Central Indiana Jobs with Justice

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News

Workers' Rights and Social Justice in the News:

Down on upward mobility
December 14, 2008
Indianapolis Star, by Dan Carpenter
The labor movement, which made teachers into empowered professionals and factory workers into middle-class taxpayers, has been under attack for a generation from the forces of phony simplicity.
For every complex crisis -- low ISTEP scores, imbalance of trade, an auto industry on the brink -- there's an easy answer: Blame the unions.
The idea that collective bargaining has achieved a standard of living that is unfair and unsustainable, rather than one that society as a whole should pursue, is one of our most powerful national myths. Like the glory of war and the frivolousness of environmental protection, union bashing is a bill of goods sold by the most myopic of special interests and bought by ordinary folks against their own interests.
Thus, the United Auto Workers, whose wages and benefits account for 10 percent of their products' cost, and whose layoffs and concessions have been nothing short of devastating, becomes a scapegoat for politicians and voters who look at a train wreck and see a gravy train.
Thus, this city, just to take one timely example, can rationalize paying more for Toyotas than for UAW-built Chevies with Indianapolis-made parts even though the latter would circulate more money through the local economy -- the exact justification for another recent decision, to rebate the county income tax increase.
Unions, which mean better jobs and more secure and stable families, families who attend more PTO meetings and give more to United Way, ought to be models for policymakers; instead, they're afterthoughts -- or enemies. It doesn't add up.
"If you ask me, American workers have been silently bailing out their companies for 35 years," says Nancy Holle, a leader in the advocacy group Central Indiana Jobs With Justice.
"Want an increase in profits? Take it out of the workers' pay. Have them work longer with no increase, or let them go, and the CEOs get a bonus. Time after time, time after time. The U.S. worker works harder and longer than workers in any other industrialized country. It has been a silent bailout."
It is no coincidence that fewer and fewer of those workers are organized. Republican presidents, governors and legislators have not been inclined to make life easy for Democratically-inclined labor; and sadly, laborers themselves have become so conditioned to going unprotected that they resent those who have some insulation. Not to mention ignoring history. Consider those "featherbedding" retirees.
"These are the people who looked out for us in World War II. They built this country," Holle declares. "For the UAW to look out for them, that's something we should all aspire to. God bless 'em."
For me, one of the finest moments of the millennial hoopla came when longtime National Public Radio anchor Bob Edwards was asked what he deemed the most important national development of the century just past. The labor movement, he replied. Not long after, he was history, as NPR went for someone younger. Maybe, I'm thinking, there are some areas in which old ideas are our best hope for change we can believe in.
Home Depot Founder: CEOs Who Don’t Fight Employee Choice ‘Should Be Shot’
by James Parks, Nov 20, 2008
In Tuesday’sWall Street Journal,columnist Thomas Frank showed just how far the corporate types will go to stop workers from having the freedom to make their own decision about joining a union and bargaining. Frank quotesHome Depot founder Bernie Marcus as saying CEOs who don’t contribute to Republicans fighting the Employee Free Choice Act “should be shot.” More...
September 25, 2008

Lawrence bus drivers must wait on union vote

By Cathy Kightlinger
cathy.kightlinger@indystar.com

Lawrence Township school bus drivers and monitors still have no union representation.

In a 3-2 vote at Monday's school board meeting, members tabled a request for union representation for the drivers, monitors and other support staff members.

Board president Susan Fuldauer and member Henry Fernandez voted against tabling the item.

Under the measure, the board would agree to participate in an election to determine whether some employees would get union representation -- but only under a defined set of circumstances.

One requirement would have the employee organization seeking to represent staff members notify the board in writing that most of the employees are interested in such a system or a sufficient number are interested to warrant an election.

Board members Adam Goldstein, Carol Helmus and Lawrence Yarrell voted in favor of tabling the action.

"I just didn't have all of the answers to all of the questions at the time this thing came to a vote," said Goldstein. "Fundamentally, I think I'd like to support this."

source: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080925/LOCAL1802/809250475/1001/NEWS
Medical Bills Leading Cause of Bankruptcy, Harvard Study Finds
Article Title
February 3, 2005
Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs. Read More
Rising Gas Prices vs. Rising Health Care Costs
August 18, 2008
From today’s daily health care news, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at The Health Care Blog points out the connection between gas prices and health care costs: Read More
Unionization Substantially Improves the Pay and Benefits of Younger Workers
Despite being better educated, young workers have fallen farther behind over the past 30 years
For Immediate Release:October 16, 2008
Contact: Alan Barber, 202-293-5380 x115

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In an election year that promises record numbers of young voters, a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) documents a large wage and benefit advantage for young workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts. The report also finds that younger workers are earning about 10 percent less than their counterparts did in 1979, despite impressive gains in young workers' educational attainment over the same time period.

"Even though they've done everything right -finished high school and college at higher rates than in the past, young workers have been the hardest hit by stagnant and declining wages over the last 30 years" said John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study.

The report, "Unions and Upward Mobility for Young Workers," found that young unionized workers -those age 18 to 29-- earned, on average, 12.4 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, young workers in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.

