LaborTech News

Wed, 08/03/2011 – 6:07pm

USW Members Ratify Labor Agreement to End 13-Month Lockout

By Honeywell International at Metropolis Uranium Plant in Illinois

Metropolis, Ill. (Aug. 3) – The United Steelworkers (USW) announced ratification of a new three-year agreement, ending a 13-month lockout by Honeywell International at the uranium processing plant in Metropolis, Ill., that is the largest conversion plant in the world to produce nuclear fuel for commercial reactors.

After a day-long vote yesterday at the union hall, USW Local 7-669 President Darrell Lillie said the membership approved the agreement, including a separate back to work provision. He declared: “We fought one-day longer on all the core issues and won them to our satisfaction. All of us who were locked out by Honeywell in June of last year who want to go back to work are doing so with union pride, a union contract and union solidarity.”

USW International President Leo W. Gerard led a national and global campaign to support the locked out workers. He flagged the dispute in meetings at the White House, with congressional leaders and federal regulatory agencies on Honeywell operating a critical nuclear energy facility with inexperienced scabs.

He said: “This is a victory earned in struggle by the Metropolis workers, their families and the community. Local 7-669 leaders and the members stood on the picket line as heroes who showed a commitment to fight an American multinational on principles that are rock solid about workplace safety, family health care, pensions, and job fairness.”

Jim Robinson, director for USW District 7 representing Illinois and Indiana workers, mobilized rallies, raised picket line contributions, and filled buses with the locked out Metropolis members. The locked out workers traveled twice to Honeywell global headquarters in Morristown, NJ, and met with legislators at state capitols. A USW delegation later travelled Europe to join leaders of Honeywell’s German and European Works Councils in Hamburg and Brussels at unity actions that kept the company coming back to the bargaining table.

Robinson said, “We formed a global labor coalition of organized Honeywell workers in the U.S. and Europe led by Alabama Steelworkers’ Director Dan Flippo. The company got the message and finally got serious about putting together a deal we could take to the locked out members.”

The new labor agreement retains all the major provisions that Honeywell sought to eliminate on existing seniority, the pension plan, health care for current hourly workers to include retirees, plus overtime pay practices. The benefit and work practice provisions were the most important to the locked out members, but the new contract will provide one percent wage increases in the second year and a two percent raise in the final year. Newly-hired workers will be placed in a different pension plan.

Some of the original 230 locked out workers in the 13-month struggle moved on to other jobs, quit or retired, creating vacancies for new hires at the Metropolis plant. Under terms of the back to work agreement, scabs or temporary workers will leave and the USW-represented workers return under a transition procedure required by the U.S. National Regulatory Commission (NRC) for safety retraining and recertification.

A schedule is being phased in among each of three returning USW groups of hourly workers. The first being the largest with 150 USW members is reporting Aug. 15 to the Paducah Community College campus for two weeks of certification training.

A big stick was wielded by European labor federations representing 16 million workers that included 30,000 workers employed at Honeywell units this past May, when leaders publicly stated: “We call on you to take all measures to ensure that this lockout be ended immediately, with all workers welcomed back to their plant without reprisals, and with full agreement of the United Steelworkers.”

Signing the document were the European Metalworkers Federation (EMF), the European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF), and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU). Unite, the UK union that has formed the first trans-Atlantic global union with the USW called Workers Uniting, was also actively engaged in the European campaign to support the locked out Metropolis Honeywell workers.

For more on the campaign in support of the locked out Honeywell Metropolis union members: www.usw.org, and www.usw7-669.com/.

January 7, 2011

Do the New NLRB Rules Really Help Workers Organize?

http://www.inthesetimes.org./working/entry/6817/do_the_new_nlrb_rules_really_help_workers_organize/
Do the New NLRB Rules Really Help Workers Organize?
Thursday
Jan 6, 2011
1:44 pm
By Mike Elk

The NLRB is walking, not running, to defend the right to organize.
(Photo via Flickr by Joe Kekeris/AFL-CIO)
A series of rules have been proposed recently by the National Labor
Relations Board that improve the rights of workers on the job. The
rule changes by the NLRB have been hailed by organized labor as great
triumphs that will promote the right to organize. But some question
whether the regulations go far enough.

In December, the NLRB ruled that employers must start posting the
rights of workers to join a union. This decision was met by many
congratulatory press releases celebrating a great victory for unions.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hailed these rules saying:

Every working person in America deserves to know his or her rights.
Just as employers are currently required to post information regarding
the laws that protect workers’ health and safety, their rights to a
minimum wage and to a workplace free from discrimination, this rule
ensures that workers’ rights are effectively communicated in the
workplace. It is necessary in the face of widespread misunderstanding
about the law and many workers’ justified fear of exercising their
rights under it.

