Labor
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SEIU press release
Columbus area janitors are partnering with cleaning contractors to protect good jobs and restore balance to our economy. By an overwhelming margin, the janitors approved a new union contract on Saturday that preserves their ability to support their families. About 1,000 working families will benefit from the new three year contract.
“Today we proved that when workers join together, we have strength. This is a huge victory for all hard working janitors,” said Claude Smith a bargaining committee member and janitor who works for ABM. “With this new contract, our families can live a little better.”
The new union contract, which goes into effect January 1st, protects the gains service workers have achieved and builds a foundation to raise standards in the future. Cleaning companies originally wanted to eliminate full-time hour guarantees. The agreement reached ensures the majority of the workforce remains full-time. Maintaining a majority full-time workforce is a major victory especially when coupled with a $.20 wage increase in 2014.
All friends of labor, friends of the FREE PRESS & all progressives to come & have a good time, a good discussion with old & new friends.
Jessica Walters (AFL-CIO) will give a brief talk on the so-called ‘right to work’ (actually---‘NO rights at work’) bill the GOP has proposed here, & what we can all do to stop it.
PLEASE come by PAT’s on Thursday, 2/21, 5 PM & add a good time to your schedule!
SPONSORED by----‘LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH’ Radio program
Patrick J’s, 2711 N High St, Columbus----one block north of Hudson
Jessica Walters (AFL-CIO) will give a brief talk on the so-called ‘right to work’ (actually---‘NO rights at work’) bill the GOP has proposed here, & what we can all do to stop it.
PLEASE come by PAT’s on Thursday, 2/21, 5 PM & add a good time to your schedule!
SPONSORED by----‘LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH’ Radio program
Patrick J’s, 2711 N High St, Columbus----one block north of Hudson
For over two decades the Central Ohio Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, has been partnering with community organizations in the “One New Toy” campaign during the holiday season to aid needy families, giving out tons of food, toys for children and aid to families needing help. This year that program will kick off this weekend (12/14-15-16) at St. Stephens Community House, 1500 E. 17th St, Columbus, (43219), and they are still looking for more volunteers.
Last year this program aided over 1,500 Columbus families, but this year the load is expected, due to the continuing economic downturn, to be even larger. Hundreds of volunteers are involved, packing and unpacking, unloading trucks and getting the food, gifts, to the waiting families, feeding, helping the volunteers, etc. Unions are asking for more volunteers, from progressive groups, or individuals wanting to give back to our community.
Last year this program aided over 1,500 Columbus families, but this year the load is expected, due to the continuing economic downturn, to be even larger. Hundreds of volunteers are involved, packing and unpacking, unloading trucks and getting the food, gifts, to the waiting families, feeding, helping the volunteers, etc. Unions are asking for more volunteers, from progressive groups, or individuals wanting to give back to our community.
The Middletown, Ohio story continues, like an old soap opera! In response to that city’s council action raising the city manager’s pay, the city’s unions have now pushed back, at least for now killing that increase.
Middletown’s city council had inspired last year’s attack on public worker’s bargaining rights by officially asking the Ohio state legislature to “take action to limit public union contracts, so local governments can control their finances.” After last year’s massive struggle by organized labor and regular Ohioans killed SB 5, the state’s attempt to destroy public worker bargaining rights, Middletown’s city voted two week’s ago to change the rules under which the city’s workers are compensated so that only the city manager could get a major pay increase. The council took this action after successfully urging that city’s unions to agree to a wage freeze through the lifetime of their contracts with the city.
Cheap clothes!
Their cost, it turns out, is beyond calculation.
“Babul Mia said he identified his wife Mariam Begum, 25, who was apparently burnt beyond recognition, but he could identify her bangles and her small teeth,” reported Bangladesh’s main English-language newspaper, The Daily Star.
“Zahera Begum, who worked on the fifth floor of Tazreen Fashions, too, was identified by her husband Iqramul from her nose ring, bangles and necklace.”
