," said AFA-CWA President Pat Friend; she urged the government to quickly write rules to implement the law after President Obama signs it.

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This is not your father's AFL-CIO

New study shows how unions have changed

Remember the old cartoons showing unions as a dim-witted, middle-aged man with a wrench in his back pocket? That image is more out of touch with reality than ever.

• Twenty-five years ago, the typical union member was indeed a white man, and barely one member in three was a woman.
• But today, unions have nearly as many women as men -- they're 45.2% women to 55.8% men. If the trends of the recent past continue, women will be in the majority by 2020. (But women are still slightly better represented in the workforce overall, where 48.3% are women.)
• The educational achievement of union workers has also grown dramatically. In 1983, union workers were slightly less educated than the overall work force; today that's flipped, and union workers are slightly more educated than the overall work force.

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Organizing wins:
2,600 child care workers join AFSCME

In New Mexico; AAUP wins at health center in Connecticut

Some 2,600 family child care providers voted in October to join Child Care Providers Together (CCPT)/New Mexico, an affiliate of AFSCME Council 18. The workers made a breakthrough in their 3-year struggle this April, when Gov. Bill Richardson (D) signed a new law allowing both registered and licensed providers to be represented by a union.

The new union members want better benefits and pay, says Sylvia Ruiz. "We're only making about $4 to $6 per day per child, but we have these kids more than the parents do. I have mothers who are nurses, so they're working 12-hour shifts."

When they were approached to join the union, said state-licensed provider Nancy Mosier, "We were interested immediately. We wanted the right to speak out on what we need as professional day care providers."

In addition to New Mexico, AFSCME now represents some 150,000 family child care providers in California, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

UConn Health Center Faculty Vote AAUP

In their third try to unionize the University of Connecticut Health Center, faculty members won their union by a whisper -- just two votes out of the 444 cast. But that was all they needed. The health center's teaching, research and clinical faculty are now represented by the American Association of University Professors, which also represents faculty on other UConn campuses.

The new union immediately reached out to all faculty, including those who voted no, and pledged to not only negotiate on issues like pay and working conditions, but also work with the administration toward common goals.

As for the administration, it had fought to keep the health center non-union. But after the vote, it pledged to "engage the faculty in decision-making, to understand and respond to its concerns, and to maintain two-way communications."

Teamsters declare victory at UPS Freight

The decision of UPS workers in Nebraska, Maryland and Kansas to sign union cards favoring the Teamsters this October capped a 3-year drive, and prompted the union to announce that it now represents nearly all the 12,600 eligible freight drivers working for UPS across 42 states. Omaha workers quickly and unanimously ratified their first-ever contract.

The union drive started back in 2006, when the Teamsters organized the Indianapolis workers who came into UPS after UPS bought up the Overnite Transportation company. They negotiated a contract that workers approved by an overwhelming 107-1 vote. That led to a card-check agreement with UPS in 2007 that lets workers join the union at each workplace when a majority sign union cards.

New alliance fights double standard for T-Mobile workers

German union gets respect, while U.S. workers harassed, underpaid, insecure

Worker X whispers his answer to a reporter's question into CWA President Larry Cohen's ear

Janelle Hartmann of CWA via PAI Photo Service

In Germany, 2 million people who work for the company that owns T-Mobile enjoy all the benefits the union brings. But T-Mobile has a free hand to exploit its 38,000 workers in the U.S., and harasses those who want a union. That outrageous double standard led the Communications Workers in the U.S. (CWA) to team up with the German union ver.di to create a new alliance to help US. Worker organize. (See previous article.) The alliance, called T Union, has a website designed to reach out to T-Mobile workers.

At a forum and news conference this November, the two unions re-affirmed their determination to help U.S. workers organize. Strong words of solidarity came from CWA President Larry Cohen and Ado Wilhelm, a ver.di official representing workers at Deutsche Telekom, the German company that owns T-Mobile.

The union heads were joined by a T-Mobile worker, known only as Worker X, who wore an absurd disguise and spoke only in whispers so the company couldn't recognize and fire him (her?). If the worker had spoken aloud, T-Mobile's voice recognition equipment could have identified him.

They introduced new research that details the atmosphere of fear and repression T-Mobile has created for workers since it entered the US market in 2001. T-Mobile routinely uses illegal or unethical practices like mandatory one-on-one meetings to intimidate workers, asserts Rutgers University Professor Adrienne Eaton, who presented the report.

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Philly security officers win decade-long drive

With no national union, Jobs with Justice plays key role

Philadelphia Jobs with Justice

The security officers who protect the treasures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art now have a little protection of their own. This October, by a vote of 68-55, the guards agreed to be union for the first time since the mayor outsourced most of the security work 17 years ago.