The report, which analyzed data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), found that unionization raises the pay of young workers by about $1.75 per hour. According to the report, young workers in unions were also 17 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 24 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension plan than young workers who were not in unions.
"Unions make a big difference for younger workers," said Schmitt. "There is no economic theory that says young people have to be poorly paid or go without benefits."
According to the study, unionization also strongly benefited young workers in typically low-wage occupations. Among young workers in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members earned 10.2 percent more than those workers who were not in unions. In the same low-wage occupations, unionized young people were 27 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 26 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than their non-union counterparts.

The full report can be found here.
Wal-Mart Has Perfected the Art of Union-Busting, Researcher Says
Sunday 26 October 2008
by: Barb Kucera, Workday Minnesota

New Yorkers protest Wal-Mart's labor policies. (Photo: Sharon Terry / Flickr)
    Minneapolis - Want to understand why so many American workers find it so hard to organize unions in their workplaces? Look no further than Wal-Mart, a researcher for Human Rights Watch says.
    Wal-Mart is a case study "of the abysmal workers' rights regime we have here in the United States," said Carol Pier, senior researcher on labor rights and trade for Human Rights Watch, an independent, nongovernmental organization that investigates human rights violations around the world.
    In a speech last week at the University of Minnesota, Pier described her two-and-one-half-year study of Wal-Mart's labor-management record, which culminated in a 210-page report, issued in 2007, titled "Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of U.S. Workers' Right to Freedom of Association."
    The report found that while many American companies use weak U.S. laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus. Many of its anti-union tactics are lawful in the United States, though they combine to undermine workers' rights. Others run afoul of soft U.S. laws.
    "I like to think about it as a 'death by small cuts' strategy," Pier told the audience gathered at the University of Minnesota Law School. "And the effect is devastating."
    In the course of her research, Pier interviewed dozens of current and former Wal-Mart "associates" (the term the company uses for its employees) and supervisors in six states and poured through thousands of pages of material from the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces U.S. labor law.
    Wal-Mart uses a subtle form of union-busting that starts with new employee orientation, where training includes watching an anti-union video, Pier said. The corporation has a 24-hour hotline for managers to report any signs of union organizing activity and a "labor relations team" is quickly dispatched to assess the situation.
    Depending on the level of union activity, workers may be subjected to mandatory "captive audience" meetings where they are lectured on the evils of unionism. In some stores, Wal-Mart has crossed the line from subtle to heavy-handed by conducting surveillance on employees, disciplining and firing some.
    When those actions are taken - clearly in violation of U.S. labor law - the failings of the system become clear, Pier said. Wal-Mart takes advantage of the exceedingly slow NLRB process to draw out cases for years. When a worker finally wins a case, the company faces no penalty - other than the requirement to reinstate the worker with back pay (minus anything he or she earned in other employment) and to post a notice saying "they won't do it again."
    With nearly 1 million employees in the United States, Wal-Mart is the country's largest private employer. Yet none of these workers belongs to a union. Employees at two stores in Quebec, Canada, finally won union representation, but both stores have been closed - the second one earlier this month.
    The International Labor Organization has cited the lack of penalties - and the fact that workers can be "permanently replaced" if they strike - as reasons that U.S. labor law fails to meet international human rights standards, Pier said.
    The proposed Employee Free Choice Act - supported by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and many Congressional Democrats - would address some of the shortcomings in U.S. labor law by levying fines of up to $20,000 for each violation and permitting workers to choose union representation by signing cards, bypassing the drawn-out NLRB election process during which many employer violations occur.
    Still, Pier worries the new law would not be effective without a broader campaign to improve people's knowledge of unions. Companies like Wal-Mart could still continue the kind of early union-busting - such as showing videos during employee orientation - that create a chilling climate for organizing.
    "EFCA will help," Pier said of the proposed legislation. "EFCA's necessary. I don't think it's the fix."
    Pier's talk was sponsored by The Institute for Global Studies and the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Program and co-sponsored by the Labor Education Service, publisher of Workday Minnesota.
    --------
    For more information:
    Read Pier's report, "Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of U.S. Workers' Right to Freedom of Association," http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0507/
Janitors Protest Outside Former Workplace
JwJ Rallies with fired Janitors - being replaced by EMS.
http://www.wibc.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=100778
By Don Riley
10/6/2008

Religious leaders and other activists are standing with 17 janitors who lost their jobs at a downtown Indianapolis office building.

Matt Ryan, lead organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), says the building's owner, Amerimar Enterprises, canceled its contract with a union cleaning contractor. They've hired Executive Management Services instead, a company that has not signed the union agreement.

The SEIU won higher wages and health benefits for janitors in a city-wide contract agreement six months ago.

Ryan says the union plans to protest in support of the fired janitors and educate the building's tenants about the issue.

No comment yet from Amerimar eEnterprises, the owner of the building at 101 West Ohio Street.
Janitor switchover at tower sparks rally
Mon. October 06 - 2008
IBJ Staff
http://www.ibj.com/html/detail_page_Full.asp?content=21250
Janitors and clergy staged a rally this morning over a decision by the owner of the 101 W. Ohio office tower downtown to hire a janitorial contractor that didn’t sign on to a citywide janitors’ contract negotiated last spring.

The Service Employees International Union said Philadelphia-based Amerimar Enterprises replaced New York-based ABM Industries Inc. with locally based Executive Management Services.
ABM had signed on to the pact—which stipulates higher pay and benefits—while EMS did not.

SEIU says the switch has left 17 ABM janitors without a job as of today.

A representative of Amerimar was not immediately available for comment.