WSLC Reports Today
Updated DAILY... Almost Every Day™ 

Links are functional at date of posting, but sometimes expire. Some links require free registration.  WSLC Reports Today links to stories of interest to organized labor; some positive, some negative.  The intention is to inform.

FRIDAY,  APRIL 18

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, 

at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. 

And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." 

--George W. Bush, interview on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

Tanker Deal:

• Lawmakers, unions protest tanker deal -- AP -- Washington state members of Congress are joining labor leaders to protest the massive Air Force tanker contract that Boeing Co. lost to a European rival. Organizers of the Capitol Hill rally are calling on the government to protect jobs by investing in the U.S. aerospace defense industry.

Local News:

• Factory flight -- Seattle torn over how to save industry -- Puget Sound Biz Journal-- In December, Seattle's City Council passed a controversial law to protect more than 5,000 acres of industrial land by limiting the incursion of offices and retail. The massive downzone -- some call it the largest in city history -- was supposed to keep industry from being uprooted. The law sent "a strong message that Seattle wants to keep industrial jobs," said Marty McOmber, spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels. But within a few months, two big manufacturers -- Korry Electronics and University Swaging -- announced they'd leave town. Two others, GM Nameplate and Avtech, said they're considering such a move.
• Students picket middle school, -- Columbian -- The Washington Assessment of Student Learning is giving students at Wy'east Middle School in Cascade Park a lesson in nonviolent protest. Every day this week, students have arrived early to school and walked along Southeast 136th Avenue carrying signs with messages such as "No WASL" and "WASL unfair."  .....It’s a moral stand, Connor said, on behalf of his autistic brother. Brendan is a Wy’east seventh-grader he believes will face hardship if he can’t pass the WASL to graduate from high school, he said. “It’s unfair to anyone who’s not progressing very fast in education,” Connor said. “The state can’t say everyone’s got to take the same (test), because not everyone is equal in their mental capabilities.”
• Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war -- US Labor Against War -- dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.
• RV maker closes but Canadian competitor plans move to Yakima  --Olympian -- Two days after the indefinite shutdown of Western Recreational Vehicles Inc. in Union Gap, a Canadian RV outfit is set to move to the Yakima area.
• Potlatch considers splitting up -- Spokesman Review --New firm would run pulp operations; Potlatch to focus on timber holdings. Potlatch has 3,600 employees. About 1,800 of them work in Lewiston, where the company makes pulp, paperboard, tissue products and lumber. Since the Lewiston sawmill is in the same complex as the pulp operations, it would become part of the new firm.
• Centralia nurses union gives OK for strike -- Olympian -- Nurses at Providence Centralia Hospital have voted to authorize their union to set a strike date.Talks to arrive at a three-year labor agreement began a year ago. 
• Boeing labor negotiator wants pension-plan change for new hires -- Seattle PI -- The company proposal on pension benefits, which Kight laid out in an interview Thursday, drew a fierce response afterward from Machinists leader Tom Wroblewski. To cut Boeing's enormous future pension liabilities, Kight said he'll propose to both the Machinists and the engineers to replace the employee pension for all new hires with a 401(k) plan supplemented by a company contribution. "This is unbelievable," said Wroblewski, district president for the International Association of Machinists
• Boeing's new lead negotiator seeks solutions -- Everett Herald -- Doug Kight wants to focus on the company's future heading into contract talks with Machinists and SPEEA. Tom Wroblewski serves as district president for the union, which has more than 20,000 members in the region. "Our members have continued to produce for the company during these past uncertain times and deserve to share in the record profits that the company has reaped." 
• SPEEA to Boeing: Stop outsourcing -- Everett Herald -- In a contract year, Boeing’s engineers union, SPEEA, is turning to video to air many of its issues with the company. 
  Last month, SPEEA’s new director laid out the union’s concerns – ranging from new pension plans to healthcare.
• Longtime foes drop challenges to mine -- Spokesman Review -- About 100 people are already working at the remote Buckhorn Mine site, with the mine's payroll expected to swell to 168 employees and 30 contract workers at peak production. The wage scale for hourly workers is $16 to $26 an hour, and underground employees are eligible for production and safety bonuses ranging from $8 to $12 an hour, according to Roberts.
• Weyerhaeuser names one of its own as new CEO -- Tacoma News Tribune --  Steve Rogel, the Weyerhaeuser CEO who led the company’s hostile takeover of Willamette Industries and then shaped the Federal Way company’s downsizing, will give up day-to-day operations at the forest products company. Dan Fulton, who assumed the job of president of the company earlier this year, will become CEO.

