Recent developments involving labor unions and their members, including the latest on contract negotiations, strikes, lawsuits, and workplace organizing.
Screenwriters Dig In for an Extended Brawl
Source: Michael Cieply, New York Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: December 10, 2007
Eight months ago, in a
contemplative moment, Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America West, sketched out what
could have been a script for the collision that wrecked talks between Hollywood's producers and striking
writers on Friday. During an interview in his office here, Mr. Verrone described the looming negotiations with
employers as a confrontation much grander than a simple fight over pay formulas. This battle would be about
respect.
Union misled farmworkers, state panel says
Source: Molly Selvin, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): UFW
Date: February 23, 2007
In a
rare rebuke, a state labor board ruled that the United Farm Workers of America deliberately misled workers
about their rights not to join the union or fund its political activities. The ruling comes amid a continuing
national effort by anti-union activists to weaken organized labor's political clout, and as the farmworker
group continues to lose membership and influence among California's immigrant farm laborers.
Source: Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America
Date: February 22, 2007
In
a victory for the Writers Guild of America, a NLRB judge has rejected an NBC Universal complaint that the union
illegally hampered the production of Web episodes of such TV shows as "The Office" and "Heroes." NBC had
alleged that the guild pressured "show runners"--writer-producers who oversee shows--to refrain from overseeing
the writing of "webisodes." The network contended that the work was covered under existing labor agreements,
whereas the union contended that writers wanted to negotiate fair terms for the extra work. The judge ruled
that there was no evidence the union "restrained or coerced" the show runners, recommending that the complaint
be dismissed.
Source: Katie Merx, Tim Higgins, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): UAW
Date: February 21, 2007
Huge pay cuts at Ford. GM shifting production to Mexico. It's no secret that Detroit
automakers are expected to push for significant changes in UAW wages and benefits in the contract being
negotiated this year. But one of the nation's top auto economists raised eyebrows among his industry
colleagues when he suggested that hourly workers may have to give up more than ever before to protect U.S.
assembly jobs.
Source: Jason Roberson, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): UAW
Date: January 31, 2007
The UAW is losing its edge in pay compared with nonunionized U.S. assembly plant workers for
foreign companies, even as Detroit automakers aim for deeper benefit cuts to trim their losses. In at least one
case last year, workers for a foreign automaker for the first time averaged more in base pay and bonuses than
UAW members working for domestic automakers.
Labor union, redefined, for freelance workers
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Freelancers Union
Date: January 27, 2007
Herding
freelancers is a bit like herding cats. Both are notoriously independent. Nonetheless, Sara Horowitz has
figured out a way to bring together tens of thousands of freelancers into a thriving organization. [She] has
founded the Freelancers Union, offering members lower-cost health coverage and other benefits that many
freelancers often have a hard time getting. A former labor lawyer, she is trying to adapt unions to a world far
different from yesteryear, when workers often remained with one employer for two or three decades.
Union membership drops to record low
Source: Will Lester, Washington Post
Date: January 25, 2007
Union membership dropped to 12% of U.S. workers last year, extending a steady decline from
the 1950s when more than 1/3 belonged to unions. The latest gloomy news for organized labor comes at a time
when the group is pushing legislation in the Democratic-controlled Congress that would make it easier for
unions to organize. But labor laws aren't the only obstacle to union membership.
Source: Stephen Franklin, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): AFL-CIO; United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: January 3, 2007
The AFL-CIO and [the United Food and Commercial Workers] sued the federal agency in charge of workers' health
and safety, saying it has failed to implement a rule that would require employers to buy protective equipment
for their employees. Such a rule would apply to as many as 20 million people who work in a number of places,
including restaurants, hospitals, factories and at construction sites, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health
Administration said in 1999. That was the year the agency proposed that employers pick up the costs of their
workers' protective equipment, saying 48,000 injuries and at least 7 deaths could be avoided annually as a
result of such an action. The agency has yet to act on the rule.
Goodyear workers return to work
Source: Joe Milicia, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: January 2, 2007
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. workers returned to work Tuesday after a
three-month strike against the world's third largest tiremaker and some workers said it will take time to mend
wounds with management. Workers at 12 plants in 10 states on Friday approved a three-year agreement covering
14,000 employees that includes plans to close a Texas tire factory and creates a $1 billion health care fund
for retirees. Some members of the United Steelworkers were optimistic about rebuilding their relationship with
management.
Birth of the first global super-union
Source: Oliver Morgan (Guardian), ZNet
Union(s): Amicus; IG-Metall; United Steelworkers; International Association of Machinists
Date: January 2, 2007
British, American and German unions are to forge a pact to challenge the power of global capitalism in
a move towards creating an international union with more than 6 million members. Amicus, the UK's largest
private sector union, has signed agreements with the German engineering union IG-Metall and two of the largest
labour organisations in the US, the United Steelworkers and the International Association of Machinists, to
prevent companies playing off their workforces in different countries against each other. The move is seen by
union leaders as the first step towards creating a single union that can present a united front to
multinational companies.
Labor sees opening to reverse declines
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Date: December 8, 2006
After 50 years of decline, the labor movement sees an opening to reverse
that trend with the election of a Congress controlled by Democrats. And they are starting an intense campaign
to win passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a proposal that would make it easier to form a union. Labor
delivered millions of votes for the Democratic Party in the 2006 midterm elections and is outlining what it
wants from the Democratic-controlled Congress in return.
N.B.A. players have zero tolerance for new balls
Source: Liz Robbins, New York Times
Union(s): National Basketball Players Association
Date: December 2, 2006
The new
synthetic ball and the new rules cracking down on in-game conduct have prompted complaints from players since
the N.B.A. season began. But what irritated the National Basketball Players Association most was that its
membership was not informed beforehand of the changes. The players union filed two unfair labor practice
charges with the NLRB and asked [them] to investigate what it said were the N.B.A.'s unilateral actions.
Players have complained that the ball is too sticky and then, when wet, does not adequately absorb moisture.
Union wants to organize airport screeners
Source: Thomas Frank, USA Today
Union(s): American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)
Date: November 19, 2006
The nation's
largest federal labor union will push to organize airport security screeners after a finding by a United
Nations agency that the screeners should have union representation. The 600,000-member American Federation of
Government Employees says it could improve workplace conditions. The Transportation Security Administration has
one of the highest attrition and injury rates in the federal government, which aggravates staffing shortages
that make airport security lines longer. The AFGE plans to lobby Congress' new Democratic leaders to let TSA
screeners unionize.
Writers file unfair labor charge against "Model"
Source: Carl DiOrio, Reuters
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: November 8, 2006
In the latest legal parry in a
multiparty labor fight over "America's Next Top Model," the Writers Guild of America has filed an unfair labor
practice charge with the NLRB. The union claims that producers of the CW's reality TV show broke the law by
eliminating 12 positions previously held by some striking writer-producers. In a charge filed, the WGA seeks
reinstatement and back pay for the strikers, who walked out in July in a bid to join the guild. The striking
employees sometimes refer to themselves as storytellers. Though reality shows are unscripted, teams of
employees must sort through reams of film and video to construct story lines.
New York looks at workers' health costs
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Federation of Teachers
Date: November 8, 2006
After announcing a tentative contract with the teachers' union, the Bloomberg administration signaled
yesterday that its next major negotiating goal was to achieve savings on health coverage for 300,000 municipal
workers. The deal announced late Monday gives the teachers a 7.1% raise over two years, increasing the base
salary for the most senior teachers to just over $100,000. The agreement was unusual because it was the first
time that a New York mayor reached a major labor deal so long before the current contract's expiration. The
current contract, which covers 83,000 teachers and about 30,000 other school employees, expires in October of
next year.
Source: Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: November 1, 2006
A national union campaign in support of striking Houston janitors kicked off in the Chicago area
when local janitors refused to cross picket lines at 6 office buildings. SEIU targeted buildings cleaned by the
area's largest commercial office cleaning contractor--in an effort to pressure the company to settle in
Houston, where some janitors walked off their jobs starting Oct. 23 after contract negotiations broke down.
AFL-CIO files complaint on supervisors
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: October 22, 2006
Organized labor is filing an international protest about a federal
decision redefining which workers are supervisors exempt from legal protection to join unions. The AFL-CIO,
said it would file a complaint with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations about a decision
this month by the NLRB. The decision, covering a series of cases known as the Kentucky River cases, involved
the role of a supervisor. The board ruled that nurses who regularly run shifts at health care facilities should
be considered supervisors and exempt from federal protections that cover union membership. The decision
potentially has major implications for workers in other fields.
Source: Stephen Franklin, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Teamsters
Date: October 11, 2006
Say a mean-looking, burly guy starts giving Sandy Pope a tough time at a Teamsters union meeting.
Her inclination is to walk up to him and ask what's his problem. "It doesn't occur to me to be scared, and
sometimes I think that is not wise." Pope [is] the #2 candidate on a slate challenging Teamsters President
James P. Hoffa for the leadership of the 1.4 million-member union. She is the first woman to do so in Teamster
history. Whether her grit will win supporters is another issue.
Goodyear strike continues; no negotiations set
Source: Beacon Journal Staff, Beacon Journal
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: October 6, 2006
Striking members of the
United Steelworkers of America continued to staff picket lines outside Goodyear Tire & Rubber's corporate
headquarters, plants and other locations today. No new negotiations are planned. About 15,000 Steelworkers at
12 U.S. plants and four in Canada walked out at 1 p.m. on Thursday as four months of talks failed to result in
a new contract.
Source: John Chase, Jeff Coen
Union(s): Council 31 AFSCME
Date: October 6, 2006
Illinois' largest public employees union has told the Gov.'s administration to back off an internal
investigation of state hiring and to stop threatening workers who refuse to cooperate. Interviews being
conducted by two law firms hired by the governor's office could have a "chilling impact" on workers who may
also be questioned in the federal criminal probe of state hiring. "These interviews could be used to intimidate
employees from revealing information that would potentially provide evidence of [hiring] violations," wrote
Michael Newman for Council 31 of AFSCME.
Source: Mischa Gaus, In These Times
Union(s): Industrial Workers of the World
Date: October 4, 2006
Sick of waiting for
modest demands to be met, [Starbucks] baristas announced they were joining the Industrial Workers of the World,
intent on returning some meaning to the National Labor Relation Act's call for "mutual aid or protection." The
baristas don't want an election with the NLRB or a certified bargaining unit. They're using a tactic popular
before the Depression, solidarity unionism, in which a minority of workers act in concert and issue demands
even if management doesn't recognize their union--which Starbucks does not. But the Chicago baristas aren't
alone: Six New York City Starbucks have affiliated with the IWW in two years of campaigning, and the Wobblies
take credit for three city-wide pay increases there.
Hundreds arrested in a protest tied to unionizing hotel workers
Source: Cindy Chang, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: September 28, 2006
About 300 people were arrested Thursday evening for blocking the street in front of two hotels near Los
Angeles International Airport in a highly choreographed event intended to publicize unionization efforts at 13
airport-area hotels. More than 2,500 people joined a march through the streets before the arrests. Organizers
from the local chapter of Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant employees union, have been trying to unionize
the 3,000 to 4,000 airport hotel workers as part of a nationwide drive. The housekeepers, dishwashers and other
employees earn an average of about $9.55 an hour, 20% less than similar workers make elsewhere in the city.
A plan for very civil disobedience
Source: Joe Matthews, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: September 28, 2006
Four hundred people will be arrested early this evening for blocking Century Boulevard near Los Angeles
International Airport, in what could prove to be one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the city's
history. At least that's how the script reads. For much of this year, the national hotel workers union, labor
leaders and immigrant groups have been planning today's protest. Marchers are supporting a drive to organize
the mostly immigrant, nonunion workers employed at 13 hotels near the airport. If the event goes as envisioned,
organizers say, it will be a highly choreographed episode of street theater, timed for news broadcasts and
peaceful enough to persuade but not enrage the public.
Labor leader: it's time to get mad
Source: Steve Cahalan, La Crosse Tribune
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: September 27, 2006
It's time to get mad at the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, national AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney told 400 delegates to the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO biennial convention. "The fact is that
our families are getting clobbered by the federal policies of George Bush and our rubber-stamp Congress,"
Sweeney said. "And it's time for us to get mad. And it's time for us to stay mad and stand up together and
fight together and vote together and take back America together."
Holy pepperoni! Pizza drivers form a union
Source: Associated Press, MSNBC.com
Union(s): American Union of Pizza Delivery Drivers
Date: September 22, 2006
Eleven Domino's employees hoping to
make a little more dough and get a bigger slice of the profits have formed the nation's first union of pizza
delivery drivers. The American Union of Pizza Delivery Drivers won recognition from the NLRB over the summer as
the bargaining agent for drivers at a franchise. The union could open doors for other fast-food workers, said
Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University's ILR. A spokesman for
Industrial Workers of the World said the prospects for unionizing fast-food employees are encouraging because
older people are taking service industry jobs that were traditionally held by younger workers.
Ford buyout deal shows union's power and pain
Source: Ellen Simon, Associated Press, Star-Ledger
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: September 17, 2006
The buyout package Ford Motor is offering 75,000 union workers shows the
vestiges of the United Autoworker Union's might: It offers lifetime retirement benefits for workers 50 or
older with 10 years of service, and a $100,000 education account for children or spouses. But the deal also
shows what the union has been reduced to: Getting a good deal for its members as they leave their jobs forever.
That future has already arrived, for the UAW and the entire labor movement. The decrease in union membership
has been stark. Twenty percent of the United States work force was unionized in 1983. By 2005, union membership
had dropped to 12.5%of the work force.
San Francisco hotel workers make a deal
Source: Kimi Yoshino, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: September 14, 2006
After nearly two weeks of intense negotiations marked by picket lines and marches, San Francisco hotel workers
unveiled a tentative agreement Wednesday with 13 hotels, averting a second strike in two years. The contract,
which runs through August 2009, grants higher wages, better pensions and full healthcare benefits to more than
4,200 members of Unite Here Local 2, a union of cooks, maids, bellmen and other hotel workers. They had been
working without a contract for two years. The accord is retroactive to 2004. "It shows that when we start
together fighting for our rights, we can keep whatever we deserve," said Rafael Leiva, who delivers room
service at the Hyatt Regency.
Source: Associated Press, BusinessWeek
Union(s): Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Date: September 13, 2006
A farmworker
group that ran a successful workers' rights campaign against Taco Bell has begun pressuring Chipotle to buy
tomatoes from suppliers who the group says take proper care of laborers and pay fair wages. The Coalition of
Immokalee Workers in Florida has accused the casual dining restaurant chain of buying tomatoes from growers who
have mistreated workers and paid substandard wages. After a four-year coalition boycott, Taco Bell's parent
company, Yum! Brands, agreed in 2005 to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes with the money passed to
workers who pick the crop that is sold to Taco Bell.
N.Y.U. teaching aides end strike, with union unrecognized
Source: Karen Arenson, New York Times
Union(s): UAW Local 2110
Date: September 7, 2006
In a
victory for NYU, its graduate teaching and research assistants have ended the contentious strike that disrupted
hundreds of classes last November, without having won recognition of their union. Local 2110 represented
N.Y.U.'s graduate assistants in bargaining until their contract expired last year and the university chose not
to continue to recognize the union. N.Y.U.'s student union leaders said yesterday that their members had
decided to halt the strike at the end of the last school year, in part because as much as 30% of the membership
turned over each year, and because they believed the whole membership should choose which strategies to
pursue.
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Independent Pilots Association
Date: September 1, 2006
UPS pilots have approved a new contract with the world's largest shipping carrier that includes hefty pay
raises, large signing bonuses and higher healthcare premiums. The deal ends a lengthy battle that was mired by
threats of a walkout. The deal was reached after more than three years of talks. The contract, together with a
tentative agreement between FedEx and its pilots, furthers a trend in recent years that has seen pay for cargo
airline pilots shoot up while the pay of many commercial airline pilots has declined. UPS pilots had been
making on average more than $175,000 a year. The new contract will boost average pilot pay to about $206,000 a
year.
Labor group takes $40-million aim at midterm elections
Source: Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: August 31, 2006
The nation's largest labor federation announced that [it] would spend more money this year
than ever before to get voters to the polls in a midterm election [it] hoped would return Democrats to power in
Congress. "This Labor Day, it appears that a 'perfect storm' is gathering that may well sweep away Republican
control of the Congress this fall," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney. The 9-million-member AFL-CIO [will]
spend $40 million on its voter turnout effort this year, compared with $35 million in the last congressional
midterm election. "Economic trends have strained working families to the breaking point," Sweeney said.
"Workers are not sharing in the wealth they helped create, and our nation's economic recovery has not been a
recovery for workers at all."
Source: Joe Mathews, Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Engineers and Architects Assn.
Date: August 24, 2006
The Engineers and Architects Assn. concluded a two-day strike Wednesday,
pulling down picket lines after failing to seriously disrupt public services or force Los Angeles city
officials to offer a better raise to the union's more than 7,500 workers. The marching and protests, while
gaining few tangible results for the union, appeared conversely to bolster the political fortunes of its chief
adversary.
Labor tries to heal their differences
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): AFL-CIO; Change to Win Coalition
Date: August 16, 2006
A year after their breakup, former partners in organized labor are trying
to heal some differences by joining forces politically for the November midterm elections. They're cooperating
now for the sake of those who depend on them--about 15 million union members. Both the AFL-CIO and the
breakaway Change to Win alliance are negotiating an agreement that would allow them to coordinate their massive
effort to educate and mobilize workers.
Ignoring split, labor makes election push
Source: Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor
Union(s): ALF-CIO; Change To Win Coalition
Date: August 11, 2006
One year
after America's labor movement saw its largest schism in decades, unions are gearing up for a high-stakes
political battle in November. It's the first test of how the split between the AFL-CIO and the new seven-union
Change to Win labor federation will affect the political activities of the labor movement. It's also a chance
for unions to demonstrate that they still wield political heft despite dwindling membership.
Day laborers, AFL-CIO join in fight for workers' rights
Source: Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: August 9, 2006
Day laborers and organized labor joined forces today, signing a significant agreement to
advance worker rights and fight ongoing immigration reform efforts coming out of Congress. The formal
partnership between the AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network creates a powerful political
team composed of groups that historically have been at odds. "Worker centers make good on the core American
belief that even the shunned and excluded should and can fight back," [AFL-CIO President John] Sweeney said.
"It is a moral imperative that we do everything in our power to support the work of worker centers."
Borrowing language of civil rights movement, drive is on to unionize guards
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: July 26, 2006
For Michael Johnson, a security guard for 16 years, unionization cannot happen soon enough. Mr.
Johnson is among more than 70,000 office-building security guards nationwide the Service Employees
International Union is trying to organize this summer, a group that in many cities is more than 50%
African-American. Those cities include Los Angeles, where guards' pay averages $8.50 an hour. The city's
black clerics are rallying behind the unionization drive, which has borrowed the vocabulary and history of the
civil rights movement. Using tactics that have included sit-ins and the picketing of executives' homes, the
union has organized far more workers than any other in the last decade.
Limits sought on worker exposure to flavor agent
Source: Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters; United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: July 26, 2006
Emergency safety standards are needed to counter a widening outbreak of lung disease among
workers exposed to a common ingredient in microwave popcorn. The Teamsters and United Food and Commercial
Workers plan to file an emergency petition demanding that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration set
exposure limits for diacetyl, a flavoring agent used in the manufacture of artificial popcorn butter, dog food
and other products. Diacetyl has been linked to an irreversible lung disease that has afflicted scores of
workers at popcorn factories and other work sites and killed at least three people in the last few years.
Tentative pact averts strike by city school bus drivers
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Amalgamated Transit Union
Date: July 6, 2006
The union representing New York City's school bus drivers reached a tentative
three-year settlement yesterday with 25 bus companies, averting a strike that had threatened to inconvenience
37,000 summer school students starting today. The union, which represents 8,400 bus drivers, escorts and
mechanics, declined to give details of the accord, including the size of the wage increase, which was reached
four days after the old contract expired. The union had threatened a strike against just a few bus companies,
but the New York City School Bus Contractors Coalition warned that if the union was to strike against even one
company, then all the companies would lock out their workers.
Judge to let Northwest reject contract
Source: Joshua Freed, Bree Fowler, Forbes.com
Union(s): Professional Flight Attendants Association
Date: June 29, 2006
A
bankruptcy judge said Thursday that Northwest Airlines can throw out its union contract with flight attendants
if two more weeks of talks don't produce a deal. "We reserve the right to strike" if that happens, [a]
spokeswoman said. The memorandum of law from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper was a major victory for
Northwest. For the rank and file, the only bright spot was Gropper's decision that Northwest could impose the
terms rejected by 80% of flight attendants earlier this month--not the harsher terms Northwest offered earlier
in negotiations, as the airline had wanted.
47,600 take offers to leave GM, Delphi
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 26, 2006
About 47,600 workers accepted buyout offers or early retirement packages from General
Motors and Delphi, the largest offers of their kind in U.S. corporate history. Robert Bruno, a labor and
industrial affairs professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he wasn't aware of a bigger, more
expensive buyout package anywhere in modern capitalism. He said the buyout program will wipe out a big chunk of
consumer-buying capacity in the U.S. economy and put more pressure on the American middle class. "By the time
all the severance money is spent, we've wiped out 47,000 middle-class union jobs with health benefits," Bruno
said. "What is the calculated cost to communities?" The buyout plan is a key component of a larger turnaround
plan at General Motors. The plan includes cutting tens of thousands of factory positions, closing all or part
of 12 plants, and slashing operating and material costs.
Mesaba unions team up to fight cuts
Source: Jewel Gopwani, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants; the Air Line Pilots Association; Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: June 26, 2006
Workers at Mesaba Airlines have employed a rarely used strategy to fight the steep wage and benefit
cuts their employer demands. They're sticking together. Separate union leaders for about 1,400 Mesaba flight
attendants, pilots and mechanics are sharing everything from legal experts to strike strategies as they try to
scale back proposals for wage and benefit cuts as the company reorganizes under Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Thousands of airline workers have taken wage and benefit cuts since the most recent wave of airline bankruptcy
filings started in 2002. But airline and labor experts say this is the first time three separate unions have
worked so closely to keep as much of their pay and benefits as they can. Lawyers for the three unions disperse
tasks to those best fit to carry them out.
Source: Julia Bauer, Grand Rapids Press, MLive.com
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 23, 2006
Today is proof that, at General Motors and Delphi, the carrot is mightier
than the stick. After decades of punching in at the world's largest automaker and its spinoff parts company,
hourly workers are leaving in droves under an early retirement and buyout plan that ends at 6 p.m. today for
most employees. The upheaval of the past 45 days has been mind-boggling for United Auto Workers members, whose
careers once spun around gold-standard job security and unshakable labor contracts. They have had to decide
whether to accept the buyout, which offers those with more than 10 years of service $140,000 and those with
fewer years $70,000. Taking the deal means no retirement benefits or health insurance.
GM workers take retirement deal
Source: BBC
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 16, 2006
More than 33,000 factory workers have accepted
early retirement packages at struggling car giant General Motors and its bankrupt parts supplier Delphi. The
United Auto Workers said 25,000 GM and 8,500 Delphi staff had signed up for the deals, ranging from $35,000 to
$140,000. GM wants to close 12 plants and cut 30,000 jobs, while Delphi is seeking to shut 21 of its 29
manufacturing sites. The car maker is cutting costs after making a loss of $10.6 billion in 2005. Delphi and
the UAW are still fighting over plans to change labor contracts.
Strike OKd by union of state workers
Source: Joe Mathews, Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: June 13, 2006
Members of the largest union of state workers [California] have voted to authorize their
first-ever strike if the union is unable to agree on a new contract with the Schwarzenegger administration.
Service Employees International Union Local 1000 could formally declare a strike as early as Thursday, the
legal deadline for passing the state budget, if they don't have a new deal. With no precedent for such a
walkout, it is not clear whether a strike by state workers is legal. But a strike by Local 1000 could affect
the daily lives of millions of Californians. The union represents toll collectors, tax collectors, custodians,
DMV staffers and agricultural inspectors--as well as nurses, teachers, cooks and other support staff in prisons
and state hospitals.
U.A.W. facing tough choices, leader warns
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 12, 2006
The
president of the United Automobile Workers union told his members in a strikingly blunt report released Sunday
that they cannot ride out the automobile industry crisis and should be prepared to make tradition-breaking
decisions to help rescue the industry. [Ron] Gettelfinger declined to say what specific moves he would ask
union members to make and said he believed things could improve for the union, which he argued is gaining
political and social momentum. But seasoned labor experts said the report [is] meant to prepare union members
to expect more concessions in critical contract talks that begin next year.
US labor groups urge sanctions probe on China
Source: Doug Palmer, Reuters
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: June 8, 2006
U.S. labor groups urged the Bush administration to
increase pressure on China to stop widespread labor abuses they said have cost millions of Americans their jobs
in addition to harming Chinese workers. The 9 million member AFL-CIO labor federation filed a petition, for the
second time since 2004, asking the U.S. Trade Representative's office to launch a one-year probe into whether
China's "systematic repression" of worker rights is an unfair trade practice that warrants using U.S.
sanctions to stop. The Bush administration rejected a similar petition filed by the AFL-CIO two years ago,
saying it would work with China to improve conditions in a country whose vast supply of cheap labor has made it
a manufacturing giant.
Union sues over safety of miners' air packs
Source: Emily Bazar, USA Today
Union(s): United Mine Workers of America
Date: June 8, 2006
The
United Mine Workers of America sued the government Thursday to demand immediate random inspections of the air
packs miners use in emergencies. The union requested an injunction that would require the Mine Safety and
Health Administration to start checking the devices, which provide about an hour's worth of air. The
injunction also would require the agency to develop new emergency training for miners that simulates mine
accidents. Mine-safety legislation approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday will require
additional oxygen reserves for miners, but the bill doesn't include random testing of the emergency air packs.
President Bush said Wednesday night that he would sign the measure into law.
Steelworkers and Sierra Club unite
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: June 8, 2006
The nation's
largest manufacturing union, the United Steelworkers of America, and the nation's largest environmental group,
the Sierra Club, announced the formation of an alliance that will do something that labor and environmentalists
rarely do: cooperate. After decades of fighting between blue-collar unions and green activists, the
Steelworkers and the Sierra Club say they will use the alliance to battle for energy independence and against
global warming and toxic pollutants. A central goal of the partnership, called the Blue/Green Alliance, will be
to reassure workers that measures to improve the environment need not jeopardize jobs.
