WSLC Reports Today -- July 2-3, 2001

for July 2-3, 2001

NEXT UPDATE: Monday, July 9 by 9 a.m. Pacific -- Links to commercial media are functional at the date of posting, but in some cases "expire" when sources would like to charge you for old news.

News from previous weeks: June 25-29 -- June 18-22 -- June 11-15

TUESDAY, July 3 -- Call your U.S. Representative: Say NO to Fast Track
— In today's Olympian -- Home-care initiative on track (300,000 signatures to be submitted today)
— In today's Seattle Times -- House should pass Patients' Bill of Rights (editorial)
...and also -- Lawmakers pledge to protect forest near Index
— In yesterday's Columbian -- Poll: Timber towns favor saving the old growth
— In today's News-Tribune -- Boeing finishes flight tests for Joint Strike Fighter
— In today's Salem S-J -- Fred Meyer to drop Pictsweet Mushrooms (on AFL-CIO boycott list)
— In today's Washington Post -- A bill of rights for immigrants (column)
— Today from AP -- Best Buy ordered to pay $5.4 million in overtime

MONDAY, July 2 -- 100,000-member nurses union affiliates with AFL-CIO
— In today's Olympian -- Decisions loom for primaries
— In today's Seattle Times -- A lesson: Strike while PR is hot (re: state employees)
— In the new Seattle Weekly -- Study exposes burden of child care on working families
— Today from Reuters -- Need for Social Security overhaul questioned
— In today's N.Y. Times -- Teamsters' Leedham seeks upset by focusing on scandal
...and also -- After patients' rights, vast needs and higher hurdles
...and finally -- Media watchdog confirms Fox News had right-wing slant
— In today's Washington Post -- House GOP looks for cover (editorial re: campaign finance reform)

News from previous weeks: June 25-29 -- June 18-22 -- June 11-15

TUESDAY, JULY 3
Call your U.S. Representative: Say NO to Fast Track

Suddenly, Congress is on a fast track to "fast track."

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote in late July or early August on HR 2149, the Fast Track legislation -- now marketed as the Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2001 -- which would allow the Bush administration to make trade deals in secret and then give Congress a take-it-or-leave-it proposal.

Bush's top international trade priority is the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would expand NAFTA to 34 countries in the western hemisphere. Yes, the same NAFTA that has taken 14,071 jobs (and counting) from Washingtonians, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Expansion of NAFTA via Fast Track and the proposed FTAA will cost us thousands more jobs, hurt families, decimate local economies and force a corporate privatization agenda on publicly-funded services.

The AFL-CIO has aggressively opposed Fast Track authority under President Clinton and continues to under President Bush. In 1997 and 1998, Congress rejected granting Fast Track authority in what was widely considered a referendum on the failed NAFTA-GATT model of U.S. trade policy and economic globalization. A year later, more than 40,000 people came to Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization. Clinton admitted then that the impact of trade on workers and environment would have to be considered more seriously in future agreements.

But now President Bush wants to take a giant step backward on the issue by removing any reference even to voluntary negotiating objectives on workers' rights, which have been included in every Fast Track trade negotiating authority since it first was used in 1974.

Now's the time to contact our representatives in Congress. A nationwide call-in campaign is underway this week to tell Congress to say No to Fast Track. Call toll free at 1-800-393-1082 and you'll be patched through to your U.S. Representative. Or, call while they are home in your district over Independence Day:

Jay Inslee (D-1st) at (425) 640-0233, jay.inslee@mail.house.gov
Rick Larsen (D-2nd) at (425) 252-3188, Larsen2000@dellmail.com
Brian Baird (D-3rd) at (360) 695-6292, brian.baird@mail.house.gov
Doc Hastings (R-4th) at (509) 543-9396, www.house.gov/hastings
George Nethercutt, Jr. (R-5th) at (509) 353-2374, www.house.gov/nethercutt
Fast Track co-sponsor Norm Dicks (D-6th) at 1-800-947-6676, www.house.gov/dicks
Jim McDermott (D-7th) at (206) 553-7170, www.house.gov/mcdermott
Jennifer Dunn (R-8th) at (206) 275-3438, www.house.gov/dunn
Adam Smith (D-9th) at (253) 926-6683, adam.smith@mail.house.gov

For more information on Fast Track, check out the AFL-CIO website or download the "Derail Fast Track" flier posted there.

