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.