Nearly 1,000 Kroger workers and UFCW members from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan are meeting this week to plan for 2012 and beyond. Among other topics, they'll be discussing issues they’ll face in upcoming bargaining, including the state of their pension funds and the state of the retail food industry.

“We are all here for a common purpose,” said Roberta Greaver, a Steward from UFCW Local 75. “As Kroger workers, we know that wages, pensions and health care will all be at stake the next time we go to the bargaining table. But beyond that, in this part of the country, the very right to stick together in a union is under attack. The only way to fight back is through unity and working together. There’s power in numbers.”

Nearly 30,000 Kroger members in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio will renegotiate contracts with the company in 2012. In 2013, contracts expire for 12,000 members in Michigan and 13,000 in Ohio.

So-called “Right-to-Work” legislation is a slick slogan designed to trick people into believing that it protects a worker’s right to a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. So-called "Right-to-Work" legislation assures no worker a job, protects no worker against employer bias or retaliation, and undermines living wages and fair benefits.

The drive for "Right-to-Work" laws began in 1947 with the Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act.  To date, more than 60 years later, less than half of the states in the country have adopted this destructive legislation.

However, the "special-interest" supporters of “Right-to-Work” legislation claim that many states are in the process of passing “Right-to-Work” legislation.

What "special-interest" supporters fail to mention is that all of these states have repeatedly rejected “Right-to-Work” laws even though supporters continue their antiquated campaigns year after year.

Additionally, Colorado voters soundly defeated a “Right-to-Work” ballot initiative in 2008.

Many "special-interest" supporters have selected dubious “facts” that reflect an extreme partisan view point.  Many of their assertions are based on myth and ignorance of the current law.

A “Right-to-Work” law is redundant, lowers wages and benefits for all workers, and destroys the tax base for local communities. When real facts are taken into account, it is not economic development strategy driving this issue.  Rather, it is an extreme, outdated, partisan agenda.

The real problem with a “Right-to-Work” law and its special-interest supporters is that in their zest and zeal to hurt unions, they hurt non-union workers as well.

The Myth of "Forced" Unionism

In 1947, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was amended to expressly protect the right of workers to not join a union. Specifically, Section 7 of the NLRA expressly states that employees shall have the right to refrain from joining a union.

Further, there are two U.S. Supreme Court cases that special-interest supporters of so-called "Right-to-Work" tend to overlook:

1. In the 1963 NLRB v. General Motors Corp. (373 U.S. 734) case, the court ruled that employees could not be forced to join a union under any circumstances.

2. In the 1988 Communications Workers v. Beck (487 U.S. 735) case, the court ruled that workers could not be forced to pay the portion of their union dues that went for political purposes with which they did not agree.

The facts are plain and simple, under the current federal law no worker can be forced to join a union or pay dues for political purposes. “Right-to-Work” laws are out-dated and a throw-back to the anti-union agenda of another era.

“Right-to-Work” laws are simply redundant and unneeded when the current federal law is actually examined.

“Right-to-Work” laws represent destructive economic development policy guided by extreme partisan politics. The goal should be to raise the standard of living for working families, not lower it.

Working families deserve better than an antiquated law designed to raise corporate profits and lower worker wages and benefits.

About 30 workers at a Brooklyn supermarket will split $300,000 in unpaid overtime and minimum wages and will for the first time receive paid vacation time and sick days as part of a union contract signed this week.

The agreement with Master Food on Church Avenue is the first deal to come out of a year-long collaboration between Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 338 and advocacy group New York Communities for Change that seeks to organize low-wage workers across the city.

“Most of all, we're happy,” said Cesar Vidal, a 37-year-old from Mexico who has worked at Master Food since 1999, earning $300 a week while working 12 hours a day, six days a week. “We know that by fighting you can accomplish anything. We fought and we don't have to continue to work the way we were working.”

Mr. Vidal, who will get about $11,000 as part of the settlement, said he'd save the money for the education of his children, ages 3, 6 and 7.

The workers filed a wage-theft lawsuit against Master Food earlier this year and used the threat of a substantial award to pressure the supermarket for a contract. Not wanting to put it out of business, they settled for less than half of what they believed they were owed, in exchange for the long-term protection of a union contract. Master workers voted to join Local 338 in March. The 13-year-old company has revenues between $2.5 million and $5 million a year, according to a profile on the small business website Manta.

The workers, who hail from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and various countries in the West Indies, will receive a raise of 35 cents an hour immediately and another 25 cents a year from now. Most of the workers will earn less than $8 an hour. They'll receive between five and 15 paid vacation days, depending on their length of service, and will get five paid holidays, three to 10 paid sick days, funeral leave and two personal days. The contract also outlines grievance and arbitration procedures for the resolution of any disputes.