Cingular bucks anti-union trend
Source: Marc Gunther, Fortune, CNNMoney.com
Union(s): Communications Workers of America
Date: June 7, 2006
By law, American workers have the right to form unions and bargain over wages and working conditions. Trying
to exercise [that] right is another matter entirely--workers are routinely fired or discriminated against for
supporting unions, most employers hire anti-union consultants to block organizing drives and some go so far as
to close down work sites when employees vote for a union. That's why the story of Cingular Wireless and its
union, the Communications Workers of America, is so unusual--and worth a closer look. The company's
cooperative approach makes more sense than the reflexive anti-union stance typically found in executive
suites.
Teamsters broke law, judge rules
Source: Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: June 6, 2006
The
Teamsters union violated federal labor law when it attempted to discipline 54 workers who refused to
participate in a "sympathy strike" during the bitter Southern and Central California supermarket labor dispute,
a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled. Administrative Law Judge William Kocol ordered International
Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 952 to notify members that they had a right to retroactively opt out of full
membership in the union, though they must still pay fees to cover the expense of collective bargaining
activities.
Canadian mining giant in a no-layoff labor pact
Source: Ian Austen, New York Times
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: May 31, 2006
Inco,
the Canadian mining company entangled in a series of conflicting takeover bids, has agreed with a labor union
to preserve all jobs at its main operations even if the company is acquired. The promise is part of a tentative
agreement the company and the United Steelworkers reached on Monday. The union revealed some terms of the
contract, which is rich by current Canadian standards, on Tuesday. If workers at Inco's operations in Sudbury
and Port Colborne, Ontario, accept the agreement, wages will rise by 2.50 Canadian dollars an hour over the
contract period, profit sharing worth about 5,000 Canadian dollars a year will continue and pensions and other
benefits will be improved.
Strike vote could test law's limits
Source: Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: May 30, 2006
Frustrated after three years without a raise, members of the largest state [California] workers union are
preparing for their first strike--a series of rolling walkouts that might be illegal. Members of Service
Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents more than 87,000 of the 173,000 rank-and-file state
workers, are voting through June 10 on whether to authorize leaders to call a strike. Union officers expect
approval. With no history of formal walkouts by state workers, a battle between the Schwarzenegger
administration and Local 1000 could produce a new precedent and perhaps give public employee unions more
leverage with the government.
Laborers union breaks free from AFL-CIO
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Laborers' International Union of North America
Date: May 22, 2006
The Laborers' Union has decided to leave the AFL-CIO. The Laborers were
already part of the Change to Win coalition, breakaway unions that have left the giant federation of more than
50 unions in an effort to forge a new direction for organized labor. But the Laborers had remained in the
federation. The breakaway unions have complained that the AFL-CIO was putting too much emphasis on electoral
politics and not enough on organizing more people to join the shrinking labor movement. The Laborers'
International Union of North America has about 700,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, mostly in the
construction industry. A large share of the unions' newer members are recent immigrants, including many
Hispanics.
Judge refuses to void Mesaba contracts
Source: Liz Fedor, Star Tribune
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: May 18, 2006
A bankruptcy judge on
Thursday denied Mesaba Airlines' motion to void its labor contracts, a decision that means the carrier and its
unions must continue to try to reach negotiated contracts. "We are very pleased. It's a hands-down victory for
the unions," said David Borer, general counsel for the Association of Flight Attendants. "It's a repudiation
of everything management has done to date to try to reject the employees' contracts," he said. "The bankruptcy
process is so tilted in favor of the company that a ruling like this will give the company's negotiators a
dose of reality," Borer added. The company released a statement with a dramatically different interpretation of
the court's decision.
UAW authorizes strike against Delphi
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: May 17, 2006
United
Auto Workers members have voted to authorize a strike against auto supplier Delphi if the company fails to
honor its labor agreements, an action that could have severe consequences for Delphi and its largest customer,
General Motors. More than 95% of UAW members who voted at 21 U.S. plants approved the strike authorization
measure. The vote doesn't mean a strike is imminent, but it does allow the union to call a strike if it feels
one is needed as the two sides bargain over wages. Delphi, which filed for bankruptcy protection in October,
has proposed cutting its U.S. hourly workers' wages from $27 an hour to $16.50 an hour, or as low as $12.50 an
hour if GM doesn't agree to supplement those wages.
City to drop lawsuit against transit strikers
Source: Thomas J. Lueck, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: May 17, 2006
[New York]
City has agreed to drop a lawsuit seeking huge financial penalties against individual members of the city's
main transit union, while the union has accepted terms for payment of $2.5 million in fines assessed against it
for its 60-hour strike in December. The deal did not appear to bring Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union
or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority any closer to the bargaining table, or to a settlement of their
stalled contract. But it tied up legal loose ends for a union that is already under financial duress, and had
been threatened with more fines.
Federal employees blast EEOC funding
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): American Federation of Government Employees
Date: May 16, 2006
Cuts in funding and staff at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission are threatening job security for millions of Americans, a federal workers' union claims in a new ad
campaign. The American Federation of Government Employees is starting a media campaign criticizing budget cuts
and reductions in staffing at the EEOC. New offices are being opened and the number of complaints are growing
at a time when the agency is trimming its budget request, the group said. That staffing shortage has resulted
in a backlog of cases that will approach 50,000 by the end of 2007. The union says the staffing reductions and
planned budget cuts of $4 million for next year will result in many legitimate discrimination complaints being
unresolved.
Day care workers flex their muscle
Source: Amy DePaul, AlterNet
Union(s): Service Employees International Union; American Federation of Teachers; United Child Care Union
Date: May 15, 2006
Around the country, unions are reaching out
to America's daycare staffs, preschool teachers and full-time babysitters, using innovative approaches to
recruit members of the poorly paid and largely female child-care work force, estimated at two million. Care of
children is among the lowest-paid professions, averaging $8.68 hourly. Meanwhile, the ranks of
union-represented child-care workers are growing. More than 350,000 child-care workers are affiliated with [the
Service Employees International Union], the American Federation of Teachers, the United Child Care Union and
its sponsor, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Union leader presides over painful changes
Source: Dale Russakoff, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: May 15, 2006
At a time of maximum uncertainty over their future, the United Auto Workers union will
gather next month to re-elect its president. An ardent, lifelong trade unionist, Ron Gettelfinger has presided
over an era of unprecedented concessions to the Detroit automakers, telling his members that the alternative is
for the companies and the union to go down together. Gettelfinger was chosen for the presidency in 2002 by the
same administrative caucus that has controlled the union since the days of its legendary president, Walter
Reuther. But if Reuther's UAW ushered blue-collar workers into the middle class by forcing Detroit to share
the wealth, the Gettelfinger UAW is fighting to keep them from being unceremoniously ushered out.
Split labor groups agree to join campaign efforts
Source: Diane E. Lewis, Boston Globe
Union(s): AFL-CIO; Change to Win Coalition
Date: May 11, 2006
Two national labor groups have agreed to set aside their differences and
work together to mobilize political activity this election year. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says his
organization will join with the Change to Win Coalition to form a national committee to coordinate election
activities. Unions from both groups will work together on get-out-the-vote campaigns, candidate endorsements,
and support for labor leaders who are seeking public office. Meanwhile, Anna Burger, chairwoman of Change to
Win, said that her organization would allow its affiliates to continue to participate in local AFL-CIO labor
councils and pay dues so they can help mobilize voters.
UAW seeks a strike vote from workers at Delphi
Source: Micheline Maynard, Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): United Automobile Workers
Date: May 4, 2006
Under normal circumstances, a request by union leaders to authorize a strike is routine. But the
situation between the United Automobile Workers and the Delphi Corporation is anything but normal. The UAW said
Wednesday that it had asked its 24,000 workers at Delphi, the auto parts supplier that is operating under
bankruptcy protection, to vote by May 14 whether to give union leaders permission to call a strike. If union
leaders were to order a walkout, not only would Delphi be severely affected, but so would General Motors, which
could itself be forced to file for bankruptcy protection as a result.
Walkout ends at University of Miami as janitors' pact is reached
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: May 2, 2006
After a sit-in, hunger strikes and a nine-week walkout, janitors at the University of Miami decided
yesterday to return to work, as the university's cleaning contractor reached a settlement with the Service
Employees International Union. Under the agreement, the contractor, Unicco Service Company, would allow workers
to sign cards indicating their desire to join the union rather than insist on the more traditional process of a
formal election. The union agreed that to gain recognition, 60% of the university's 425 janitors--rather than
a traditional simple majority--would have to sign cards saying they wanted to form a union.
Transit union leader is released
Source: John Holusha, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: April 28, 2006
Roger
Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union, walked out of jail shortly after 9 a.m. today,
after serving less than four full days of what was supposed to be a 10-day sentence for leading an illegal
strike in December. Defiant in brief remarks outside the jail complex in lower Manhattan, he said, "We will not
back down" to demands by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to limit pensions and benefits. Mr.
Toussaint was released after his sentence was trimmed because of good behavior. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice
Theodore T. Jones found Mr. Toussaint in contempt of court for taking the 33,000-member union out on strike and
sentenced him to the jail term last week.
Unions protest Wal-Mart health care in 35 cities
Source: Marcus Kabel, Associated Press, San Jose Mercury News
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: April 26, 2006
Unions representing 6 million workers rallied Wednesday in 35 cities from New
York to Los Angeles to protest what they called inadequate health-care coverage by Wal-Mart, the nation's
largest employer. The Change to Win labor federation said Wal-Mart epitomizes a business model of low pay and
benefits that harm the middle class. It is the federation's first national rally targeting Wal-Mart and part
of a broader campaign called "Make work pay" aimed at raising living standards for workers. The rallies were
organized together with WakeUpWalMart.com, a political campaign group started a year ago by the United Food and
Commercial Workers union to pressure the retailer to raise pay and benefits and improve working conditions.
M.T.A. board refuses to vote on transit contract
Source: Thomas J. Lueck, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: April 26, 2006
The
board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority [New York City] refused today to consider a ratification
vote that the city's transit workers' union took last week on a long-stalled contract. Local 100 of the
Transport Workers Union had voted in favor of the contract a week ago, three months after members narrowly
rejected the same deal in a surprising rebuke to the union's president. The chairman of the transportation
authority said the contract terms were off the table because of the union's initial rejection of the contract.
He went on to describe the strike in December as a "criminal act."
Edwards, Hoffa join Fla. University strike
Source: Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: April 25, 2006
Former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, Teamsters President James
Hoffa and civil rights leaders marched with striking service workers and about 200 supporters Tuesday at the
University of Miami. About a quarter of the 425 janitors and other contract workers employed by UNICCO Service
Co. at the university have been on strike since early March. The workers want to organize as part of the
Service Employees International Union and are demanding a pay hike. The union and students want UNICCO to agree
to a process called card check, granting union recognition if a majority of workers sign cards in favor of
joining. That process tends to be easier for workers to form unions, compared with having a secret ballot.
Organized labor fails to heal rift
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO; Change to Win Coalition
Date: April 24, 2006
Efforts to heal the sharp divisions in organized labor are faltering as
the AFL-CIO and the breakaway unions in the Change to Win coalition quarrel over the best way for the divided
unions to cooperate from afar. The AFL-CIO has been promoting solidarity charters, which allow locals of the
disaffiliated unions to join forces with AFL-CIO locals on issues of common concern. The Change to Win
federation has proposed an umbrella group, Alliance for Worker Justice, which would allow unions from both the
AFL-CIO and Change to Win to join with other unions to work on issues ranging from working conditions to health
and safety to political action. Both sides in the labor feud are now rejecting the unity plans of the other,
renewing the sense of disarray in organized labor as the midterm elections near.
The transit union chief's long march to jail
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: April 24, 2006
When
Roger Toussaint, the transit workers' union president, leads a procession of chanting union members and labor
leaders across the Brooklyn Bridge today on his way to a jail cell in Manhattan, it will be only the latest
bizarre twist in a contract fight that never seems to end. In sentencing him to 10 days in jail, Justice
Theodore T. Jones of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said Mr. Toussaint had shown contempt for the law by
heading an illegal strike. But the jail stay, some labor experts say, could end up helping Mr. Toussaint by
turning him into a martyr.
Hotel rooms get plusher, adding to maids' injuries
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: April 21, 2006
The
nation's premier hotels are trying to have their accommodations resemble royal bedrooms. Superthick
mattresses, plush duvets and decorative bed skirts have been added, and five pillows rather than the pedestrian
three now rest on a king-size bed. The beds may mean sweet dreams to hotel guests, but they mean pain to many
of the nation's 350,000 hotel housekeepers. The problem, housekeepers say, is not just a heavier mattress, but
having to rush because they are assigned the same number of rooms as before while being required to deal with
far more per room. The hotel workers' union, Unite Here, says injuries and the increased workload will be a
major issue in negotiations this spring. The union is threatening its biggest strike ever, one that might
involve hundreds of hotels in New York, Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Toronto.
Source: David Moberg, In These Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: April 19, 2006
Eduardo and Eddie are
two faces of one of the most ambitious union campaigns in recent decades to make that better world, an effort
by UNITE HERE to campaign simultaneously for hotel workers who are in the union and those who are not--or at
least not yet. The union is trying to create a "movement for equality" that will make the quality and rewards
of work in the vast, low-paid ranks of the service sector a central issue of public morality in American
politics. Despite a downturn after 9/11, which the industry used to slash its workforce, the hotel industry is
now quite profitable. But hotel workers aren't sharing the bounty. The nation's hotels represent a microcosm
of the growing inequality in the United States.
Transit union approves contract that it rejected before
Source: Thomas J. Lueck, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: April 19, 2006
[New York] City's main transit union announced yesterday that its members had
overwhelmingly approved the same contract proposal that they narrowly rejected in January, and its leadership
demanded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority now approve the deal. Like so much else in the labor
dispute, which has included a 60-hour transit strike that hobbled the city and the deal's rejection by just
seven votes, yesterday's announcement raised as many questions as it answered and did not appear to bring
matters any closer to a resolution. The authority brushed aside the union's demand yesterday, insisting that
it had taken the contract terms off the table after the workers stunned the city by voting them down in
January.
Anger rises on both sides of strike at University of Miami
Source: Abby Goodnough, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: April 18, 2006
Outside the University of Miami's main entrance, six janitors and five students continued their
hunger strike on Monday, with several asserting that the university's president, Donna Shalala, was a
union-buster. The janitors have been on a hunger strike for 13 days, the students for 6--all part of a labor
dispute that has turned unusually personal, with faculty members, students, union leaders and members of the
clergy sharply criticizing Dr. Shalala. Day after day, the janitors and their supporters heap invective on Dr.
Shalala, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary for health and human services, saying she has not done
enough to pressure the university's cleaning contractor to grant union recognition.
Transit union is fined $2.5 million over December strike
Source: Thomas J. Lueck, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: April 18, 2006
Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union was fined $2.5 million yesterday for the 60-hour strike that hobbled
the city in December. Coming nearly four months after the walkout, which brought subways and buses to a halt in
the days before Christmas, and with no discernible progress in bargaining for a new contract with the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the ruling was the second legal blow to the union in a week. On April
10, [the court] ordered Roger Toussaint, Local 100's president, to jail for 10 days for contempt of court, a
charge that stemmed from [his] failure to order his members back to work under provisions of the state's
Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public employees.
Deal may avert pilot strike at Delta
Source: Vikas Bajaj, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: April 14, 2006
Delta Air
Lines and a union representing nearly 6,000 pilots said today they had reached a tentative agreement a day
ahead of a an arbitration panel ruling that could have sent the pilots on strike. The company, which has sought
$305 million in annual pay cuts from the pilots, and the union said they would not provide details about the
agreement, which has to be approved the union's executive committee and a bankruptcy court. The pilots had
offered to take pay cuts totaling $140 million. An arbitration panel was expected to decide by tomorrow if
Delta's contract with the Air Line Pilots Association should be thrown out. Earlier this month, Delta pilots
voted overwhelmingly to strike the company if their contract was voided.
Farmworkers' union is set to announce first national contract for guest workers
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Farm Workers
Date: April 11, 2006
With Congress debating a major expansion in the program for guest workers, the nation's largest
union of farmworkers planned to announce today that it had signed the first nationwide contract covering
agricultural guest workers. The union, the United Farm Workers, and Global Horizons, a labor contractor based
in Los Angeles, have signed an agreement that provides employer-paid medical care, a seniority system and a
grievance procedure to help ensure that farms comply with state and federal laws.
Air traffic controllers' contract talks break down
Source: Stephen Barr, Washington Post
Union(s): National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Date: April 6, 2006
Contract talks between the Federal Aviation Administration and the air traffic
controllers union collapsed yesterday. The FAA declared the negotiations at an impasse, which allows the agency
to turn the dispute over to Congress. The disputed contracts cover about 25,000 FAA employees who play key
roles in the operation and safety of the nation's commercial aviation system. The FAA is one of the few places
in government where unions can bargain over salaries. The agency's pay plan would reduce starting salaries for
newly hired controllers by 30% compared with the current pay scale. By most accounts, the FAA will need to hire
and train about 12,500 new controllers through 2014 as controllers hired after the 1981 strike retire and leave
the agency.
AFL-CIO chief criticizes guest worker plans
Source: Associated Press, USA Today
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: March 28, 2006
The
nation's largest labor organization on Tuesday criticized plans to expand guest worker programs for immigrants
seeking to come to the United States, parting company with longtime Senate Democratic allies who pushed
successfully to include them in broad-based immigration legislation. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney's
criticism underscored the unusual political pressures at work as President Bush and Congress grapple with an
emotional issue in the run-up to midterm elections. The Service Employees International Union issued a
statement supporting the measure.
Delphi is said to offer unions a one-time sweetener
Source: Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: March 28, 2006
Auto parts supplier Delphi has proposed giving its factory workers $50,000 in exchange for a 40% reduction in
pay. Delphi has proposed lowering pay for factory workers initially by $5.50 an hour, to $22 an hour in early
July. The rates would later drop to $16.50 an hour in September 2007. Unless there is an agreement with its
unions by Friday, Delphi has said it plans to ask a federal bankruptcy judge for permission to cancel its labor
contracts and impose lower wages and benefits. Such a move would increase the likelihood of a strike by Delphi
workers and create more problems for General Motors, Delphi's largest customer.
Long after strike shut subways, dispute heads into arbitration
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: March 24, 2006
Three months after a strike shut down the city's buses and subways during the holiday shopping
season, the labor fight between 33,700 transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is being
placed in the hands of three arbitrators. Handing the authority an important victory yesterday, the New York
State Public Employment Relations Board ordered that binding arbitration be used to settle the contract
dispute. The board's two members called for arbitration after concluding that the two sides were deadlocked
and that the board's mediators had "explored every possible avenue through which a voluntary agreement could
be reached." The transportation authority, a state agency, had sought arbitration, in which a three-member
panel will essentially dictate the terms of a new contract.
G.M. will offer buyouts to all its union workers
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: March 23, 2006
General
Motors reached a landmark agreement Wednesday with the United Automobile Workers intended to reduce sharply the
ranks of a generation of auto workers long envied by other blue-collar workers for their wages and benefits.
G.M. said it would offer buyouts and early-retirement packages ranging from $35,000 to $140,000 to every one of
its 113,000 unionized workers in the United States who agreed to leave the company. For G.M.'s American
workers, the offer presents a host of difficult choices, forcing them to consider the risk that the company may
be even worse off in the future if the buyouts fail to spur a turnaround in business.
Uniform makers pay poorly, union says
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: March 15, 2006
U.S. military uniforms are being made by workers who are poorly paid and lack health
insurance coverage, the union that represents garment workers asserted in a report released yesterday. Many of
the workers must rely on government programs, such as Medicaid and food stamps, according to the report from
Unite Here, which said starting pay at the companies it surveyed averages $5.49 an hour. The average wage of
those who sew uniforms is $6.55 an hour. The average for U.S sewing machine operators is $9.24 an hour,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Military uniforms, by law, are made in the United States with U.S.
labor and materials. The contractors discussed in the report received $456 million for military apparel
contracts from 2003 to 2005.
N.F.L. owners accept labor deal
Source: Clifton Brown, New York Times
Union(s): NFL Players Association
Date: March 9, 2006
N.F.L.
owners voted Wednesday night to accept a players union proposal to extend the collective bargaining agreement
by six years, ensuring labor peace in the league through the 2011 season. The deal put an end to a labor
dispute that had threatened the stability of the N.F.L., which is enjoying its greatest period of prosperity
and has not had a strike since 1987. Without an agreement, the league faced playing the 2007 season without a
salary cap and the possibility of a strike in 2008. The union's proposal called for the players to receive
59.5% of total revenue over six years, which owners struggled to accept.
Automaker, union under fire: retirees blast UAW deal with GM
Source: Michael Ellis, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: March 7, 2006
Linda Jones worked 34 years for General Motors, but is so angry that her retirement
health care benefits could be cut that she is ready to turn her back on the automaker. Jones was one of 20
retired hourly workers who testified in a Detroit federal court Monday against a proposed settlement between
the automaker and the UAW that will force retirees to pay more for their health care coverage. More than 100
hourly retirees appeared in court, and dozens took seats in an adjoining courtroom or in the hallway and
watched the proceedings on television monitors. Under the proposed settlement, GM hourly retirees would pay
monthly contributions, annual deductibles and coinsurance costs for the first time.
Chicago transit workers authorize strike
Source: Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Amalgamated Transit Union
Date: March 7, 2006
Chicago Transit Authority union workers voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to authorize a strike
against the nation's second-largest transit system over work rules that affect bus drivers' routes and
salaries. No date was set for a walkout. The union has filed unfair labor grievances over a procedure called
"rostering," which determines bus drivers' routes and salaries. The local's members voted 1,029 to 11 to
authorize a strike. The union represents about 6,000 bus drivers and mechanics. The union last authorized a
strike in 2001, but a deal was reached before workers walked out. The last strike at the CTA was in March 1979,
and lasted four days.
Northwest pilots reach pay-cut deal
Source: Joshua Freed, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: March 3, 2006
Pilots reached a tentative pay-cut deal with Northwest Airlines on
Friday, a major step toward ending a showdown that put the bankrupt airline's future in doubt. The Northwest
branch of the Air Line Pilots Association announced the agreement but didn't release details. The bankruptcy
law would have allowed Northwest to impose its terms even without [a] judge's ruling, but pilots threatened to
strike if that happened. Northwest has said a strike could have killed it. Pilots had already taken a 15% pay
cut in late 2004 and another, temporary 24% pay cut in bankruptcy.
Pilots at Northwest and Delta nix deals
Source: Keith L. Alexander, Washington Post
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: March 2, 2006
Pilots at the nation's third- and fourth-largest air carriers -- Delta Air Lines Inc. and
Northwest Airlines Corp. -- moved a step closer to striking yesterday after failing to reach separate
agreements on steep pay and benefits cuts, which both airlines say they need to emerge from Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection. Delta reduced its request to $305 million in annual pay and benefit cuts, down from $325
million. Delta's 6,000 pilots are offering about $115 million in concessions. In 2004, Delta's pilots agreed
to a five-year deal that included a 32.5% pay cut and about a $1 billion reduction in benefits per year.
Northwest request[ed] $145 million in pay and benefits cuts from its pilots. Northwest's request comes after
the pilots agreed to $215 million and a 23.9% pay cut in November and $265 million in cuts in 2004.
Source: Bill Ordine, Baltimore Sun
Union(s): NFL Players Association
Date: March 2, 2006
The first dominoes in the NFL's fast-moving labor crisis began tumbling yesterday,
and those sounds being heard around the league were the careers of veteran players going thud. Without an
extension of the collective bargaining agreement between team owners and the players union, NFL clubs are
preparing to jettison an unusually large number of solid performers in order to comply by today with a
relatively restrictive salary cap of $94.5 million. Negotiators for the owners and the NFL Players Association
disagree over how much of league revenues should go to the players. Reportedly, management has offered just
over 56% and the union wants at least 60%.
Northwest makes a deal with flight attendants
Source: Reuters, New York Times
Union(s): Professional Flight Attendants Association
Date: March 1, 2006
Bankrupt Northwest Airlines on Wednesday reached a tentative labor deal with its flight attendants union but
still faces a possible strike should it fail to reach agreement with its pilots ahead of a court-imposed
deadline later in the day. The No. 2 U.S. airline said in a statement that the deal, which requires membership
ratification, would save it $195 million annually. Neither the airline nor the Professional Flight Attendants
Association disclosed additional details of the agreement. The agreement would remove a major hurdle for the
airline as it seeks to cut $1.4 billion annually in labor costs.
AFL-CIO rejects US guest worker proposals
Source: Peter Szekely, Reuters, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 28, 2006
AFL-CIO leaders on Tuesday said they would reject guest worker proposals now in
Congress, saying that all foreign workers who come to the United States to fill labor shortages should come as
permanent residents. In a comprehensive policy on an immigration issue that has divided labor as well as
Republican lawmakers, leaders of the 54-union federation ditched the idea that a temporary guest worker program
could be made acceptable. By rejecting the guest worker concept, the AFL-CIO rejected the notion of separate
but equal working conditions for workers who are not accorded permanent residency status.
Unions in push to help Democrats win Congress
Source: Peter Szekely, Reuters, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 27, 2006
AFL-CIO leaders on Monday approved an ambitious and expensive political strategy
aimed at mobilizing their members to put Democrats back in control of Congress and several state legislatures.
While a few Republicans may get labor backing, the $40 million plan--the biggest ever for the labor federation
in a non-presidential election year--would target 21 states and 40 congressional districts where union
officials believe Democratic candidates can win in the November election. The plan would fund polling, research
and get-out-the vote drives. No money would go to candidates.
Labor leaders to convene, faced with uphill battles
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 27, 2006
When the AFL-CIO's leaders gather this week, they will once again be on the defensive, a situation made worse
by the split the labor federation suffered last year. Wages for the nation's workers failed to keep up with
inflation last year, and unions in the beleaguered automobile, steel and airline industries are battling
management's efforts to cut pay and benefits. But labor leaders insist that they are moving forward. They
boast that they played an instrumental role in getting several states to raise their minimum wage and in
blocking President Bush's plans to revamp Social Security. And they say their lobbying in Maryland and other
states to force companies to pay more for health insurance has pressured Wal-Mart to improve its benefits.
