No pay justice for home health care workers, rules Supreme Court

SEIU Photo

Home-care workers are not entitled to overtime pay or a minimum wage. On June 11, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 to uphold a 1975 Labor Department rule exempting the one million home-care workers employed by agencies from being protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The case was brought by lawyers for Evelyn Coke, a 73-year-old retiree who spent more than two decades in the home-care industry helping the ill and the elderly. Now in failing health, Ms. Coke challenged the rule that had denied her time and a half for all her extra hours on the job; an appeals court agreed the rule was illegal, and the Service Employees International Union testified in her favor.

This decision "is another blow to struggling, low-wage women," said Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women's Law Center. The SEIU pointed out that, while the Bush Administration defended the "campanionship" rule that exempts home-care workers from labor rights, a future administration could tear up that rule.

Men share women’s attitudes on balancing work and family

-- From Kathleen Gerson's upcoming book about "Children of the Gender Revolution"

Women are not giving up the struggle to work while raising families, and instead men are becoming more like women in their attitudes toward balancing life at home and at work. That’s the word from experts who shared their latest research at the Conference of the Council on Contemporary Families in Chicago this May.

Men increasingly feel personal tension between family and work life, even if their wives stay home, said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Family and Work Institute. This is especially true among young parents, says Kathleen Gerson, author of “Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood.”

Sharing is #1 choice

After conducting 120 in-depth interviews with men and women ages 18 to 32, Dr. Gerson found that Generation X fathers spend more time with their children than did baby boomer fathers, and that both sexes aspire to the same ideal: “a balance between work and family.” Fewer than three out of ten of either sex want a traditional division of work and family, where men earn the money while their wives care for the children.

What would parents do if they couldn't achieve that balance? While both prefer equal sharing, women and men do differ in their fall-back strategies, with seven out of ten women opting to be independent while an equal proportion of men would fall back on a flexible version of traditional roles.

As for the kids, three out of four whose parents share the parenting and breadwinning say that's the best option. And barely half of those growing up in traditional families where their fathers go to work while their moms stay home think theirs is the best situation. Among those whose parents have broken up, 44% think their situation is better than if their parents had stayed together.

Paula England, a sociologist at Stanford University, says the slight decline in women’s employment since 2000 – less than 2 percent after decades of steady growth – is “completely trivial.”

Walker Health Care Center workers celebrate

PAI Photo

Two victories for medical workers in Minnesota

Nursing home gets union, hospital nurses protect union rights

Taken from articles by Workday Minnesota & Press Associates

In a case that became a “poster child” for the pro-management delay-ridden labor law process in the U.S., the 600 workers at the Walker Methodist Health Care Center, a nursing home in Minneapolis, finally won union recognition -- four years after they won the union election. At long last, the National Labor Relations Board rejected management appeals that had delayed the final count of the ballots to join AFSCME Council 5. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), whose district includes Minneapolis, had pointed to the long delays and management harassment of employees, who voted 61 percent to unionize back in 2003, as an example of the need for labor law reform.

Meanwhile, just months after the Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board ruled that most nurses and hundreds of thousands of other workers could be considered supervisors and stripped of their rights to unionize, more than 10,000 nurses in the Twin Cities area won new union contracts with 13 area hospitals and clinics. The new contracts sport language saying the hospitals “will not challenge the supervisory or managerial status of any current member of the bargaining units during the contract’s term.”

New Jersey Unions add more than 3,000 members in a week

By Doug Cunningham, Workers Independent News

Signed union cards at Rutgers

New Jersey unions gained 3,000 new members this week as Rutgers University administrative staff joined the American Federation of Teachers. A strong majority of the 2000 administrative unit members signed cards. The same week, 1100 casino dealers at Bally’s joined the UAW.

Gov. Corzine visited the Rutgers campus to support their union drive. The employers fought to keep workers from becoming union members, but state and local elected officials supported the organizing drives.

Union fed seeks organizing links with Chinese union

Change to Win announces new initiative in China

Taken from PAI article

CTW chair Anna Burger with the federation¹s #2 official, Edgar Romney

AFL-CIO Photo

North American workers trying to organize are often reminded that they face very low-wage competition from countries like China. Is it possible for U.S. and Chinese unions to work together to raise standards on both sides of the world? With that goal in mind, the Change to Win federation launched a project to exchange information and strategies for collective bargaining and organizing with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, China’s state-sponsored union.

