New labor group hopes to sway local politics

I found this old article about our first event in 2004. Some people said we wouldn't make it past the 2004 election. Happy 6th anniversary to us!

By Coulter Jones
Columbia Missourian
Tuesday,February 24, 2004

The United Working People of Mid-Missouri hopes to restore labor’s effect on the political process, at least in Boone County. The new political action committee, composed mainly of people who also belong to labor unions, served chili with a side of politics Sunday at its kickoff event, which doubled as fund-raiser and pep rally. The chili cook-off attracted about 150 people, many of them union members. Local politicians did not miss the opportunity to make a public appearance. About 20 attended, ranging from former Gov. Roger Wilson to four candidates hoping to fill Democratic state Rep. Vicky Riback Wilson’s seat in the 25th District. The group hopes to influence local elections this year but has no plans to become involved in federal politics. An umbrella organization consisting of about 15 unions, with about 50 members before Sunday’s event, the group grew from the ideas of about 10 people. Discussions began in November, but President Steve McLuckie and Treasurer Russ Unger didn’t finish the paperwork in Jefferson City until late January. Though only Democrats and independents attended the cook-off, McLuckie said the group will look at all candidates, and each will go through an interview before receiving support. Candidates must agree with the group’s views on key issues, including health care, education and job-creating policies. “Once we have a list of everybody whose who’s filed — Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, whoever’s running — we’re going to invite them to come and talk to us about our issues, and we’ll consider everybody,” McLuckie said. McLuckie said his group will differ from most political action committees in its grass-roots focus on top of fund-raising power. “We will be pounding the pavement and working for our candidates; we’re not just a bank account,” McLuckie said. McLuckie, who works for the Missouri chapter of the National Education Association, said the group’s ideas might be new to mid-Missouri but are not new at a national level. McLuckie said the group is building its e-mail list. It estimates that about 4,000 union members are in Boone County and surrounding areas who can be tapped for support. “That’s 4,000 door-knockers, that’s 4,000 people who can give you financial support, that’s 4,000 people that can put up signs,” Sergeant at Arms Linda Vogt said. Union membership is at a record low nationwide, having dropped in 2003 to 12.9 percent of wage and salary workers, according the U.S. Department of Labor. Part of this is because many union jobs are now filled out of the country. In the past three years, Missouri has lost more than 50,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, an industry once dominated by labor unions, according to the department.

Union continues holiday tradition

From the Centralia Fireside Guard
by James Smith

The labor union at Centralia's Hubbell facility continued a long-standing tradition for another year.

Along with his fellow union officers, Matt Jackson, president of local 86821 IUE CWA, helped pass out 439 frozen turkeys to union members and retirees.

"We've been doing this for as long as I can remember," said Jackson, who has been in the union for 19 years, and its president for six years.

Some union retirees thought the tradition had started between 20 and 25 years ago.

"People appreciate it," said Jackson. "Today not a whole lot of things are free."

But the happiness and shared camaraderie of the event was leavened for Jackson and others by what Jackson described as attempts by Hubbell to undermine its labor contract with the union and push members with seniority out of the company.

Jackson said the company is ignoring the contract's seniority sections when calling back laid off employees and calling back low seniority employees over those who have been with the company longer.

Fireside Guard e-mails and telephone inquiries made at the local corporate level regarding this issue were forwarded to the Hubbell corporate offices in Orange, Conn., No response had been received by press time.

"We will probably have to go into arbitration over this," he said. "They are saying they interpret the contract differently than we do."

Jackson described it as a trend to shift jobs across the border to Hubbell's Juarez, Mexico, facility. "Workers there get paid the equivalent of $3.35 an hour, including benefits," he said. "We're down to just 362 workers here... this world economy stuff is killing us. When people can get on the internet and shop abroad and buy stuff at third world prices ... Soon we won't have jobs here to make any money to purchase anything. It is not just this company alone."

Jackson said that Hubbell is changing some of the local lines to ones that will feature automated production. "We are purchasing and installing computer-operated robots," said Jackson. "But they will be run by one employee and pretty much do the work currently done by four welders for example. We are not building more production robots to sell to other companies."

Again the Guard was unable to get Hubbell officials to comment on this matter.

