On the picket line

Protect postal workers’ bargaining rights!

The Postal Workers union issued a call Aug. 3 to protest an amendment to Senate bill S. 1507 that would completely negate postal workers’ bargaining rights. The overall purpose of the bill is to eradicate the U.S. Postal Service’s deficit, but, as APWU President William Burrus notes, “Relief cannot be on the backs of postal workers who would be forced to accept wages and working conditions commensurate with the USPS deficit.” Mandatory arbitration, which includes comparing APWU workers’ conditions to that in private industry, could easily wipe out raises, cost-of-living increases and protection against layoffs, warns Burrus. To sign APWU’s online petition, visit www.apwu.org and click on “Send a message to your senators.”

Rite Aid workers demand contract

Supporters of the freedom to form unions demonstrated on Aug. 10 in seven cities, including outside a pharmacy industry conference in Boston, to demand that Rite Aid workers—as well as all other workers—be able to join unions and bargain free of intimidation, coercion and illegal firings.

Why Rite Aid? After Rite Aid warehouse workers in Lancaster, Calif., attempted to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 2006, the company hired a high-priced union-busting firm that carried out an intimidation campaign. Despite that, the workers voted to join ILWU Local 26 in March 2008, but due to Rite Aid’s hostile tactics, they still don’t have a contract. Jobs with Justice issued a special report on this struggle to show why the Employee Free Choice Act is sorely needed. To download the report, visit www.jwj.org.

CWA contract with AT&T West

More than 23,000 workers in California, Nevada and Hawaii have reached a tentative three-year contract with AT&T West, announced Communication Workers District 9 on Aug. 13. The contract provides for a 9-percent wage and pension hike, with a cost-of-living adjustment in the third year. It maintains quality health care for all, including retirees, and establishes fully funded preventive care and company-funded, tax-free health reimbursement accounts. This settlement follows the Aug. 7 ratification of a similar three-year contract by CWA members at AT&T Midwest. Negotiations are continuing in four other districts.

Even though the billion-dollar corporation tried to impose draconian cuts on workers’ health care coverage and totally cut it for retirees, the workers’ willingness to strike and to expose AT&T’s greed in public protests all over the country are proving to be a winning strategy.

Court OKs use of company e-mail for union business

It took nine years, but workers at the Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard newspaper finally won the right to use company e-mail to discuss union business. In a sharply worded ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a National Labor Relations Board decision and exonerated Newspaper Guild-Communication Workers Local 37194 for sending three e-mail messages about Guild business after work hours in 2000. Let’s hope this ruling will help unionized workers all over the country.

Immigrant groups demand action now

On Aug. 11, the day after President Barack Obama announced that immigration reform legislation would have to wait until 2010, twelve groups supporting immigrant rights, headed by the Mexican American Political Association, demanded an immediate moratorium on all punitive enforcement procedures and policies. A brief excerpt of their statement reads: “If we can’t have reform this year, we absolutely require relief in the form of a moratorium of the enforcement of employer sanctions, raids, deportations, e-Verify, and prolonged detention for immigration-related offenses, which are civil in nature. All non-violent tactics need to be put on the table. ... We demand a fair and humane immigration reform for all NOW.”