AFL-CIO announces partnership with NEA
Source: Elliot Spagat, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): AFL-CIO; National Education Association
Date: February 27, 2006
The AFL-CIO and the nation's largest teachers union, the National
Education Association, announced a partnership Monday that could help the labor federation regain some of the
clout it lost when several unions defected last year. The 2.8-million-member NEA agreed to allow its local
affiliates to join the AFL-CIO. The hope is that the AFL-CIO will give teachers more muscle when they campaign
for political candidates and push legislation. Despite a decades-long decline in union membership, the AFL-CIO
played a critical role in recent elections. Union households made up a fourth of U.S. voters in the 2000 and
2004 general elections. About 6 in 10 union households voted Democratic in the last two presidential
elections.
Nurses from eight unions band together
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO; RNs Working Together
Date: February 23, 2006
Nurses from eight AFL-CIO unions are banding together in hopes of
increasing their political and organizing strength. The move foreshadows more coalitions within specific
industries as organized labor attempts to regain clout. About 200,000 nurses, describing themselves as RNs
Working Together, are bidding to become the first union members to form such a group--called an industry
coordinating committee--within the AFL-CIO. After a difficult year that saw several large unions break away
from the AFL-CIO, the labor federation is taking numerous steps to reinvigorate the labor movement.
Eye on presidency and ear on hotel workers' grievances
Source: Carolyn Marshall, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: February 16, 2006
The nation's largest hotel union opened a nationwide campaign on Wednesday to improve
workers' wages with an unusual strategy--it had John Edwards, the former Democratic candidate for vice
president, sit with hotel workers to hear their complaints. They complained of injuries from moving hotel
mattresses, of not earning enough to support their families, of rising health care costs. The workers and Mr.
Edwards have joined an effort by Unite Here, the union of hotel, restaurant and apparel workers, to pressure
hotels around the nation to improve wages for not just 90,000 unionized hotel workers, but also for more than a
million nonunion hotel workers.
Two trade unions break away from alliance
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Laborers International Union; International Union of Operating Engineers
Date: February 15, 2006
In a new
sign of dissatisfaction within organized labor, two national trade unions broke away Tuesday from an alliance
affiliated with the AFL-CIO after complaints about declining membership and misplaced priorities. The Laborers
International Union and the International Union of Operating Engineers, representing more than 1 million
members, are breaking away from the umbrella group known as the Building and Construction Trades Department of
the AFL-CIO as of March 1. The umbrella group still has 11 unions representing about 2 million workers.
Screen actors, writers protest product placement
Source: Jesse Hiestand, Reuters, Washington Post
Union(s): Screen Actors Guild; Writers Guild of America, West
Date: February 9, 2006
Unions representing Hollywood actors and screenwriters staged their first joint
protest over product placement Wednesday after being denied a chance to attend an advertising summit about
branded entertainment. About 200 actors and writers carried picket signs and chanted in front of the Beverly
Hills Hotel as agents, producers and brand directors spoke to advertisers at the daylong conference. Passing
cars honked in support. The unions launched a campaign against what they call "stealth advertising" in
November, saying that it was unfair to force writers to weave advertisements into story lines that actors are
required to read.
Striking NYU grad students face retaliation, uphill battle
Source: Bennett Baumer, The NewStandard
Union(s): Graduate Student Organizing Committee
Date: February 8, 2006
As the New York University graduate-student workers' strike enters its second semester, college
administrators are making good on their pledge to dock strikers' pay and teaching assignments. In November
2005, NYU grad students started the strike for union recognition, and to preserve the economic and workplace
gains from their first contract that covered over 1,000 student workers. The strike has national reverberations
because, in September 2001, NYU became the first private university to recognize a graduate-student labor
union, and both grad students and administrators at other private campuses are monitoring the labor battle.
Ford to extend existing buyout plans
Source: Sarah A. Webster, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: February 8, 2006
Ford is trying to extend five existing severance and early retirement programs--including one
that offers workers who volunteer to leave the company a lump sum of $100,000--to workers at plants slated to
close under the Way Forward restructuring plan. The automaker announced Jan. 23 that it would close 14 plants
and lay off 30,000 workers in the next six years as part of that massive turnaround effort. UAW locals will
have to approve the severance packages.
UAW chief calls for workers to 'dig in'
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: February 5, 2006
U.S. auto
workers, struggling with the recent announcements of massive job cuts at GM and Ford, need to take "serious
actions" to strengthen the nation's manufacturing base and help working people, the union's president said
Sunday. United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger told about 1,600 union political activists that the
union had "no choice but to dig in for the fight" for a better legislative agenda amid rising health care
costs, troubling trade policies and job cuts. His address, opening the union's four-day conference, urged a
universal health care system, measures to fight unfair trade practices, support for incentives to make ethanol
more widely available and tax credits for gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles.
In modern rarity, workers form union at small chain
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
Date: February 5, 2006
Among the thousands of stores in New York's low-income neighborhoods, labor unions have virtually no
presence, except in a few supermarkets. But in a remarkable culmination to a yearlong struggle, 95 workers at a
chain of 10 sneaker stores have formed a union. For much of last year, workers Footco protested what they said
were widespread minimum-wage violations. Last month, however, they signed a union contract that raised their
wages and gave them paid vacations and health insurance. The union that Footco's workers joined, the Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union, said its success in combining community support with boycott threats
could be copied to unionize other small apparel and shoe chains across New York.
FedEx drivers win right to hold union ballot
Source: Diane E. Lewis, Boston Globe
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: February 2, 2006
Truck drivers for a FedEx division are employees, not independent contractors,
according to a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board's regional office in Boston. The decision against
FedEx argues that although 23 drivers at the terminal signed contracts stating that they would operate as
independent contractors, they should be considered employees under labor law because they must adhere to the
company's rules and regulations and do not exercise full control over work, compensation, training, or routes.
The decision stems from allegations brought by Teamsters Local 170, which said workers were wrongly denied
access to a union because the company said they were not full employees.
Toussaint rejects the M.T.A.'s latest contract proposal
Source: Sewell Chan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: January 27, 2006
The leader of the New York City transit workers' union last night rejected the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority's latest contract proposal--one that is harsher than the settlement his members
rejected last week--but said he still hoped to arrive at a new settlement rather than submit to binding
arbitration, as the authority has urged. "We're not talking about a new strike," said Roger Toussaint,
president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union. "We're saying that we want a negotiated settlement, not
one imposed through arbitration." Mr. Toussaint acknowledged that the strike of Dec. 20-22, and the narrow
rejection last week of the settlement he reached with the authority, may have cost the union public support.
M.T.A. returns to harder line in labor talks
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: January 26, 2006
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed a contract considerably harsher
to the city's transit workers than the one they narrowly voted down last Friday. Some labor experts said the
authority's move was intended to pressure union leaders to accept binding arbitration--but was likely to
heighten labor unrest. The offer added yet another surprise chapter to a labor epic that led to failed
negotiations in December, a 60-hour strike, a hard-wrought agreement that ended the walkout, and then, finally,
the general membership's rejecting the overall contract settlement by just 7 votes.
New York transit workers reject contract by 7-vote margin
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: January 21, 2006
By a margin of only seven votes, members of the New York City transit
workers' union rejected the contract settlement that their leaders reached with the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority in the aftermath of last month's debilitating subway and bus strike. The rejection,
which seemed to catch city officials off guard, derails a painfully wrought agreement, represents a stunning
defeat for the union's president, Roger Toussaint, and opens a potential Pandora's box of complications in
any future negotiations. Those on both sides, however, were quick to say that another strike, while a
possibility, was unlikely.
Hotel workers union starts wage campaign
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: January 19, 2006
The major hotel workers union launched a campaign yesterday designed to narrow the wage gap
between workers in various states, pointing out that hospitality employees in highly unionized areas make more
than double those in less-unionized areas. Unite Here represents workers employed by the companies that own the
majority of hotels in the nation. The union engineered contracts among hotel chains in major cities to expire
at the same [time] to gain more bargaining power. The simultaneous expiration creates a threat of strikes that
could occur in many cities at once. That possibility puts greater pressure on the companies to provide higher
wages and more benefits and job protection.
Labor federation calls for universal health coverage
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: January 18, 2006
John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO's president, called on Congress to enact universal health insurance and to
bar American companies from selling goods produced overseas under sweatshop conditions. Mr. Sweeney said the
health system was badly broken because it has left 45 million Americans uninsured and undercut the
competitiveness of American corporations by saddling them with soaring health costs. Mr. Sweeney said the
nation's unions would push in 30 states for legislation like that enacted last week in Maryland requiring
large corporations to pay a specific percentage of their payroll toward health insurance.
AFL-CIO head blasts corporate policies
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: January 18, 2006
Corporate policies are driving millions of workers out of good-paying
jobs, stripping them of health care and killing pension plans in a strategy that is "just suicidal" for the
economy, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. Sweeney outlined a state-by-state effort that was aimed at
allowing organized labor "to break free from the gridlock of Washington" and fight for worker benefits such as
stronger health care plans and a higher minimum wage. Sweeney, in a speech to the National Press Club on the
state of labor in America, pointed to numerous economic developments that suggest the middle class is getting
into increasing trouble--an increasing poverty rate, health care costs being shifted to workers and jobs moving
overseas.
Source: Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: January 18, 2006
The battle for a life of middle-class dreams and security is fought region by region, even
town by town. Time was when it was fought contract by contract, but that was in an America where unions
represented one-third of the private-sector workforce rather than today's anemic 8%. In a global economy, the
conventional wisdom would have it, the bargaining power of unions is the ultimate spent force. But not all of
our economy is global, nor all our labor exportable. Least of all is it exportable in the hotel industry, a
sector that employs 1.3 million workers in this country, most at poverty wages. So it will remain, unless the
hotel union--UNITE HERE--can find a way to do something that hardly any American union has done in recent
decades: organize an industry.
Farmworkers' union leaves the AFL-CIO
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): United Farm Workers
Date: January 13, 2006
The United Farm Workers union has left the AFL-CIO and will join a group of breakaway unions known as the
Change to Win Coalition, in a move the UFW hopes will boost recruiting efforts, officials said Thursday. The
UFW, with about 27,000 members, joins the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the United Food
and Commercial Workers, Unite Here and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in forming the
dissident coalition. When the AFL-CIO formed 50 years ago, union membership was at its zenith, with one of
every three private sector workers belonging to a labor group. Now, fewer than 8% of private sector workers are
unionized.
Pension demand was an error, chairman of MTA concedes
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: January 5, 2006
The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday that he had erred
in making pension changes a central demand in contract negotiations with the city's transit workers, a
miscalculation that helped lead to a 60-hour subway and bus strike the week before Christmas. The chairman,
Peter S. Kalikow, did not take responsibility for provoking the strike, the city's first since 1980, but he
acknowledged misjudging the union's hostility to his demands that future workers accept a higher retirement
age or contribute more to their pensions than current workers do.
Source: Lynne Duke, Washington Post
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: January 3, 2006
A daughter's death left an unexpected gift. After the sorrow ripped his heart and the
confusion left him dazed, Andrew Stern began to discover it--began to see what Cassie had passed on to him. She
had been so fragile, yet so very much alive. Frail but fearless--that was Cassie. And that was her gift to her
father. It is but one facet of a man's life--certainly not his sum total. Stern, 55, president of the powerful
Service Employees International Union, has been a labor activist and innovator for more than 30 years. His
supporters say Stern will go down in history as the courageous, visionary leader who charted a bold new course
for American unionism just in time and helped spark a labor movement to fight for workers in the world
economy.
New York transit deal shows union's success on many fronts
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 29, 2005
He was excoriated on tabloid front pages and by the mayor and governor. But after details of an
agreement between the transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were spelled out, Roger
Toussaint, the union's president, seems to have emerged in a far better position than seemed likely just a few
days ago. Mr. Toussaint, whose back appeared to be against the wall last week, can boast of a tentative
37-month contract that meets most of his goals, including raises above the inflation rate and no concessions on
pensions. Indeed, several fiscal and labor experts said that Mr. Toussaint and his union appeared to have
bested the transit authority in their contract dispute.
At the table, public unions do better
Source: Alexandra Marks, Christian Science Monitor
Union(s): Transport Workers Union; Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: December 29, 2005
New
York transit workers went on strike for three days and managed to save the right to retire at 55 with half pay,
plus they got wage increases totaling almost 12% over three years. Northwest Airlines's mechanics have been on
strike since this past August. If they approve the current settlement, the best they can hope for is four weeks
of layoff pay and a pink slip. This tale of two unions shows the change in the relative power of private versus
public sector unions in the past 40 years. The once seemingly inconsequential municipal unions have
successfully protected their wages and benefits. At the same time, the once powerful private sector unions have
become increasingly accustomed to making concessions to hold onto their jobs in the global economy.
Source: George F. Will, Washington Post
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: December 29, 2005
In one of the biggest successes in the history of organized labor in the South, the 4,700
janitors working for Houston's four largest cleaning companies recently joined the Service Employees
International Union. The janitors, most of them immigrants, earn an average of $5.30 an hour--15 cents more
than the minimum wage--without health care benefits. The mobilization of the janitors is one sign of why Andy
Stern, head of the SEIU, is today's most important--perhaps the only really important--labor leader. He aims
to convince nonunion workers "that Ronald Reagan was wrong--that wealth does not trickle down." And that "Bill
Clinton also was wrong" in saying high-tech employment is the wave of the future.
In novel tactic, Cintas workers sue unions
Source: Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Union(s): Unite Here; International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: December 27, 2005
When a union organizer showed up unexpectedly at Elizabeth Pichler's Bethlehem, Pa., home on a
cold Saturday afternoon in February 2004, she shut the front door on him. A handful of [her Cintas Corp.]
co-workers were also annoyed about visits to their homes and complained to their managers. They eventually
learned that the union had traced their home addresses from license plates in the company parking lot. That
made them angry enough to meet with lawyers provided by the company and then file a suit alleging their privacy
rights had been violated. It's highly unusual for workers to bring a lawsuit against a union trying to
organize, and the case is threatening to send ripples through the labor movement.
Ford workers approve health deal
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: December 23, 2005
Hourly workers
at Ford narrowly approved an agreement that would require hourly workers and retirees to pay more for their
health care, the United Auto Workers union said. The deal is expected to save Ford $850 million a year in
health care costs. Workers approved the deal by a 51% majority. Last month, hourly workers at General Motors
approved a similar agreement by a 61% majority. The U.A.W. has also begun negotiating a similar agreement with
DaimlerChrysler. The three automakers expect to spend about $11 billion on health care this year.
New York's subways and buses operating on normal schedules
Source: Steven Greenhouse, Sewell Chan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 23, 2005
The abrupt return of workers Thursday--many strikers simply laid
down their placards and walked into the buildings they had been picketing--capped a day of fast-moving
developments in a labor showdown that just a day before seemed headed for an intractable and ugly stalemate.
Despite the end of the strike, a final settlement of the dispute remains to be reached. Officials hinted that
in exchange for the union's ending the strike, the [MTA] would significantly scale back or even abandon its
insistence on less-generous pensions for future workers. In return, the union would consider having its members
pay more for health insurance. The negotiations will now resume under an agreement among all parties not to
speak with reporters.
Source: Joshua B. Freeman, The Nation
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 22, 2005
Driven at first by
economics, but increasingly by ideology, the crusade to dissolve all employer and state responsibility for
individual welfare has swept like a grim reaper through pension plans, health insurance, labor rights and
minimum wages. New York transit workers are fighting to stop that trend in their particular domain, not for
themselves but for the next generation of workers. They are fighting against the lie that abstract, neutral
economic necessity, not the ideas and interests of the rich and powerful, are driving the demolition of what
remains of social solidarity. Their fight is a fight for all of us, part of the long overdue need to stand up
and say, No more.
State mediators set up plan that leads to end of 60-hour ordeal
Source: Steve Greenhouse, Sewell Chan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 22, 2005
New York City transit employees will return to work today and limited subway and bus service
could resume within hours, officials from Transit Workers Union, Local 100, said at midafternoon. The order to
return to work came after the union's executive board voted 38 to 5 to accept a preliminary framework of a
settlement plan as a basis to end the walkout. The framework had already been agreed to by the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority. State mediators devised the framework for a settlement after all-night negotiations
with the union and the M.T.A. The agreement, said several people close to the negotiations who insisted on
anonymity because of the sensitive stage of the talks, would give every side some of what it asked for.
NY transit union votes to end strike
Source: Chris Reese, Reuters
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 22, 2005
New York's striking subway and bus workers will be
returning to work as soon as possible after the executive board of the striking union voted on Thursday to end
the strike. The leaders of striking bus and subway workers agreed to return to work after talks at which the
union and transit authorities undertook to go back to the bargaining table, mediators said. Some 34,000 workers
in the Transport Workers Union Local 100 walked off the job on Tuesday after contract talks broke down over
pay, health care and pensions, stranding some 7 million passengers who use subways and buses each day.
Tough stance, tougher fines: union leader is in a corner
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 22, 2005
When Roger Toussaint, the president of the [New York City] transit workers' local,
defiantly announced a strike, he proclaimed that his union was taking a proud stand against the concessions
that employers had demanded nationwide. But Mr. Toussaint has quickly discovered that engaging in an illegal
walkout can leave a union with a weak hand. His union faces a $1 million fine for each day on strike, a state
judge is threatening to throw him in jail and thousands of individual strikers stand to lose two days' pay for
each day out. Not only that, but the mayor, the governor and editorial writers are denouncing the union as
greedy and showing contempt for the law.
Judge puts off strike rulings as union leader meets mediator
Source: Sewell Chan, Colin Moynihan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 21, 2005
Roger Toussaint, the leader of the transit workers union, was meeting with
a mediator this afternoon as the transit strike stretched into its second day. As the meeting was going on, a
judge suggested that union officials could face jail sentences over the strike. The judge's remarks, which
appeared to surprise attorneys on both sides of the case, came as the lead attorney for the state argued for a
contempt order against union officials. It [is] unclear whether Mr. Toussaint would agree--if mediation fails,
as is likely--to submit his contract dispute to a three-member panel of arbitrators whose decisions would be
binding.
In final hours, M.T.A. took big pension risk
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 21, 2005
On the final day of intense negotiations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, it turns out,
greatly altered what it had called its final offer. But then, just hours before the strike deadline, the
authority put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in soaring pension costs,
[they] asked that all new transit workers contribute 6% of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2%
that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the
first time in a quarter-century.
Delphi rescinds plan to slash union pay
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: December 20, 2005
Delphi, the troubled auto parts giant, has pulled a controversial proposal to slash
union workers' pay after steadfast opposition from the United Auto Workers and other labor unions. As part of
its bankruptcy reorganization, Delphi was proposing salary scales that would have paid some workers as little
as $9.50 per hour, down from about $27 per hour that workers earn now. Delphi said it was formally withdrawing
the proposal because General Motors, Delphi's former parent company and largest customer, has entered the
negotiations. Labor costs were listed as the key reason for the auto parts maker's Chapter 11 bankruptcy
filing in October.
Strike shuts down N.Y. City transit system
Source: Michelle Garcia, Michael Powell, Fred Barbash, Washington Post
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 20, 2005
A Transport Workers Union strike shut down the New York City
transportation system Tuesday, leaving 7 million daily bus and subway travelers to fend for themselves on foot,
by bike, on in-line skates, by skateboards and in shared vans and taxis. Late in the afternoon, a judge ruled
that the strike was illegal and fined the union $1 million for each day that the workers stay out. The strike,
after weeks of often bitter negotiations, was the first in a quarter century in New York. Its timing just
before Christmas and in the cold was expected to compound the dislocation from the strike. For all the
potential dislocation, the mood was in some ways strikingly normal for New Yorkers, at least, who have seen it
all.
M.T.A. and union remain locked in acrimonious standoff
Source: Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 20, 2005
Shivering, intrepid and occasionally befuddled this morning, New Yorkers faced
down the first citywide transit strike in a quarter-century by walking, biking and carpooling through their
frigid city as the transit workers and the state agency that employs them remained deadlocked over a new
contract. Early this morning, the city's transit union, which represents 33,700 subway and bus workers, and
the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees the city's transportation system, were at loggerheads,
primarily over future workers' pension benefits, and the union voted to strike.
Uniquely aggrieved, and empowered, union digs in again
Source: Sewell Chan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 20, 2005
In its standoff with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Transport Workers Union has
highlighted once again its ability to upset millions of the city's subway and bus riders. It is an enduring
tradition of militancy that dates to the union's creation during the Great Depression. Indeed, in New York, a
city that has weathered major strikes by sanitation workers, drawbridge operators, teachers and social workers,
no union seems able to unsettle residents quite like the one that moves the subways and buses. The transit
union is something of a throwback to the era of industrial unions.
At center of city's transit talks, a trend that tests union loyalty to future hires
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 19, 2005
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sought to give [New York] City's 33,700 subway and bus
workers a stark choice: protect your own wallets or protect the wallets of future transit workers. The
authority has essentially pitted today's transit workers against those of tomorrow, explicitly warning current
workers that they face sizable fines if they go on strike in a dispute over the authority's demands to reduce
pension and health benefits for future workers. The authority has joined a trend in which many corporations and
government bodies across the nation have demanded reduced wages and benefits for future employees in what is
often called a two-tier contract.
Little dignity on the job, workers say
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 19, 2005
Regardless of whether a strike is called or a settlement is reached, the protracted labor
negotiations over a contract for 33,700 [New York City] subway and bus workers have highlighted one fact: many
workers feel they lack dignity and respect on the job. Bread-and-butter issues--wages and pensions--have been
the dominant concerns at the bargaining table, but leaders of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union have
repeatedly said that their members were equally animated by workplace conditions including on-the-job hazards
and abuse from riders. In a survey, Cornell University provided considerable evidence that many workers feel
mistreated and undervalued--which could push them toward greater militancy.
All toes point to the picket line
Source: Sarah Kaufman, Darragh Johnson, Washington Post
Union(s): American Guild of Musical Artists
Date: December 16, 2005
For the second night in a row, the Washington Ballet has canceled its
"Nutcracker" performance because of labor strife. Dancers, dressed in coats and boots instead of costumes, were
throwing up a picket line on the slick sidewalk outside the show's venue. The union has characterized the
situation as a lockout by management. But the Washington Ballet calls it a strike. The issues are not primarily
about money, but about how much control [the] director should have over matters ranging from hiring and firing
to how rehearsals are conducted to the size of the company and how students from the Washington School of
Ballet can be used in productions.
N.Y. transit union rejects offer and will begin limited strike
Source: Sewell Chan, Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 16, 2005
After five hours of intense negotiations with the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, the transit workers' union decided this morning to delay for four days a decision on
whether to strike the New York City subway and bus system. At 6:30 a.m. today, the union's executive board
agreed to set a new strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. For millions of riders, the decision prolonged
uncertainty about whether the nation's largest transit system will be shut down by a labor strike for the
first time since 1980. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program today that a strike next
week "would be a lot worse" than if a strike had taken place today.
NYC could face transit strike Friday
Source: Sara Kugler, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 14, 2005
Here's what it could look like: bicyclists darting through never-ending
traffic jams. Swarms of commuters trudging over the Brooklyn Bridge in their sneakers in the freezing cold.
Tourists stranded during the height of the Christmas season. Broadway shows with half-empty theaters. New York
could be hit on Friday with its first subway and bus strike in more than 25 years, a walkout that could shut
down a system used by an estimated 7 million riders a day. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is locked
in round-the-clock negotiations with the Transport Workers Union on a new contract for more than 33,000
members. The old contract expires Friday at 12:01 a.m.
Janitors win jobs back in NLRB ruling
Source: Jaci Smith, NorthJersey.com
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: December 14, 2005
Ten janitors who lost their jobs in a labor dispute with
a cleaning company won them back in a ruling issued Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board. The ruling
found that Janitorial Environmental Services fired the janitors because they were unionized. The ruling
requires that the company immediately rehire the workers at their contract pay of $7.75 an hour, pay them for
their time off work and renegotiate a new contract. The members of the Service Employees International Union
Local 32BJ were fired in December 2004.
City seeks stiff fines for workers and transit union if they strike
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 14, 2005
With three days to go before a threatened transit shutdown, the Bloomberg
administration stepped into the middle of the fray yesterday, asking a judge to fine the transit workers'
union $1 million and each striker $25,000 on the first day of a strike and to double the fines successively
each day after that. The union has been negotiating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state
agency, whose initial wage offers have been forcefully rejected. The contract is set to expire at 12:01 a.m.
Friday. By filing the suit, the city put itself squarely in the fight.
New York City sets plan in case of transit strike on Friday
Source: Steven Greenhouse, Thomas J. Lueck, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union
Date: December 13, 2005
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he hoped that a walkout would be averted and urged transit
workers to follow the example of many municipal unions by exchanging productivity increases for bigger raises.
The Bloomberg administration estimated that the city's businesses would lose $440 million to $660 million per
day in business activity. [The] president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, representing 33,700
subway and bus workers, said the mayor should not interfere in his union's talks with the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, a state-controlled agency. Local 100 has threatened to shut down the transit system
if the two sides fail to reach a settlement by 12:01 a.m. Friday.
House GOP reaches deal with UAW on pension reform
Source: Associated Press, USA Today
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: December 13, 2005
Two House Republican leaders said Tuesday they had reached an agreement with the United Auto Workers on major
pension reform legislation, clearing the way for the House to vote on the bill before it adjourns for the year.
The Senate last month passed its version of the legislation that attempts to tighten rules for companies that
underfund their pension funds while protecting the promised benefits of workers and retirees and shoring up the
financial status of the federal agency that insures defined-benefit plans.
Union ads aim to pressure House members
Source: Will Lester, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employess; Service Employees International Union; AFL-CIO
Date: December 12, 2005
One of the nation's largest unions is [running television ads] critical
of proposed federal budget cuts in social programs for the middle-class and poor--aiming the ads at seven GOP
House members. The AFSCME ad shows images of families in the background as a voice criticiz[es] Republicans'
stance on the budget. Meanwhile, the SEIU is [running] newspaper ads targeting a number of Republican
lawmakers. In a separate effort, the AFL-CIO is organizing campaigns in 10 states to pressure members of
Congress to take positions "favoring working families" on key issues.
Ford, UAW sign tentative health care pact that trims benefits
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: December 11, 2005
Ford and the United Auto Workers have reached a tentative agreement to reduce
health care benefits after a similar deal made with General Motors in October. The Ford deal follows the basic
framework of the GM agreement, which requires workers and retirees to pay more for their health care.
