Blue Diamond Workers United

Some 2,500 workers at a General Motors facility in Kansas are on strike and more news from "Bargaining Digest Weekly." The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

Work Stoppages and Actions

UAW, General Motors: More than 2,500 workers, represented by the UAW, went on strike at General Motors' (GM's) Fairfax facility in Kansas after no agreement was reached on issues such as management at the plant, job security and seniority rights. The striking workers build the Chevrolet Malibu, one of GM's most popular vehicles. GM says it will boost Malibu production at its Orion, Mich., plant. The Kansas workers join the Lansing GM plant on strike over local conditions.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

Economics is scary. Or boring. Or both. Say the word and watch people yawn.

But what's going on around us right now—the U.S. mortgage crisis, skyrocketing oil and food costs, tanking wages and disappearing health care and retirement benefits, to name a few of our current traumas—makes the need for understanding a few fiscal fundamentals critical for most Americans.

So how do we dislodge people from watching "American Idol" long enough to see that the reason they are having trouble paying bills, affording health care or sending their kids to college is not because they are only working two jobs instead of three. Rather, there's something really wrong with the way our nation's economy is being run. And it's in their interest—and the interest of all of us—to understand why.

This Mother's Day, we’d like to wish every mother a Happy Mother’s Day. Today is the day we show how much we appreciate the innumerable contributions that mothers have made to our lives and our country in a big way. This is one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants, florists and the phone companies.

But here's something lawmakers and corporate bosses can give moms they can really use—time off from work with pay so they can spend time with their children, whether they are newborns or are just suffering from childhood ailments.

The United States doesn’t make it easy for mothers to raise their children. First off, if a mother works, she likely is going to get paid less than a man in the same job—about 77 cents for every $1 a man makes to be exact. And paid time off after a child is born is available in many western nations—but not here. In the United Kingdom, for example, a new mother can take a year off from work and be paid for about nine months. In Norway, she can take 26 weeks and about 20 weeks of that is paid.

More than 200 high school seniors received scholarships from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

Higher education is no longer a far off dream parents once had for their children but a necessity in today’s economy—and an expensive necessity at that. Recent studies show workers with a college degree earn 45 percent more than those with a high school diploma. Yet college tuition costs are at an all-time high, making it harder for working families to afford it.

The union movement has historically been a strong supporter of educating workers to create a better life for themselves, their families and communities. Many unions, state federations and central local bodies and labor groups sponsor scholarship programs, including Union Privilege. Click here to learn more about Union Privilege’s scholarship program.

The union movement also created the National Labor College, the nation’s only accredited institution of higher learning dedicated to educating union members.

Wellington Chibebe

Yesterday, the two top officials of Zimbabwe’s union movement were arrested by Zimbabwe police and charged with “inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed.” Arrested were Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), and Wellington Chibebe, ZCTU general secretary.

Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe have a long record of worker and human rights violations. In the aftermath of the controversial presidential election in March, which observers say Mugabe lost, but which he is contesting, the Mugabe government has unleashed a new wave of violence and arrests against unions and other opponents in the past several weeks.

The nearly 600 adjunct faculty at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich., made a strong statement this week for better pay and benefits by voting for the Adjunct Faculty Organization (AFO), an affiliate of AFT.

The faculty members are concerned about low pay scales that maxed out at $1,700 a course, lack of job security and health insurance and no access to office space for preparation work or to meet with students.

Even though AFT represents regular faculty at the college, Henry Ford officials fought the adjunct faculty’s desire for a voice, says Mary Beck, AFO’s interim president. But the workers overcame the school’s anti-union campaign the old-fashioned way: with shoe leather and door knocking.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.

The union, which represents 600,000 federal and District of Columbia government employees, made the endorsement after extensive member polling and a meeting of its national Executive Council.

John Gage, president of AFGE, says Obama’s energetic campaign and support of working families will mobilize voters around the country and help pro-working family candidates up and down the ticket in the fall. Gage said Obama would tackle the challenges facing the federal workforce and all working families, including job privatization and underfunding and understaffing of Social Security and veterans’ programs.