Dealing with companies like Wal-Mart

CTW Chair Anna Burger told a May 22 press conference in the Chinese capital of Beijing that the two federations would concentrate on ways to organize and bargain with multi-national corporations that operate in both economies. She said that’s especially important since trade talks in Washington between the Bush Administration and the Chinese government, which ended May 24, pointedly ignored workers’ rights.

Many unions are wary of making such contacts, assuming that government control of the Chinese union prevents it from being free and able to represent workers’ rights. But Burger thinks the union has a “sincere” commitment to improving workers’ lot. “To share in the prosperity of the global economy, workers and their organizations must build strong links of solidarity around the world,” she added.

Berger singled out Wal-Mart as among the multinational corporations who “roam the world in a race to the bottom,” usually by “settling where they can pay their workers the least--and far too many have settled here,” in China.

Latest Facts show salaried & professional women gain from unions

New fact sheet shows a huge union advantage

"Did you know that the typical union woman who teaches kindergarten or preschool kids makes more than 1 ½ times what her non-union counterparts get – a whopping 57% pay advantage? For elementary and middle school teacher, the union wage advantage is still strong, at 34.6%.

In 2006, union librarians earned almost 29% more than non-union librarians, while union social workers and counselors earned 27% and 26.4% more than those without unions, respectively. For RN's, the union wage advantage was 15%. If you figure in the fact that union women and men are more likely than nonunion workers to have health and pension benefits, to get paid holidays and vacations, and to be covered by life and disability insurance, the differences are even more dramatic.

The latest fact sheet from the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, Salaried and Professional Women not only shows the differences in union and non-union paychecks for 2006, but also updates other facts about unionism among women. Today, over 7.5 million women are represented by unions. To obtain hard copies, contact Marcie Lawrence at 202/638-0320, ext. 16.

NLRB opens way to early decert petitions

Could kick out unions before they even have a chance to function

Taken from PAI article by Mark Gruenberg

By a 2-1 vote along party lines, the Bush-appointed Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board opened the way for early decertification petitions against unions, even before the ink dries on the contracts involved. In a case involving Service Employees Local 790, which organized security screeners, baggage handlers and specialists at San Francisco Airport, the board majority told its regional director to accept a decertification petition filed by anti-union worker two days before the first contract was to take effect.

Covenant Aviation Security, which employs the San Francisco screeners, recognized Local 790 in October, 2005 after 555 of the 1,010 workers signed authorization cards. Local 790 and Covenant reached a tentative contract two months later. It was ratified 378-229 and took effect Jan. 13, 2006; 92 percent of the decertification signatures were collected even before the ratification vote.

Although the board’s San Francisco regional director said that was too early and tossed the decert out, the national board reinstated it. San Francisco is one of the few U.S. airports where a private firm runs the screening. At other airports, the Bush regime made it illegal for unions to organize screeners on “national security” grounds -- a ruling congressional Democrats have voted to overturn.

Sisters on the Frontline: Organizing Women, Building Power

Conference shares insights on strategies & resources for organizing women

More than 200 women met recently in New York City to speak frankly about how to maximize the number of women joining unions. Hosted by Cornell University's Institute for Women and Work, senior women organizers joined other women from community coalitions to share effective strategies and resources for unionizing women at the March 30-April 1 conference, "Sisters on the Frontline: Organizing Women, Building Power." It was held at The Joseph S. Murphy Center for Labor, Community & Policy Studies, CUNY.

Julie Kushner, a senior UAW organizer, stressed the importance of keeping your own (organizing) style: "They [the men] changed because I didn't. I kept my own style. The challenges are tremendous to not change."

More

Behind the Pay Gap

New proof that male-female pay gap persists spurs
rally for equality

"Behind the Pay Gap," a new study by the American Association of University Women, shows how the pay gap between men and women starts the minute working women step out of college into the job world. The gap is even larger for minority-group women. But it is much smaller, a witness recently told lawmakers, if women are unionized.