Political and Legislative:

AFL-CIO Congressional Records Available click here for more

Regional:

• Service worker union members plan a walkout --Vallejo Times Herald -- After continued unsuccessful negotiations with Solano County, members of Solano County's largest employee union will walk off the job Tuesday, union officials said Thursday. The union represents county health care, building cleaning and security workers, and other public employees.
• LAX will use body imaging scanning -- LA Times -- The sophisticated technology, called millimeter wave imaging, may prove to be a more effective way to check travelers for guns, knives, bombs and other dangerous materials than pat-down searches. But it has raised questions by privacy and civil rights advocates, who say the screening process is extraordinarily invasive and amounts to a virtual strip search.
• SAG signs interim pact with independent film company -- AP -- SAG signs interim pact with independent film company. Contract negotiations between SAG and the producers group are scheduled to run through April 26. The producers then start talks with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on April 28. It is unclear whether SAG's interim deal with The Film Company will exert any real pressure against the studios. Variety said AMPTP members have been holding off starting projects until after a new deal is set with the guild.

Columbian Trade Deal:

• Unions, Rights Leaders Vow to Keep Fighting Colombia Trade Deal -- AFL-CIO Blog -- AFL-CIO President John Sweeney reiterated the union movement’s opposition to a deal with Colombia: 

  Until our brothers and sisters can exercise core worker rights without fear of intimidation, threat or murder, we cannot seriously consider passing a trade agreement with Colombia. The test of trade should not be how much profit it generates. Should the Colombia FTA come up for a vote this year, we will mobilize our members and the resources of the federation to defeat it. 

• Union Killings Peril Trade Pact With Colombia -- NY Times -- More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985, with fewer than 100 cases resulting in convictions, according to the National Labor School, a labor research group in Medellín....400 union members have been killed since 2002, and dozens of Mr. Uribe’s supporters in Congress and his former intelligence chief are under investigation for ties to paramilitary death squads, which are classified as terrorists by the United States and responsible for some of the union killings.

McCain Myth Busters: 

• Check out the latest on the AFL-CIO's website:

  McCain Revealed. There you will find the real story about Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican nominee for president. McCain has built a media-friendly reputation as a “maverick” and moderate. But there’s nothing moderate about McCain, a loyal ally of Bush who has consistently and perniciously voted against the interests of working families in his decades-long career in Washington.

   

  Click here to go to a page full of previously posted articles on John McCain. 

• The Man Who Would Be Bush -- Alternet -- Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

  Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing -- an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals -- must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.

  If not the white-guy syndrome, why would even a shocking minority of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they prefer McCain to the other Democrat? How otherwise to explain the nation's widespread bipartisan rejection of the Bush presidency and yet a willingness to let McCain continue in that vein?

• Suspending gas tax won't ease pain at pump -- Union Bulletin Opinion -- Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax as well as other tax cuts as a way to curb the pain at the pump.
  
  The proposal is deeply flawed.
  
  Suspending the 18.4 cent a gallon gasoline tax and 24.4 cent a gallon diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day would provide modest relief and only for a very short time. Over the last month gas has shot up 18.4 cents in a matter of days. If the gasoline tax is suspended that void would be filled in a matter of weeks if not days. The oil companies would reap even bigger profits.
  
  But the loss of that tax revenue would be devastating to this nation's infrastructure.

  . 

• Murtha says McCain too old to be president -- AP -- Murtha is 75, four years older than McCain. He says they are nearly the same age, and the rigors and stress of running the country is too much for guys their age. ''I've served with seven presidents,'' Murtha told a union audience. ''When they come in, they all make mistakes. They all get older....This one guy running is about as old as me,'' he said, drawing laughter and applause. ''Let me tell you something, it's no old man's job.''