Autoworkers represented by the UAW pay little in out-of-pocket costs for health care benefits. Health care and
other benefits were won over decades of collective bargaining agreements between the union and Detroit
automakers. UAW's deal with GM was regarded by labor scholars as a major setback for the UAW, which has been
called one of the last unions in the country with significant clout.
Labor to press for workers' right to join unions
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: December 9, 2005
The AFL-CIO
has organized 100 demonstrations nationwide this week to assert that the right of American workers to form
unions is being systematically violated. Eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama, are
backing the protest against violations of the right to unionize in the United States and other nations. Union
membership [is] slipping even though surveys show that more than half of American workers would join a union if
they could. Labor leaders say that companies often violate workers' rights in an effort to cripple organizing
drives, pointing to a new study showing that nearly one-third of companies facing unionization campaigns fire
union supporters and that one-half threaten to close work sites.
Union supporters picket White House
Source: Juan-Carlos Rodriguez, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: December 8, 2005
Hundreds of union members picketed the White House Thursday but did not
succeed in delivering a petition addressed to President Bush urging him to protect workers' rights and pass
labor-friendly legislation. The demonstration was the latest in a series of events around the country designed
to coincide with International Human Rights Week and bring attention to the labor movement. Demonstrators
gathered at a boisterous rally at the AFL-CIO national headquarters and marched to the White House, where they
formed the large picket line and shouted anti-Bush slogans. Speakers encouraged Congress to pass the Employee
Free Choice Act to secure workers' rights.
AFL-CIO plans worldwide labor rallies
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: December 6, 2005
[35%] of
American workers were union members in the mid-1950s, and that number is now 13%. Only 8% of those in private
industry now are union members. The AFL-CIO and dozens of allied organizations are putting together a
mobilizing campaign with more than 100 rallies around this country and a dozen overseas. Veterans of the labor
movement say it has been under siege for almost a quarter-century, since President Reagan fired federal air
traffic controllers in 1981 during a prolonged strike. The steady loss of manufacturing jobs overseas,
corporate hostility to unions and government policies that make organizing new unions a slow and difficult
process have all contributed to labor's problems.
Boeing engineers ratify 3-year labor agreement boosting wages
Source: James Gunsalus, Bloomberg
Union(s): Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace
Date: December 2, 2005
Boeing's engineers' union voted to accept a new labor agreement that boosts pay and preserves
health-care benefits, helping the company avoid a strike and keep its aircraft program on schedule. Members of
the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace voted 89.5% in favor of the contract. Wages
increase 17% for engineers and 15% for technical workers. Salaries will be reviewed in 2007 and 2008 to make
sure they are competitive with the industry. In 2000, Boeing engineers staged one of the largest white-collar
walkouts in U.S. history. The 40-day strike led to a drop of as much as 32% in Boeing's stock.
Union's latest idea: organize a contest
Source: Molly Selvin, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: December 2, 2005
More than 15,000 [people] around the country have entered an unusual contest launched by a labor union to find
"common sense" solutions to the nation's most pressing problems. Along the way, the Service Employees
International Union has found a clever way to promote itself. A bipartisan panel of judges will award prizes of
as much as $100,000 for the best ideas. The union also has pledged to back the winning idea with a campaign
that could include supporting legislative change. Some suggestions are--to put it charitably--wacky. But the
deluge of entries suggests that Americans are especially worried about taxes, jobs and affordable healthcare.
FAA calls for mediation in talks with controllers
Source: Matthew L. Wald, New York Times
Union(s): National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Date: November 29, 2005
Seeking
concessions like those that airlines got from pilots, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration called
for mediation in talks with unionized air traffic controllers, saying contract discussions were near an
impasse. The controllers' union responded by saying good progress was being made, and charged that the agency
was trying to throw the task of resolving the differences to a Republican-controlled Congress unfriendly to
organized labor. The union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, is the successor to the
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, whose strike in 1981 brought mass firing of controllers by
President Ronald Reagan.
Delphi extends unions' deadline for talks on cuts
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: November 29, 2005
Delphi, the nation's largest auto parts maker, postponed a showdown with labor yesterday
by saying it would give the unions another month to negotiate wage and benefit cuts before asking a judge to
impose them. Delphi, which is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, said it will not consider
asking the bankruptcy court judge to throw out the labor contracts until Jan. 20, giving the company and unions
time to hammer out a deal and avoid a strike. Delphi has proposed cutting wages to as little as $9.50 per hour
from $28 per hour. Reductions also could include cutbacks to vacation days and benefits, as well as to the
company's payments in pensions and health care for retirees. Delphi is also seeking to slash its workforce as
part of the reorganization.
Janitors' drive in Texas gives hope to unions
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: November 28, 2005
Union
organizers have obtained majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades,
collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors. In an era when unions typically face frustration
and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing
in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death
unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to
the Houston campaign as a model. The service employees' success comes as the percentage of private-sector
workers in unions has dropped to 7.9%, the lowest rate in more than a century.
Union steps up drive to organize Starbucks
Source: Anthony Ramirez, New York Times
Union(s): Industrial Workers of the World
Date: November 26, 2005
The
conflict between the Starbucks coffee chain and workers wanting to form a citywide union played out on two
fronts yesterday: organizers formed a picket line in front of a local Starbucks, and a hearing was announced
for next year before the National Labor Relations Board. So far, the union, the Industrial Workers of the
World, has organized three Starbucks coffee shops in New York City. Starbucks has more than 200 outlets within
10 miles of downtown Manhattan, and nearly 6,900 in the United States. The starting wage for Starbucks in New
York City is $8.50 an hour.
Delta pilots' union wants judge removed
Source: Michael J. Martinez, Madlen Read; Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: November 16, 2005
A lawyer for Delta's pilots' union on Wednesday asked the
judge presiding over the company's bankruptcy case to remove herself from consideration of Delta's request to
impose deep wage cuts on the pilots, saying her comments in court showed her to biased. [The] attorney for the
Air Line Pilots Association said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Prudence Carter Beatty had made a number of comments in
open court that cast doubt on her ability to be impartial. [He] quoted Beatty as saying in a Sept. 15 hearing
that pilots' wages were "hideously high," and [said] that a transcript of a hearing showed Beatty said: "Oh,
you know that's really weird is why anybody agreed to pay them as much money to begin with. They get paid a
lot of money."
Rally seeks to unionize guards and push for raises
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: November 15, 2005
It was
billed as a rally to unionize tens of thousands of security guards, but it had more of the air of a civil
rights gathering. Hazel Dukes, the president of the New York State NAACP, was there, and so was David N.
Dinkins, the former mayor. Joined by other black leaders and members of the clergy, they threw their weight
behind a campaign to unionize New York City's security guards. Noting that many guards are black and earn less
than $18,000 a year, these leaders said unionization would further the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. to lift
blacks out of poverty. The union behind the organizing drive, the Service Employees International Union, sought
to show the real estate industry that there was strong community support for improving the guards' wages and
benefits.
Hollywood unions object to product placement on TV
Source: Sharon Waxman, New York Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West; Writers Guild of America, East; Screen Actors Guild
Date: November 14, 2005
A group of show
business unions are denouncing the creeping practice of "stealth advertising," the integration of commercial
products into the story lines of television shows, which they say deceives audiences and forces writers and
actors to do jobs they were not hired for. The Writers Guild of America, West, and the Writers Guild of
America, East, with the support of the Screen Actors Guild, will hold a news conference Monday calling for a
code of conduct to govern this latest twist in the world of advertising, in which product placement has become
increasingly central to plotlines.
Guilds' actions foster strike plans at studios
Source: Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Screen Actors Guild; Writers Guild of America, West
Date: November 12, 2005
Unnerved by mounting anger within the unions representing actors and writers, Hollywood
studios are already girding for potential strikes two years before the first contract even expires. Relations
have become so frayed in the last two months with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America,
West, that studios recently began drafting strike contingency plans that could be finalized by early next year.
Both guilds elected slates that vowed to take a more confrontational stance with studios in trying to get them
to budge on long-festering issues. Both unions then jarred Hollywood by abruptly firing their top negotiators,
both of whom were criticized for being too accommodating.
NYU graduate assistants strike
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Graduate Student Organizing Committee
Date: November 9, 2005
About 1,000 graduate assistants started striking against New York University on Wednesday over its refusal to
bargain with or recognize their union. The Graduate Students Organizing Committee said its members would stay
on strike until the university decides to bargain with them "in good faith." The assistants will not teach,
grade, advise students or do research while on strike. The graduate assistants had been represented by the
United Automobile Workers from 2000 until August of this year. NYU said then it would no longer recognize the
union based on a policy reversal by the National Labor Relations Board on private universities allowing
graduate student workers to unionize.
Source: Jane M. Von Bergen, Philadelphia Inquirer
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: November 7, 2005
60 union
members [are] running for office this year in New Jersey in a program that is among the biggest and most
comprehensive in the nation. "We apprentice our rank-and-file members in the field of politics," said Charles
Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey state AFL-CIO. This emphasis on politics comes at a crucial time for the
AFL-CIO. This summer, on its 50th anniversary, the AFL-CIO split into two camps, partly over the issue of
politics. The dissident group, which includes such political heavy hitters as the SEIU and the Teamsters, said
the AFL-CIO was spending too much time and energy on politics and not enough on traditional union-building.
Wowkanech couldn't agree less. He's unapologetic about his organization's focus on politics.
Court nixes appeal from United attendants
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: November 2, 2005
A
federal court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from United Airlines' flight attendants challenging a ruling that
allowed the company to terminate its pension plan. A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
said it found "no reason" to reverse a bankruptcy judge's approval for United to transfer its plans to the
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. The Association of Flight Attendants argued the termination violated its labor
contract. United's five other unions also saw their plans turned over to the PBGC as of result of that May
ruling in bankruptcy court. Transferring pension obligations to the government is estimated to save the airline
about $645 million annually.
NLRB hits firings at Blue Diamond
Source: Rachel Osterman, Sacramento Bee
Union(s): International Longshore & Warehouse Union
Date: November 1, 2005
Blue Diamond Growers has illegally threatened, interrogated and fired workers seeking to organize a union at
the cooperative's almond processing plant, according to a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board. The
complaint, which follows a nearly four-month investigation, comes after pro-union packers, mechanics and other
workers filed charges contending that their efforts to bring in Local 17 of the International Longshore &
Warehouse Union were met with company intimidation. Blue Diamond, which produces roughly a third of
California's billion-dollar almond crop, has remained union-free for 94 years.
N.Y.U. graduate students say they'll strike to unionize
Source: Karen W. Arenson, New York Times
Union(s): United Automobile Workers
Date: November 1, 2005
New York University is facing a strike next week by its graduate student teaching assistants, who lost their
union representation in August and are trying to win it back. The students said yesterday that they would begin
a strike on Nov. 9. In 2000, as other universities and union organizers watched closely, the national labor
board--controlled at the time by Clinton appointees--directed N.Y.U. to allow graduate student workers to
unionize, making it the first private university to recognize a graduate student employees union. The
Bush-controlled board took the opposite stand last year, giving N.Y.U. the right to pull back.
Philly commuters find own way to work
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
Date: October 31, 2005
Commuters who rely on the city's buses, subways and trolleys were forced to walk, hitch rides and take taxis
to work Monday after thousands of city transit workers went on strike. In a city where one in three households
lacks a car, about 920,000 trips are taken on a typical weekday along the Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority lines shut down by the strike. Members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 have not
had a raise since December 2003. SEPTA is the fifth-largest transit agency in the country but workers' wages
rank 20th. Negotiations broke off around midnight Sunday. The two sides couldn't reach agreement on health
care, pension issues and disciplinary rules.
Source: David Moberg, In These Times
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: October 26, 2005
After a year of
turbulent debate and division at the top, America's unions are adjusting to a new organizational landscape
while still grappling with the same old challenge: how to grow and gain power. With the founding of the Change
to Win [Coalition] in late September, the summer split of the AFL-CIO took firmer shape, but its ultimate
impact is still up in the air. Despite the schism, there is pressure on leaders from both sides to cooperate.
CTW is a new, not a rival, federation, insists Laborers' union president Terry O'Sullivan. But there is also
a new edge to the competition to organize between the non-rivals.
General Motors and union reach agreement on health care costs
Source: Danny Hakim, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: October 17, 2005
General Motors said today that it had reached a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers union
to cut $1 billion worth of annual health care benefits for hundreds of thousands of American retirees. The deal
marks the biggest strategy shift by the union since the early 1980's, when it made a wave of concessions to
stave off a bankruptcy filing by Chrysler. This time, with the future of the entire domestic auto industry at
risk, union leaders agreed to a deal broad enough to require the vote of GM workers for approval. It shows how
labor leaders in a range of industries, from airlines to steelmakers, have become increasingly hard-pressed to
hold on to previously won benefits in the face of global competition and the threat of bankruptcy.
GM, union move toward agreement
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: October 17, 2005
General Motors moved closer this weekend to winning an agreement with the United
Auto Workers to cut health care costs. GM pays the health care costs for 1.1 million workers, retirees and
family members, making it the nation's largest single provider of health care. Hourly workers at GM pay about
7% of their health care costs; the national average is about 34%. GM has complained that rising health care and
pension costs weigh on the company's bottom line. In European countries and in Japan, workers are covered by
publicly funded health care programs. The UAW has failed to organize those workers. The UAW has repeatedly
called for national health care.
NLRB investigates claim of illegal boycott of Anheuser-Busch
Source: Christopher Leonard, Associated Press, Belleville News-Democrat
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: October 13, 2005
The National Labor Relations Board is expected to rule by next
week on claims that the Teamsters union is illegally boycotting Anheuser-Busch products over the union's
dispute with a local [St. Louis] beer distributor. Unionized truckers working for Lohr Distributing have been
on strike since May. Union members are asking bars and other businesses to boycott all Anheuser-Busch products
within city limits because Lohr exclusively distributes the brewer's drinks. Anheuser-Busch filed five charges
with the NLRB Tuesday alleging the boycott is illegal because the company is not directly involved with the
labor dispute.
Labor gears up for pivotal battle
Source: Sholnn Freeman, Ben White, Washington Post
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: October 12, 2005
Auto-parts giant Delphi said in the first day of its bankruptcy hearings that it
wanted to renegotiate agreements with its unions to "fundamentally transform the company." The company's
ambition for a fundamental transformation could mark a turning point in the relationship between the auto
industry and organized labor, union officials and labor experts say. Companies in the steel industry and in
airlines have already gone before bankruptcy court judges to wrest concessions in pay, benefits and job
protections from unions. Auto giants have historically negotiated with the unions for cuts during difficult
periods in the industry.
For chairwoman of breakaway labor coalition, deep roots in the movement
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: October 10, 2005
Anna Burger has come a long way since [a] rollicking 1995 victory party in which John J. Sweeney,
just elected president of the AFL-CIO, presented her with a leather whip. Mr. Sweeney was thanking her for
being his efficient campaign manager and whip, but now she has become his chief rival, having recently been
elected chairwoman of a breakaway labor alliance, the Change to Win [Coalition]. That has made Ms. Burger the
highest-ranking woman in the history of the American labor movement. Ms. Burger said the four dissident unions
needed to leave the AFL-CIO because the federation had done far too little to stop labor from sinking into
oblivion.
Delphi demands 63% pay cut from UAW
Source: Michael Ellis, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: October 7, 2005
Delphi has
demanded such drastic cuts in wages and benefits for workers that, according to one UAW local , its members
would no longer be able to afford the cars they help build. The company is asking for wage cuts of as much as
63%, to $10 an hour, and for workers to pay 27% of their health care costs versus 7% currently. Union members
say they are not going to agree to such a severe change in their livelihood, even if it means that the company
will end up declaring bankruptcy. But if Delphi goes bankrupt, plants could be closed, thousands of workers
could lose their jobs and companies that depend on Delphi, including General Motors, could face costly
disruptions.
Breakaway unions start new federation
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: September 28, 2005
Seven unions
founded a new labor federation Tuesday, creating a rival to the AFL-CIO that promised to unionize hundreds of
thousands of workers and to pressure the Democratic Party to pay far more heed to workers' concerns. Most
unions in the new group, the Change to Win [Coalition], have left the federation, saying American workers need
a new grouping that will be far more aggressive about unionizing workers to help improve living standards. If
the convention had one theme, it was that unions, for all their problems, are the best tool to improve wages
and benefits, not just for low-wage workers, but for all workers.
Breakaway unions meet to form federation
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: September 27, 2005
Leaders from unions that broke away from the AFL-CIO pledged Tuesday to organize Wal-Mart workers and
reach out to those who lost their jobs due to Hurricane Katrina. The Change to Win Coalition met for its
founding convention in St. Louis, where the atmosphere was like a rally. Organizers hope the new coalition will
revitalize the nation's labor movement. The Change to Win Coalition planned to establish procedures--such as
adopting a constitution and formally recognizing its leadership--while raising a rallying cry that more can be
done to organize workers.
Anna Burger to head breakaway labor group
Source: Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: September 27, 2005
In 1972, the year Anna Burger started a wildcat strike of Philadelphia social workers,
organized labor did not look like a promising career for a liberal, antiwar feminist. Today, Burger will be
formally chosen to run the newly created Change to Win Coalition--a milestone that shows how far the labor
movement has come. A tough-minded organizer and political strategist, Burger was handpicked by the leaders of
insurgent unions who earlier this year took flight from the AFL-CIO and hope to create a new labor empire
capable of reversing the political and bargaining setbacks workers have suffered in recent decades.
Machinists reach tentative accord with Boeing
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Date: September 26, 2005
Boeing has
reached a tentative agreement with its machinists' union, whose more than 18,000 members have been on strike
for 24 days. A ratification vote is scheduled for Thursday, and the strikers are not scheduled to return to
work before then. The strike has stopped almost all production at Boeing, the nation's largest commercial
airplane manufacturer. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers posted details of the
settlement on its Web site, boasting, "No takeaways, no sellouts," and saying the deal gave it much of what it
was seeking.
Union accuses BellSouth of violation
Source: Mike Drummond, Charlotte Observer
Union(s): Communications Workers of America
Date: September 21, 2005
An
anti-union organization accused BellSouth Wednesday of allegedly continuing to force most employees to wear a
union logo. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed a complaint with the National Labor
Relations Board to compel BellSouth to kill the policy. The filing echoes a Charlotte case where a federal
court earlier this year shot down the practice.
Auto workers and Chrysler reach deal in Canada
Source: Ian Austen, New York Times
Union(s): Canadian Auto Workers
Date: September 21, 2005
Reflecting the struggling state of North American automakers, the Canadian Auto Workers reached a tentative
agreement with DaimlerChrysler that eliminates about 1,600 jobs and offers only limited wage and benefit gains.
As in the contract reached between the union and Ford last week, the job reductions will be helped along by an
increase in early retirement payments. Both contracts are the most modest ever signed by the CAW, which has
been known for aggressive bargaining. The CAW now must negotiate an agreement with General Motors, the
country's largest automotive employer. G.M. has already said that it would not accept the terms of the Ford
contract.
Flight attendants: union sues U.S. over workplace safety
Source: Bloomberg News, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: September 20, 2005
A union for flight attendants sued the Federal Aviation Administration and Labor Secretary
Elaine Chao, claiming they failed to ensure the health and safety of workers at airlines. The suit, filed by
the Association of Flight Attendants, says airline crews are subject to hazards such as turbulence, sudden
changes in cabin air pressure, unwieldy service carts, exposure to toxic chemicals, unruly and sick passengers,
and threats of terrorism.
Two large unions reach agreement to end feud
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Service Employees International Union
Date: September 20, 2005
Two of the
nation's largest unions--the service employees and the state, county and municipal employees--agreed to end a
long-running feud by pledging not to raid each other's memberships. The two unions had devoted hundreds of
workers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last six months to a fight over which should represent
child care employees in Illinois and home health care workers in California. The battle had raised concerns
within organized labor that the service employees, the leader among four unions that broke away from the
AFL-CIO, would start a venomous and expensive war of raids and retaliation between rebel factions and those
loyal to the federation.
Strike is about more than pay and benefits
Source: Evelyn Iritani, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Date: September 18, 2005
For members of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers who voted to go on strike two weeks
ago, the global economy is an increasingly powerful presence at the negotiating table. At issue in this
contract dispute is more than just pensions and healthcare. Boeing workers, union leaders and their supporters
now wonder whether even the most sophisticated U.S. manufacturing jobs can survive in an increasingly brutal
global economy--and what, if anything, can be done to protect what remains.
Ford Canada workers accept deal
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Canadian Auto Workers
Date: September 18, 2005
Ford Canada workers have overwhelmingly accepted a new labor deal, even though it offers some of the lowest
wage gains in their union's history and allows for hundreds of layoffs. The Canadian Auto Workers union said
Sunday that 95% of Ford union workers accepted the three-year deal, which had been tentatively reached by
negotiators last week.
Unite Here leaves AFL-CIO over dispute
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: September 14, 2005
Unite
Here, a union of 450,000 workers in the apparel and hospitality industry, is leaving the AFL-CIO to join a
group of dissident unions that want the organized labor movement to spend more time and money recruiting new
members. Unite Here is joining the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the United Food and
Commercial Workers and the Carpenters in forming a dissident labor federation that has been calling itself the
Change To Win Coalition. The Laborers International Union of North America and the United Farm Workers are also
part of the new federation, but have not left the AFL-CIO. The new federation represents about 6 million
workers.
Ford labor pact in Canada calls for 1,100 job cuts
Source: Danny Hakim, Ian Austen, New York Times
Union(s): Canadian Auto Workers
Date: September 13, 2005
Ford
will cut 1,100 jobs in Canada by 2008, or about 9% of its hourly work force in that country, as part of a
tentative agreement reached Monday with the Canadian Auto Workers union. The agreement comes as the company
faces billions of dollars in losses in its North American automotive operations and is close to announcing what
is likely to be a revamping plan that will bring a wave of job cuts in the United States. The Ford agreement is
the first reached by the Canadian union in its 2005 negotiations. The first deal will be used as a framework
for agreements that will be negotiated later this month with General Motors and DaimlerChrysler.
Day 11 of strike by Boeing machinists with no end in sight
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Date: September 13, 2005
With no negotiations scheduled in the strike by 18,300 machinists at Boeing, the two sides are showing
little inclination for compromise, raising fears that the walkout could last a month or more. The machinists
walked the picket line for the 11th day yesterday in what is shaping up as one of the biggest labor showdowns
in years. Boeing appears to have dug in since the walkout began, saying its rebuffed offer reflects its need to
control costs when health spending is soaring and competition with Airbus remains fierce. For their part, the
machinists are angry that Boeing has demanded concessions even as its profits have rebounded strongly.
CAW union picks Ford as target in talks
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Canadian Auto Workers
Date: September 8, 2005
The Canadian Auto Workers union said Thursday it will try to negotiate a master contract with Ford by next
week and then ask other U.S. automakers to match those terms. CAW president Buzz Hargrove said the union picked
Ford because it has always had a good relationship with the company. The talks will be a good measure of
what's to come in 2007, when the United Auto Workers union negotiates its new contracts with the Big Three.
The union says Canadian workers are among the most productive and that U.S. automakers save on costs because of
Canada's national health care system.
Mechanics cool to latest NWA offer
Source: Elizabeth Dunbar, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: September 8, 2005
Northwest Airlines and its mechanics union got together for talks Thursday, but
several strikers on the picket lines here scoffed at the airline's latest offer. The airline was demanding
even steeper cuts than the ones that prompted mechanics to walk out. The airline said rising fuel prices have
forced it to ask for even more labor savings. Northwest's 4,427 mechanics, cleaners and custodians walked out
on Aug. 20 rather than accept 25% pay cuts and layoffs of some 2,000 workers. The airline has told the union
that it would begin hiring permanent replacements by Sept. 13 if they didn't make a deal.
Union tries very old (new) tactic to organize Dick's Sporting Goods workers
Source: Jim McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: September 4, 2005
A Dick's Sporting Goods distribution center in [Pennsylvania] is developing into a test case
for a novel approach by the United Steelworkers union to organize new members without going through a
winner-take-all election campaign. The idea, seen by the labor movement as a potential new way to revitalize
declining membership, is to establish a members-only union at the warehouse among workers that choose to join.
The approach, if it survives expected legal challenges, would upend decades of conventional wisdom holding that
employers have no duty to bargain with any union that has not been certified as an exclusive employee
bargaining agent by the National Labor Relations Board.
More than 18,000 Boeing machinists strike over new contract
Source: Gene Johnson, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers
Date: September 2, 2005
Machinists at Boeing walked out Friday, forcing the aerospace
company to halt production of commercial airplanes after the two sides could not agree on a new labor contract.
The strike affects about 18,400 Machinists in the Seattle area, Wichita, Kan., and Gresham, Ore. The Machinists
voted overwhelmingly Thursday to strike, rejecting a three-year contract proposal their leaders called
"insulting." Union leaders said the contract offer fell woefully short on top issues including pension payments
and increased health care costs.
76 arrested protesting NYU cutoff of student union
Source: Karen W. Arenson, New York Times
Union(s): Graduate Student Organizing Committee
Date: September 1, 2005
The president
of the AFL-CIO, the secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers and a state senator were among nearly 80
people who were arrested yesterday during a protest of New York University's decision to end dealings with a
union of graduate student teaching and research assistants. The National Labor Relations Board gave the
students the right to unionize in late 2000, making NYU the first private university to have a graduate student
employee union. But after a revamped national labor board reversed that position last year, the university
decided not to renew its contract with the union. For many in the labor movement, NYU has become a symbol of
organized labor's determination to expand its presence in academe.
Boeing, machinists brace for strike
Source: Reuters, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Date: August 31, 2005
Boeing
and the workers who assemble its planes are bracing for a strike as the machinists' union told members to
reject the company's latest contract offer. The 18,500 members of the International Association of Machinists
and Aerospace Workers covered by the Boeing contract are set to vote on the latest offer on Thursday, hours
before the current contract expires. Strong demand for Boeing's jets--such as its single-aisle 737, favored by
low-cost carriers from Dallas to New Delhi--gives the union an unusually strong hand in the talks this time
around, industry-watchers say. That is in sharp contrast to striking mechanics at Northwest Airlines, who are
at risk of losing their jobs permanently to replacement workers.
Source: Sarah Kaufman, Washington Post
Union(s): American Guild of Musical Artists
Date: August 31, 2005
For the past two years [Nikkia Parish] was a member of the Washington Ballet. The American
Guild of Musical Artists, the union that has represented the company's dancers since last winter, has charged
that Parish and another dancer were unlawfully discriminated against in retaliation for their union activities.