When AlliedBarton, a company controlled by Philadelphia billionaire Ron Perelman, took over the security, it cost the guards a good chunk of their livelihoods. This fall they were making $10 an hour, even though museum guards had gotten $14 an hour plus benefits before the work was privatized in 1992.

"I really love the Art Museum, and most of us do," museum guard Bernardo Dickerson explained. "This victory will make our jobs worth having. It will make the museum both a better place to work and a better museum."

Captive audience meetings turned into grievance sessions

AlliedBarton had fought the decade-long drive with shady moves like making workers attend meetings where they warned that the company's contract would be canceled if the union won and that any gains would be wiped out by union dues. But the guards turned the meetings around into grievance sessions and supervisors had to retreat, reports Warren Davis, solidarity co-chair for Philadelphia Jobs with Justice.

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The Shriver Report:
A Woman's Nation Changes Everything

Attitudes changed, but the workplace didn't

"For the first time in our nation's history, working women make up nearly half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families." So begins the Executive Summary of a report that's gotten lots of attention from both the media and politicians.

This "dramatic shift from just a generation ago" marks a permanent cultural change, says The Shriver Report, yet employers, government and other institutions haven't caught up with the new reality. Maria Shriver's very readable report, entitled "A Woman's Nation", gives new ammo to battles to get workplaces to adapt to modern families and women workers.

Shriver is not only California's First Lady (wife to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger); she's also had an impressive career as an award-winning TV journalist and news co-anchor at both CBS Morning News and NBC. She grew up as a niece to President John F. Kennedy and his brothers, and has four children.

The Shriver Report is sprinkled with goodies from a nationwide Rockefeller-funded poll that Time magazine also published, capturing American attitudes about the role of women in today's world. It reveals that men have largely embraced the move of women into the workforce, and it takes a hard look at what still needs to happen, now that families depend so much on women workers, with a series of essays.

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Coalition of Labor Union Women

New CLUW officers vow to help organizing

New CLUW officers sworn in

CLUW

The Coalition of Labor Union Women elected a new slate of officers at its October convention, and front and center was the need to organize and recruit young members. The new president, Karen See, hails from the Postal Workers Union (APWU) and had been CLUW's membership and field organizer. She vowed to "be more active in our communities as we build partnerships with community allies, together fighting for the needs of women and families." Organizing will be a key priority of her administration, she pledged, along with helping women have a more forceful voice in their unions.

Convention delegates also elected Janet Nelson of AFSCME as executive vice president and Gloria Brimm of UAW as corresponding secretary. APWU member Judy Beard and Dolores Gorczyca of the Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) were re-elected as treasurer and recording secretary, respectively. Delegates voted to expand the national board to include members from unions not previously represented and elected 11 new vice presidents.

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO

 

Asian-Pacific-Americans: Fast-growing group of workers

Workers testify about rip-offs, study confirms need for unions

What's the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. Labor force these days, next to Latinos? Workers whose families hail from Asia or a Pacific island. While many of those Asian-Pacific American (APA) workers are joining unions, many others are being blatantly ripped off.

Ricky Lau's experience is all too typical. Lau is a skilled electrician but he's also a Chinese immigrant. Before he got a union job, he was put to work 60 to 70 hours a week for a contractor that only put 16 to 20 hours on the timesheets for him and other immigrant workers. Lau and four co-workers now have union jobs and are suing their former employer for back wages.

Stories like his came to light at the first-ever national workers' rights hearing for Asian Pacific American workers (APA) at AFL-CIO headquarters on November 13. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), the AFL-CIO and 18 other organizations co-sponsored the hearing.

Asian Pacific American workers are likely targets for exploitation because they can be vulnerable and isolated, said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). They may be less informed about labor laws, may not speak English and come to the United States with a distrust of the government and fear of retaliation, Chu said.

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Ding dong --

The Bush Personnel System is dead!

Civil service rules restored for civilian defense workers

On Jan. 1, 2012, the anti-union National Security Personnel System George Bush had rammed down the throats of civilian Defense Department workers will be dead, thanks to the 2010 Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed Oct. 29. And the unions who'd been fighting the "nightmare" scheme since 2003 are ecstatic.

Under the pretense of beefing up security, disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had cooked up the system to strip 700,000 civilian defense workers of the right to organize or bargain or even have a fair grievance procedure and pay standards. A coalition of 31 unions representing defense department workers battled the scheme in the courts, and eventually appealed to the Supreme Court.

Finally Congress restored many collective bargaining rights in the 2008 defense Authorization bill, and the lawsuit was dropped. But it wasn't until this year that the Personnel System was overturned and traditional civil service pay, protection and collective bargaining rights were restored to DOD civilian workers.