Read about the pay gap study & its findings

Download the report (pdf)

The news that inequality persists helped inspired unionists, led by the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the American Federation of Teachers, to rally with other pay equity groups on April 24 on the Capitol lawn. Speakers highlighted the fact that a woman worker’s pay is still only 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. The April 24 date for the rally was chosen because it marks the number of extra days in 2007 that a female worker nationwide has to work, in addition to all of 2006, to equal the median pay for a male worker for 2006 alone.

Fired non-union Circuit City workers get support from union

Taken from PAI news

A second round of mass firings of 654 store managers by the big electronics retailer Circuit City prompted some workers to contact the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum blasted the firings, and said they showed the firm’s managers are “poster children for corporate irresponsibility.”

The retailer had already fired 3,400 staffers nationwide, virtually all because they were its highest-paid workers. It told them they could reapply for their old jobs in two months, at half the pay. Customers responded by abandoning Circuit City due to lack of expertise on the stores’ floors, and revenues crashed in the first quarter of 2007. The company CEO earned $17 million last year in pay and benefits.

RWDSU is backing a lawsuit against Circuit City filed by three California workers. “Even though the employees at Circuit City are not members of our union, every retail worker has a stake in fighting what Circuit City is doing,” Appelbaum said. “Big chain stores have been pushing retail workers around for too long; it’s time to push back.”

Sen. Tom Harkin, who addressed this Equal Pay Day rally in 2005, now chairs the committee taking up the issue.

Photo by Mark Gruenberg, PAI

New moves to put equal rights for women into Constitution & laws

Congress considers Women’s Equity Amendment and laws for pay equity

Information from PAI

The Coalition of Labor Union Women vows to mobilize its chapters “and do everything we can” to help pass a proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing women equal rights under the law. The Women’s Equity Amendment revives the goal of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment that was passed by Congress in 1972 and swept much of the nation before being defeated by a backlash against women's rights. Opponents used many of the same scare tactics that are already being raised against this new campaign launched March 27.

The amendment states that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It then gives Congress power “to enforce it by appropriate legislation.” As Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) put it: “It is time to ensure the promises enshrined in our Constitution--justice, fairness, equality--are made real in the lives of every woman in America”

Why are nurse aides paid so much less than truck drivers?

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) backs pay equity legislation at Capitol Hill rally. Photo by Mark Gruenberg, PAI

Photo by Mark Gruenberg, PAI

Democrats also introduced into Congress new pay equity laws that would make it easier for women to prove pay discrimination on the job. A key goal is to grant equal pay for women who hold jobs that are comparable to jobs men hold, even if they don't have the exact same titles and duties.

An example the law could correct, said professor Philip Cohen of the University of North Carolina, who testified for a pay equity bill, is the huge pay gap between nurses’ aides and truck drivers. Nurse aides are about the same average age as truck drivers and their jobs also require medium amounts of strength, but the aides generally have more education and on-the-job training. “Yet those aides, 89 percent of whom are women, have median earnings of $20,000 a year," Cohen pointed out. That's just 57 percent of what truck drivers make -- "97 percent of whom are male.”

Labor organizer for U.S. FLOC union killed in Mexico

Taken from article by Dan LaBotz, Mexican Labor News & Analysis

Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), based in Toledo, Ohio, was murdered in Monterrey, Mexico on April 9. Cruz was found bound and beaten to death in the union offices; there was no robbery.

Baldemar Velásquez, president of FLOC, believes that he may have been murdered because the union had disturbed the operations of corrupt individuals involved in labor contracting operations in Mexico. Cruz, originally from Oaxaca, had gone to the United States in search of work to help support his family in Mexico. After he became involved as a volunteer with FLOC “we recognized his talent,” said Velásquez, “and hired him to work for the union.”

Worked for FLOC union in both the U.S. & Mexico

Cruz worked both in Ohio and in North Carolina organizing agricultural workers for four years. Earlier this year Cruz found himself in need of more money to help his family and took a factory job. During an immigration raid he was arrested and deported to Mexico. Back in Mexico he learned that FLOC was looking for someone to work in its office in Monterrey, and the union hired him for the job. Still short on money to rent an apartment, Cruz was staying in the union office at the time he was attacked and killed.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has gotten involved, telling the Mexican government to “adopt the necessary measures to guarantee the life and physical security” of FLOC staff in Mexico and to keep the IACHR informed of the judicial process to bring Santiago’s killers to justice. What you can do to help.