As organized labor has become more and more disorganized--witness the recent split in the AFL-CIO, reflecting
unions' loss of influence and falling membership nationwide--it may come as a surprise that a dancers' guild
is trying to throw its weight around. Other unions may be losing might, but men (and women) in tights are
organizing.
Steel unions take worldly view toward expansion
Source: M.R. Kropko, Associated Press, Indianapolis Star
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: August 29, 2005
When steelmaking was king in this city [Cleveland] and others across the nation,
labor unions were as strong as the metal their members made. With hundreds of thousands of members, the United
Steelworkers of America and the Independent Steelworkers Union were powerful forces that held their own against
the multimillion-dollar companies with whom the unions often squared off. Today, when organized labor is
shrinking with the steel industry, union workers are trying to figure out how they can remain influential in
the U.S. and become a force internationally. Steel has emerged from tough times by consolidating, and
businesses that survived are increasingly tied to foreign firms.
Northwest strikers showing signs of dissent
Source: Micheline Maynard, Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 29, 2005
Ten days into a strike against Northwest Airlines, signs of dissent are beginning to bubble up among
mechanics' union members on picket lines at airports around the country. In a union known for lively debate,
some members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association are questioning the union leaders' decision to
call a strike without a vote on the airline's final offer. Other workers are voicing adamant support for the
walkout. But even some of them are looking for other jobs, saying they cannot afford to be out of work. The
lively debate among AMFA members over the strike is not unusual at a union known for controversy.
Source: Kip Chipman, Bloomberg News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Union(s): Union Network International
Date: August 26, 2005
Labor leaders from around the world are calling on funds that manage union
pension investments to sell shares of Wal-Mart. Investors instead should put their money in "socially
responsible" companies, according to a resolution by members of Union Network International, a federation
representing more than 15 million workers in 120 countries. The unions are working on plans for a global
campaign against Wal-Mart. They claim the retailer violates child labor and discrimination laws, offers poor
wages and benefits and doesn't give most of its 1.6 million employees the freedom to unionize. Wal-Mart
rejects the unions' claims and considers itself a "premier employer" in all the countries in which it
operates.
Airlines' woes may erode unions' clout
Source: James F. Peltz, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 26, 2005
When Northwest [Airlines] brought in replacement workers for members of the striking Aircraft Mechanics
Fraternal Assn., other unionized employees--pilots, flight attendants and other ground workers--reported for
work. The lack of labor solidarity partly reflected the go-it-alone stance of [the AMFA], which has alienated
much of organized labor by plucking members from other unions. But it also showed that airline unions were
thinking twice about using their most potent bargaining tactic against a company that is already on the brink
of bankruptcy. A strike now, analysts say, might ultimately mean no airline and no job.
Northwest Airlines threatens to replace strikers permanently
Source: Micheline Maynard, Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 26, 2005
Northwest Airlines [is] considering giving permanent jobs to the 1,500 substitute
workers it hired to replace striking mechanics. Northwest said union members could still have their jobs back
if they wanted to cross picket lines. The airline says it is willing to negotiate with the union, although no
talks have been held and none are scheduled. Declaring the replacement workers to be permanent employees would
have tremendous implications for both Northwest and the mechanics' union, as well as the airline industry and
perhaps the entire labor movement, industry experts said. Northwest has the right under federal law to lock out
the strikers.
Source: Jack Katzanek, Press-Enterprise
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: August 25, 2005
Federal investigators say Lowe's might have broken labor laws during the union organizing drive at its Perris
[California] distribution center, although the government has not issued a formal complaint. A National Labor
Relations Board spokeswoman said there is enough evidence to follow up on three of the accusations filed by the
Teamsters covering Lowe's actions leading up to late June, when workers voted by a almost 2 to 1 against
becoming the chain's first employees to join a union. The charges labor board investigators are pursuing
accuse Lowe's of harassing and coercing employees who had pro-union leanings [and] threatening to close the
facility if workers voted for the Teamsters.
A maverick union chief now in search of unity
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 25, 2005
As president
of the union representing mechanics at Northwest Airlines, O. V. Delle-Femine has repeatedly urged, almost
begged, the rest of organized labor to show solidarity with his union's walkout. But other unions have largely
shunned his call, and that is hardly surprising considering that Mr. Delle-Femine has long been viewed within
the labor movement as Mr. Antisolidarity. Ever since he founded the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association 43
years ago, Mr. Delle-Femine has been something of a labor pariah, enraging the machinists and other unions by
repeatedly seeking to steal their members.
Source: Jeremy W. Peters, Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 24, 2005
These men and women are at the center of the airline industry's most significant labor dispute in
more than a decade. And they may be taking part in another historic moment of a different kind: busting unions,
21st century style. They are among the 1,900 replacement workers deployed by Northwest to assume the duties of
4,430 members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The union struck the airline on Saturday over
demand[s] for $176 million in pay and benefit cuts. The replacements spent the last three months training under
a $107 million contingency plan the airline crafted in anticipation of a strike. Not since a strike in 1989 at
Eastern Airlines, which eventually contributed to the airline's demise, has an airline tried to rely so
heavily on replacements to keep its planes aloft.
Alliance aims to organize Wal-Mart workers
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Union Network International
Date: August 23, 2005
An
alliance of unions plans to step up organizing efforts at Wal-Mart beyond its U.S. base, focusing first on the
mega-retailer's employees in South Korea. Union Network International, a federation of unions in 150
countries, plans to launch organizing efforts by year's end in South Korea and is also looking to target
Wal-Mart in countries including Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. UNI has already been working with labor groups in
India and Russia to lay the groundwork for organizing if Wal-Mart enters those countries. UNI also eventually
plans multi-nation campaigns to organize employees of express mail company DHL, News Corp., Walt Disney Co. and
furniture retailer Ikea.
Northwest employees get little support
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 23, 2005
In a world known for solidarity, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association stands almost
alone, even as 4,400 of its members walk the picket line. The Northwest Airlines mechanics and cleaners are the
first workers at a major U.S. airline to [strike] in seven years. But, despite major upheaval in the industry
where many pilots, flight attendants and other workers have had to make concessions in pay and benefits, the
striking workers are finding little support from other unions. AMFA, which grew by winning members away from
other unions, is an outsider in the labor movement. But what happens to AMFA and its Northwest mechanics could
have a broad impact on organized labor, according to labor experts.
Mechanics face doubt, uncertainty on picket line
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 23, 2005
The striking [Northwest Airlines] mechanics and maintenance workers at National [Airport]
make up a tiny portion of the 4,400 union members who walked out Saturday morning after negotiations failed to
achieve a compromise on jobs and wage cuts sought by the airline. But the mechanics here, like their
counterparts in larger contingents in Minneapolis, Detroit and elsewhere, are wondering what the future holds
and how they will endure if the strike is prolonged. Northwest has replaced the union workers with mechanics
laid off from other airlines, and it is unclear whether the strikers will lose their jobs permanently. The
airline says it hopes to return to the negotiating table.
Today's flights to put NWA to test
Source: John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 22, 2005
Northwest [is] able to keep its planes in the air because its other unions--representing pilots, flight
attendants, ticket agents and baggage handlers--allowed members to cross the mechanics' picket lines and keep
working. Northwest's non-striking unions, while declining to call sympathy strikes, appear to be giving the
replacements the cold shoulder. In an industry awash with layoffs, many of the replacement mechanics formerly
worked at major carriers. Labor experts say the use of replacement workers in strikes is growing. "Their
feeling is, 'This is my only chance to get a job in this industry again, and I'm taking the job of a worker
who miscalculated and walked off the job,'" Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations, said.
Well-laid plan kept Northwest flying in strike
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 22, 2005
As
Northwest Airlines rode out a full weekend with its mechanics' union on strike, it was enjoying the fruits of
an elaborate plan that was meant to not only keep its planes flying, but also to overhaul the way its workers
do their jobs. Northwest's plan to use temporary workers in place of striking members of the Aircraft
Mechanics Fraternal Association took 18 months to create. It also required the cooperation of other unions and
the federal government--and even consultation with the White House. One labor expert said Northwest's ability
to switch to new work routines and keep operating, at least at the outset, sends an important signal to unions
that strikes may have lost their power as tools to fight job losses and other cuts.
Source: Micheline Maynard, Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: August 18, 2005
Northwest Airlines and its mechanics' union are bracing for a street fight over wage and benefit cuts
that many in the battered industry thought would have come long before now. While other airlines and their
unions have sparred over reduced pay, elimination of benefits and job cuts, none of the disputes have come to
the point of a strike like the one Northwest could face at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. The expected showdown is the
culmination of three years of unsuccessful efforts by Northwest to persuade employees to accept wage and
benefit cuts to get its costs in line with competitors that have already reduced their labor rates.
Qwest reaches pact with union, averting strike
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Communications Workers of America
Date: August 17, 2005
Qwest Communications International's largest union said it had reached a contract agreement with the company
late Tuesday, removing the threat of a strike by 25,000 telephone workers in 13 states. The agreement includes
a 7.5% wage increase over three years, changes to healthcare coverage to reduce overall costs for many
employees, and an eight-hour cap on mandatory overtime, [a Communications Workers of America] spokeswoman said.
Denver-based Qwest is the primary local telephone service provider in 14 states. The contract covers Colorado,
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa
and Utah.
New homeland security work rules blocked
Source: Stephen Barr, Washington Post
Union(s): National Treasury Employees Union
Date: August 15, 2005
The Department of Homeland Security, after more than two years of work on new workplace
rules, may have to scrap the plan after a federal judge questioned whether it protects union and employee
rights. The rules were scheduled to begin today but were blocked by U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer in
a ruling released Friday night. The workplace rules would have dramatically reduced the clout of unions in the
department, which has about 160,000 employees. Bush administration officials see the proposed rules as a key to
moving forward--and sidestepping union objections--to more ambitious changes that would affect how employees
are paid, promoted and disciplined.
Deal to organize janitors gives union a stronger foothold here
Source: L.M. Sixel, Houston Chronicle
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: August 12, 2005
Five companies that employ the bulk of Houston's janitors have agreed to allow the service workers union to
try to organize their employees without any fight. The deal comes on the heels of a four-month battle waged by
the Service Employees International Union to unionize 8,000 janitors and it could give the organization a
stronger platform to go after its next likely target--Houston's health care workers. Unlike other unions that
put their efforts into organizing the rank-and-file, the SEIU starts at the top and meets with company
leadership, seeking its neutrality in the union's efforts. If the employer is reluctant, union officials lay
out the various economic pressures they can bring to bear.
Labor leader offers locals 'solidarity'
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: August 11, 2005
AFL-CIO
president John Sweeney moved yesterday to minimize the damage that the schism within organized labor would do
to city and state labor federations. When [the Teamsters, SEIU, and UFCW]withdrew, Mr. Sweeney sternly noted
that under the AFL-CIO's constitution, locals in those unions no longer belonged to city and state labor
federations. Many union leaders said they feared that as a result, labor's effectiveness at the city and state
level--in politics, lobbying and collective bargaining--would be undermined. After being urged by local labor
leaders, Mr. Sweeney proposed allowing union locals in the departing unions to rejoin state and city labor
bodies as special affiliates if they signed a new "solidarity charter."
NYU ends negotiations with union for students
Source: Alan Finder, New York Times
Union(s): United Automobile Workers
Date: August 6, 2005
New York University
formally notified the union representing its graduate students yesterday that it would no longer bargain with
it. In June, the university said it was moving toward severing its relationship with the five-year-old union
when its contract expires on Aug. 31. In a memorandum distributed to students and faculty and in a letter to
the union, university officials said they decided not to negotiate a new contract. In 2000, NYU became the only
private university in the country to have a union representing graduate students.
Source: Tom Robbins, Village Voice
Union(s): AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union
Date: August 2, 2005
On the same hot
summer day last month that the AFL-CIO was splintering apart in Chicago, a pair of men trying to organize a
non-union demolition firm received a vicious beating in a Queens equipment yard. These days, organizers are
more likely to get fired for their efforts than beaten, but the incident is a dramatic reminder of what unions
are up against, even in labor-friendly places like New York.
Shock waves of union split cross oceans
Source: Thomas Fuller, International Herald Tribune
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: August 2, 2005
From the vantage point of Europe or Asia, the United States often seems like a giant island,
powerful enough to sustain itself and preoccupied with its own matters, whether domestic politics or national
sports teams. And so it seemed last week when a large faction of the AFL-CIO, the trade union federation, split
away. The move raised questions about the future of organized labor in America, but the damage appeared largely
domestic. And yet a closer look shows that the shock waves of the split did manage to cross the oceans and
could have significant consequences for unions in countries both rich and poor.
Source: David Moberg, In These Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 31, 2005
The decision by the
SEIU and the Teamsters to leave the AFL-CIO--and the resultant loss of 2.6 million members and $18 million in
dues--overshadowed the convention of the AFL. Yet despite the potential impact of these large unions'
departure on national politics and the federation itself, one of the main repercussions of the split involves
an oft-neglected, even little-known part of the labor movement: its state and local organizations. They've
become political powerhouses, important players in economic development, and centers for building real
solidarity among local unions and their members across union lines. Now, many of these groups will be hard-hit,
not only losing much of their limited financing, but disrupting their newly forged solidarity.
Third union is leaving AFL-CIO
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: July 30, 2005
The United
Food and Commercial Workers, one of the nation's five largest labor unions, quit the AFL-CIO yesterday,
becoming the third big union to leave the nation's main federation this week. Joe Hansen, president of the
union, which has 1.3 million members, said his union was committing itself to a new coalition that includes the
two other unions that pulled out, the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union. Members of the
new group say the AFL-CIO has not moved aggressively to stop the decline of organized labor. The insurgents,
the Change to Win Coalition, intend to foster a resurgence.
Source: Matt Kempner, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Union(s): AFL-CIO, Unite Here
Date: July 29, 2005
They were close friends in a hostile environment, trying to spread unions in the South.
Bruce Raynor was the regional director of a textiles union. Stewart Acuff launched the Georgia State Employees
Union and became president of the Atlanta Labor Council. Together, Raynor and Acuff operated side by side as
two of the most prominent labor leaders in Georgia over the past two decades. But now the two 50-something guys
hold crucial national posts on opposite sides of the biggest split the U.S. labor movement has faced in
decades, one that may help determine whether unions become a historical afterthought or a reignited power in
the American workplace.
AFL-CIO leader says split hurts labor
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 29, 2005
John
Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, has long been known as a steady-as-you-go consensus builder, but this
week, when two giant unions bolted the labor federation, he got his Irish up. In an interview minutes after the
labor federation's 50th anniversary convention ended on Thursday, Mr. Sweeney was burning with a quiet anger.
"Some of our good brothers were trying to make a power grab, and I think that it failed," he said. "They
didn't have the support of the majority, so they picked up their marbles and they left." Now, Mr. Sweeney says
he has to pick up the mess left by [the] departure[s].
Union leaders seek local unity despite schism
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 29, 2005
The AFL-CIO
suffered a major blow on Monday when two of its biggest unions, the Service Employees International Union and
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, quit the federation, saying it was doing too little to reverse
labor's slide. This schism has worried Democrats in New York and around the country because they fear that it
will undermine labor's clout in elections. Because the departing unions represent such a high percentage of
union members in many cities, officials from more than a dozen central labor councils voiced alarm that the
schism would hobble their operations and budgets.
AFL-CIO chief re-elected as 2 unions exit
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 28, 2005
The
delegates who re-elected AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to a fourth term wore T-shirts that said "One Strong
Voice for Worker's Rights"--but the labor group's unity remained in doubt after the defection of two key
unions. The Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union had sought Sweeney's ouster and dropped
out earlier this week when they didn't get it. Sweeney said he felt it was important to run for another term
because of the important challenges facing the labor movement. [He] talked Wednesday about an "ambitious
blueprint" for the AFL-CIO that includes several reforms enacted at this week's convention, some similar to
demands that had been made by the dissident unions.
Labor debates the future of a fractured movement
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 27, 2005
The two
giant unions that quit the AFL-CIO say their exodus will help revive the labor movement. Officials from the two
dissident unions--the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters--say that breaking away will give
their unions new energy and focus that will spur growth. In announcing the rupture on Sunday, Anna Burger, the
service employees' secretary-treasurer, said, "Today will be remembered as the rebirth of union strength in
America." But amid the banners and labor memorabilia at the [AFL-CIO] convention, the most frequent refrain is:
how can division help revive a movement whose watchword has long been solidarity?
Analysis: ambitions are fueling union split
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union
Date: July 26, 2005
The huge
split in organized labor has been fueled by stagnant living standards for many workers, by the ascendancy of
the service sector and by labor's lack of success in politics and unionizing workers. But as much as anything,
the schism reflects the conflicting ambitions of two titans of labor, John Sweeney, the president of the
AFL-CIO, and his onetime protege, Andrew Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union,
until now the largest union in the labor federation. Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Stern both say their overarching goal
is to lift American workers, but they have different visions on how to get there.
Two top unions split from AFL-CIO
Source: Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 26, 2005
Two of the nation's largest and most powerful unions resigned from the AFL-CIO on Monday,
fracturing the 50-year-old federation as the labor movement struggles to stem decades of decline and lost
influence in both the workplace and the political arena. The leaders of the breakaway faction said they are
taking flight because of distress over what they described as the AFL-CIO's ineffectiveness in stopping the
long-term decline in union membership and making labor more relevant to the challenges of the modern workplace.
There is general agreement that splintering the national labor federation has large implications for
employer-employee relations and the strength of the Democratic Party.
Labor's big split: pain before gain
Source: Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Union(s): Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: July 26, 2005
Yesterday's announcement by the Service Employees International Union and the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters that they were quitting the AFL-CIO was no less stunning for its absence
of theatricals. What we know is that the split--which is likely to grow as several other unions announce their
own disaffiliations over the next couple of weeks--sunders a union movement that is already weaker than it has
been since the 1920s. What we don't know is whether the new organization that the SEIU, the Teamsters and
their allies will form in the coming months can and will do anything to bolster the power of America's
indispensable, if enfeebled, labor movement. For now, it's a lot easier to see the damage than it is to
foresee the gain.
Breakaway groups crumble labor's once-solid foundation
Source: Stephanie Armour, USA Today
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 25, 2005
Since its creation, the AFL-CIO has been the most visible and powerful labor organization in the
nation, campaigning for pro-labor political candidates and lobbying for issues affecting the lives of ordinary
workers such as overtime regulations and health care. But now its very future is up for grabs. Two
union[s]--the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union--left the AFL-CIO on Monday. Discord
between the unions has been mounting for some time due to clashes over leadership and direction. The splinter
groups have argued that the AFL-CIO's emphasis on lobbying and backing political candidates was coming at the
expense of organizing efforts.
Teamsters, SEIU bolt AFL-CIO federation
Source: Ron Fournier, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Service Employees International Union
Date: July 25, 2005
The Teamsters and a major service employees union on Monday bolted from the AFL-CIO, a
stinging exodus for an embattled movement struggling to stop membership losses and adjust to a rapidly changing
working environment. In a decision that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney labeled a "grievous insult" to labor's
rank-and-file, the Teamsters union and the Service Employees International Union, two major federation
affiliates, said they decided to leave. They said they were forming a competing labor coalition designed to
reverse labor's long decline in union membership. The joint announcement, the largest schism in labor's ranks
since 1930, came as no surprise since weeks of publicly-aired dissension within the ranks preceded it.
AFL-CIO president blasts heads of unions
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 25, 2005
AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney, anticipating plans by the Teamsters and the service-workers affiliate he used to head
to bolt, charged Monday that such a move would be a "grievous insult" to working people and their unions. "At a
time when our corporate and conservative adversaries have created the most powerful anti-worker political
machine in the history of our country, a divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better
life," Sweeney said in his keynote address to an AFL-CIO convention marred by division and boycott. The
Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union intended to announce Monday they are leaving the
federation after failing to reform it.
4 major unions plan to boycott AFL-CIO event
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 25, 2005
Leaders of
four of the country's largest labor unions announced on Sunday that they would boycott this week's AFL-CIO
convention, and officials from two of those unions said the action was a prelude to their full withdrawal from
the federation on Monday. The schism is the culmination of a rancorous debate within the union movement that
also threatens to hurt labor's efforts in lobbying and in political campaigns. Leaders of the service
employees union, the food and commercial workers union, the Teamsters and Unite Here said they were shunning
the convention because the federation under the leadership of its president, John Sweeney, has been ineffective
in halting the decades-long slide of organized labor.
Among dissident union leaders, the backgrounds may vary but the vision is the same
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 22, 2005
The band of union presidents who are threatening to create the biggest schism
in organized labor in 70 years are a varied lot: a former meat cutter, a former social worker, the son of the
last century's most controversial labor leader and the organizer who led the heralded unionization campaign at
J. P. Stevens. Whatever their differences, they agree on a fundamental point: the AFL-CIO has utterly failed to
reverse labor's slide even as workers struggle to cope with stagnant wages and shrinking benefits. They argue
that the federation needs to embrace far-reaching changes to save organized labor from oblivion. Failing that,
the leaders of the dissident unions--which represent more than one-third of the federation's members--are
warning they will secede from the federation.
NHL players overwhelmingly approve labor deal
Source: Rick Westhead, New York Times
Union(s): N.H.L. Players Association
Date: July 22, 2005
National
Hockey League players voted Thursday to ratify a six-year collective bargaining agreement, which included a
salary cap for the first time. The 301-day lockout caused the first season lost to a labor dispute in North
American major league sports. The new contract guarantees that players will receive 54 percent of the league's
revenue. In the past, they have received closer to 75 percent. Several members of the players' executive
committee said they had been resigned to losing the protracted labor battle. Jeffrey Kessler, a labor lawyer in
New York who has worked for the NFL and the NBA unions, called the NHL deal "the largest setback for players
that I've seen in collective bargaining."
Northwest at an impasse in talks with mechanics
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: July 21, 2005
The clock is
officially ticking on a 30-day cooling-off period in the labor dispute between Northwest Airlines and its
mechanics' union. After that, the union could strike or the airline could impose the $176 million in cuts that
it wants--but neither is certain. The countdown began yesterday, when the National Mediation Board declared an
impasse in bitter negotiations it had tried to resolve between Northwest and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal
Association. The nation's fifth-largest airline, Northwest has spent more than two years trying to persuade
its workers to grant cuts so that it can reduce labor costs to the rates paid by rivals like American, Delta,
United and US Airways, which have all obtained union concessions in the last few years.
Dissidents threaten labor convention boycott
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: July 20, 2005
Leaders of
several dissident unions warned yesterday that they might shun next week's AFL-CIO convention in Chicago
unless the labor federation's president, John Sweeney, agreed to some of their demands. The possibility that
those unions--the service employees, Teamsters, food and commercial workers and Unite Here--would boycott the
convention signals that the four might carry out their threat to quit the federation, labor leaders said. The
dissident unions, which include about one-third of the federation's members, are unhappy that Mr. Sweeney
seems certain to win a new four-year term at the convention.
Some United attendants are rehired
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: July 11, 2005
United Airlines has called back 600 flight attendants who took voluntary layoffs, and company executives said
they would invite 851 more to return to work by late fall. Although the Assn. of Flight Attendants welcomed the
recall, the union said the action was needed to fill vacancies left by workers who were quitting in response to
pay and benefit cuts implemented by the carrier as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy protection. United's
flight attendants are threatening to strike after the carrier formally turned over their pension plan to the
federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
Reality TV workers sue producers and networks
Source: Sharon Waxman, New York Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: July 11, 2005
A lawsuit
filed last week against producers and broadcasters of reality television shows accused those companies of
planning to falsify payroll records of employees to avoid paying wages for overtime. The lawsuit seeks
class-action status and is part of a broader effort by the Writers Guild of America, West, to organize nearly
1,000 workers who edit and produce the reality programs. The union says the workers toil lengthy schedules for
dismal wages with no health or pension benefits, unlike counterparts on scripted television shows. The lawsuit
charges breach of California overtime law, failure to provide itemized wage statements, nonpayment of wages,
denial of meal periods and record-keeping violations.
Reality show writers claim exploitation
Source: Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: July 8, 2005
Stepping up its organizing campaign against reality TV producers, the union representing Hollywood writers
Thursday unveiled a lawsuit filed by a dozen scribes who alleged that they were denied overtime and meal breaks
and ordered to falsify time cards. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeks class-action
status. It is the latest effort by the Writers Guild of America, West, to keep up the pressure on production
companies and networks involved in the burgeoning reality TV arena.
U.S. suit, claiming mob control, seeks takeover of dock union
Source: William K. Rashbaum, New York Times
Union(s): International Longshoremen's Association
Date: July 7, 2005
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed a civil racketeering suit against the International
Longshoremen's Association yesterday in an effort to take over the union, which they said has been controlled
by two New York mob families for roughly 50 years. The lawsuit [is] based on recent criminal prosecutions and
decades of evidence of corruption and mob influence in the union and waterfront businesses. The lawsuit said
the union "continues to be a vehicle for organized crime influence in the nation's ports." A union statement
said the lawsuit would have "devastating consequences" on the union and the industry.
Local 880: labor's new up-and-comer
Source: Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: July 5, 2005
There was a time not so long ago when old-line industrial unions derided the SEIU--they called it
"SEI-Who?"--for organizing low-income workers who get little recognition and even less respect. Now the 1.8
million-member union, the country's fastest growing, is a powerful force within a deeply divided labor
movement. SEIU is part of a coalition pressing for new AFL-CIO leadership and a stronger commitment to
organizing. Nowhere are the fruits of that commitment more evident than at Local 880, whose innovative drives
are examples of what labor is doing right in the struggle to halt its long, slow decline in membership.
Never-ending United pension saga continutes; flight attendants may strike
Source: Times Wireless Services, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Assn. of Flight Attendants
Date: July 1, 2005
The U.S. government Thursday took over United Airlines'
pension plans covering flight attendants and other workers, prompting the union representing the flight
attendants to threaten a job action -- one that could happen as soon as today. The action by the Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corp. moves the bankrupt No. 2 U.S. airline closer to securing the labor savings it needs to
exit Chapter 11 protection. But the Assn. of Flight Attendants said the decision to shift the pension plan to
the pension agency altered the union contract without workers' consent and thus gave the union the right to
strike immediately.