Meanwhile the union continues to hand out holiday turkeys from a table in the back of Prenger Foods, to what members it still has. This year it handed out, 345 to active members and 94 to retirees. Some active members deliver the turkeys to retirees who have left the area. Some turn around donate them to the Centralia Senior Center, said Terry King, recording secretary.

She said one former union president took one for old friends he used to work with who retired to St. Charles.

Others enjoy them at home. "I think this is wonderful, we've been doing it for years," said Micki Nothcutt, who for the last 13 years has been a union welder for the company. "This is what the union and holidays are all about, people taking care of each other."

Let's Pass the Protecting America's Workers Act

Question: How do you get away with murder?
Answer: Hire your victim.
____________________________________
Click on "16 Deaths Per Day" under Labor Links on your right to view a moving five minute film. Then email your congressional representatives to ask them to vote for the Protecting America's Workers Act.
____________________________________

There are 16 workplace deaths in the United States every day. Most companies are never prosecuted for negligence, even after repeated warnings that their workers were in danger.
Under current Federal law, willfully contributing to the death of an employee is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum prison sentence of six months and a maximum fine of $70,000. Even with these weak penalties, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) rarely refers such cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution, so those employers that knowingly allow their employees to work under dangerous conditions are rarely held accountable. In fact, current laws are so weak that millions of dollars of penalties to victim's families have not been paid -- in those rare cases when violators are penalized at all.
Working families need the Protecting America's Workers Act.
Authored by Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Lynn Woolsey, the Protecting America's Workers Act will:
Expand workplace protections to state, county, municipal, and federal employees who are not currently covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act
Increase financial penalties for those who kill or endanger workers
Strengthen criminal penalties to make felony charges available for willful negligence causing death or serious injury
Expand OSHA coverage to millions of employees who fall through the cracks (like airline and railroad workers)
Provide protection for whistleblowers
Give employees the right to refuse hazardous work that may kill them
Improve the rights of workers and families, requiring OSHA to investigate all cases of death
Prohibit employers from discouraging reporting of injury or illness

She's a community organizer — and proud of it

by Steve Giegerich

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

11/06/2009

You'd think these may not be the best of times for Lara Granich, the director of a nonprofit that serves as a watchdog against lax and abusive labor practices.

Granich's job description — community organizer — might also be problematic for those who venerate the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.

But all in all, the head of Missouri Jobs with Justice says, "it's really kind of an exciting time for what we do."

To understand that function, it helps to look at where the organization is situated in the hierarchy of American employment.

At the top end of the spectrum stands the tarnished, but unbowed, titans of industry and Masters of the Wall Street Universe.

On the opposite end are the lower- and middle-class wage earners that do the country's heavy listing.

It's those employees that the Jobs with Justice coalitions represent in 40 cities across the country.

Worker advocates, JwJ coalitions align with faith-based, community and labor organizations on behalf of fair wages, employment conditions and other issues.

(Full disclosure: Jobs with Justice supports the efforts of the guild representing Post-Dispatch employees).

At JwJ, an economy that has stripped away 130,000 jobs locally and 15 million nationwide is seen as an educational and motivational tool.

The working class, Granich has found, is justifiably outraged by the yawning gap between working class wages and executive compensation.

According to the Institute of Policy Studies, the ratio between CEO pay and that of the average U.S. worker is 319-to-14; the discrepancy balloons to 714-to-15 for minimum-wage employees.

"When we talk to working people we find out that, yes, they are desperate," Granich explained. "But they are a lot clearer that if they don't stand up for themselves, no one else will."

On Thursday night, the coalition marked the 10th anniversary of the national Jobs with Justice movement's presence in St. Louis and Missouri. Over dinner and in speeches, the coalition commemorated battles won:

The 2005 sit-in and hunger strike that ended with Washington University granting fair wage concessions to custodians and other non-professional employees tops the list of accomplishments.

And battles ongoing: The push for health care reform.

As Jobs with Justice moves into its second decade in St. Louis and across Missouri, Granich acknowledges that dealing with the decline of manufacturing, retail and service jobs — the very foundation of the coalition's advocacy efforts — will be a major challenge.

Despite "losing the things they've built over the years," she said, St. Louis remains, at heart, a blue-collar community with a blue-collar work ethic.

Granich sees those deeply ingrained sensibilities transcending the workplace as the area's blue-collar job force moves from heavy industry to the emerging environmentally sustainable (green) sector.

"Even people who don't belong to a union have working-class people in their families or in their neighborhoods," she said. "And that's a real asset."

