[Educationforall] spam con huevos labor news, views and concerns, 2.03.12-I

[Carlos Pelayo]

Pregnant, and Pushed Out of a JobThree Kaiser Unions Walk Out Again in California, while SEIU Stays Put‏ Radical threat to workers' rights‏On the News With Thom Hartmann: Arizona Republicans to Introduce Draconian Anti-Union Legislation This Week, and More  Foul Play Before the Superbowl‏ Stop China's Unfair Auto Parts Trade‏Apple Tries Damage Control after Horrific Working Conditions at its Factories Exposed  On the News With Thom Hartmann: Indiana Becomes First Right-to-Work State in Ten Years, and More  Unions Shocked By American Airlines Proposed Cuts  Where the Jobs (Still) Aren’t  
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Pregnant, and Pushed Out of a JobBy DINA BAKSTThanks to a gap between discrimination laws and disability laws, it's possible for a pregnant woman to be forced from her job.
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Three Kaiser Unions Walk Out Again in California, while
SEIU Stays Put
Steve Early 
February 1, 2012
http://labornotes.org/2012/02/three-kaiser-unions-walk-out-again-california-hospitals-while-seiu-stays-put

As three unions at the Kaiser Permanente health care
chain in California pulled a one-day statewide walkout
yesterday, their solidarity went unmatched by the
company's largest union, the Service Employees.

In Modesto, Shawna Stewart, a steward and board member
for SEIU's United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), began
receiving calls from members asking whether it was OK to
honor the picket lines of 22,000 members of the National
Union of Healthcare Workers, the California Nurses
Association, and the Operating Engineers.

Stewart sent an email to everyone at her facility,
stressing that their contract has a no-strike clause.
Stewart argued that SEIU's 44,000 service and technical
workers should not respect the picket lines of other
Kaiser unions because "this is not our fight."

SEIU UHW officials had similarly warned members away
from sympathy action last September in response to short
strikes then by NUHW and CNA.

Taking aim at NUHW in particular, Stewart claimed that
its members "put themselves at risk" of contract
concessions when they decertified SEIU and joined the
new union. "Now they have to fight for everything they
ALREADY had," Stewart finger-wagged. Their switch was
triggered when the SEIU International trusteed their
local and removed the leadership in 2009.

"If they want our support, they would need to sign a
card saying they want to come back and then they can
keep what they had," Stewart said, adding "it's always
best to stick with the winning team."

Health Care Winners and Losers
For thousands of other Kaiser workers, forging
rank-and-file unity and striking together on January 31
seemed like a better way to build a "winning team" when
Kaiser wants givebacks on pensions, health care, and
more. The three sponsoring unions claimed high levels of
rank-and-file participation at scores of hospitals and
clinics around the Golden State.

NUHW struck, as it has several times before, to back up
ongoing negotiations involving 4,000 mental health
professionals, optical workers, and Southern California
nurses who switched from SEIU to NUHW in 2010.

CNA's 17,000 RNs at Kaiser in northern California joined
the work stoppage, even though their contract doesn't
expire until 2014. Kaiser dragged the nurses into
arbitration last fall, saying CNA violated the
"no-strike" clause in its contract after the union
called on members to strike in sympathy. Union leaders
pointed to legal precedents that back up members' rights
to honor other workers' picket lines.

A new addition to the fray was 650 members of Stationary
Engineers Local 39, who maintain the hospitals' air
conditioning, refrigeration, and physical plant. They,
like CNA, struck in sympathy with NUHW and helped picket
other building trades workers off the job at Kaiser
construction sites.

By some estimates, hundreds of health care workers who
belong to SEIU also stayed home or showed up to picket.
They ignored warnings and resisted pressure from their
own union, which remains wedded to Kaiser's
"Labor-Management Partnership" program. (For more on
that program, see here and here.)

Union: Patients at Risk
At a boisterous picket line outside Kaiser's Oakland
Medical Center, strikers sang, danced, and distributed
flyers to patients and their families that stressed
safe-staffing issues as well as the concession threats.
In a statement issued by CNA, nurse leader Zenei Cortez,
a 29-year Kaiser veteran, said that while they reward
themselves, Kaiser executives want to eliminate secure
retirement and retiree health care, make other health
care takeaways, and "refuse to bargain for sufficient
staffing for mental health services."

Several Kaiser professionals, including psychiatric
technician Juan Ibarra and social worker Amy Thigpen,
echoed the criticisms made in "Care Delayed, Care
Denied", a whistle-blowing report issued by NUHW last
November based on information provided by unionized
social workers and psychologists, plus outside experts.