Union Plans to File Suit for Reality TV Workers
Source: Sharon Waxman, New York Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: June 29, 2005
While the
reality genre has matured, creating shows that commonly compete in the ratings with scripted entertainment,
conditions for those who work on the shows have worsened, not improved, those workers say. Although the most
popular reality shows compete with scripted entertainment, the genre remains a seat-of-the-pants culture, with
some shows taking only weeks, rather than months, to be bought, produced and appear on the air. This has made
for intense competition among reality-show producers. Budgets and shooting schedules are being squeezed by the
networks, producers say. And the burden, say those who work on the shows, is falling on them. "It's the
Wal-Mart model," Mr. Sharp said. "The networks offer a low amount of money, and if one production company
can't do it, they'll go to another production company. And it's all coming down on us."
Reality show writers seek representation
Source: Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Writers Guild of America, West
Date: June 21, 2005
The guild representing Hollywood writers disclosed Monday that more than 75% of the scribes on TV reality
shows have signed cards asking to be represented by the union. Organizing writers on reality TV shows brings to
light what has been one of the proliferating genre's open secrets: that so-called unscripted shows often are
scripted after all. Because writers are deeply involved in the dozens of reality shows, union leaders argue,
they should get similar pay and benefits as writers on conventional programs. The guild, which began organizing
the writers a year ago, said it went public with its campaign after major production companies ignored its
demand for recognition.
Coalition's strategy builds on union efforts in state
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Change to Win Coalition
Date: June 20, 2005
A group of dissident union leaders last week vowed to reinvigorate the slumping U.S. labor
movement by launching a series of big, strategic organizing campaigns. Elements of what they have in mind have
already been road-tested in California, a hot spot for union activism for more than a decade. And they seem to
be working. The individual unions' innovative campaigns, aimed at some of the state's lowest-paid workers,
have brought tens of thousands of new members under the union umbrella in the last decade and raised pay and
benefits for most, even as wages have stagnated nationally and organized labor's overall share of the
workforce has declined.
N.Y.U. moves to disband graduate students union
Source: Karen W. Arenson, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 17, 2005
New York
University is moving to close down its graduate students union, the labor movement's only toehold among
graduate students at private universities. Union officials quickly attacked N.Y.U. 's plan and vowed to fight
the university in any way they could. N.Y.U. became the only private university with unionized graduate
students five years ago, when the National Labor Relations Board reversed its longstanding position that
graduate student workers were essentially students, not employees. Last year, in a case involving Brown
University, the board, whose composition had changed since the N.Y.U. decision, reversed the position it took
four years earlier, giving N.Y.U. an opportunity to back away from collective bargaining.
No pact changes with G.M. yet, union chief says
Source: Danny Hakim, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 16, 2005
Setting up a
potential conflict with General Motors, the president of the United Automobile Workers union said Wednesday
that he would not agree to change G.M.'s labor contract before it expires in 2007 or to roll back health
benefits for G.M. hourly workers to match the lesser benefits of the company's salaried employees. In an
extended interview the union's leader, Ron Gettelfinger, said that while he was willing to make concessions to
help General Motors within the terms of their existing contract, the two sides were not yet close to reaching
an agreement. G.M., he said, had not presented him with enough information to convince him of the severity of
the financial situation.
Five top unions join forces, raising threat of labor rift
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO; Change to Win Coalition
Date: June 16, 2005
The likelihood of a schism in organized labor increased yesterday when five major unions formed a
growth-oriented coalition and the presidents of four of the unions hinted strongly that they might quit the
A.F.L.-C.I.O. The presidents of the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and Unite Here yesterday
joined an earlier threat by the Service Employees International Union to end their affiliations because they
are so unhappy with the labor federation. The four unions represent nearly one-third of the members of the
A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of 57 unions and 13 million workers, and if they quit it would greatly weaken the
federation, hurt its budget and cause fighting within labor.
UAW raises possibility of strike over GM health care
Source: Sharon Silke Carty, USA Today
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 15, 2005
As talks heat up between General Motors and the United Auto Workers over possible health care concessions,
local union leaders are buzzing about the possibility of a strike if workers are forced into a plan they don't
like. Two issues in particular are riling union members: retiree benefits and GM's attempt at a deadline. GM
has asked the union to agree to trim retiree health care benefits, and to do so by June 30. The union balked at
the deadline but said it is trying to find ways to help GM cut its health benefit costs without reopening the
contract. GM says that health care costs add nearly $1,500 to the cost of every car it builds. The company
provides health care for 1.1 million retirees, active workers and their families.
Source: Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO; Change to Win Coalition
Date: June 15, 2005
The dissident unions of the AFL-CIO are meeting today to announce that they are building a
halfway house. The Change to Win Coalition will begin life neither entirely within nor without the AFL-CIO. The
founders have each made noises about decamping from the federation unless more money is devoted to organizing
and incumbent President John Sweeney is replaced. But Sweeney and his allies command a clear majority of the
federation's unions, and they insist that all the dissidents except SEIU are bluffing. In a sense, the leaders
of American labor are engaging one another in a massive game of chicken. But such games can take on a life of
their own, with all manner of unforeseen consequences.
G.M. board wants cut in benefits
Source: Danny Hakim, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: June 15, 2005
The board of
General Motors has given the United Automobile Workers until the end of the month to agree to cuts in its
members' health care benefits. Many local union leaders have said they were willing to make concessions, but
not to the extent that G.M. was seeking. If the union and the company cannot agree by the end of the month,
G.M. is threatening to make the cuts on its own. Such a step could lead to a breakdown in G.M.'s relations
with the union and possible strikes. Shares of G.M. rose 4 percent on Tuesday after a report on the deadline
appeared in The Detroit News. G.M. covers 1.1 million Americans, including workers, retirees and family
members, making it the nation's largest private provider of medical benefits.
Union, hotels avert strike, lockout
Source: John O'Dell, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: June 12, 2005
In a deal brokered by Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, hotel operators and union leaders tentatively agreed
on a new contract Saturday, narrowly averting a lockout of union workers at seven major Los Angeles hotels. The
agreement to end a 14-month dispute between Unite Here Local 11 and the Los Angeles Hotel Employer's Council
was signed five minutes before 2,500 union workers were to be locked out of their jobs in retaliation for a
strike called Thursday against one of the council's hotels. Villaraigosa, in his first major effort at
managing the city he will head beginning July 1, was credited by both sides for bringing the long-standing
dispute to a close.
Source: Roger Vincent, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: June 10, 2005
Employees at the Hyatt West Hollywood, a legendary rock 'n' roll hotel on the Sunset Strip, went on strike
Thursday as contract negotiations between workers and owners at seven prominent Los Angeles hotels faltered.
Most of the 120 union members at the Hyatt hotel and restaurant, including bellhops, front desk clerks,
housekeepers and telephone operators, are honoring the picket line, said Tom Walsh, secretary-treasurer of
Unite Here Local 11. He expects the strike to last two weeks. Hotel owners voted Thursday to lock out union
employees at the six other hotels at an unspecified date in response to the strike. Those hotels may also be
subject to strikes, Walsh said.
Teamsters unit rejects Coke accord
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: June 3, 2005
Four
locals of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, representing about 1,650 workers, have been jointly
negotiating with [Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.] for several months. They launched a coordinated strike May 23,
mainly over healthcare benefits. A settlement reached early Wednesday was expected to end the strike. Union
negotiators unanimously recommended ratification, and members of three locals did just that. But the bottlers,
in Local 896, voted to reject it. If members of Local 896 resume picket lines today, as they said they would,
members of the other three locals will honor them and not return to work.
Agreements reached with United, averting a strike
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: June 1, 2005
United
Airlines dodged the possibility of walkouts by two unions yesterday, in a reflection of the reality of
bargaining with a company under bankruptcy protection. Members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
approved a contract that would reduce their pay by 3.9 percent, as part of $96 million in annual cuts. United
reached [an] agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers after a burst of
last-minute bargaining that began Monday. In a statement, the union said that the agreement covered a variety
of terms and included a new pension plan. It did not offer specifics.
Unions struggle as communications industry shifts
Source: Matt Richtel, New York Times
Union(s): Communication Workers of America
Date: June 1, 2005
Even as unions
struggle nationwide, with just 12.5 percent of the total work force unionized in 2004 compared with 22 percent
in 1980, they face a particularly bleak future in the telecommunications industry. The industry was once a
labor stronghold after the Bell monopolies became unionized in the late 1930's. But mergers, deregulation and
technological change have reduced the number of jobs at the traditional phone companies while creating hundreds
of thousands of jobs in cable and wireless companies, which are largely union-free. To slow the rapid decline,
unions are fighting to organize workers at cable and wireless companies. They have had little success, outside
a big victory in 2000 when they organized workers at Cingular Wireless.
Logging on with a new campaign
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: May 31, 2005
After years of failed attempts to help Wal-Mart workers organize a union, leaders of the
United Food and Commercial Workers are trying an Internet-oriented approach developed in recent failed
presidential campaigns. When Joseph T. Hansen became president last year, he decided to switch from approaching
employees inside the stores to putting on a wider campaign designed to win over the company's customers and
general public. His hope is that public reaction and negative publicity will force the company's executives to
change some practices. The effort [is called] Wake-Up Wal-Mart, and it tries to use tools developed in
political campaigns.
A summer of discontent for labor focuses on its leader's fitness for his job
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: May 31, 2005
After nearly half a century in the union movement and after a decade leading the nation's
main labor federation, John Sweeney is facing his toughest time ever. The percentage of American workers
belonging to unions continues to fall, President Bush is seeking to weaken collective bargaining rights for
700,000 federal workers, and many unionized companies are cutting back once-unassailable benefits, like health
insurance and pensions. But for Mr. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the biggest battle may be a nasty
internal struggle--the federation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, is threatening
to secede if, as many expect, Mr. Sweeney wins a new four-year term this summer.
Ruling expected in United Airlines labor contract case
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Date: May 31, 2005
A federal bankruptcy court judge is expected to rule today on a request by United Airlines to
terminate the contract covering its 20,000 baggage handlers and ground workers, a move their union maintains
would lead to an immediate strike. Negotiators for United and the International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers met Monday night to discuss United's request for $176 million in wage and benefit cuts in a
bid to reach an agreement before a court hearing. United is seeking cuts as part of $700 million in annual
employee cutbacks in its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy protection. Workers granted United an initial round
of $1.5 billion in annual cuts shortly after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2002.
Chrysler and union face crucial talks in Canada
Source: Danny Hakim, New York Times
Union(s): Canadian Auto Workers
Date: May 27, 2005
The
stakes are high for Chrysler in summer contract talks with the Canadian Auto Workers union. Executives of
Chrysler contend that their Canadian workers are fast becoming uncompetitive in the global economy. While
Canada's nationalized health care helps Chrysler undercut labor costs at its plants in the United States,
Canadian workers have in the last three years become more expensive than workers at nonunionized plants in the
United States run by Toyota, Honda and other Asian automakers. Chrysler executives say a series of generous
contracts granted to Canadian workers have offset the roughly $4-an-hour advantage over the United States
resulting from Canada's health care system.
Source: Michael Barbaro, Washington Post
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: May 23, 2005
Behind [a] hodgepodge of figures is a very specific goal: Keeping out Wal-Mart. As the
discount giant shifts its focus from the Washington region's fast-growing fringes to its dense urban center,
it has become locked in a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle with the local unionized grocery industry, which is
scrambling to erect legislative barriers to the chain's growth. The fight is taking on national significance.
Wal-Mart, which has conquered rural America with more than 3,000 stores, desperately needs to break into the
urban market to maintain its phenomenal growth. So far, it has been rebuffed in Chicago, New York and Los
Angeles, and the retailer views Washington as an important frontier for expansion.
Hotels break ranks on union contract
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: May 20, 2005
A coalition of prominent Los Angeles hotels has suffered a double blow in its yearlong power struggle with the
hotel workers' union, as two of nine original members publicly broke ranks on the crucial issue of the
contract expiration date. The Unite Here union is demanding that the contract end in 2006 as part of a campaign
to line up expiration dates across the country. That could allow the union to call a national strike as it goes
up against national chains, leaders said. The expiration date has been the key point of contention between the
two sides, with the Los Angeles Hotel Employer's Council pushing for a longer deal.
AFL-CIO is urged to oust its leader
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: May 17, 2005
The
president of the largest union in the AFL-CIO yesterday called on other labor leaders to help him oust John
Sweeney, the federation's president, and warned that his union would quit the federation if Mr. Sweeney was
re-elected. Asserting that sweeping change was needed to revive the labor movement, Andrew Stern, president of
the Service Employees International Union, said Mr. Sweeney was not the person to bring about bold change. Mr.
Stern joined the leaders of four other major unions--the Teamsters, the laborers, the food and commercial
workers, and Unite Here--in endorsing a platform that calls for overhauling the AFL-CIO. Yesterday's
developments show that the challenge to Mr. Sweeney has reached new heights.
Source: Hans Nichols, The Hill
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: May 10, 2005
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has flatly rejected a major labor union's call to cut ties to Wal-Mart
lobbyists and executives who have been canvassing the Capitol in search of new friends and allies. Black
lawmakers say they will continue to listen to Wal-Mart--as they would any other group interested in building a
relationship--and will not be bullied by what they regard as the Service Employees International Union's
(SEIU) inappropriate attempt to "put the CBC in its place" with instructions to shun the world's largest
employer. This SEIU-CBC dispute comes at a time when Wal-Mart is significantly boosting its political
contributions to Democrats.
AFL-CIO lays off 105, but discord grows louder
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: May 8, 2005
Already
facing upheaval and dissent from several union presidents, the AFL-CIO saw its problems escalate last week when
the federation laid off about a fourth of its staff and the chairman of its public relations committee resigned
in a fit of pique. Not only that, but four of the nation's largest unions demanded that the AFL-CIO remove
their members' names from its master political list of 13 million workers because of a feud over sharing
information. The AFL-CIO, a federation of 57 unions, has been in tumult for more than six months, ever since
the federation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, threatened to quit, complaining
that the organization was doing far too little to reverse labor's decline.
United maps novel legal strategy in labor fight
Source: Mark Skertic, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants; International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: May 6, 2005
United Airlines could be flying into uncharted legal territory next week when it asks a bankruptcy
judge to throw out the contracts of more than 41,000 flight attendants, mechanics and machinists. The airline
will use federal bankruptcy laws when asking the court to void the contracts of three unions. If successful,
the carrier has vowed to invoke another law, the Railway Labor Act, to force workers to stay on the job. In
short, United hopes to use the power of the courts to compel workers to accept new pay and benefit terms the
company would dictate.
US warns AFL-CIO on protests about Social Security
Source: Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: May 5, 2005
The Bush
administration has warned the nation's biggest labor federation that union-run pension funds may be breaking
the law in opposing President Bush's Social Security proposals. In a letter to the AFL-CIO, the Department of
Labor said it was "very concerned" that pension plans might be spending workers' money to "advocate a
particular result in the current Social Security debate." The Labor Department also warned the federation that
pension plans could be violating their fiduciary responsibilities by suggesting that they might take their
investment business away from Wall Street firms that support Mr. Bush's plans.
Unions war over tribal casinos in California
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Communications Workers of America; Unite Here
Date: May 4, 2005
The main
union of hotel and restaurant workers has sued another union, accusing it of violating a promise by pressing a
rival campaign to organize workers at tribal casinos in California. The hotel workers' union, Unite Here,
points out that it was granted exclusive jurisdiction by the AFL-CIO in 2001 to organize employees in
California's fast-growing casino industry. But the other union, the Communications Workers of America, defends
the legitimacy of its campaign, noting that it already represents employees at two casinos as a result of
contracts that were signed before the labor federation conferred that jurisdiction.
Laundry workers prepare to strike
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: May 3, 2005
Workers who clean the linens of half the hospitals in Southern California are planning to
strike Thursday, part of a national campaign against laundry contractor Angelica Corp. that could disrupt
services to healthcare facilities across the country. Union leaders said Monday a majority of workers are set
to walk off the job at 15 Angelica plants. They also said union truck drivers and healthcare workers will
cooperate by refusing to handle linens delivered by striker replacements. The union backing the planned strike,
Unite Here, wants Angelica to agree to health and safety improvements, a slower work pace and family healthcare
benefits.
Union cries foul in Wal-Mart sign fight
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: April 19, 2005
The image
planned for the anti-Wal-Mart billboard was unusual--a fire-breathing Godzilla standing next to the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge--and the language was strong: "The Wal-Monster will destroy Staten Island businesses
and devastate our quality of life." But New Yorkers may never see the billboard, which was supposed to go up on
the island, because Clear Channel, the giant radio network that also runs an outdoor advertising company, has
rejected it, saying its image and language are too inflammatory. Officials of the labor union that was planning
the message to help fight a Wal-Mart proposed for Staten Island accused Clear Channel of improper censorship.
Union won't reopen GM labor pact
Source: Chicago Tribune
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: April 15, 2005
United
Auto Workers officials indicated Thursday that they would be unwilling to reopen the union's 2-year-old labor
contract with General Motors to negotiate lower health-care costs. Already battered shares of the world's
largest automaker tumbled to lows not seen in more than a decade. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said after an
annual meeting between GM and the union that the automaker has not asked the union to reopen the contract. He
said the UAW believes it can work with GM to lower costs within the current contract. Gettelfinger repeated his
call for a national health-care system, which he said would be the best thing for employers as well as the
millions of Americans without medical coverage.
1-day strike hits UC facilities
Source: Stuart Silverstein, Natasha Lee, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Date: April 15, 2005
Cooks, janitors, groundskeepers and other service workers staged a one-day
strike Thursday at University of California campuses and hospitals, protesting their job conditions and stalled
union contract negotiations. Union activists with Local 3299 of the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees, which represents 7,300 UC service workers, called rallies and protests at 12 university
sites throughout the state. UC officials said the strike was "presumptively illegal" because negotiations with
the union have not reached a dead end. Union officials disagreed, saying that employees have worked without a
contract since Jan. 31 and have not received a raise in two years.
Union files labor complaint against Wal-Mart
Source: Reuters, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: April 13, 2005
The
largest U.S. grocery union has filed a complaint against Wal-Mart, asking the National Labor Relations Board to
investigate whether the retailer "bribed" employees to block union activities. The United Food and Commercial
Workers' complaint comes after The Wall Street Journal reported last week that former Wal-Mart Vice
Chairman Tom Coughlin may have used undocumented expense payments to fund anti-union activities, including
paying union staffers to tell him of pro-union workers in stores. The union wants the NLRB to subpoena any
documents from Wal-Mart that might substantiate those charges. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the union was filing
wild charges in hopes that they would get attention.
Union seeks Wal-Mart files about payments
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: April 9, 2005
The United
Food and Commercial Workers Union called on Wal-Mart Stores to release all documents connected with accusations
that its former vice chairman, Tom Coughlin, had obtained improper expense account reimbursements to finance
secret anti-union activities. The union voiced dismay over a report in The Wall Street Journal that
cited several Wal-Mart employees who said that Mr. Coughlin diverted thousands of dollars in expense account
reimbursements as part of a plan to make secret payment to union staff members so they would tell Wal-Mart
officials the names of pro-union employees at stores.
Source: Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: April 8, 2005
Thousands of Illinois child-care providers have voted to join a union, ending a nearly decade-long
organizing campaign. They handed a significant victory to the Service Employees International Union, an
organization with growing political clout. The election results, announced Thursday by SEIU's Local 880,
extend collective bargaining rights to nearly 50,000 mostly female workers who offer government-subsidized
child care in their homes. The workers, many of whom earn as little as $9.48 per child per day, care for about
200,000 children from low- and moderate-income families under a state-run program funded by state and federal
grants.
3 Continental unions agree to take pay and benefit cuts
Source: Bloomberg News, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Transport Workers Union
Date: March 31, 2005
Pilots, dispatchers and mechanics at Continental Airlines voted to accept pay and benefit cuts, contributing
to a company goal to reduce annual costs by $500 million. The new contracts hinge on flight attendants'
agreeing to the concessions. Continental said earlier this month that it could be forced to cut jobs, cancel
plane orders and seek more concessions from workers if the contracts were not approved. Continental promised
workers that it would not cut jobs under the new contracts, which run through 2008. The airline also agreed to
provide profit sharing and 10 million stock options to employees.
Unions team up to take on Wal-Mart
Source: Anne Howland, Ottawa Sun
Union(s): National Union of Public and General Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers Canada
Date: March 23, 2005
Two of Canada's largest unions are taking direct aim at Wal-Mart as they prepare to release a study tomorrow
on the "abuse" of the right to freedom of association. Freedom of association includes the right to join a
union, bargain collectively and withhold services by going on strike. The study, by [the National Union of
Public and General Employees] and [the United Food and Commercial Workers] Canada, cites 170 pieces of
legislation that have undermined freedom of association rights since 1982. Because Canadian governments have
neglected to uphold the basic right, the labour leaders said in a release, "employers in Canada have developed
a culture of impunity and routinely engage in the wholesale denial of workers rights." The two unions have
signed a "formal organizing protocol" to support organizing Wal-Mart workers in Canada.
Workers vote to end strike at walnut plant
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: March 23, 2005
Workers at the world's largest walnut processing plant voted Tuesday night to end their more than
13-year-long strike. Members of Teamsters Local 601 ratified the new five-year contract 180-61, clearing the
way for striking workers to return to work Monday at Diamond of California. Most of the 600 strikers who walked
out Sept. 4, 1991, have since found jobs elsewhere and aren't expected to return. Workers took a 30 percent
pay cut in 1985 during tough times, and say they expected to be repaid as the cooperative's finances improved.
The union's leadership ordered the walkout when Diamond offered a dime-an-hour raise and a bonus package in
1991.
Big Three workers give an inch on health care
Source: Danny Hakim, Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: March 22, 2005
With the decline of the domestic auto industry accelerating, the United Auto Workers union has agreed to a
baby-step rollback of its vaunted health care coverage. Under the coverage, workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler
pay no deductibles or monthly premiums. But the union agreed to let Chrysler start imposing deductibles for
workers or retirees who use preferred provider organizations. While Chrysler will reap only modest savings from
the step, and while auto workers still have coverage that is the envy of many white-collar workers, the move is
deeply symbolic and a sign of the union's acknowledgment of the competitive pressures from foreign-based
competitors. Considering that Chrysler is the healthiest of the Big Three at the moment, and that similar
provisions are in all of the Big Three contracts, such arrangements are expected to follow for GM and Ford.
British Labor Party? Embassy staff in U.S. see lack of solidarity
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers
Date: March 17, 2005
Workers at the British Embassy in Washington and at British consulates
throughout the United States are seeking to join an American labor union, but Britain's government has
resisted recognizing the union. In January, shortly after the British Embassy announced cutbacks in sick leave
and some other benefits, a majority of the 630 nondiplomatic employees at the embassy, consulates and United
Nations mission signed statements saying they favored joining the International Federation of Professional and
Technical Engineers, based in Silver Spring, Md. Embassy officials asserted that American law did not require
them to recognize the union, so the employees asked Britain's main labor federation, the Trade Union Congress,
to lobby Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
U.S. moves to take over a United Air pension plan
Source: Mary Williams Walsh, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: March 12, 2005
The
government moved to take over the pension fund for the ground employees and mechanics of United Airlines,
saying that the fund was almost $3 billion short of the amount needed and growing weaker with every month that
United kept control of it. It was the second time in three months that the government has sought to take
control of a United pension plan. In both cases, the government said it had to act to keep United from
improperly exploiting the federal pension insurance program, which is itself in trouble. The Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corporation, which insures pensions, said United had already acknowledged that [the] plan was doomed,
but was delaying shutting it down to get more insurance coverage. If the government does take over [the] plan,
some of its 36,000 participants will lose [some] of their benefits.
Wal-Mart workers reject union in Canada
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: March 9, 2005
Workers at a Wal-Mart store in Windsor have voted against being unionized by the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union. Wal-Mart said store associates in the union's proposed bargaining unit voted 167 to 59 on
Tuesday against joining the union, representing a 74 percent vote against certification. The UFCW said it has
asked the Ontario Labour Relations Board to consider a second certification vote at the Windsor Wal-Mart store
because of "charges Wal-Mart conducted a campaign of intimidation leading up to a certification vote held at
the store on Tuesday." The organizing campaign was the second attempt at the Windsor store. Employees at the
store voted in the 1990s against joining the United Steelworkers of America. But the Ontario labor board ruled
in 1997 that the company engaged in a pattern of misconduct, and automatically certified the employees.
Bush-named NLRB majority further weakens workers rights
Source: Mark Gruenberg, International Labor Communications Association
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: March 4, 2005
The Bush-named GOP majority on the
National Labor Relations board has produced a clear trend over the last four years to further reduce already
weak labor law protections for U.S. workers, the AFL-CIO's top lawyer says. And the worst may be yet to come.
In a press conference on March 1 during the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Las Vegas, federation General
Counsel Jon Hiatt pointed to "0 to 45" rulings by the 3-member NLRB majority that cumulatively weaken worker
protections. But real bad damage would come if that same majority abolishes--in fact if not in name--the
ability of unions to represent workers through "card check," otherwise known as voluntary recognnition
agreements (VRAs).
2 unions feud over Illinois workers
Source: Stephen Franklin, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Service Employees International Union
Date: March 4, 2005
An angry spat erupted Thursday between two of the nation's largest unions over who should represent
49,000 child-care workers in Illinois. The feud pits the Service Employees International Union against the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees over the workers, whom Gov. Rod Blagojevich
recently said could bargain with the state though a union. The workers are not state employees, but they care
for about 200,000 children from low- and moderate-income families in Illinois through state grants. Such
workers are coveted as unions hunt for new members; the two unions also have bumped heads in other states.
Furious over what he described as an effort by AFSCME to undercut his union's long-term organizing effort
among Illinois' child-care workers, SEIU President Andy Stern asked AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to
intervene.
Wal-Mart workers sign union cards
Source: Associated Press, San Jose Mercury News
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: March 3, 2005
Five years after the first unionized Wal-Mart store in Canada was decertified without
winning a contract, union organizers say they've signed enough workers at the same store to hold a new vote.
The United Food and Commercial Workers is asking provincial labor officials to hold a vote next week at a store
in Windsor, Ont. The union said Wednesday that more than 40 percent of workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s east
Windsor location have signed union cards--the minimum required to hold a certification vote. Wal-Mart, the
world's largest retailer with more than 4,000 stores worldwide, has been facing increasing pressure to accept
unionized stores, but has so far resisted. The only two unionized Wal-Mart stores in North America are in
Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., and Jonquiere, Que.