“Some people said immigrant workers are so vulnerable that you can't organize them, you can't do that much for them,” said Kevin Lynch, who recently retired as director of organizing for Local 338 and has been advising the campaign. “But this is the absolute proof that that is wrong. You need a strong offense. You need to go in with guns blazing.”

Mr. Lynch said the contract doesn't have health benefits, but the vacation, holidays, personal days and sick days are benefits the workers never had.

Richard Izzo, a lawyer for Master Food, did not return several calls seeking comment. A man who answered the phone at the supermarket said owner Mun Cha was not available and to “call back next week.”

The campaign at Master Food is one of several involving low-wage grocery workers in Brooklyn. Lawsuits have been filed against a Fine Fare and a Key Food and organizers are hoping the Master Food deal will be a template for other workplaces. They plan to expand the campaign to additional supermarkets, car washes and fast food restaurants, using wage-theft suits to help win long-term security for workers.

“We stumbled on a model and will be doing this in a lot more places,” said Jon Kest, executive director of New York Communities for Change. “Increasingly, we see this as a model for how to organize low-wage workers.”

Read more: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111028/LABOR_UNIONS/111029884#ixzz1cZhQIhs0

MEMO

TO:           ALL UFCW LOCAL 328 STEWARDS

FROM:       Dave Fleming, President

DATE:        August 17, 2011

RE:            VERIZON STRIKE

_____________________________________________________________               

As I  sure you are all aware by now, our brothers and sisters working for Verizon have taken the unprecedented step of striking to stop the Wisconsin-style tactics of the Verizon Corporation.

Despite making $19.5 billion in profits and paying out $258 million to its top 5 exectuvies over the last five years, Verizon wants to take back more than 50 years of collective bargaining and destroy middle class jobs.

We are asking all UFCW members to help support our striking brothers and sisters wherever you can.  We are asking everyone to take a few minutes out of your day to stop by a Verizon picket line in your area.  Something as simple as walking the picket line for 1 hours would mean a great deal to these men and women who are leading the fight for good middle class jobs.

If you can't get to a picket line, you can help by signing a petition by going to:

  cwa-org./verizongreed        or by going to    facebook.com/UnityatVerizon2011

REMEMBER, "An Injury to one is an injury to ALL".

On behalf of all the men and women of the CWA and IBEW, Thank You.

PLEASE POST

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

On Wall Street Bonuses

February 23, 2011

Today’s Wall Street bonuses are just one more example of how shared sacrifice only applies to the middle class, not corporate CEOs.  While executives on Wall Street fret over the size of their bonuses, the rest of the country is worried about how they will put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. As 14 million unemployed Americans desperately search for work, the Wall Street Journal estimates that banks and securities firms paid out a record $135 billion in total compensation for 2010. And in state after state, public employees are being asked to pay for deficits that the Wall Street financial crisis created.

What’s just as shameful is that those at the very top are getting tax breaks at a time of such vast need for everyday Americans.  And what are these billionaires doing with that money? Using their political muscle to destroy workers’ freedom to bargain collectively for a middle class life.  They are attacking public service employees based on the falsehood that firefighters, teachers and nurses are overpaid. 

Rebuilding our economy requires addressing the growing income gap so clearly illustrated by Wall Street’s bonuses. America cannot retain its greatness with two different worlds – one for working people and another for those at the top. These bonuses show why Wall Street must be regulated.  Yet members of Congress are trying to repeal the types of protections put in place to ensure Wall Street can’t cause another economic crisis, including targeting the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  We have to hold fast to these Wall Street reforms and demand that the billionaires pay their fair share.

America is emerging from the recession, slowly, steadily, by putting one foot in front of the other. It's not just recovery that's at stake in November, it's our future, and it's why union members, progressives, can't let up--despite the sometimes slow pace of change, despite setbacks and disappointments that might happen. There is far, far too much left to do.

Progress: America Doesn’t Stand Still. We Move Forward

UFCW members from coast to coast were part and parcel of the incredible grassroots movement that united to elect Barack Obama in 2008 and bring a worker-friendly majority in to power in both houses of Congress. Our union brothers and sisters walked countless blocks, registered thousands of first-time voters and brought uncounted new voices into the political process. Record numbers of people in every city and town, men, women, young people and retirees of every background were engaged and committed to shaping our country’s future for the better.

During that campaign season, we were in the midst of an unprecedented economic collapse, the vast majority of citizens thought the country and our leaders had gotten us way off on to the wrong track, yet our campaign was fueled not by frustration, anger, or disappointment but by hope—and the knowledge that with hard work, perseverance, and the right kind of leadership America could emerge stronger than ever.

