The Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO is about to mail the FINAL edition of its WSLC Reports newsletter -- as you know it.

In our continuing effort to distribute union news and information as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, the Washington State Labor Council has shifted its focus to utilizing technologies such as fax, e-mail and the internet.  So instead of producing this quarterly newsletter in its current form, we plan to offer a scaled-down monthly summary of labor news for those who would still prefer to receive info via traditional mail.

SPOKANE — Approximately 550 technical employees at Sacred Heart Medical Center (SHMC) voted overwhelmingly Wednesday for union representation with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1001, by a margin of 282-142 votes.  The technical employees sought union representation to gain a voice in the changes occurring at SHMC and the health care industry, and to ensure the highest possible patient care to the community.

"We organized because the hospital has made changes to our working conditions and the type of patient care we deliver without really considering our input.  We want to have our rights in writing and have a real say in the type of patient care we deliver," said Ginny Hein, Mental Health Counselor in the Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents at SHMC.

"I have lived in Spokane my whole life and I have worked at Sacred Heart for 15 years. I feel I have contributed to a high standard at the hospital and I feel the community needs to be made aware of the critical role technical employees play in their health care," said Abbie Kalstad, Surgical Technician. "Registered nurses have a union and receive acknowledgement.  I feel it is our time to be recognized for our professional commitment to our patients and community.  

"We work side by side with registered nurses, but don’t receive the same benefits and respect," Kalstad added.  "For example, at 15 years I have reached the top of the wage scale. The registered nurses’ wage scale continues to their 30th year of service.  Their union voice has been heard.  By forming a union we are being proactive to make positive changes at Sacred Heart."

"The vote is in and the employees have elected to have union representation," said Steve Swift, Special Procedures Technologist in Radiology.  "I hope that the administration and employees will work together to better the work environment and that a new trust will come from that.  This can only improve patient care and employee morale."

Technical employees will begin negotiating their first contract in early 2002.  UFCW Local 1001 is the largest, non-registered nurse, health care union in Washington state.

The Association of Flight Attendants needs your help in its campaign to organize 20,000 Delta flight attendants, the last large unorganized unit remaining, as they vote on whether or not they will be represented by the union.

Volunteers are needed for a get-out-the-vote phone bank operating Dec. 12-21 in Seattle to make sure every Delta attendant gets a call confirming receipt of their ballot (which were mailed Dec. 7) and that they vote.  People are needed to work two shifts— from 2 to 5 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m.—at the IAM Local 79 Hall at 9135 15th Place South in Seattle.  Call Suzanne Kirkpatrick at (206) 523-8952 to volunteer.

Here is more information on the campaign from the AFA website:

The Delta vote is also the largest private-sector union election in more than 30 years, with nearly 20,000 flight attendants involved.  Delta’s flight attendants are the only crew members at a major carrier who do not have union representation.  The vote comes in the wake of the airline tragedy of September 11th and the recent loss of American Airlines Flight 587.  The past few months have been a time when flight attendants nationwide are grappling with emotional and safety issues, and the industry is reeling from the economic fallout. 

“While we are all still coping with the shock of September 11th, flight attendants everywhere understand that now, more than ever, we must stand together for our safety and well-being,” said Patricia Friend, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO.  “This election at Delta gives the flight attendants a chance for a real voice at work to deal with these difficult times.” 

“There have been a lot of changes at Delta.  We’ve lost more than 4,000 flight attendant positions because of leaves and early retirements,” Silviano Blan, a New York City-based Delta flight attendant said. “We don’t know what will change next.  We’re all thinking about our futures, our jobs, our lives. I believe that winning this election and standing together as flight attendants is the best thing we can do to protect our future.” 

“While the landscape may have changed, the reasons that flight attendants want a union have not,” said Emily Ceshker, an Atlanta-based Delta flight attendant. “This election is about respect, and our ability to act together in the interests of our passengers and ourselves,” she said.  “The world clearly saw how dangerous our jobs can be.  I want an effective voice at work so I can fight for our safety in the air and for a better quality of life at Delta.” 

Ballots are being mailed from and returned to Chicago because of concerns about anthrax in the mail of Washington. The NMB has extended the usual 30-day deadline for returning ballots by nearly a month to Jan. 30, 2002 and the ballots will be counted on Feb. 1.

More than 50,000 flight attendants join together to form AFA, the world’s largest flight attendant union. Visit us at www.afanet.org.

The following statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was released Tuesday in response to the recommendation of President Bush's Social Security Panel to privatize the program:

Today the President’s Commission to privatize Social Security officially endorses a radical plan to dismantle Social Security.  The drastic recommendations adopted by the 16-member Commission will bankrupt our nation’s most effective family protection program and jeopardize the future of the federal budget.

This report is rich with irony.  President Bush’s Privatization Commission recommends that Congress cover the high price of private accounts with trillions of dollars from general government revenue, on a “temporary” basis that literally would last decades.  At the same time, Republicans in the House and Senate refuse to spend the modest amounts of money needed to improve conditions for unemployed workers at the front line of our recession, or to use general revenue to strengthen Social Security without radically restructuring.