AFL-CIO's Sweeney defeats challenge from dissidents
Source: Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: March 3, 2005
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney turned back a strong challenge to his control from
dissident unions and then won a major increase in spending on labor political activities during a federation
meeting Wednesday. Sweeney's forces defeated an effort to shift $35 million of union funds into union
organizing. The dissident unions had challenged federation policies under Sweeney and discussed the possibility
of running a candidate against Sweeney. Sweeney also won approval of a proposal to nearly double spending on
political and legislative activity to $90 million every two years. On the organizing front, labor continues to
collapse. The percentage of workers who are in unions has fallen from 15.8 percent in 1994 to 12.5 percent last
year, while private sector unionization rates have fallen from 10.8 percent to 7.9 percent in the same
period.
Labor leaders debate 'dramatic changes' for AFL-CIO
Source: Bryant Stamford, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: March 3, 2005
There's little doubt, say leaders of the nation's unions meeting [in Las Vegas], that
organized labor badly needs a fix for its woes. But divisions in their ranks mean that major questions about
the future of the AFL-CIO will probably not be resolved until the group's three-day convention in Chicago in
July, union officials said Tuesday. In a gathering that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney described as "one of the
most important" in labor's history, the AFL-CIO's Executive Council meeting is largely focused on ways to
re-energize the 50-year-old organization.
Labor leaders reject rival plan to shift more money to organizing
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: March 3, 2005
In a vote likely to create deeper tensions inside the labor movement, the leaders of the AFL-CIO
rejected a proposal to cut in half individual unions' contributions to the federation to free up more money
for organizing. The proposal put forward by five large unions came during the federation's winter meeting,
which was taking place under a threat by the AFL-CIO's largest union, the Service Employees International
Union, to leave the organization. The five unions argued that a 50 percent cut in contributions was important
to get unions to invest more in organizing, to shake up the AFL-CIO's bureaucracy and to demonstrate a
commitment to far-reaching change.
Teachers refuse to give homework
Source: Associated Press, FindLaw
Union(s): Berkeley Federation of Teachers
Date: March 1, 2005
Berkeley [California] students aren't getting written homework assignments because teachers are refusing to
grade work on their own time after two years with no pay raise. So far, a black history event had to be
canceled and parents had to staff a middle-school science fair because teachers are sticking strictly to the
hours they're contracted to work. Teachers say they don't want to stop volunteering their time. "It's hard,"
said high school math teacher Judith Bodenhauser. "I have stacks of papers I haven't graded. Parents want to
talk to me; I don't call them back." The action was organized by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, which
wants a cost-of-living increase next year.
Labor pains: eight simple rules
Source: Jonathan Tasini, TomPaine.com
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 28, 2005
Perhaps it's fitting that the AFL-CIO Executive Council, at which the roiling debate over the future of labor
will be played out, is being held in the land of fantasy: Las Vegas. Don't get me wrong: the fact that there
even is a debate--and a sharp one at that--is a great thing. But, count me as one who doubts that the current
debate will lead to the changes needed. These rules will help you understand what is happening in Sin City this
week and how to tell whether anything really will change.
At a small shop in Colorado, Wal-Mart beats a union once more
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: February 28, 2005
Joshua Noble jolted Wal-Mart last November when he got a majority of employees at the Wal-Mart
tire-and-lube shop where he worked to sign statements saying they wanted to vote on bringing in a labor union.
The unionization drive begun by Mr. Noble created a storm in this onetime ranching town at the foot of the
Rockies and became a closely watched test of labor's efforts to unionize the world's largest retailer. But on
Friday the workers at the Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express abandoned Mr. Noble, voting 17 to 1 against
unionizing, another setback for organized labor at the very moment when its leaders are mapping a campaign to
pressure the company to improve wages and benefits.
AFL-CIO leader backs shifting money to member unions' organizing efforts
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 25, 2005
With several unions threatening to bolt the AFL-CIO, John J. Sweeney,
the federation's president, said that he would support cutting individual unions' contributions to the
federation to make more money available to organize workers. Mr. Sweeney gave broad support to proposals made
by several labor leaders who assert that labor needs to devote far more money to organizing to stop labor's
longtime slide. As an unusual debate swirls within labor about what changes are needed, Mr. Sweeney said unions
should have their contributions to the AFL-CIO reduced only if they pledged to invest heavily in organizing.
The debate over change and reducing unions' payments to the AFL-CIO could gather steam next week when the
nation's labor leaders hold their winter meeting at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas.
Wal-Mart, union vie for tiny shop
Source: T.R. Reid, Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers
Date: February 25, 2005
In the 35 months he has worked for one of the world's richest corporations, Joshua Noble has received
several commendations, he says, and three raises. But that still leaves him with an annual wage below $20,000
and a grand total of one week of vacation per year. "It's frustrating, to be at a big company for three years,
and you're still struggling all the time," says the 21-year-old. That frustration has turned Noble into a foot
soldier in what seems likely to be one of the major union-management battlegrounds of the next decade: the
fight to unionize Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart seems likely to face repeated union battles at its 4,800 outlets. The
retailer recently has had to confront unions at its stores in this country and elsewhere.
AFL-CIO chief to seek 3rd term as labor ponders future
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 25, 2005
Amid a deepening sense of crisis in the U.S. labor movement, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney
said Thursday he would propose comprehensive reforms for the labor federation and seek reelection to a third
term. Elected on a reform slate, Sweeney had promised to make labor bigger, stronger and more vibrant. But
despite notable successes in politics and organizing, union membership continued to decline and now stands at
8% of the private-sector workforce, its lowest level in decades. Few blame Sweeney for the setbacks. But
several labor activists have privately said that new, energized leaders are needed to push reforms. Sweeney's
decision to seek reelection in June--which was expected--makes it more awkward for his rivals, though others
are expected to seek his job anyway.
AFL-CIO leaders to debate major reforms at meeting
Source: Nigel Hunt, Reuters
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: February 24, 2005
The AFL-CIO executive council will attempt
to hammer out a reform program when it meets in Las Vegas next week as the U.S. labor federation seeks to
regain political clout, calm internal dissent and reverse declining membership, President John Sweeney said.
Sweeney said the AFL-CIO would seek to encourage union mergers and provide financial incentives for unions to
organize in workplaces where they are currently not active. The number of U.S. union members has fallen by 1.28
million to 15.47 million since Sweeney took the helm of the AFL-CIO in 1995 and the percentage of union members
had dipped to 12.5 percent of workers from 15.5 percent. Sweeney said the Bush administration was the "most
hostile to working people we've ever seen" and said that the union movement also faced employer resistance to
workers trying to form unions.
Labour rules out Wal-Mart boycott
Source: CBC News
Union(s): Quebec Federation of Labour
Date: February 14, 2005
Organized labour in
Quebec has announced a series of moves to fight Wal-Mart's closure of its first unionized store in the
province, but those moves, for now at least, stop short of a boycott. The Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ)
said a boycott could backfire, pointing out that several unionization drives are underway at other Wal-Marts in
Canada. FTQ president Henri Masse said Wal-Mart might accuse his group of working against its own people.
Instead, the labour movement will focus its Wal-Mart strategy on the Quebec government and will fight the
closure through labour tribunals.
Is labor out in front on health care?
Source: Matt Miller, New York Times
Union(s): Communications Workers of America, Service Employees International Union
Date: February 13, 2005
It's no
secret that surging health costs have become a C.E.O.-level issue. When a company like General Motors looks
more each year like a giant health plan that operates a nice little nonprofit car business on the side, who
wouldn't sound the alarm? But to many business leaders, their union counterparts' view of soaring health
costs remains a mystery. Recent conversations with Morton Bahr of the Communications Workers of America and
Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union suggest that at least some union leaders think about
the health system in ways more sophisticated and businesslike than many chief executives do--and that they are
eager to be partners in a national reform dialogue that's overdue.
Pentagon's personnel system faces suit
Source: Christopher Lee, Washington Post
Union(s): American Federation of Government Employees, Association of Civilian Technicians, Laborers' International Union, National Association of Government Employees, National Federation of Federal Employees
Date: February 11, 2005
Five federal-employee unions announced yesterday that they will file a lawsuit next week in U.S. District
Court challenging parts of the Defense Department's new personnel system. The unions contend that Pentagon
officials went against federal law by refusing to adequately consult with employees' representatives in
developing the sections on labor-management issues. They also say that the National Security Personnel System
would gut collective bargaining in violation of federal law. The American Federation of Government Employees,
the Association of Civilian Technicians, the Laborers' International Union, the National Association of
Government Employees, and the National Federation of Federal Employees have about 250,000 members among the
750,000 civilian workers at the Defense Department.
Wal-Mart to close store in Canada with a union
Source: Ian Austen, New York Times
Union(s): United Food and Commercial Workers Canada
Date: February 10, 2005
Wal-Mart Canada said Wednesday that it [will] close a store in Quebec where unionized workers are attempting
to negotiate the first collective agreement in North America with the company. The union [will] appeal the
closing to Quebec's labor relations board. But a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling affirmed the right of
employers to close for any reason. The situation may repeat itself in other cities and towns in Canada. A union
bargaining unit was recently certified at another Wal-Mart store, in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. The store's
closing might provoke a reaction against Wal-Mart in Quebec, an area where unions enjoy unusual strength.
Labor tries organizing in the union-wary South
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: February 6, 2005
The
Service Employees International Union is undertaking one of the largest private-sector organizing drives in the
South in decades, seeking to represent 7,000 condominium workers, mostly immigrants, in the Miami area. [SEIU]
president Andrew Stern is leading a campaign to remake the labor movement, and his aides assert that if unions
are serious about reversing their decline and helping low-wage workers nationwide, they need to expand below
the Mason-Dixon line. Union officials also acknowledge a secondary motive: to try to transform the politics of
the region and the nation by creating conditions in which labor-friendly candidates can be elected here. If the
service employees gain a foothold, they could embolden other unions, many labor experts say. While 12.5 percent
of workers are in unions nationwide, in Florida just 6 percent are.
Source: Mark Skertic, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: February 1, 2005
United Airlines won labor peace Monday, though it may last only a few months, when two of its
largest unions agreed to millions of dollars in concessions, and a bankruptcy judge imposed a short-term
contract on a third. Judge Eugene Wedoff ordered a temporary 10 percent pay cut for workers in the mechanics
union after United's attorney argued the financially ailing carrier needed the reduction immediately. The
airline's pilots and flight attendants agreed to new contracts that cut pay and changed work rules.
First labor union at Wal-Mart?
Source: CNN.com
Union(s): UFCW
Date: January 31, 2005
Employees at a Colorado Wal-Mart
tire and auto maintenance shop have been granted approval to hold a union election that could create the first
ever organized labor group at the country's biggest retailer. Workers at the Loveland, Colo., Wal-Mart Tire
& Lube Express are expected to vote in February on representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers
Union. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) spokesman said that the automotive service workers were found to
have a "distinct and sufficient interest" in collective bargaining that distinguishes them from other store
employees.
Source: Matt Bai, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: January 30, 2005
The S.E.I.U. is a
different kind of union, rooted in the new service economy. Its members aren't truck drivers or assembly-line
workers but janitors and nurses and home health care aides, roughly a third of whom are black, Asian or Latino.
While the old-line industrial unions have been shrinking every year, [Andrew] Stern's union has been
organizing low-wage workers, many of whom have never belonged to a union, at a torrid pace, to the point where
the S.E.I.U. is now the largest and fastest-growing trade union in North America. Once a movement of rust brown
and steel gray, Big Labor is increasingly represented, at rallies and political conventions, by a rising sea of
purple. All of this makes Andy Stern -- a charismatic 54-year-old former social-service worker -- a very
powerful man in labor, and also in Democratic politics.
United union rejects tentative contract
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
Date: January 28, 2005
United
Airlines' mechanics union announced Friday that its members rejected a tentative contract agreement, dealing
the carrier a setback in its efforts to cut labor costs without alienating its workers. Members of the Aircraft
Mechanics Fraternal Association also voted to authorize a strike if United succeeds in its efforts to get a
federal bankruptcy judge to impose its own terms, union spokesman Richard Turk said. United pilots and flight
attendants are conducting similar contract ratification votes, with the results to be announced Monday.
Grocers, union in Bay Area reach deal
Source: Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): United Food & Commercial Workers
Date: January 25, 2005
Three major supermarket chains and the union representing 30,000 grocery workers in the Bay Area have reached
a tentative agreement on a new contract that may have been influenced by the crippling supermarket strike in
Central and Southern California a year ago. The contract doesn't include a two-tier wage system. Union members
will vote on the proposed deal over the next three weeks. They may owe their comparatively better deal to the
sacrifices of their Central and Southern California counterparts. "Supermarket workers across the country have
benefited from the Los Angeles experience," said Kent Wong, director of UCLA's Center for Labor Research and
Education.
Actors, studios agree on contract
Source: James Bates, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Screen Actors Guild; American Federation of Television & Radio Artists
Date: January 21, 2005
Actors
and Hollywood's major entertainment companies reached agreement on a three-year contract late Thursday,
averting a production slowdown that could have started as early as this month. Under the $200-million pact,
actors' pay is increased across the board, but they do not gain a bigger share of studio DVD revenue. The
centerpiece of the agreement gained by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television &
Radio Artists is a 9% raise over three years for 140,000 performers, from film and TV actors to dancers.
D.C. hotel workers ratify 3-year pact, end strike threat
Source: Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: January 19, 2005
Workers from the District's major hotels overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract, ending a
five-month struggle that threatened a strike during the presidential inauguration. The contract gives 3,500
hotel workers raises over three years and guarantees that they will not pay health insurance premiums. The 14
hotels involved in the negotiations backed off from earlier demands that newly hired employees pay part of
their premiums, which would have created a two-tier health care system strongly opposed by the union. The major
victory for hotels was a three-year contract, rather than the two-year deal sought by the union, which wanted
to bargain for the next hotel contracts in three major cities at the same time.
Labor Presses Case Against Privatizing Social Security
Source: Ben White, Washington Post
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: January 19, 2005
The AFL-CIO on Tuesday stepped up its opposition to private Social Security accounts, accusing Wall
Street's main trade group, the Securities Industry Association, of campaigning in favor of policy changes that
would put workers' retirement at risk while showering billions of dollars in fees on SIA members. "Support for
privatizing Social Security creates a conflict of interest for the member firms of the SIA like those which led
to the financial industry scandals of recent years," AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney wrote in a letter to SIA
Chairman Daniel J. Ludeman. The labor federation began to take a more aggressive stand on corporate governance
issues after scandals at Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and other companies.
Hotels, union negotiators break off talks after 3 hours
Source: Neil Irwin, Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: January 13, 2005
Contract talks between the local hotel union and 14 large D.C. hotels ended abruptly last
night as negotiators for the hotels refused to increase their pay and benefits offer, complicating efforts to
avoid a strike before the presidential inauguration next week. Unite Here Local 25 officials have said they
will take action, possibly including a strike, if there is no new contract by Saturday. The two sides have
reached agreement on some minor issues involving working conditions but reached no accord on the union's
access to workplaces or on future pay and benefits for hotel workers.
Steelworkers, PACE merge into union
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America, PACE International Union
Date: January 11, 2005
The
United Steelworkers of America and PACE International Union announced a merger Tuesday that will create the
nation's largest industrial labor union. The combined force will have more political clout and broader
coverage of workers in the industrial sector, union officials said. While the most recent filings with the U.S.
Department of Labor show the combined union would have about 776,000 members, union officials say those 2003
labor figures are outdated and put the actual figure closer to 850,000. Even using conservative estimates, the
new union would exceed membership of other large industrial unions such as the United Autoworkers of America
and the International Association of Machinists.
A pension plan's broken promise
Source: H.J. Cummins, Star Tribune
Union(s): United Steelworkers of America
Date: January 9, 2005
While many workers
assume there's a government guarantee protecting them from a failed pension plan, that guarantee is more akin
to catastrophic health coverage--deliberately limited. Economists worry more than ever about the [Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corp.]'s prospects, with some even predicting a savings-and-loan-style bailout. In just four
years, the PBGC has fallen from a $9.7 billion surplus to a $23 billion shortfall, thanks to the steel-industry
collapse, recession-driven company failures, the aging of America and--some say--Congress' unwillingness to
tighten rules requiring companies to kick in money to the PBGC. The next big concern: underfunded airline
pensions.
Judge rejects United's contract with pilots
Source: Micheline Maynard, Mary Williams Walsh, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: January 8, 2005
A federal bankruptcy judge rejected a contract between United Airlines and its pilots' union on
Friday, saying the agreement unfairly forced other unions to join the pilots in letting United terminate their
pension plans. The pilots' contract, which members of the Air Line Pilots Association approved on Thursday,
drew unusual opposition from a federal pension agency, United's creditors committee, some of its banks, its
other unions and its retired pilots. The uncommon action by Judge Eugene R. Wedoff was the latest setback for
United, which filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002 and has yet to present a reorganization plan.
Courts side with United and US Airways on labor contracts
Source: Eric Dash, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers
Date: January 7, 2005
In
separate bankruptcy proceedings yesterday, US Airways received approval to cancel contracts with its mechanics
and baggage handlers and United Airlines won pay cuts it had sought for a similar group. The rulings were
victories for both airlines, which are struggling for survival, but defeats for their unions. The rulings
should provide both airlines a little more breathing room and, in the case of US Airways, permit it to stave
off liquidation for now.
Judge lets airline toss contract
Source: Keith L. Alexander, Amy Joyce, Washington Post
Union(s): International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers
Date: January 7, 2005
A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge yesterday granted US Airways' request to throw out its
machinists' contract as part of the airline's effort to cut costs and emerge from bankruptcy protection. But
Judge Stephen S. Mitchell delayed enforcement of the ruling at least until Jan. 22, when union members are
scheduled to vote on US Airways' latest contract proposal. If the union rejects the cost-cutting proposal, the
existing contract will be nullified and the airline permitted to replace it with a cheaper one. In siding with
US Airways, Mitchell said the mechanics should consider which would be worse: half of them losing their jobs,
or all of them losing their jobs should the airline be forced to liquidate.
Hotel union threatens to strike before inauguration
Source: Neil Irwin, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: January 7, 2005
Officials of the local hotel union said yesterday that they may call a strike at 14 major D.C. hotels
if they do not reach accord with management on a new contract by Jan. 15. That raises the possibility of a work
stoppage during the presidential inauguration, a period when tens of thousands of visitors flock to town and
hotels are generally the busiest they are during any four-year span. The threat, by Unite Here Local 25, came
at the same time participants reported progress in contract talks.
Judge throws out United's new deal with pilots
Source: Associated Press, USA Today
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: January 7, 2005
A
federal bankruptcy judge threw out a disputed new five-year contract between United Airlines and its pilots
Friday, dealing the bankrupt carrier a significant setback in its efforts to lock in lower labor costs without
a court order. The contract, which called for 15% pay cuts, drew opposition from labor groups and others who
complained that it would pave the way for United to eliminate traditional pension plans. Bankruptcy Judge
Eugene Wedoff said several aspects of the proposed agreement would "unduly tilt the bankruptcy process,"
including the requirement that other unions' pension plans also be terminated.
United pilots ratify new cost-cutting pact
Source: Associated Press, FindLaw
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: January 6, 2005
United
Airlines' pilots have overwhelmingly ratified a new cost-cutting contract, giving the carrier an important
victory as it worked to secure agreements from all its unions on the eve of a self-imposed deadline. The
announcement Thursday by the Air Line Pilots Association came as some unions, creditors and banks gathered in
bankruptcy court to oppose the five-year deal, in which pilots agreed to wage cuts and the company's
elimination of traditional pensions but received future financial considerations. The groups have denounced the
contract as an effort to short-circuit the pension deliberation process.
US Airways workers OK new labor contract
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: January 6, 2005
Flight attendants at bankrupt US Airways approved a new labor contract Wednesday that cuts their pay by nearly
10 percent, leaving only one union that has refused to accept the cost cuts the carrier says are needed to
avoid liquidation. The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents more than 5,000 workers at the
airline, approved the contract with 64 percent of the vote, according to a union spokeswoman. The new contract
cuts pay immediately by 8.4 to 9 percent, with pay raises of 1 percent to 2 percent beginning in 2007 and
extending through 2011. Tougher work rules will also be implemented.
United Air creditors oppose deal with pilots
Source: Micheline Maynard, Mary Williams Walsh, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: January 5, 2005
In a bitter split, United Airlines' creditors, along with some banks and unions, have joined the
federal government in opposing a deal in which United would terminate its pilots' pension plan and offer the
pilots equity in the airline and other sweeteners in exchange. The United situation has riveted the airline
industry, in part because of a decision last week by the federal agency, the Pension Guaranty Benefit
Corporation, to seize the pilots' pension plan, rather than see its unfunded burden increase. It also has
implications for unions at other airlines, which could seek similar cuts if United is successful.
Airline financing proposal is faulted by union leader
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers and the Laborers\' International Union of North America
Date: December 22, 2004
The business plan that United Airlines is using to line up postbankruptcy financing is unworkable, a
labor union leader said yesterday, even though the plan was called "feasible" by an independent financial
consultant. The union leader, Robert Roach Jr., vice president for transportation at the International
Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said the business plan assumed the termination of United's four employee
pension plans, a step he vowed the machinists would not take voluntarily. Further, said Mr. Roach, a $150
million miscalculation by United would offset the assumptions in the plan, the fifth by the airline in two
years.
Report says N.H.L. will reject proposal
Source: Jason Diamos, New York Times
Union(s): N.H.L. Players Association
Date: December 14, 2004
The
National Hockey League appears poised to reject a proposal made Thursday by the players union. The proposal
included a 24 percent reduction in pay and other concessions but not a hard salary cap. Bill Daly, executive
vice president of the N.H.L., wrote that the union's proposal offered short-term financial relief, but fell
"well short of providing the fundamental systemic changes that are required to ensure that overall league
economics remain in synch on a going-forward basis." The league is certain to ask for a greater measure of what
it calls cost certainty, which many players say is a euphemism for a hard salary cap.
Unions plan big drive for better pay at nonunion Wal-Mart
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: December 11, 2004
The AFL-CIO and more than a half dozen unions are planning an unusual--and unusually
expensive--campaign intended to pressure Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, to improve its wages and
benefits. The campaign will be highly unusual because it will not, at least at first, focus on unionizing
Wal-Mart workers, but will instead focus on telling Americans that Wal-Mart--with wages averaging between $9
and $10 an hour--is pulling down wages and benefits at companies across the nation. The unions are talking of
spending $25 million a year on the effort, more than has ever been spent before in a union campaign against a
single company.
Teamsters offer plan to reshape labor future
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)
Date: December 9, 2004
The
Teamsters union heated up the debate over reshaping the labor movement yesterday by proposing to slash the
A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s budget and finance a four-year campaign of political and union organizing in swing states to
help elect a pro-labor president. Worried about the steady decline of organized labor, the Teamsters, one of
the nation's largest unions, recommended withholding half of the $90 million that individual unions give the
labor federation each year and using it to recruit more members.
Union may try to avoid strike against hotels
Source: Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: December 6, 2004
Hotel workers in Los Angeles and two other cities intent on a key contract goal are taking an unusual approach
to reach it: not going on strike. Unite Here locals in L.A., San Francisco and Washington want two-year
contracts that would expire at the same time as those in several other cities around the country, giving the
union nationwide bargaining clout against giant hotel chains. Instead of striking if they don't get two-year
deals, union members may simply work without contracts until 2006--getting what they want, they hope, by
default.
Between union leader and his protege, debate over direction of labor
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: December 5, 2004
Twenty years ago, John J. Sweeney, then the president of the Service Employees International Union,
was so impressed by the drive and intelligence of a little-known union official from Pennsylvania that he asked
him to move to Washington and become his organizing director. The official was Andrew L. Stern, who, quite
predictably, succeeded Mr. Sweeney as the union's president. But rather unpredictably, he has called into
question the whole structure of the house of labor, which Mr. Sweeney has headed for the past nine years.
Union sends strike ballots to 21,000 United attendants
Source: Associated Press, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: December 3, 2004
The nation's largest flight attendants union on Thursday mailed strike authorization
ballots to 21,000 United Airlines flight attendants, seeking their approval for nationwide walkouts if United
or US Airways breaks its labor contracts in bankruptcy. The board of the Association of Flight Attendants
authorized a strike last month if collective bargaining contracts are abrogated by either carrier. Both have
put the process in place while negotiating new terms as part of continuing restructurings in bankruptcy.
Transit union campaigns against computer-run trains
Source: Sewell Chan, New York Times
Union(s): Transport Workers Union of America
Date: December 2, 2004
New York City's transit union began a campaign yesterday to mobilize riders against a plan to replace train
conductors with a computer-controlled subway system. Members of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers
Union of America, handed out leaflets at stations along the L train route in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where New
York City Transit officials hope to begin introducing the fully automated trains by the middle of 2005.
Source: Stephen Franklin, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: November 29, 2004
Come July, organized labor will gather in Chicago for a meeting that is quickly shaping up to be
both monumental and stormy. The convention spotlights the re-election bid of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney,
70, who is likely to face a challenge for his job heading the umbrella labor organization. Also at issue will
be a controversial drive to restructure the way unions get their work done. Sweeney recently signaled union
leaders his expectations about what might come up at the meeting organized labor holds every four years. In a
letter to labor leaders, Sweeney said "we are still not the movement we need to be" and called for a massive
discussion from the bottom up about "extremely hard decisions" on organized labor's future.
Stagehands reach deal on contract
Source: Jesse McKinley, New York Times
Union(s): International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees
Date: November 24, 2004
After an
all-night negotiating session, Broadway's stagehands and producers reached an agreement early yesterday on a
new three-year contract. The deal is the latest between producers and the theater industry's three major
unions, effectively assuring labor peace on Broadway at least through the spring of 2007. The contract includes
annual 3 percent pay increases, as well as increases in benefit contributions, said Alan Cohen, a spokesman for
the League of American Theaters and Producers.
United's pilots are offered 2 ways to cut their wages
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: November 24, 2004
United Airlines is giving its pilots' union two options. They can accept 18 percent wage cuts or they can
agree to smaller cuts but also accept significant changes in work rules. With either option, the airline, which
has been in bankruptcy for almost two years, told its pilots that it wants to be able to impose additional wage
cuts after it leaves Chapter 11, if it needs to do so. The demands are part of United's bid for another round
of $725 million in wage and benefit cuts from its unions. Labor specialists said they could not remember
another instance where a company tried to reserve the right to seek more cuts even if it completed an
overhaul.