National News:

• US Airways Pilots Replace Their Union -- NY Times --  Pilots at US Airways ousted their union, the Air Line Pilots Association, on Thursday, replacing it with an insurgent group, a move that raised further questions about the carrier’s ability to combine operations after its 2005 merger with America West Airlines.
• Harley-Davidson cuts 8 percent of workforce -- AP -- Chief Executive Jim Ziemer says he hopes employees will take retirement packages. He says there will be 370 union production jobs cut in the next few months. That's because the company is reducing bike shipments due to sales declines in the weakening U.S. economy.
• Enviro bags injuring checkout staff: union -- ABC Australia -- The union says customers are overloading cloth bags because they can carry up to 40 per cent more than plastic bags. A ban on the plastic is expected to be introduced at the start of next year.
• Making a pitch for working class-- Detroit News -- Just as union wages and benefits have created the backbone of the middle class in Michigan, so has a labor background helped form the backbone of the Detroit Tigers' pitching staff. Justin Verlander and Dontrelle Willis are sons of labor. And that is appropriate when you consider how much organized labor plays a role in the national pastime -- from the players on the field to the workers in the stadium to the unionized customers cheering for the team.
• The Ludlow legacy, part II: Colorado -- SF Chronicle -- The Ludlow Massacre's tiny monument off I-25 in Southern Colorado is easily missed if you don't know where to find it. Though the nearby coal mine garnered international attention in 1914 after a government militia slaughtered union organizers there, the minimalism of the memorial is predictable. History books venerate Rockefellers - the union-busting mine owners - and disregard agents of progress like the labor movement.
• Massive union crowd celebrates at port  --  AP -- Hundreds of union members marched for 28 miles as part of an effort to bring attention to a series of pending labor contract negotiations with employers across Los Angeles County. The "Hollywood to the Docks" march culminated with a massive rally attended by some 2,000 people gathered near the port's cruise terminal. The carnival-like atmosphere featured food, fiery speeches, and cheering union workers.
• Strike temporarily averted at key GM transmission plant -- Chicago Tribune -- The factory makes four- and six-speed transmissions for nearly all of GM's cars. If the strike had occurred, it could have crippled the automaker's car production. Industry analysts say the union is using the threats of a strike to pull GM into an ongoing labor dispute at parts maker American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc. The UAW has been on strike against American Axle for nearly two months, and more than 30 GM plants have been affected.
• Union head claims USDA tried to intimidate employees -- AP -- The head of the union that represents 6,000 federal food inspectors told a congressional committee Thursday that the Agriculture Department tried to intimidate him and other employees who reported violations of regulations, an allegation denied by the agency.
• Meat inspection is adequate, USDA official tells Congress -- LA Times -- The Bush administration Thursday resisted calls from Congress to add more inspectors and new technologies to oversee slaughterhouses, saying neither was necessary to do the job adequately. Stan Painter, who leads the federal food inspectors union, said inspectors were swamped with work. Painter said that video monitoring would help deter slaughterhouses from mistreating animals but that hiring more inspectors was even more vital.
• Rising beer prices hard to swallow -- LA Times -- A worldwide shortage of hops -- a key ingredient for the pale ales Foye likes so much -- and rising prices for malted barley have pushed up the cost of imbibing a tall cold one. Add beer to the growing list of what many people consider basic foods -- like bread, coffee and pizza -- that are costing more. The cost of groceries has risen at an annual rate of about 5% in each of the last six months, the fastest food inflation since 1990.
• AT&T to cut about 4,600 jobs, sees $374 million 1Q charge -- AP -- The nation's largest telecommunications provider said most of the layoffs will be among managers, particularly in wireline operations, including local phone service and service for large corporate customers. Jobs in corporate functions in like finance will also be cut.
• Dispute stalks farm bill -- McClatchy News Service -- Overall, the farm bill has a $280 billion price tag over five years. Food stamps and nutrition account for much of the spending. Negotiators are haggling over $2.5 billion worth of tax provisions, including one granting faster depreciation and sweeter capital gains treatment for racehorses. This is dear to the heart of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican whose state is famous for its horse industry. It is anathema to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, negotiators say.