The study documents Kaiser's "systematic" failures to
observe "recommended clinical standards" and thus meet
the mental health needs of patients suffering from
autism, depression, schizophrenia, and bi-polar
disorder. NUHW accused Kaiser of failing to comply with
state laws requiring "timely access" to appropriate
care.

NUHW is lobbying state and federal officials to
"initiate immediate investigations to determine the full
extent of Kaiser's regulatory violations."

Thigpen's union, SEIU, has refrained from any such
public criticism of Kaiser and discouraged social
workers from joining yesterday's strike. Nevertheless,
about half of Thigpen's co-workers respected the picket
lines on Howe Street in Oakland.

Not About Purple and Red
Wearing their crimson NUHW T-shirts, Larry Parker, Sonia
Minor, and their Kaiser co-workers were out early
yesterday morning, picketing at an optical center in
Richmond. Parker has spent 28 years with the chain. "If
Kaiser gets takeaways from us," he said, "they're just
going to do the same thing with everybody else."

"It's not about the purple and the red," agreed Minor,
referring to the signature colors of SEIU and NUHW. "At
the end of the day, we all work for Kaiser and we all
need to stand together to protect our benefits."

Minor has sat at the bargaining table for NUHW and heard
Kaiser negotiators demand that defined-benefit pensions
be eliminated--while CEO George Halvorson is receiving
nearly $9 million a year and gets multiple retirement
plan coverage. The hospital chain has made $5.7 billion
in the last three years.

But a very different picture of Kaiser's financial
health and future was presented 10 days ago at a
pre-bargaining meeting of SEIU and other
labor-management partnership union delegates in San
Jose.

According to a Kaiser worker in attendance, Dave Regan,
who was installed as UHW's new leader three years ago,
suggested that Kaiser might end up like bankrupt General
Motors "if we're not careful."

A recording of the meeting reveals Regan saying there is
a "train bearing down on us" that might lead Kaiser to
"take our stuff," as he called the union's contract
benefits.

To fend off such low-road behavior, Regan argued that
"we can push [Kaiser] to a higher place." The
destination he described is an expanded employee
"wellness" program--of the sort SEIU has already helped
other California hospital chains introduce.

These programs essentially blame the personal habits of
workers for medical cost inflation--and penalize those
who fail to shape up. As Regan explained in San Jose:
"If you're overweight, you pay for more of your health
care. If you smoke, you pay 20 percent more. If you do
this or that, you pay more. That's what's going on out
there."

Can't Say No To Kaiser?
Regan proposed tying future contract bonus money "to how
we use health care to get healthy." This would, he
claimed, "protect what we have," while changing
Americans' perception of unions.

By email, the Kaiser worker who taped the meeting
accused UHW leaders of trying to soften up delegates.
"They never talk about the fact that Kaiser is rolling
in profits, that the CEO got a $1 million raise, and
that other unions are fighting Kaiser's cuts. Instead,
they try to scare us that we're going to turn into the
UAW and Kaiser will turn into General Motors unless we
let Kaiser cut our benefits. They tell us: 'You're lucky
to have a job.'

"Regan told us that we can't show up at the bargaining
table and say 'no' to the cuts," said the worker, who
insisted on anonymity. "Instead, he says we have to 'get
out in front of the cuts' by offering our own."

The continuing struggle over which path to take at
Kaiser--resistance to concessions or the non-adversarial
approach embraced by SEIU--will intensify in the months
to come.

In October 2010, NUHW lost its representation challenge
to SEIU in Kaiser's giant service and technical unit.
But the vote among those 43,000 employees was overturned
last summer after the NLRB found that SEIU's illegal
campaigning, along with Kaiser's unfair labor practices,
"interfered with the exercise of a free and reasoned
choice among employees."

If the workers adversely affected by this collusion get
another vote between the two unions in the middle of
SEIU's 2012 bargaining, Kaiser and SEIU may have a
harder time peddling concessions as a lasting
prescription for labor peace.