UPS dismisses pilots' threat to halt flights
Source: Andrew Ward, Financial Times
Union(s): Independent Pilots Association
Date: November 24, 2004
Pilots
of United Parcel Service yesterday threatened to stop work in sympathy with striking workers in Canada--a move
that could cripple the package delivery company during the peak Christmas season. UPS dismissed the pilots'
threat as scaremongering and said it was confident the strike would not spread beyond Canada. Nearly 4,000 UPS
workers have been on strike there since Monday over a pay dispute. The Independent Pilots Association, which
represents 2,500 UPS crew members, has ordered members to halt flights to and from Canada in support of the
stoppage and threatened more widespread action if the company attempts to break the strike.
Pennsylvania turnpike workers go on strike
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: November 24, 2004
Toll collectors on the Pennsylvania Turnpike went on strike Wednesday, just as Americans were hitting the road
for Thanksgiving. The strike was announced by union leaders. Anticipating a walkout, the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Commission decided to waive tolls on Wednesday and have nonunion employees staff tollbooths Thursday, charging
a flat fee instead of regular tolls. Negotiations have been rocky between turnpike officials and unions
representing toll collectors, maintenance workers and office employees.
San Francisco hotel workers to return
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: November 22, 2004
Unionized
workers have reached an agreement with a group representing 14 luxury hotels to end an eight-week lockout,
allowing about 4,000 maids, bellhops, cooks and other hourly employers to return to their jobs on Tuesday. The
workers went on strike at four hotels on Sept. 29 and were locked out at 10 others two days later. They agreed
to end their strike last month, but the hotels said the lockout would continue until agreement was reached on a
new contract. Mayor Gavin Newsom said negative publicity and the union's ability to extend health coverage
while workers remained locked out were major factors in the hotel operators' change of heart.
U.S. labor chiefs press El Salvador for killers of Teamsters organizer
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Date: November 21, 2004
Gilberto Soto, a union organizer in New Jersey, was so upset by the wages and
working conditions of truck drivers in Central America that when he went home to visit his mother in El
Salvador and celebrate his 50th birthday this month, he added a week to his vacation to go to ports to see
about unionizing them. On the eve of his birthday, he stepped outside of his family's longtime home in
Usulutan to talk on his cellphone. "We suddenly heard three shots," recalled his sister Areli, who was inside.
The killing, on Nov. 5, has deeply unsettled American labor leaders, who called for an investigation. They
suspect that Mr. Soto, an organizer for the Teamsters, was gunned down as part of a systematic effort to
suppress union activity in El Salvador.
Unions resume debate over merging and power
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: November 18, 2004
Andrew Stern
has ignited a debate throughout the labor movement by arguing that labor needs a sweeping overhaul, including
the merger of many unions and a vast increase in organizing, to reverse its long decline. Last week, Mr. Stern,
president of the Service Employees International Union, called on the AFL-CIO to adopt a 10-point plan, and the
debate he began could lead to the most far-reaching changes in the labor movement in a half-century. Mr. Stern
complained that unions were doing far too little to help American workers because they were organizing too few
workers and were often undercutting one another in negotiations. He also complained that many unions were too
small to contend with giant companies.
Pizza drivers seek national union
Source: Matt Gouras, Associated Press, FindLaw
Union(s): Association of Pizza Delivery Drivers
Date: November 18, 2004
A fledgling national union for pizza drivers is demanding better wages and training, saying the
large chains have been taking advantage of them for years. It's an effort that has attracted the attention of
the Teamsters union, but the Association of Pizza Delivery Drivers has yet to organize its first shop. A vote
at a Domino's franchise in Lincoln, Neb., failed Tuesday night on a tie. But organizers expect a better result
next week when Pizza Hut drivers vote at a store near Columbus, Ohio. About 600 drivers nationwide have signed
up for the free union, and momentum [is] gathering for more unionization votes.
Unions insulted by Bush minimum wage
Source: Elizabeth Fulk, The Hill
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: November 18, 2004
Despite Democratic losses
across the board in the elections, organized labor is refusing to embrace President Bush's offer to raise the
minimum wage by $1.10 an hour. "It's insufficient, and it's too little, too late," said Bill Samuel, director
of legislation for the AFL-CIO. "This is an insult to workers whose wages have fallen so far behind that they
can't even afford the bare necessities." Samuel said his organization would protest any wage increase less
than the one Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) proposed, which would raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 an
hour.
Kaiser to help S.F. hotel workers
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: November 17, 2004
Healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente stepped into San Francisco's bitter hotel labor dispute Tuesday by
agreeing to provide two months of medical coverage to 3,500 locked-out workers who were at risk of losing their
benefits. The Oakland-based health plan's decision allows the workers, whose employer-sponsored health
insurance with Kaiser is due to expire Dec. 1, to stay out on picket lines while their union holds out for its
contract demands. A spokesman for Kaiser said the nonprofit company was not taking sides in the hotel dispute
but merely looking out for the well-being of its clients. In the past, Kaiser has done the same for other union
members engaged in work stoppages, including Southern California grocery store workers last year.
Flight attendants threaten to strike
Source: Orlando Sentinel, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: November 17, 2004
The nation's largest flight attendants union said Tuesday it would hold
strike-authorization votes at four major airlines, accusing the industry of using the bankruptcy process to cut
workers' pay and other benefits. The strike votes should be tallied by the end of December. After that, union
officials plan to await the outcome of the airlines' bankruptcy proceedings before weighing whether to walk
off the job. The union has 46,000 members employed by 26 airlines, but the four immediately at issue are
United, US Airways, ATA and Hawaiian.
Flight attendants union wants strike vote
Source: Associated Press, FindLaw
Union(s): Association of Flight Attendants
Date: November 16, 2004
The
president of the United States' largest flight attendants union urged authorization of a nationwide strike and
criticized the airline industry for using the bankruptcy process to obliterate collective bargaining rights.
Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 46,000 members, said that
efforts at airlines like United and US Airways to use the bankruptcy process to cancel union contracts and
impose deep pay cuts are threatening flight attendants' careers across the nation. She also noted that the
bankruptcy process is being used to terminate pension plans and eliminate health coverage for retirees.
Delta pilots vote to accept 32.5% pay cut
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: November 12, 2004
Pilots at
Delta Air Lines overwhelmingly approved a new five-year contract yesterday with $1 billion in annual
concessions sought by the airline, which had threatened to file for bankruptcy if the pilots did not acquiesce.
The deal, which cuts pay by 32.5 percent, would reduce the salary of the highest-paid Delta pilot by more than
$90,000, to about $185,000 a year. It ends an era of luxurious pilot pay in the airline industry, but does not
end Delta's problems.
Disney workers reject contract
Source: Sean Mussenden, Orlando Sentinel, Chicago Tribune
Union(s): Service Trades Council
Date: November 12, 2004
Thousands of unionized Walt Disney World workers voted down a new three-year
labor contract Thursday, giving union negotiators the authority to call a strike. The surprise rejection sends
negotiators with the Service Trades Council union group and Disney back to the bargaining table today. Union
leaders said they were unlikely to call for a work stoppage, at least in the near future. They hope to convince
Disney to improve its offer, saying the proposed wage increases are too small and the increases in health-care
premiums are too high.
Labor vows to consider change, but rebel voices discontent
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): AFL-CIO
Date: November 11, 2004
The president of the AFL-CIO announced Wednesday that organized labor, facing the second term of an
administration it fought hard to beat in last week's election, would take up recommendations to reverse the
movement's long decline. The federation's president, John Sweeney, said the proposals would be put forth by a
Committee of Change. But immediately after the nation's union leaders had created the committee, the president
of the federation's largest union escalated his threat to break away unless substantial change was adopted to
strengthen the movement. "We need to either change the AFL-CIO or build something stronger that could really
change workers' lives," said Andrew Stern of the 1.6-million-member Service Employees International Union.
Nigerian court blocks upcoming strike
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Nigeria Labor Congress
Date: November 11, 2004
A Nigerian high court on Thursday blocked an upcoming general strike meant to shut down oil exports in the
world's seventh largest exporter. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer and the fifth-largest source of
U.S. oil imports. Nigeria's unions, including blue- and white-collar oil worker guilds, had called the strike
for Tuesday, and said this one--unlike other recent strikes--would target oil production and exports. Unions
are unhappy over a 23 percent increase in domestic fuel prices, raised by the government in September.
Largest union issues call for major changes
Source: Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
Union(s): Service Employees International Union
Date: November 10, 2004
As the
nation's union leaders gather today in Washington the labor movement is in turmoil, with the president of the
AFL-CIO's largest union hinting that it might pull out of the labor federation. In a sign of the jockeying and
soul-searching, Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO's largest
union, called yesterday in a letter for far-reaching changes in labor designed to increase its membership,
proposing a $25-million-a-year campaign to unionize Wal-Mart and a near doubling in the amount spent annually
on organizing. The meeting comes as long-simmering differences in the AFL-CIO have been intensified by
President Bush's re-election, with many union leaders fearing retaliation because organized labor spent more
than $150 million to try to defeat him.
Lucent Technologies and unions reach deal
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Date: November 9, 2004
Lucent
Technologies Inc. reached a tentative agreement early Tuesday with two labor unions that cover about 3,250
employees nationwide, a company spokeswoman said. Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward did not reveal details of the
agreement, but said the company and the unions had bargained over issues like whether retirees should
contribute to the cost of their health insurance. Most of the 3,250 workers are represented by the
Communications Workers of America; about 250 are represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers.
Disney, union reach tentative pact
Source: Sean Mussenden, Orlando Sentinel
Union(s): Service Trades Council
Date: November 5, 2004
Walt Disney World and its largest union reached a tentative deal on a new three-year
contract late Thursday. The agreement between Disney and the Service Trades Council, which covers more than 40
percent of Disney World's work force, came after nearly eight months of talks on wage hikes, health and
retirement benefits, and other issues. The council, which represents more than 20,000 theme park and hotel
workers, is made up of six smaller unions. Leaders of four of the six agreed late Thursday to the tentative
deal. But the heads of two others said they were not invited to the final negotiating session, had not seen the
deal, and could not support it. One of those unions said it was considering legal action against the council
and Disney.
Volkswagen averts strike by German workers
Source: Mark Landler, New York Times
Union(s): IG Metall
Date: November 4, 2004
Volkswagen averted the first full-scale strike in its history on Wednesday, offering its factory workers a
seven-year job guarantee in return for a 28-month freeze in wages. Volkswagen's union, IG Metall, had staged
warning strikes at several factories to press for a pay increase of 4 percent. But even as it threatened
broader disruption, the union later gave up this demand--accepting a face-saving compromise that it must now
try to sell to its members. Volkswagen's face-off with the union was closely watched here as a test of whether
German auto workers--and VW employees in particular--could maintain their privileged position as the best-paid,
best-treated workers in an increasingly competitive global industry.
UAW workers walk out at four CNH plants
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Auto Workers
Date: November 4, 2004
More than
600 workers at four CNH Global NV plants in the Midwest walked off their jobs Wednesday over the failure to
negotiate a new six-year contract with the maker of farm and construction equipment. The strike shut down
tractor production at the Racine manufacturing operation and three other plants. The main impact was reported
to be in Racine and Burlington, Iowa, where backhoe loaders are made. Cal Rapson, a UAW vice president who
directs the national union's Agricultural Implement Department, issued a statement saying the job action was
needed to reach a fair labor agreement. "The company's contract demands, particularly in the area of health
care, simply do not reflect the value our members contribute to CNH," he said.
A tentative contract is reached to end Atlantic City casino strike
Source: Michelle O'Donnell, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: November 2, 2004
A month-long strike against seven of the 12 Atlantic City casinos, which left gamblers eating
with plastic utensils and office workers serving them breakfast, appeared to be over last night as the union
representing the striking workers reached a tentative agreement with management. Members of Local 54 of the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union accepted the five-year contract, which includes
some increases in pay and benefits, but is not the ambitious three-year contract that the union had sought
earlier. Over the five-year contract, the workers will receive a 28.3 percent increase in wages, health care
benefits and pension contributions, the union said.
Volkswagen may be close to settling its wage talks
Source: Mark Landler, New York Times
Union(s): IG Metall
Date: November 2, 2004
Volkswagen and its workers entered a critical week in their wage negotiations on Monday, with signs that a
compromise was taking shape even as protests flared at factories across Germany. The showdown is being closely
watched, and not just because it pits Germany's most powerful union against its most prominent carmaker. The
talks are viewed as a litmus test of whether German auto workers can preserve their privileges in the fiercely
competitive global car industry. In a sign of how high the stakes are, the union has threatened large-scale
strikes against Volkswagen if the talks do not produce an agreement this week. They would be the first in the
company's history.
Lockout at top hotels mars tourism in San Francisco
Source: Carolyn Marshall, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: November 2, 2004
The drumbeats and chanted slogans begin at dawn and echo through downtown streets well after dark, as
bellhops, barkeeps, maids and cooks--locked out of their jobs by 14 of this city's most prominent
hotels--picket to protest stalled contract talks that have set this popular tourist destination on edge. Now in
its fifth week, this labor dispute threatens to tarnish San Francisco's self-described reputation as
"Everyone's Favorite City." Workers are at odds with their managers, and city leaders are at odds with hotel
owners. And caught in the cross-fire are the city's treasured tourists.
Volkswagen, German union resume wage talks
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): IG Metall
Date: November 1, 2004
Volkswagen AG and Germany's biggest industrial union resumed pay negotiations Monday with both sides hopeful
of bridging their differences--even as thousands of auto workers staged brief stoppages to underline their
demand for wage increases and job guarantees. Volkswagen, which wants a two-year wage freeze, says it must cut
costs to meet competition from lower-cost rivals. In addition to the freeze, it wants more flexible scheduling
to avoid overtime and programs that would allow new workers to be paid less. The union has demanded annual
increases of 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent in a 26-month deal, along with job guarantees.
Talks between D.C. hotels, union still in deadlock
Source: Neil Irwin, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 28, 2004
Fourteen major D.C. hotels and the union that represents their employees met yesterday for another round of
talks on a new contract, but they made little progress in a session both sides described as contentious. Since
their contract expired Sept. 15, the two sides have faced off at bargaining sessions about once every week or
two, but have reported little progress toward an agreement. The union seeks improved working conditions, higher
wages and protection of benefits, and a two-year contract that would expire the same year as contracts in New
York and other cities. Both sides said that they may take further action if the impasse continues, but neither
would specify what that might be, or when it might happen.
Delta reaches deal with pilots' union
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 28, 2004
Delta Air
Lines reached a tentative agreement with its pilots' union last night on long-sought wage and benefit cuts,
averting a threatened bankruptcy filing, at least for now. Terms of the deal were not available. Agreement came
after an intense day of negotiations, during which Delta made its final offer in its bid for $1 billion in
contract concessions. If pilots had not agreed to the tentative deal, Delta was prepared to file for Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection today. Leaders of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Delta's 6,900
pilots, must approve the deal before ratification can begin.
Kroger employees ratify new contract
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Food & Commercial Workers
Date: October 28, 2004
Members of the union representing Kroger Co. employees in three states ratified a three-year contract. "Kroger
should not kid itself about the results of today's vote," Lennie Wyatt, president of United Food and
Commercial Workers Union Local 1099, said in a statement late Wednesday after all-day voting. "This contract
was ratified for one reason and one reason only--there simply was no workable alternative at this time. In a
down economy and during a national health care crisis, a strike seemed a worse alternative." About 8,500
cashiers, grocery baggers and clerks in meat, produce and delicatessen departments at 70 stores in the
Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana are covered by the contract.
Newsom joins picket line, vows boycott of hotels
Source: George Raine, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 27, 2004
Mayor Gavin Newsom made good on his promise to join locked-out union members on the picket line
Tuesday after a group of San Francisco hotels rejected his proposed 90-day cooling off period, extending a
bitter labor dispute that has left 4,000 workers locked out of their jobs. The dispute, caused by an impasse in
the negotiation of a new contract, began Sept. 29 with a two-week strike at four hotels and grew to become a
lockout by employers at 14 of the city's largest hotels on Oct. 13. The union accepted Newsom's proposal for
a three-month cooling off period, but the hotels rejected it Tuesday and Newsom hit the picket line.
With prospect of Chapter 11 looming, Delta and Pilots bargain
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 26, 2004
Delta Air Lines and its pilots union continued bargaining today on the airline's demand for $1
billion in contract concessions, with the prospect of a Chapter 11 filing as soon as Wednesday hanging over the
discussions. Delta, the third-largest airline behind American and United, has warned repeatedly that it will
have to seek court protection unless it reaches a deal with its pilots on $1 billion in wage and benefit cuts,
and achieves agreements with its debt holders. Delta's pilots, who are the highest paid in the industry, have
proposed cuts worth up to $705 million. A Chapter 11 filing by Delta would mean half the industry's
traditional airlines were under court protection.
World's big two aim at getting bigger
Source: John Vandaele, Inter Press Service
Union(s): International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, World Confederation of Labour
Date: October 26, 2004
In a
historic move, WCL has decided to start negotiations with ICFTU for setting up a new international labour
organisation. The long awaited initiative is intended to protect labour rights in the face of globalisation and
counter the growing clout of multilateral corporations. WCL, the World Confederation of Labour, comprises of
144 autonomous and democratic trade unions from 116 countries around the globe, with more than 26 million
members, mainly from Third World countries. ICFTU, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions,
represents 148 million workers worldwide and is by far the biggest confederation consisting of 234 affiliated
organisations in 152 countries and territories.
US Airways pilots approve 18% pay cut
Source: Keith L. Alexander, Washington Post
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 22, 2004
US Airways pilots yesterday approved a five-year, cost-cutting contract that will reduce their pay about 18
percent and save the airline about $1.8 billion over five years, the union said. The union's ratification
means the pilots are exempt from the 21 percent, across-the-board employee pay cut that a bankruptcy court
judge last week imposed through February. The agreement reduces retirement benefits, increases work hours
largely by trimming vacation and sick days, and eliminates retiree medical coverage. The contract is a major
boost to US Airways, which is trying to cut its labor costs by $950 million a year to transform itself into a
profitable low-cost, low-fare airline.
Union, Kroger reach agreement on pension
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Food & Commercial Workers
Date: October 21, 2004
The
Kroger Co. and a labor union representing about 8,500 employees in 70 supermarkets in three states have reached
tentative agreements on health care and pensions but still have not reached a deal on a new contract, a union
spokesman said Thursday. The two sides negotiated for 20 consecutive hours through Thursday morning and were
unable to reach consensus on wage increases, said John Marrone, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union Local 1099. Cashiers, grocery baggers and clerks in meat, produce and delicatessen departments at
stores in the Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana are covered by the contract.
Union set to begin boycott of L.A. hotels
Source: Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 21, 2004
The union representing hotel housekeepers, bellmen, waiters and other hourly workers is moving toward an
official boycott of nine upscale Los Angeles-area hotels, after six months of negotiations have failed to move
either side on key contract issues. Leaders of the union, Unite Here Local 11, are set to announce today that
they are gathering signatures from rank-and-file members to approve a boycott. The central contract issue is
the expiration date. National leaders of Unite Here want to line up local contracts across the country so that
they all expire in 2006, giving each local more power at the bargaining table.
US Airways pilots' union OKs labor deal
Source: Matthew Barakat, Associated Press, FindLaw
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 21, 2004
US Airways' pilots' union ratified a new labor contract Thursday that will cut their base pay by
18 percent and save the airline $300 million a year. The bankrupt airline has been hopeful that a ratified deal
with the pilots will give it momentum as it seeks cost cuts from its three other major unions, representing
machinists, flight attendants and passenger service workers. US Airways says it needs about $950 million in
annual cost cuts from all its unions to have any chance at survival.
Can both worker rights and civil rights win in hotel talks?
Source: David Bacon, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 19, 2004
For a decade, San Francisco's Unite Here Local 2 and Local 11 in
Los Angeles have proposed and won language in their contracts protecting members from discrimination and firing
because of immigration status. In San Francisco, as in many other big U.S. cities, immigrants make up a
majority of the hotel workforce. This year, Locals 2 and 11 added new language to their existing contract
proposals on immigrant rights, and the hotels agreed. But the Multi-Employer Group, the hotel owners'
bargaining collective, didn't accept a related proposal asking the hotels to set up a diversity committee and
hire an ombudsman to begin increasing the percentage of African-American workers.
Wal-Mart finds union at its back door
Source: Adam Geller, Associated Press, AZ Central
Union(s): United Food & Commercial Workers
Date: October 18, 2004
The low-slung gray and blue Wal-Mart store off highway 70 could be almost any one of the retail
Goliath's nearly 5,000 discount emporiums in the United States and eight other countries. And that's what
worries executives at the Arkansas headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. While still not a certainty, the 165
retirees, single moms, students and other hourly workers at this store 2 1/2 hours north of Quebec City
[Canada] could soon become the first anywhere to extract what the world's largest private employer insists its
1.5 million "associates" around the world neither want nor need--a union contract. A government agency has
certified the workers as a union and told the two sides to negotiate.
Pilots union agrees to cuts at Northwest
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 15, 2004
Northwest
Airlines and its pilots union reached tentative agreement yesterday on a deal that would save the airline $300
million in labor costs. Leaders of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at Northwest, will
now decide whether to submit the two-year agreement to members for a vote. The tentative settlement includes
$265 million in cuts, the first granted to the airline by any of its labor groups. Northwest sought $950
million in concessions from its unions in the spring of 2003, with a warning that [it] might file for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection if it could not cut its costs. Analysts were skeptical that Northwest was in such dire
need.
No progress reported in hotel negotiations
Source: Neil Irwin, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 15, 2004
Negotiators for several major Washington hotels and the union that represents their employees discussed health
insurance costs yesterday in a day-long bargaining session that made no apparent progress toward a new
contract. The two sides have been at an impasse, which has included union threats of a strike, since the
previous contract expired Sept. 15. The union wants better working conditions, protection of health and other
benefits and a contract that will expire the same year as contracts in New York and other major cities.
Kroger employees reject contract offer
Source: Associated Press, New York Times
Union(s): United Food & Commercial Workers Union
Date: October 14, 2004
Kroger Co. employees from stores in three states rejected the company's latest contract offer and authorized
their union to call a strike if necessary. About 8,500 cashiers, grocery baggers and clerks in meat, produce
and delicatessen departments at 70 Kroger stores in southwest Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeast Indiana
could go on strike when their current contract expires at 10 p.m. EDT Friday. Ninety-seven percent of the
5,000-plus workers who voted rejected the contract offer and authorized a strike.
80 casino strikers are arrested for blocking road into Atlantic City
Source: Iver Peterson, New York Times
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 9, 2004
In an escalation of their tactics, striking casino service workers blocked the main access road to
Atlantic City for about 20 minutes Friday evening just as the busy Columbus Day weekend traffic began flooding
into town. The Atlantic City police said that about 80 demonstrators were arrested and given tickets for
disorderly conduct and obstructing traffic. Union officials were on hand at police headquarters to pay the
tickets. About 10,000 members of Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union
who work at seven casinos here have been on strike since Oct. 1.
US Airways union sends contract for vote
Source: Charles Sheehan (AP), FindLaw
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 6, 2004
The
union representing US Airways pilots voted Tuesday to send out a concessionary contract to its 3,200 pilots
that is meant to save the troubled airline $300 million a year. The tentative agreement, reached after a
sometimes contentious union meeting that lasted for about 11 hours, calls for a five-year pay cut of 18
percent, slashed vacation time and cuts to benefits that will save the airline $1.8 billion through 2009,
according to the Air Line Pilots Association. However, US Airways said it still intends to ask a bankruptcy
court judge Thursday to make temporary cuts of 23 percent on all union workers--including pilots, flight
attendants, mechanics, ramp workers and customs agents.
Partisan Politics at Work Criticized
Source: Christopher Lee, Washington Post
Union(s): American Federation of Government Employees
Date: October 5, 2004
Military and civilian employees at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque received an unusual e-mail inviting
them to attend an Aug. 26 campaign rally for President Bush. "The White House has extended an invitation to
TEAM KIRTLAND to attend President Bush's speech downtown at the Convention Center," read the message, sent by
Deborah Mercurio, the director of public affairs for the 377th Air Base Wing. To federal employee unions, [the
e-mail] represented the latest attempt by the Bush administration and its supporters to transform what is
supposed to be a politically neutral federal bureaucracy into an arm of the president's reelection campaign.
Source: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
Union(s): United Farm Workers
Date: October 4, 2004
Workers at Gallo of Sonoma voted a decade ago to join the UFW, but it's been a
rocky relationship. It took six years for workers to get a contract, which expired last November, and there has
been little progress on reaching a new agreement. The union was challenged with a decertification vote 18
months ago, but the result has been tied up in legal proceedings because of UFW charges of Gallo misconduct.
The dispute is being closely watched in wine country, where unions have struggled to gain a foothold.
10 hotels expected to lock out workers
Source: Jenny Strasburg, George Raine, San Francisco Chronicle
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 1, 2004
Ten of San Francisco's largest hotels are expected to lock out an
estimated 2,600 workers this morning, escalating an already tense labor dispute that triggered a strike against
four hotels earlier this week. All told, 4,000 union workers in San Francisco have a stake in the contract
dispute, which centers on the length of the next contract as well as differences over wages, health benefits
and pensions. The union said the strike was intended to last for two weeks and called it a measured, tactical
labor action but not so far-reaching as to damage the regional economy.
Union workers strike in Atlantic City
Source: John Curran, Associated Press, Washington Post
Union(s): Unite Here
Date: October 1, 2004
Front-office executives served drinks, lawyers flipped hamburgers and accountants
made beds Friday after about 10,000 union workers went on strike at seven of Atlantic City's casinos. Cocktail
waitresses, housekeepers, bellhops and other members of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union walked off the
job and hit the picket lines around daybreak, some in the middle of their shifts. The striking workers have
been without a contract since their five-year deal expired Sept. 15. They are demanding a three-year contract,
protection against the use of nonunion restaurant workers, and casino-funded health care.
US Airways and pilots union reach tentative deal
Source: Micheline Maynard, New York Times
Union(s): Air Line Pilots Association
Date: October 1, 2004
US Airways
and its pilots union reached a tentative agreement today on $300 million in wage and benefit cuts, after weeks
of debate inside the union over whether to grant the cuts to the bankrupt airline. The deal is said to include
annual pay cuts of about 19.5 percent, reductions in the company's contribution to pilots' retirement
benefits and changes in retired pilots'