The President and this Commission worked hard in the spring to convince working Americans that Social Security was in such bad financial shape that it had to be dismantled.  During those same spring months, President Bush and Congress had a real opportunity to do the right thing by using part of the federal budget surpluses to strengthen Social Security.  The President and Congress squandered that opportunity by using the entire projected surplus for his $1.6 trillion millionaire tax cut.  The non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that if only half of the money spent on the President’s $1.6 trillion tax cut was dedicated to Social Security the program would be financially solvent for the next 75 years.

Then the President added insult to injury.  After failing to strengthening Social Security for the future, the President asked his Commission to design individual accounts that would be built from the dedicated nest egg in Social Security.  Creating accounts funded with 2 percent of a worker’s wages takes 16 percent of the payroll tax revenue out of the Social Security trust fund.  That means Social Security would lose $1 trillion in ten years.

The $1 trillion cost can only be made up in three ways: use the on-budget surplus, increase taxes, or cut benefits.  The President has taken the first two options off the table with his millionaire tax cut that eliminated the budget surplus and with his no-new-taxes promise.  That leaves benefit cuts.  

The Commission hides its benefit cuts behind technical changes in the benefits formula. The Commission says it wants to “improve work incentives,” by permanently cutting benefits to those who retire before age 65.  This kind of penalty is a big hit against people who work a lifetime in physically demanding jobs and therefore retire in their early 60s, as well as workers who cannot find work after they have lost a job at the end of their careers or who have a shorter life expectancy.

The Commission wants to cut some workers’ guaranteed benefits by 40 percent by changing the benefits formula so that benefits would no longer keep up with the growth in real wages.  This is a drastic change in Social Security that would mean workers could no longer maintain the same standard of living in retirement as they had during their working years.

Despite the President’s promise to protect Social Security’s benefits for the surviving children of workers who die before retirement and disabled worker families, the Commission is cutting them along with the guaranteed benefits for retired workers.
All working families need a guaranteed benefit with no individual risk that they can count on as a minimum foundation for retirement.  Many workers are able to add pensions and private savings to that foundation, but some are not, and those benefits do not have the solid guarantee of Social Security.  That is one of the most important lessons from the recent bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation.  Thousands of workers at Enron watched their 401(k) retirement accounts go up in smoke as the company stock they worked hard for, believed in, and invested their life savings into became virtually worthless.

Secure, dependable Social Security benefits are critical to tens of millions of Americans.  Far too many elderly people rely on Social Security’s monthly benefit for all or most of their income.  Nearly two-thirds of older Americans count on Social Security for at least half of their income in retirement.  Social Security is the only income for one in four elderly unmarried women (the widowed, divorced and never married.  Two out of five African American seniors and Latino seniors count on Social Security for all of their retirement income.  These families need more from Social Security, not less.

Social Security has never missed a paycheck it its 60-year history.  The program works for working Americans.  It needs to be strengthened so retirees and workers can count on it in the future – not turned into risky individual stock market accounts.

While we support the President’s commitment to the war on terrorism it is clear that President Bush has mismanaged the economy here at home.  Even as our nation slipped into a recession, President Bush focused on a passing a huge tax cut and ignored serious priorities such as Social Security, health care, and unemployment reform.  Now that the American public has even more priorities, such as fighting the war on terrorism and increasing security at home, there is not enough money to cover all our needs.  From the tax cut to the Social Security Commission, the President’s domestic agenda has failed to meet the needs of America’s working families.

The presidential commission created both to shore up the Social Security safety net and to head off a deficit predicted for 2038 has failed on both counts, according to a new Economic Policy Institute analysis issued Tuesday.

The report, Undermining Social Security With Private Accounts, (draft version available at http://www.epinet.org/Issuebriefs/ib172/ib172.pdf with the final version at the same address tomorrow after 10 a.m. Eastern) by EPI economist Christian Weller, faults the commission's recommended private investment options as a raw deal that would leave coming generations of retirees with a reduced standard of living and would require massive infusions of new tax dollars to pay for the changeover.

The commission's three options, released in outline last month, are expected to be finalized today. The commission, whose members were reportedly selected because of their support for privatizing Social Security, limited their work to recommendations involving the introduction of private accounts.

Undermining Social Security makes the following critiques of the commission's proposals:

— Each proposal reduces the standard of living for all workers in retirement through benefit cuts that are not fully restored by savings in individual accounts.

—  None of the three options put forward by the commission would close Social Security's long-term funding gap, proving that privatization cannot "fix" Social Security.

— Under one of the options outlined by the commission, workers would in fact face a higher retirement age. This would disproportionately affect low-wage workers, workers in physically demanding jobs, and African-Americans.

— The commission violates the spirit of its mandate, if not the letter, when it comes to preserving disability and survivor benefits. Although the commission's mandate stipulates that both programs shall remain intact, the benefit cuts proposed under two of the options would reduce those benefits.

— Even after cutting benefits, the commission's proposals would still require massive infusions of tax dollars to pay for privatization, an estimated $1 trillion over the next 10 years and $3 trillion over the next 20.

Weller also faults the commission for overlooking an obvious and fair solution for resolving most, if not all, of the deficit problem. That solution would remove the arbitrary cap on earnings that are subject to the social security payroll tax, a change that Weller predicts would cover at least three-fourths of the predicted deficit.

"The commission's work shows us very clearly why privatization is no solution for Social Security," said Weller. "Each of its three options would create so many new hardships and costs that it is obvious that we need to look elsewhere for the answer."

The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic think tank founded in 1986.  The Institute is located on the web at http://www.epinet.org.