Health Care:

• CA to review canceled health insurance policies  -- LA Times -- Thousands of people whose policies were canceled by California health insurers will have a chance to win back their coverage and be reimbursed for outstanding medical bills, the Schwarzenegger administration announced Thursday. The state's action is the boldest yet in dealing with the industry's increasingly controversial practice of canceling individual coverage -- known as rescission -- after patients have taken ill and submitted medical bills.
• Union Plus Offers Prescription Savings for Union Members -- AFL-CIO Blog -- A new prescription drug program from Union Plus could save union members and their families an average of 20 percent on brand-name drugs and up to 55 percent on generics. The new online prescription discount card—part of the Union Plus Health Savings program—is free for union members and its benefits apply to all family members in your household.
• Drug companies to reveal grants they give doctors -- Seattle Times -- For years, the nation's largest drug and medical device manufacturers have courted doctors with consulting fees, free trips to exotic locales and sponsoring the educational conferences that physicians attend. Those financial ties in most cases need not be disclosed and can lead to arrangements that some say improperly influence medical care. Now, under the threat of regulation from Congress, the two industries are promising to be more forthcoming about their spending.

• A new report by Families USA --  Dying For Coverage gives great stats on state of WA health care.

War News:

• 300,000 vets have mental problem, 320,000 had brain injuries -- Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation. "There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND. "Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation."
• Pentagon records detail prisoner abuse by US military -- AP -- Detainees at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan reported being made to kneel outside in wet clothing and being kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose and knees if they moved, according to the documents. A 2006 Army review concluded that the detainees were not abused but that the incident revealed "misconduct that warrants further action."

World News:

• China Eastern Airlines' shares sink on fine -- AP -- The Shanghai-based airline earlier said that 21 flights on March 31 in southwestern China's Yunnan province were intentionally disrupted by pilots who either turned back midway through their flights or landed them and then took off again without letting passengers disembark. It was a rare show of defiance by pilots reportedly disgruntled over contract and work conditions in a country that bans unauthorized labor organizing.

Democracy: The Cornerstone of Community

By Paul Lee

(Paul is a shop steward at OPEIU Local 8)

           Saturday April 5^th was the date that I discovered the power of democracy and why it is so integral to the formation of community. This year the 37^th Legislative District held their caucus at Cleveland High school , home of the fighting Eagles. The energy was high and people seemed enthusiastic. We heard from party notables and elected officials. Both Clinton and Obama supporters were out in force! But something happened that night that was truly transcendent.  

            It was about 4:30PM and all the festivities had ended, people had already given their speeches, and voted on their ballots. The janitors had arrived and cleared the chairs of the floor. We were instructed to make our way into the lunchroom and wait there for the final votes to be tallied. As time pressed on, we all became tired and anxious. Then suddenly, the caucus chair announces over the microphone that Pat Wright of the Total Experience Gospel Choir was going to share a couple of songs with us. I began to feel the spirit in the room begin to lift as everyone shared in singing some old time hymns. Following Pat were others that shared jokes with us, which also included Dawn Mason former State Representative from our district. Soon people were reciting poems and sharing stories, the kind that are usually reserved for the kitchen table. I don’t think it was just me that noticed what was beginning to happen. Others began talking about what a special experience this caucus process was becoming. By the time the votes were tallied, which was about 11PM I don’t think there was a person in that room that wanted to leave. We all wanted to share what had happened in the room and spread it out to our other neighbors and community.

             As I reflect on what I experienced that day, I realized that democracy is all about giving voice to each and every common man. Perhaps what draws me to the process is this notion that each person’s voice is regarded equally and that this empowers people to stand up and be heard.

Do you want to know how Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted on a move to repeal the federal minimum wage?

Are you interested in Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) vote on a measure to rein in the soaring cost of prescription drugs for seniors and working families?

How about finding out where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stood on a bill that would restore the freedom of airport screeners to join a union?

Or maybe you just want to know if your U.S. House member voted with working families last year?

All that information and more about your U.S. senators and representatives is just a click or two away in the AFL-CIO's final 2007 House and Senate Voting Records. The congressional scorecards track 19 Senate votes and 24 House votes from the first session of the 110th Congress.

Workers Memorial Materials Available Online Now -- AFL-CIO Blog -- 

Each year, thousands of workers are killed on the job and millions more are injured or become ill because of their jobs.

This April 28, workers in the United States and around the world will honor those killed and injured on the job and call for improved workplace safety on Workers Memorial Day.

You can start planning and organizing a Workers Memorial Day event in your workplace or community with materials now available online from the AFL-CIO.