Organizing drives gain support

Information from reports by Press Associates

Arizona county workers vote overwhelmingly to join SEIU

By a 94 -6 percent margin, workers for Pima County, Arizona (home of Tucson. the state's second biggest city) voted to join SEIU Arizona on April 12. The vote grants union representation to 4,500 social workers, mechanics, animal-control officers and maintenance personnel. Key issues in SEIU’s two-year organizing drive were fair wages and benefits, health care, more training, and resources to improve services. In Arizona, public worker unions may only “meet and confer,” not bargain and agree, about various issues with counties -- if the counties pass “meet and confer” ordinances first. Pima County did so in January. Health care cost hikes have eaten up recent raises for workers, the union said.

Starbucks charged with 30 counts of labor law-breaking

Starbucks' liberal image apparently ends when it comes to respecting its own workforce. The illegal tactics it used to fight an organizing drive in Manhattan by Industrial Workers of the World Local 660 range from firing pro-union workers to banning discussions of the union when workers are off-duty, grilling workers on their support for the union, and banning union buttons.

Starbucks workers are paid as little as $8.75 an hour in this expensive city, and many aren't allowed to work more than four hours a day. They started trying to organize in 2004, and unionists say that despite three years of dirty tricks the company has used against them, support is growing.

Edwards urges Smithfield to accept union rights

Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who is running for president, is urging Smithfield foods to end its pitched battle against the United Food and Commercial Workers’ organizing drive at the firm’s Tar Heel, N.C. plant.

“I understand that workers at Tar Heel--the largest pork-processing plant in the world--have expressed a long-standing interest in forming a union,” Edwards wrote Smithfield CEO Carl Pope in April. He wants Pope to pledge the firm is “remaining neutral in their ongoing organizing campaign.” Tar Heel has 5,500 workers.

As Edwards pointed out, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in 2004 that Smithfield violated its workers’ right to organize in the 1990s, and Smithfield recently had to pay $1.5 million in back wages in that labor law-breaking case.

Bill would overturn NLRB 'Workers Are Supervisors' ruling

Save right to unionize for millions of workers

From PAI article by Mark Gruenberg

Is someone a supervisor simply because that person spends a small part of her time-maybe an hour or less a day --in "supervisory" duties such as telling orderlies to change bedpans? Last year millions of such workers were stripped of their rights to unionize by a National Labor Relations Board ruling.

Are these nurses supervisors?

The Supreme Court, in a case filed by the Kentucky River nursing home, had told the NLRB to clarify which workers are supervisors. The Bush-appointed majority seized upon that opportunity to decide last September, in another nursing home case, that millions of workers, including 843,000 registered nurses nationwide, could be deemed supervisors and stripped of labor law protections.

Are reporters and teachers supervisors?

The labor board definition was so broad that it could make "supervisors" of millions of other workers, from construction workers, newspaper reporters, kindergarten teachers, and airplane pilots to physical therapists. Estimates of the number of workers hit by the Bush board's Oakwood ruling range from 8 million by the Economic Policy Institute to 34 million by the NLRB's two dissenters.

What bill would do

But that could change. A bill introduced into Congress March 23 would declare that a worker cannot be considered a supervisor unless "for a majority of the working time" he or she is "acting in the interest of the employer" in hiring, firing, disciplining or otherwise managing workers. Simply "assigning" other people to tasks or just for being responsible for directing them on occasion would not make someone a supervisor.

This law, says AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, would "right a wrong done to millions of Americans" and "restore Congress's original intent, which was never to deny protection to these workers." The new bill would also say workers who occasionally take on supervisory duties for a shift or two , such as charge nurses or team leaders, are not supervisors.

'Opt Out' or Pushed Out?

The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Workforce:
Path-breaking study debunks the myths

If you only listened to the media, you’d think that conflicts between work and family are mostly a matter of on professional women choosing to “opt out”—to cut back on work or leave the workforce—for family reasons.