• Housing crisis? What housing crisis? Looking out the White House window, Bush can't see one, so it must not be there. Because why else would he threaten to veto Democrats' housing rescue plan, aimed at preventing foreclosures and stabilizing the housing market? Even congressional members of his own party are signaling support for the measure (not that it's an election year or anything). Yet the Lame Duck-in-Chief is calling the plan to help troubled homeowners "a burdensome bailout that would open taxpayers to too much risk." Unlike the $5 trillion experts predict we'll spend on the Iraq war. Or the $30 billion bailout to Bear Stearns.

• If Bush doesn't think the nation's homeowners and consumers need help getting by, maybe he should talk with retiree Josephine Powe, a member of the Alliance for Retired Americans. Says Powe: “An extra dollar or two per gallon may not seem like a lot of money to a big oil executive, but to a senior on a fixed income, it is everything. When our costs go up and our income does not, that dollar means you don't know if you're going to have enough money to buy food after you fill up the tank.” Powe testified this week on Capitol Hill in favor of the Consumer-First Energy Act, introduced by Senate Democrats, which would lower prices by placing a 25 percent windfall profit tax on any energy company that doesn’t invest in new energy sources and end $17 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil.

The Sacramento City Council stood up again April 1 for the Blue Diamond workers' right to organize and join the ILWU. The Council voted 7 – 1 to create an ad hoc committee which would talk with the company, the workers and the union to try to work out a fair election process agreeable to all.

This marked the second time the Council had taken action for the Blue Diamond workers. At a packed and dramatic meeting Dec. 5, 2006, the Council passed a resolution urging the company to sign a neutrality agreement with the ILWU. Company management has not responded to that or any other input from the community it has called home for nearly 100 years--the community that gave it around $21 million in public aid in 1995 to keep it from leaving town.

Even one of the Council members who gave thumbs down on the 2006 resolution approved of this year's call for an ad hoc committee.

"Having the kind of dialogue my colleague is suggesting can only be helpful," Council member Robert King Fong said. "We have a responsibility to the employer and the employees at Blue Diamond to try to help resolve this situation." Read more about the Council meeting and other recent developments in the campaign here.

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Sacramento's eighth annual César Chávez March stopped for a brief rally in front of the Blue Diamond plant March 29. The Aztec dancers opened up, swaying their plumed head-dresses and rattling their leg-bracelets to the beat of their drummer (and the low-rider song playing on the sound system).

Blue Diamond Organizing Committee members Gene Esparza and Maria Arellano addressed the thousands of marchers, who represented dozens of unions and community groups. The workers have seen their conditions improve since they started organizing, Arellano said. "But we know why we made those gains, and we know we will lose them if we do not have a union."

"All we want is a fair vote," Esparza said. "We want a fair vote, not a rigged vote, and we need your help to get it."

Then the crowd marched up to the Blue Diamond gift shop and sat down for a minute in front of it, yelling and chanting support for the workers' right to organize.

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Jaime Soto, the new Bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento, sent a message to the Blue Diamond workers on the occasion of the César Chávez March.

"I make myself present through this message to support the righteous cause of the Blue Diamond workers to reach greater solidarity among themselves and struggle together as a whole for a better future for their families," Bishop Soto wrote.

"Coming together in a union can serve as an effective instrument for furthering the common welfare and promoting the dignity of the worker as a brother and companion in the quest for a more righteous world."

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Sacramento's new Bishop, Jaime Soto, wrote to Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl March 26.

"Historically, the success of Blue Diamond Growers is the result of the growers' own efforts to work together for each others' benefits," the Bishop wrote. "The earnest ambitions of your employees are no different. I sincerely hope and pray that both the Growers and their employees will find an equitable accommodation to resolve this unnecessary labor-management tension."

The Bishop also urged Blue Diamond to agree to fair ground rules for a union vote, and offered any of the parish halls in Sacramento as a location for the election.

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About 500 members of M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) rallied in front of the Blue Diamond Growers plant March 21 during the group's national conference. They also took up chalk and paint to cover the pavement with drawings and messages of support for the Blue Diamond workers' long fight to join ILWU warehouse Local 17. The two blocks leading to the plant's main gate bloomed with solidarity greetings from as far away as Pennsylvania, Colorado and Arizona.