A product of north St. Louis county, Granich comes from working class, activist and labor roots.

Her grandfather was a member of the Communications Workers of America, an aunt was played a high-profile role in St. Louis' social justice movement and her mother spearheaded an unsuccessful bid to organize the area's parochial teachers.

"It was part of how I grew up," she explained.

Granich picked up the ball following graduation from Minnesota's Macalester College when, as an usher at Powell Symphony Hall and the Gateway Arch, she joined the Stagehands Union upon her return to St. Louis.

She served as a volunteer when nonprofit, nonpartisan Jobs with Justice organized in St. Louis in 1999 and started drawing a paycheck from the organization in 2001.

Firmly ensconced in the job and the cause, Granich cheerfully dismisses the recent disdain directed at people in her line of work.

"We have a community organizer in the White House," Granich points out.

Beck, Limbaugh and Palin notwithstanding, Granich is pretty proud of that.

Labor and the Media

Presented by the MU Labor Education Program, University of Missouri Extension

MU Labor Education Program

December 8, 15, and 22nd, 2009

6:00 – 8:30 PM

Heinkel Building Room 226 (7th and Locust)

$40.00

This non-credit program will consider the issue of labor’s image in the mainstream media, the structure and function of the media in the United States, as well as, the roles of reporters, labor organizations, and local union leaders in making “news.” Participants will analyze reporting on labor issues, prepare and critique press releases, and develop a basic media campaign for a local labor issue.

Return the attached registration form with a check made payable to The University of Missouri

by December 2, 2009 to the following address:

Labor Education Program Phone: 573-882-8358

University of Missouri-Columbia Fax: 573-884-5423

Heinkel Building Room 212 Labored@missouri.edu

Columbia, MO 65211-1341

Columbia laborers propose alternate budget cuts

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Columbia Missourian

BY GREG MITCHELL

COLUMBIA — Columbia City Council chambers were filled to standing room only Tuesday night, in part because three labor groups showed up to oppose changes in overtime and sick leave for city employees. The groups suggested alternate cuts to the personnel cost reductions in the city manager's 2010 budget at the council meeting.

Scores of Columbia Water and Light Department employees, Columbia Professional Firefighters members and Laborers' International Union of North America Local 773 filled the back rows of the city council chambers to show support, and silently stood as their representatives outlined to the council their philosophy on personnel-related budget cuts.

City Manager Bill Watkins' 2010 budget would pay overtime based on hours worked as opposed to hours in pay status, meaning employees would only be paid overtime if they worked more than the normal hours in a week, rather than working extra hours in one day.

"When you have no power in the middle of the night and it is 10 below zero, someone has to fix it," he said.Fred Eaton, a spokesman for Columbia Water and Light Department employees, said the overtime change would be unfair because these hours are based on variables such as weather and equipment malfunction, so employees rarely work overtime by choice.

Watkins' proposed budget would also reduce the amount of unused sick leave employees could get paid for, from 75 percent to 50 percent.

Representatives from the labor groups said these changes would place an unfair burden on city employees in lower pay grades.

"We are all concerned with those in the workforce at the lowest end of the pay scale, but the city's proposal takes overtime dollars away from the lower paid, hourly employees," said Brad Frazier, president of the Columbia Professional Firefighters.

Frazier, along with the other labor representatives, acknowledged the need to reduce personnel costs by $1 million butproposed a 1.2 percent pay cut to all city employees.

"The proposal we endorse does not discriminate," Frazier said. "It distributes cost reductions evenly among all city employees with an average impact equivalent to one hour of salary per paycheck, per employee. With our proposal, they would have only lost 1.2 percent, which is the equivalent of a can of soda a day" for employees that earn about $10 per hour.

According to a document distributed by Laborers' Local 773, the pay cut would lead to $800,000 in savings for the city. This, paired with some of Watkins' proposed reductions, would lead to $1,006,900 in total savings.

During a pre-council meeting, Frazier stressed that Watkins' open door policy has led to constructive discussions on the issue, and he realizes that tough decisions need to be made.

Council members will vote on the budget as early as the next meeting in two weeks.

Strong unions are good for America's workers, businesses

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Columbia Missourian

BY ROSE M. NOLEN

In the days when I was a union member and worked in a closed shop, I liked the fact that all the people who worked in management were former union members and therefore the environment was not toxic. We were able to avoid a lot of the nastiness people encounter among those who think of collective bargaining units in the same way they do terrorist cells.