In November, the NLRB ruled that expressing one’s negative opinion of
a boss using social media such as Facebook or Twitter was free speech
protected by the Constitution. This was hailed as a major victory for
workers trying to organize because it gave broader protection to
workers criticizing their companies. In October, the NLRB issued a
decision saying that employers now must electronically inform workers
through email of their union busting violations. Previously companies
were forced to only post a notice on a bulletin board.

Each time these rulings are issued by the NLRB, they are lauded as
signs of great progress by organized labor. However while the NLRB has
expanded the rights of workers in theory, it still has not changed the
penalties for illegal union busting. Requiring an employee to send out
an e-mail as opposed to posting a paper notice or having to post the
rights of a worker to join a union does not change an employer’s
behavior of intimidation.

Employers still face no serious financial penalties or lose government
contracts for illegally firing a worker. Nor has the NLRB shortened
the election period to seven days—as many in labor hoped—in order to
prevent the boss from running effective intimidation campaigns for
months. So why do so many in organized labors celebrate these rulings
with such great hope?

What these ruling represent is that the NLRB has shown the willingness
to change the rules ever so slightly in order to protect the rights of
workers. The NLRB has shown it has the power and willingness to do it.
However, until the NLRB is willing to issue tough penalties and
improve voting conditions for workers, these expanded workers’ rights
will help workers little as they exercise their right to organize.

January 3, 2011

Japan Labornet TV
Chie Matsumoto, Japan

Objectives:

* To inform the public of labor issues in Japan and abroad.
* To provide helpful tips in sorting troubles at work (ie. Introducing trade unions)
* To release labor disputes especially at major corporations, which mainstream media fail to report because of their advertiser-media relationship
* To help younger generation understand unionism
* To reach out to younger members of the society telling the importance of unions
* To help increase membership at trade unions
* To help fill generation gaps between older unionists and non-union youngsters
* To empower struggling unionists, win support for their struggles and unions
* To build international solidarity

Tech:

* UStream (Japanese)
* 1 main camera, 1 web-cam for non-stop streaming; mixer, 3 PCs, no switch board, projector as a monitor
* 10 staff members (1 director, 1 sub D, 1 camera, 1 mixer, 2 floor Ds, 2 art, 2 anchors)
* Archive files of past programs

Basics:

* Launched in May, 2010
* Operated by Labornet Japan members
* Broadcasting service of Labornet Japan (homepage-based news service)
* Funded by donations, volunteer based
* Studio set up in Tokyo
* Monthly broadcast
* News-based, 1-hour show
* Pictures, videos
* 5~6 sections:

* News briefs from the past month taken from Labornet Japan site
* Outstanding unions
* Struggles
* Complaints, call-in labor consultation with music, satirical haiku, satirical art
* Q-A on unionism between older unionists and younger generation
* Movie previews
* Critics

* Station breaks
* Credit roll of donors at the end of each program
* Around 100 access per program, live; 500 views of archive

Background:
Ever since Japan has ended its longest economic growth and fell into one of the worst recessions, the nation’s unemployment rate hit 5.6, considered one of the worst in history.
By then, the long-loved life-time employment system collapsed, while one in three workers in Japan was working on unstable, short-term contract, most often without social benefits.
Having a large percentage of temp workers makes it difficult for unions to organize workplaces, and that led to a spread of workers’ rights violations, as well as labor exploitation.

Full-time employees are not benefiting from this at all, either. As companies cut personnel cost and shrink workforce, full-timers are beginning to feel the heavier burden and work responsibility. Their work hours are getting longer, with fewer holidays, pay cut, less benefits, etc. They also feel the pain from tight resources.

Surprisingly enough, Japan has one of the most worker-friendly trade union law in the world. With general workers’ unions active across the nation, an individual can join a union, hold a collective bargaining session with management and protect workers’ rights. Although we still have full-time employees’ unions at most of the major corporations, their constitution often limits membership to full-time workers.

As temp workers are starting to raise their voices, it is time for unions in Japan to reach out to them. Unfortunately, just as the same as some other countries, trade unions are rarely perceived as something positive or an easy access in Japan. A vivid projection of radical activists in the 60s and 70s has managed to shun many young people from trying to learn about or join trade unions.

Trade unions have not caught up with Internet technology yet. The most they can get their hands on is building homepages as an information distributor; releasing information rather than receiving. Unionists are still lagging behind in use of Twitter or Facebook, or Internet streaming.

Labornet TV was established to serve as a mediator between unions and workers, in hopes of drawing interests of tech-savvy younger people and making the best use of interactive feature of online TV.