MONDAY, JULY 2
100,000-member nurses union affiliates with AFL-CIO

Nurse delegates of the United American Nurses voted last Thursday to join the AFL-CIO as the federation’s newest affiliate. The 100,000 UAN members—the union arm of the American Nurses Association—join the other 1.1 million health care workers represented by AFL-CIO unions.

The UAN-affiliated Washington State Nurses Association represents and promotes the professional development of more than 12,000 nurses in Washington state.

"We are excited about the prospect of a formal affiliation with AFL-CIO," WSNA President Janice Bussert said recently in anticipation of Thursday's affirmative vote. "(It) will provide even greater opportunities for our members to work more collaboratively with other nurses and union leaders in addressing critical issues concerning quality patient care such as access to care, the nursing shortage, and deteriorating workplace conditions."

The following press release on the issue was distributed by the AFL-CIO last Thursday:

This morning, registered nurse delegates of the United American Nurses (UAN) National Labor Assembly voted to affiliate with the AFL-CIO, forming an historic partnership with the federation's 64 unions. The affiliation will officially occur at 11:15 a.m. today, when AFL-CIO President John Sweeney addresses the UAN delegates and congratulated the nurses during their meeting at Washington's Omni Shoreham Hotel.

The UAN is the national union arm of the American Nurses Association (ANA) and includes more than 100,000 registered nurses from state nurses associations or collective bargaining programs in 23 states and in the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. The ANA is the largest and oldest professional association of registered nurses in the country and has had no formal external labor affiliation until this time.

"This new partnership with the AFL-CIO and its member unions can have a tremendous impact on health care in this country," said UAN President Cheryl Johnson, RN. "With their vote to accept our AFL-CIO charter, UAN delegates sent a message loud and clear that we are ready to roll up our sleeves and get down to the business of solving—together—the patient care crisis in this country."

With the addition of the UAN, the AFL-CIO will represent 1.2 million health care workers. The AFL-CIO also represents the largest organized group of health care consumers, health plan purchasers and frontline health care workers in the U.S. AFL-CIO unions bargain to provide health insurance for more than 40 million workers and family members—accounting for one out of every four Americans with employment-based coverage.

"Together, the UAN and unions of the AFL-CIO can provide a powerful and effective alliance that will take on the current health care system's inadequacies, unfair policies and unsafe conditions that plague both American families and health care workers," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

On May 2, 2000, Sweeney was authorized during a meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council to issue a charter to the UAN, pending a vote by the nurses' organization. Later that day, the UAN's Executive Council unanimously passed a resolution recommending that delegates to the UAN's National Labor Assembly (NLA) take up the charter application to the AFL-CIO when the Assembly convened this month in Washington, DC. Delegates to the 2000 NLA had resolved to pursue a charter with the AFL-CIO.

"This is an historic day for the UAN," said American Nurses Association (ANA) President Mary Foley, MS, RN. "We are pleased and proud that the union nurses of the UAN have affiliated with the AFL-CIO—it's a step that is good for nurses, patients and quality health care. We look forward to joining forces with the AFL-CIO in the fight for better patient care and safe working conditions for nurses."

Johnson of the UAN said nurses are organizing into unions at an increased pace to gain a voice on the job and on behalf of quality patient care, and that giving nurses a voice can address the nationwide staffing crisis.

"Health care executives, policy makers and the news media are all talking about the critical nursing shortage and the fact that the profession has lost its popularity as a career choice for young women and men," added Sweeney. "But this is a staffing crisis that can be stopped by giving nurses better working conditions, recognition and respect for their professional expertise and appropriate compensation and benefits. Hospitals need not look outside this country's borders, but inside their own facilities to solve this shortage, and through their unions, nurses will help them do so."

According to the findings of a February survey of more than 7,000 registered nurses by the ANA, America's nurses feel that deteriorating working conditions have led to a decline in the quality of nursing care. Specifically, 75 percent of nurses surveyed feel the quality of nursing care at the facility in which they work has declined over the past two years, while 56 percent of nurses believe that the time they have available for patient care has decreased. In addition, more than 40 percent of nurses surveyed said they would not feel comfortable having a family member or someone close to them be cared for in the facility in which they work.

If you have news items regarding unions or workplace issues in Washington state that you would like to see posted here, please submit them via e-mail to David Groves or via fax to 206-285-5805.