One would think with the obvious greed exposed in the financial arena that led to our current economic crisis, people would get over the attitude that labor unions are nothing more than gangs of pirates.

---

Before this recession, the wages of the working class were stagnant even though the economy was booming. And let’s face it, most employers like it that way. Most of them are not interested in creating a fair playing field; they believe in winner-take-all. A lot of them don’t see the point in paying their employees benefits when workers can sign up with the state welfare office for health care, food stamps and subsidized housing. Why shouldn’t the executives take home fat bonuses and let the public foot the bill for their employees? I truly don’t think there is any way the Employee Free Choice Act could be written so that these business owners wouldn’t object to it. They don’t want their employees to unionize, and it’s as simple as that.

• Read the text of the Employee Free Choice Act
  

Unfortunately, no matter how prosperous some businesses and industries become, many of them would rather ship the jobs overseas than pay their workers an adequate wage. The days when Americans had the best interest of other Americans at heart have long gone. The working class will have to fight for every dime it can get.

Apparently, these business people don’t even understand the importance of maintaining the middle class. They seem to be hellbent on wiping them out as well. When they look at Third World countries where there are only two classes, the very rich and the very poor, can’t they see that at the rate they are going, the country is heading in that direction?

When we had to walk the picket line to secure pay increases and benefits, I never heard anyone complain about the fact that our fellow employees who lived in states that didn’t have closed shops, many of whom didn’t belong to the union, also gained the same privileges as we did. The thing union members have in common is that they think workers should receive fair wages for the work they do. And it pleases me to know that those who remained with the company until retirement are now enjoying good pensions and good health insurance. After all, these people worked hard for years for these benefits.

When workers began to walk away from union membership and thought that they could bargain individually on their own, how many years did they have to wait for an increase even in the minimum wage? I hoped they learned something and will write letters to their senators and representatives urging them to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. While there are some employers who value the work their employees do, I doubt they are in the majority. And I honestly think that most workers waiting to organize a union will have retired before their employers grant them that right.

The way some members of Congress and business leaders talk, you would think Chrysler and General Motors executives never made a dime and all the money they made selling cars went into the pockets of members of the United Auto Workers union. The jets in which automakers rode to Washington D.C. on that first trip to meet with Congress belonged to the union members, right?

Anyone watching television has obviously witnessed the absolute disrespect many members of Congress have for the people who work on assembly lines. I would be absolutely ashamed and embarrassed if anyone in my family displayed such despicable manners toward people who actually work because they have the nerve to ask for fair wages for the jobs they do.

As a former union member, I’m pretty sure that when the automakers signed the union contracts, they were confident they would make enough money selling cars to pay workers' salaries and make an adequate profit. Otherwise, they would still be negotiating. And, of course, no one seems to mind that foreign automakers have come into America and undermined American carmakers and automobile workers.

Unfortunately, as sad as it is, this has become the American way.

You can join the conversation with Rose M. Nolen by calling her at 882-5734 or e-mailing her at nolen@iland.net.

Union objects to UM pension decision

By TERRY GANEY

Columiba Tribune

Monday, February 16, 2009

University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee has a big sales job ahead of him, convincing employees that contributing to their defined benefit pension program is a good thing.

A business representative for the union that covers campus workers says employees already have contributed to their pensions by accepting lower wages and their contract with the university does not provide for another contribution.

“Our biggest question right now is whether it’s even legal to take your wages and do anything with them without your authorization,” said Rex Taggart, business representative of Local 773 of the Laborers International Union of North America. The union represents some 1,100 food service workers, custodians, maintenance employees and groundskeepers on the MU campus.

The UM Board of Curators has approved Forsee’s proposal to require workers with salaries below $50,000 to contribute 1 percent of their wages to their pension plan. Those whose income is $50,000 and above would pay 1 percent on the first $50,000 and 2 percent on the amount above that. Employees who leave the university before their contributions vest would get them back.

Currently the plan is financed entirely through university contributions, similar to plans that cover state workers and employees of the Missouri Department of Transportation.

“It’s worked out very well,” Taggart said. “It’s always been the light at the end of the tunnel for people.”