Steve Early's new book on the inter- and intra-union
conflict at Kaiser Permanente and other California
health care employers just went into its second
printing. Copies can be ordered from Haymarket Books at
www.civilwarsinlabor.org. Early can be reached at
Lsupport at aol.com.Some nurses join workers picketing Sacramento Kaiser hospitals
By Darrell SmithKaiser health care workers, joined by nurses, picketed Tuesday at Kaiser Permanente Sacramento area hospitals, part of demonstrations statewide over stalled labor negotiations. - Read More
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Dear Friend,The rights of our brothers and sisters who work at airlines and railroads are in jeopardy.Over 75 years ago, Democrats and Republicans worked together to craft the Railway Labor Act to resolve labor disputes in the airline and railroad industries. Under the Act, the National Mediation Board administers union representation elections in the industry.Until today.Radical anti-union members of Congress are attempting to rewrite this important labor law and change the role of the National Mediation Board without debate or discussion. They have included drastic changes to the law in the FAA Reauthorization bill.Click here to write Congress today and make sure that these changes are removed from the FAA Reauthorization bill.The changes these radicals are seeking would:Make it much harder for airline and railroad workers to hold union representation elections.Threaten airline and railroad workers’ right to a secret ballot during union representation campaigns, allowing for management intimidation and retaliation.Allow airline and railroad management to decertify unions without an election in a merger.And, in a shocking act of hypocrisy, it would enshrine these anti-worker changes into law. Meanwhile, the rule that promotes democracy by preventing non-voters from being counted as no votes in a union representation election would not be written into law, and could be easily changed.The FAA Reauthorization bill is an important piece of legislation that must be passed to ensure safe, efficient air travel. It is not the place to make drastic changes to rules that protect the rights of workers to join labor unions.We must stand together to let Congress know that unrelated, controversial changes to labor law have no place in this bill.Click here to use our easy online tool to contact Congress today.
In Unity,Larry Cohen
PresidentYou have received this message through your subscription to a Communications Workers of America e-mail list.
If you did not subscribe or would like to unsubscribe click here.Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC. All Rights Reserved. 501 Third Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Arizona Republicans to Introduce Draconian Anti-Union Legislation This Week, and MoreIn today's On the News segment: Arizona Republicans will introduce draconian anti-union legislation this week, Romney admits he is "not concerned with the very poor," the annual budget deficit will exceed $1 trillion this year, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript 

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Retirees Occupy Century AluminumLeo Gerard, Campaign for America's Future: "On Dec. 18, a dozen retirees, men and women in their 60s, 70s, even 80s, began occupying a median strip along Route 33 in front of the closed Century Aluminum smelter in Ravenswood, W.Va. In tents and under tarps, a small group stays overnight, despite hypertension, arthritis and other old age ailments. One has suffered a stroke. These vulnerable people expose themselves to weather extremes although some have no health insurance at all. Century cancelled it. That's why they're occupying Century." Read the Article 
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Foul Play Before the SuperbowlJust days before billions of people will be tuning in to watch Indianapolis host the Superbowl, the Indiana GOP is putting the wrong kind of spotlight on the Hoosier state. The Indiana Senate today approved the proposed "right-to-work" legislation, making it the first state since Oklahoma to adopt this destructive law. Governor Mitch Daniels is expected to sign it into law before the Super Bowl this weekend. 
As you know, “right-to-work” is not about rights or work. It is, as President Hansen said in the Huffington Post, “the ultimate transfer of wealth from the 99 percent to the 1 percent.”You can guarantee that special interest groups, big corporations, and anti-worker zealots will try to use their victory in Indiana as leverage to pass “right-to-work” in Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, and in more and more states around the country.Not on our watch! Click here to join our rapid response program so that together, we can fight back against anti-worker attacks. You can also sign up by using your cell phone to text the letters UFCW to 698329.Join today to make sure workers across the country are protected!   Unsubscribe from this list
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Feb. 1, 2012
Tell the Labor Department to adopt a new rule bringing 2 million home care workers under federal minimum wage and overtime protections. Click here.More than 1.6 million American jobs in the nation’s auto supply chain are at risk unless China’s illegal trade practices are curtailed, three new reports find. United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard says, “China is cheating unmercifully in this sector,” and he urged the U.S. government to “enforce our trade policies” and crack down on China’s trade violations.
Got comments? Post them at blog.aflcio.org. Tell Labor Department to Adopt Home Care Worker Rule Working Family Candidate Wins Special Election in Oregon USW Reaches Tentative Deal with Oil Industry ‘Brotherhood Outdoors’ Voted Top Hunting/Fishing ShowRead more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.Follow the AFL-CIO:
            Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)
To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.Click here to unsubscribe.

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-Apple Tries Damage Control after Horrific Working Conditions at its Factories ExposedApple's attempts at cleaning up its image after recent scrutiny of its labor practices are more about reputation than actual change. READ MOREBy Jeff Ballinger / Labor Notes
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Indiana Becomes First Right-to-Work State in Ten Years, and MoreIn today's On the News segment: Indiana became the first state in ten years to become right to work, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to extend the pay freeze for federal workers, 2012 might be the year for marijuana legalization, the size of the so-called terrorist no-fly list more than doubled last year, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript 

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Unions Shocked By American Airlines Proposed CutsBy NPR Online
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Where the Jobs (Still) Aren’tBy Truthdig
Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monitory gain to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the material for research and educational purposes. This is in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. section 107..
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
 

Listen to Native Voice One http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/nv1/ppr/index.shtml



 
 


 













































  		 	   		  
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