When President Obama took office, he inherited overwhelming challenges: two wars, an economy in crisis, a broken health care system, and record deficits. On the campaign trail, he used to say that, “the size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics.” It was a call to rise above the partisan bickering that had become the norm from our state houses to the White House and had all but stopped movement in any direction from happening. It was a call to acknowledge the real, urgent, over-arching problems facing our country and the world—from the economy, to the environment—and confront them, boldly, with ideas, solutions, leadership, creativity, and with America’s can-do attitude.

Democrats in Congress didn’t slow down when coming up to the daunting hurdles facing our nation. Rather, they worked overtime with the President to prevent a second Great Depression, putting our economy on the road to recovery. We stabilized our financial system and we put insurance companies, big banks, and credit card companies on notice with the strongest consumer protections ever. UFCW members lead the push to make affordable health care available to everyone—and we stuck to our ideals: everyone should have access, nobody should be denied because they’re sick, and nobody should go bankrupt because they’re sick.

These weren’t band-aid solutions to big problems. These policies addressed the underlying reasons for our broken health care system and the inequality that meant our economic system was only working for Wall Street and not Main Street. They weren’t immediate solutions, and they require short term sacrifice for long term gain. But that’s exactly why we elected President Obama in the first place. Americans have learned the hard way that the responsible solution is not the easiest, or the quickest, or the one with the best sound byte.

 We elected Barack Obama and Democrats because they acknowledged we all had a role to play in building our future—and they asked us to step up and be part of those solutions. They asked all of us to sacrifice a little, everyone must contribute to the recovery and to building a better America we can be proud of—all of us, from the most successful entrepreneur, to the small business owner just starting out, to the millions of Americans who stand at a cash register all day, to our opinion leaders and pundits who guide the national debate. And so many of us have risen to that occasion, contributing to the moving of America forward—from the taxes we pay, to the time we volunteer, to the civility we find when we discuss politics with a neighbor who disagrees with us.

Yet since the day President Obama took office, Republicans have tried to block progress at every turn. Republicans refused to give the winners of the election the slightest room to govern when there was an unmistakably clear mandate. Instead of intelligent discourse, respectful compromise, or checking and balancing of power, they chose to root for failure of the President’s agenda and policies—as if it were personal instead of about the future of every single American. UFCW members should take it personally when Republicans ridicule our long, thoughtful, earnest work to make health care affordable and accessible by labeling it “Obamacare” or denouncing us as socialists. 

Republicans resort to ridicule because they don’t have real, thoughtful solutions to any challenge we face. Our twenty-four hour news cycle makes the Bush Administration seems like ancient history—but UFCW members remember that Wall Street bankers made the rules and American families paid the price. Millionaires got tax cuts while middle-class Americans worked harder and harder to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the exploding deficit mortgaged the future of every American child to the tune of over $100,000 each.

Yet Republican candidates from Meg Whitman in California to John Kasich in Ohio are touting their Wall Street experience as if it’s a resume builder and not a serious problem. Republicans’ failed policies, utter complicity with Wall Street’s delusional greed, and their disdain for even the most basic regulation or responsibility is what lost us 8 million jobs in the first place. And as a result, lives all over America are on hold: retirements are postponed, college educations are delayed, dreams of owning a home or starting a family are destroyed. For a long time, the future has been hanging out in front of us, like a carrot on a stick. As we took steps toward it, the future remained a mirage just out of reach.

Make no mistake: it was Republicans who strung that carrot up. And it’s Democrats who have cut it down. America is emerging from the recession, slowly, steadily, by putting one foot in front of the other. It’s not just recovery that’s at stake in November, it’s our future, and it’s why union members, progressives, can’t let up—despite the sometimes slow pace of change, despite setbacks and disappointments that might happen. There is far, far too much left to do.

If you care about building a better America, you need to talk to your neighbors, your family, and your co-workers. You need to knock on doors and make phone calls for the worker-friendly candidates in your state who are ready to move our country forward. We've come too far to turn back now

John J Sweeney, the nation’s top union official, often complains that he was invited just once to the White House during George W. Bush’s eight years in office — and even that was at the Vatican’s behest during a visit by Pope Benedict.

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE IS THE ONLY OPTION

Left to right: Tim Melia, President Dave Fleming, Speaker Pelosi, Jim Riley & Peter Derouen (Local 791)

Speaker Pelosi in Rhode Island

Just the other day I and many other labor folks were lamenting the fact that the liberal blogosphere has zero time for the labor movement these days—apart, of course, from thanking us for bringing them the weekend, declaring that we’re no longer relevant, and then quickly moving on to a sexier progressive topic.