But a study released in October by the The Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law debunks the myths surrounding the opt out story. It details the ways in which women usually do not opt out, but are instead pushed out of their jobs by inflexible workplaces, failures of public policy, and outright workplace bias.

Media focus on professionals - 8% of American women

The study reviews more than 100 news articles and shows how they:

• focus overwhelmingly on the lives of professional/managerial women, who comprise only about 8% of American women;
• pinpoint the pull of family life as the main reason why women quit, whereas a recent study showed that 86% of women cite workplace pushes (such as inflexible jobs) as a key reason for their decision to leave; and
• give an unrealistic picture of how easy it will be for women to re-enter the workforce.

The study also points out that better educated women are more likely to be in the labor force than less educated women. And although mothers are not increasingly likely to stay home with their children, a real trend is that both men’s household contributions and women’s work hours have stalled.

The real problems

The real problems, it says, stem from workplaces that are still designed for the workforce of the 1950s, in which male breadwinners were married to homemakers who took care of home and children. Today, all the adults in 70% of families are in the labor force.

It points out that better educated women are more likely to be in the labor force than less educated women; and women’s decisions to opt out do not represent a return to “traditional” values; in fact, much of what contemporary professional moms stay home to do is not traditional.
Read the study.

Half of U.S. workers don't get paid sick days

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 percent of American workers don't have paid sick days. The bill would require employers with 15 or more employees to provide seven paid sick days to address an employee's short-term medical needs or those of his or her family.

A union-backed bill introduced into both houses of Congress on March 15 called the Healthy Families Act would give most workers at least seven paid sick days a year. The bill would also provide pro-rated leave for part-time employees, and sick days for medical appointments and to care for a family member with comparable needs. Unionized workers often have such rights written into their contracts.

More than three out of four low-wage workers have no paid sick days, and women are disproportionately denied sick days. In total, 22 senators and 17 representatives are cosponsoring the legislation.

New Flex Pack: How Unions Can Push For Worker Controlled Flexibility

"Fake flex": When the workweek is cut from 32 hours to 8

Sally Wright, 67, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Ponca City, Oklahoma, quit in August after 22 years with the company, after managers pushed her to make herself available to work any time, day or night.

Wright asked to stay on the day shift, but her manager cut her schedule from a 32-hour week to an 8-hour week and refused her pleas for more hours.

New tool to help unions bargain for real flexibility

Unfortunately, this is only one example of "fake flex" policies that force workers to "flex" their lives to fit the job, says the Labor Project for Working Families. Today, more and more workers want their jobs to flex back. They want more control over their work schedules without risking their wages, benefits or job security. How can unions make jobs more flexible? How easy is it to bargain for flextime programs? And how can unions protect job security at the same time? The new Flex Pack - a unique resource for unions from the Labor Project for Working Families -- is now available as a free download or at just $5 a printed copy.

Get more information .

Unionizing home-based child care  brings public support for  children

A new report from the National Women’s Law Center  shows how unionizing  leads to more pubic investment in children as well as better working conditions for child-care workers. In just the last two years, there has been a flurry of union organizing among women who care for children in the their own homes. Considered self-employed, home child-care workers haven’t been covered by existing labor laws, and unions have had to win new laws to organize them.  “The findings in this report are preliminary but confirm that there is strength in numbers,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center.

Since 2005, the legislatures or governors in eleven states have taken action to authorize unionization of home-based child care providers -- although in four of those states, the Governors have vetoed bills passed by the legislature.  Three states have signed contracts with unions.

Read the report .

Who's behind those anti-union groups?

New tool created by America Rights at Work

American Rights at Work (AFL-CIO affiliated) has launched a great new Web-based resource tool that counters the lies and twisted information spewed out by Richard Berman, the National Association of Manufacturers and others. It offers good info on how to counter a lot of the anti-union messages in the US.

At the Anti-Union Network (http://www.antiunionnetwork.org), you'll find profiles of anti-union organizations with details on their lobbying, litigation and media outreach, as well as their connections to each other.

The site premiers with a profile of Berman’s egregiously misnamed Center for Union Facts and includes a diagram of Berman’s extensive money trail.