So a fire swept through a sweatshop in Bangladesh on Nov. 24, killing at least 112 people, nearly half of whom were unidentifiable and buried in a mass grave. The sweatshop, which produced brand-name garments for major retail outlets such as Walmart and Sears, has been described as a deathtrap: It lacked working fire extinguishers and external fire escapes; one of the exit doors was locked; and, oh yeah, when the fire alarm first went off, the bosses told everyone to go back to their sewing machines.
“Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower,” the local fire department operations director said.
Their cost, it turns out, is beyond calculation.
“Babul Mia said he identified his wife Mariam Begum, 25, who was apparently burnt beyond recognition, but he could identify her bangles and her small teeth,” reported Bangladesh’s main English-language newspaper, The Daily Star.
“Zahera Begum, who worked on the fifth floor of Tazreen Fashions, too, was identified by her husband Iqramul from her nose ring, bangles and necklace.”
So a fire swept through a sweatshop in Bangladesh on Nov. 24, killing at least 112 people, nearly half of whom were unidentifiable and buried in a mass grave. The sweatshop, which produced brand-name garments for major retail outlets such as Walmart and Sears, has been described as a deathtrap: It lacked working fire extinguishers and external fire escapes; one of the exit doors was locked; and, oh yeah, when the fire alarm first went off, the bosses told everyone to go back to their sewing machines.
“Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower,” the local fire department operations director said.
We just received the news that, due especially to all your solidarity efforts & those of steelworkers, their families, and all the people fighting for justice, a TENATIVE SETTLEMENT AT COOPER TIRE WAS JUST ANNOUNCED!!
Pending worker’s ratification of the announced settlement, the SATURDAY RALLIES ARE POSTPONED.
Just as the lockout of the Cooper Tire workers was an attack on all of us, this settlement is a victory for all of us who stood together with these embattled workers and their families. Only because of the solidarity efforts so far, and the announced escalation of our solidarity efforts, did Cooper management come back to the table and actually begin to negotiate again. THANK YOU ALL!!
Pending worker’s ratification of the announced settlement, the SATURDAY RALLIES ARE POSTPONED.
Just as the lockout of the Cooper Tire workers was an attack on all of us, this settlement is a victory for all of us who stood together with these embattled workers and their families. Only because of the solidarity efforts so far, and the announced escalation of our solidarity efforts, did Cooper management come back to the table and actually begin to negotiate again. THANK YOU ALL!!
Monrovia, CA/Immokalee, FL -- Trader Joe’s and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) announced today that they have signed an agreement that formalizes the ways in which Trader Joe’s will work with the CIW and Florida tomato growers to support the CIW’s Fair Food Program.
The Fair Food Program is a groundbreaking approach to social responsibility in the US produce industry that combines the Fair Food Code of Conduct – a set of labor standards developed in a unique collaboration among farmworkers, tomato growers, and the food industry leaders who purchase Florida tomatoes – with a small price premium to help improve harvesters’ wages. The goal of the Fair Food Program is to promote the development of a sustainable Florida tomato industry that advances both the human rights of farmworkers and the long-term interests of Florida tomato growers.
The Fair Food Program is a groundbreaking approach to social responsibility in the US produce industry that combines the Fair Food Code of Conduct – a set of labor standards developed in a unique collaboration among farmworkers, tomato growers, and the food industry leaders who purchase Florida tomatoes – with a small price premium to help improve harvesters’ wages. The goal of the Fair Food Program is to promote the development of a sustainable Florida tomato industry that advances both the human rights of farmworkers and the long-term interests of Florida tomato growers.
‘Retirement Heist,’ by Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Schultz, is certainly one of the most important books published in the past few decades. For the past three decades, we’ve been inundated with hysterical announcements from the corporations that they faced a “crisis” due to “runaway pension and health care costs.”