Missouri’s public school teachers contribute to their own plans, which are matched by local school districts. The teachers’ pension plan is the biggest in the state. Defined benefit plans differ from defined contribution plans, common in the private sector, in which workers kick in a percentage to their own 401(k) plans.

Many government pension plans lost a quarter of their value in the collapse of the stock market last year. Contributions will be needed to make up the difference. Forsee wants some of that to come from employee wages. The administration is hosting a series of workshops on the campuses explaining the plan.

“Our issue is that it’s a change,” Forsee said. He said the economy had rifled its way through the university budget and the impact on the pension plan needed to be considered. He said many other states and universities as well as the private sector had shifted to plans in which employees contribute something.

Forsee said information from actuaries indicated the university would have to significantly step up its contributions over the next three years for the plan to be fully funded. “For the university to assume that those funds are going to be available to us from state sources was a high-risk proposition,” Forsee said.

Taggart said the plan as proposed would take money away from workers’ income at a time when they need it most.

“It’s going to make a hardship for people,” Taggart said. “If the fund was in a crisis, it would be one thing. People need this money in their pockets.”

Reach Terry Ganey at 573-815-1708 or e-mail tganey@columbiatribune.com.

Labor pains

Law reform is long overdue; act levels field for bargaining

 

By RUSS UNGER

Columbia Tribune

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, led by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Right to Work Committee and, here in Missouri, the Save Our Secret Ballot initiative, are attempting to use the issue of the secret ballot to defeat passage of the first meaningful effort to reform U.S. labor law since the Carter administration. The issue of the so-called secret ballot is a red herring designed to exploit the general public’s lack of knowledge about labor law by drawing a comparison with the political election process.

Russ Unger

Since the 1980s, the labor movement has suffered greatly under the combined weight of free trade policies that lack provisions to protect workers’ rights and a concerted political agenda designed to turn a blind eye toward corporate greed and union busting. The Employee Free Choice Act is not revolutionary legislation that will automatically restore power to workers and their organizations. It is, however, an effort to restore a semblance of balance to industrial relations by giving workers an opportunity to bargain collectively in today’s harsh economic reality.

Under the NLRA, one way workers can gain union recognition and collective bargaining rights is if the employer voluntarily agrees to majority sign-up, often referred to as card check. Card check is a simple process where the employer agrees that if a majority of the company’s employees desire to be represented by a union, it will recognize the union and bargain with that organization. The Employee Free Choice Act merely extends this right to workers as well as employers. There have been thousands of workers organized under this process, with Cingular and Dana Corp. being well-known employers that have agreed to allow card check recognition.The Employee Free Choice Act will amend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935. The NLRA did not mandate unions, but it did recognize the potential social good that collective bargaining could bring to the United States. Based on a belief that workers should have the ability to join a union of their own choosing and an opportunity to bargain collectively, the NLRA provided workers a voice and a stake in the success of their employers.

Where the Employee Free Choice Act will diverge from the NLRA is in the area of bargaining. The Employee Free Choice Act will encourage more efficient bargaining of a first contract between an employer and a union. If an agreement is not reached in 90 days, the Employee Free Choice Act allows for mediation of the unresolved issues. If mediation fails, the Employee Free Choice Act requires that both parties submit to binding arbitration 30 days later. The reason for this is simple: For too many years, too many employers have refused to bargain in good faith and have not signed an agreement in a reasonable period of time. By stalling, these employers erode union support and, most important, deny workers their goal of having a collective voice at work.

The Employee Free Choice Act will also increase penalties for violating the NLRA — which forbids discrimination against workers during an organizing drive — because, once again, some employers have willfully violated this aspect of the current law. The Employee Free Choice Act will require employers who violate the law to pay triple back pay to workers victimized by the violations and an additional $20,000 fine per violation. Even these increases in penalties for violating workers’ basic rights to organize free of harassment, intimidation and discrimination are far less than the penalties to employers who violate anti-trust or civil rights laws.

The debate about the Employee Free Choice Act should be placed in a broader context. Card-check union recognition “elections” have been around for years. Many companies have allowed their use in the United States, and the world did not end. It is a process that gives workers a more efficient means to exercise their legal right to have union representation where they work. The act promotes workplace democracy and does not, in any way, curtail the democratic rights of working people to improve their economic well-being.

Russ Unger is apprentice coordinator for the Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 36 and president of the Mid-Missouri Labor Club.