"M.E.Ch.A.'s motto is 'La unión hace la fuerza,' in unity there is strength," said Steven Payan, a member of M.E.Ch. A. at Woodland Community College and an organizer of the support action. "These workers are part of us. They're people of color, people in the struggle. We know some of them are scared and we want to increase their hope and faith by letting them know we're behind them."

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The mine manager and other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Utah hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, a congressional committee said today. Last August, six miners and three rescue workers died after the mine collapsed.

In a report released today, the House Education and Labor Committee says the mining company’s plan to remove coal was flawed and should never have been submitted, and that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) should never have approved it.

The committee referred its findings to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecutions. Click here to read a summary of the report by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.

Sen. John McCain is used to getting softball questions from his fans in the media. At his town hall meeting yesterday in Michigan, however, he finally took a tough, smart question from an unexpected source.

When a 14-year-old girl attending the meeting got to ask a question of a presidential candidate, she took the opportunity to ask why he skipped out on voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

McCain said he agreed with the minority of senators who filibustered the bill, which would give targets of workplace discrimination the chance to fight for equal pay. He claimed it wouldn’t help women. Here’s what he had to say:

I don't believe that this would do anything to help the rights of women, except maybe help trial lawyers and others in that profession.

      A few items have been piling up in my inbox that need to be shared. Workers who pick tomatoes have been seeking a penny a pound increase in wages to help address their egregiously low wages. Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and other chains, has agreed to do so. But Burger King Corp. refuses. Now, it turns out Burger King hired a private security firm to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance, one of several groups seeking to improve the lives of migrants in Florida. At a recent Senate hearing, witnesses described how the workers sometimes are held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay—21st century slavery. (Click here to sign the petition to eliminate modern-day servitude in America’s produce fields.) If Burger King thinks slave-like working conditions are OK, guess spying is, too.

With the busy summer travel season fast approaching, the nation’s air traffic controllers are alerting the public that a combination of short-staffing, fatigue and faulty equipment in control towers is a "recipe for disaster."

Just this week, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) issued warnings about several near misses at two of the country’s major airports—Atlanta and Cincinnati. In Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport, the number of incidents when planes have gotten too close has already exceeded last year’s total—and the situation is getting worse. In Cincinnati, three such serious incidents have occurred in the past six weeks.

Jeremy Bishop, executive director of Pride At Work, describes how we can assist laid-off flight attendants at Aloha and ATA airlines.

Recently, thousands of flight attendants at Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines have been laid off after their respective companies went out of business. As any working person can attest, this is a terrible time to be unemployed.

Once covered by contracts negotiated by the Flight Attendants-CWA, these flight attendants were forced to leave stable wages, health care benefits and a path to retirement behind for the unemployment line.

If you are a working woman, are you worried about finding a job that pays your bills and provides benefits? Or concerned about the rising cost of health care? Maybe you're frustrated you can't find time to do your job and spend time with your family. Or are you tired of working as hard as your male counterparts and not getting paid as much?

The AFL-CIO and Working America’s just-launched online 2008 Ask a Working Woman survey enables you to share workplace concerns about issues such as equal pay and stronger family and medical leave laws. Click here to take the survey and here to share it with other working women.

The image at the right was taken in 2004

Once again a step ahead of intermodal truckers across the US, Stockton truckers, led by the majority Sikh drivers, launched a strike over the issue of fuel prices on Monday, May 5, 2008.

While many truckers participated in various protest shutdowns on either April 1st or May 1st this year, the 300-400 Stockton truckers working out of the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railyards have shut down their industry until their demands have been met.

Rather than demand the fuel surcharges paid by shippers but often pocketed by companies rather than passed along to drivers, the Stockton truckers are asking for a dramatic increase in the rates paid in order to keep up with increases costs such as fuel.

On April 26, 2004 Stockton intermodal truckers, inspired by rumors circulating of an LA port trucker shutdown, were the first to join what became a strike of west cost port truckers on April 30, and by June had spread to most southern and eastern ports as well.

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