These undue burdens were bringing the entire economic system down, they said. American companies, we were told by a corporate owned media, just couldn’t compete with “unfair competition,” all because of outrageous “entitlements.” Ellen Schultz has shown, with meticulous research, how financial institutions, corporations, were able to use accounting tricks, rulings by corporate controlled government oversight bodies, ridiculous tax incentives, deception and outright lies to literally destroy the structure of retirement security that took decades of struggle by America’s working people to put in place.
These undue burdens were bringing the entire economic system down, they said. American companies, we were told by a corporate owned media, just couldn’t compete with “unfair competition,” all because of outrageous “entitlements.” Ellen Schultz has shown, with meticulous research, how financial institutions, corporations, were able to use accounting tricks, rulings by corporate controlled government oversight bodies, ridiculous tax incentives, deception and outright lies to literally destroy the structure of retirement security that took decades of struggle by America’s working people to put in place.
Tuesday's most important vote is the repeal of Ohio's vicious anti-labor Issue 2.
Polls show the repeal winning by 25% or more. But will it---like the 2004 presidential election---be stolen by the 1% intent on crushing working people and stealing huge sums of money?
Like Wisconsin's millionaire assault on the bargaining rights of public unions, the thoroughly bought Ohio legislature has passed a draconian law aimed at crippling the organizing ability of working people.
The attack has the loud, persistent support of Wall Street's hand-picked Governor John Kasich, who made millions as a Foxist commentator and Lehman bond dealer. Among other things, Kasich helped pawn $400 million in Lehman's junk bonds onto the Ohio teacher's pension fund, making him a multi-millionaire. Control of that money would be directly affected by the outcome of this referendum.
The legislature's original passage of the anti-labor bill drew thousands of demonstrators to the statehouse lawn and key locations throughout the Buckeye State. The pre-occupy rallies got ardent support from progressive, union and working people across Ohio's political spectrum.
Polls show the repeal winning by 25% or more. But will it---like the 2004 presidential election---be stolen by the 1% intent on crushing working people and stealing huge sums of money?
Like Wisconsin's millionaire assault on the bargaining rights of public unions, the thoroughly bought Ohio legislature has passed a draconian law aimed at crippling the organizing ability of working people.
The attack has the loud, persistent support of Wall Street's hand-picked Governor John Kasich, who made millions as a Foxist commentator and Lehman bond dealer. Among other things, Kasich helped pawn $400 million in Lehman's junk bonds onto the Ohio teacher's pension fund, making him a multi-millionaire. Control of that money would be directly affected by the outcome of this referendum.
The legislature's original passage of the anti-labor bill drew thousands of demonstrators to the statehouse lawn and key locations throughout the Buckeye State. The pre-occupy rallies got ardent support from progressive, union and working people across Ohio's political spectrum.
While an overused description, yesterday’s meeting of over 700 unionists at the Pipefitter’s Union Hall in Columbus, Ohio certainly qualifies as an historic gathering. Even in the sweltering heat, the huge, enthusiastic crowd poured into the union hall to hear Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga, national AFL-CIO Rich Trumka and others lay out, in detail, the wide program of mobilization organized labor and its allies intend to put into effect to win repeal of SB 5, the Republican sponsored bill that would end bargaining rights for public workers in that state.
Burga broke from his prepared speech opening the event to tell the cheering, chanting crowd that “it’s official, we’ve been certified! 915,000 signatures, the most on a referendum in the history of our state, have been validated to place the recall of SB 5 on the November ballot!”
Burga went on, with a blistering attack on the current Kasich administration in Ohio and corporate politicians nationally.
Burga broke from his prepared speech opening the event to tell the cheering, chanting crowd that “it’s official, we’ve been certified! 915,000 signatures, the most on a referendum in the history of our state, have been validated to place the recall of SB 5 on the November ballot!”
Burga went on, with a blistering attack on the current Kasich administration in Ohio and corporate politicians nationally.