WSLC Monthly Report, October 2002

WSLC Reports is a monthly summary of labor news and a preview of coming events. It is not intended to be comprehensive. More detail is available on these (and other) items online. If you would like to receive this via fax or mail, Get on the List!

2002 LABOR NEIGHBOR. Get involved in Labor Neighbor, the WSLC’s grassroots political education program. Neighborhood walks, phone banks and other activities are happening now through Election Day, Nov. 5th. To volunteer; call 1-800-542-0904 for more information.

NOVEMBER 21-22—“Workforce Strategies 2002” conference, hosted by the state Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, will be at the Hilton Seattle Airport and Conference Center. The conference will focus on four main themes: employer benefits, linkage with economic development, national workforce development policy, and partnerships. Learn more.

FEBRUARY 28—The Washington State Labor Council’s 2003 Legislative Conference will be at the WestCoast Olympian Hotel. Registration information will be available soon, but mark your calendars now.

Thanks to a prolonged recession spurred by the events of Sept. 11, Washington state is facing a multi-billion dollar revenue shortfall. Unemployment is rising. Parks, courts and libraries are closing. Our transportation system is crumbling, costing us (and our employers) millions of dollars. On Tuesday, Nov. 5, the election ballot will be filled with candidates and ballot measures that will determine whether we take the high road to solving these problems.

The Washington State Labor Council has been engaged in an unprecedented grassroots political education program called Labor Neighbor. It has involved hundreds of volunteers fanning out across the state every weekend for months (and participating in weekday phone banks) to get the word out to union families about labor-endorsed candidates and ballot measures.

YOU can still volunteer to participate in the critical Labor Neighbor activities between now and Nov. 5—and for the massive Get Out the Vote effort on Election Day—by visiting www.wslc.org or calling 1-800-542-0904.

The WSLC has printed reams of 2002 Working Families’ Voter Guides and fliers listing labor endorsements, but more importantly, information about issues and positions that explain WHY candidates and ballot measures earned your union’s support. Those materials are available to all union members and their families at www.wslc.org or by calling 1-800-542-0904.

The labor dispute between workers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at West Coast ports and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing some 80 shipping companies for who they are working without a contract, appears ready to escalate again.

Just as ILWU leaders predicted Oct. 8, the day after President Bush intervened in the PMA lockout and required ports to reopen, the PMA says it plans to give federal prosecutors data they claim shows an orchestrated slowdown by dockworkers in the time since the ports reopened. Under the terms of Bush’s Taft-Hartley intervention, if the PMA succeeds in convincing a judge that the ILWU is engaging in a deliberate slowdown, the court could arrest ILWU leaders and impose monetary sanctions against the union.

The ILWU has said for weeks that, instead of negotiating in good faith on a new contract, the PMA has sought to break the union through Bush’s intervention and court-imposed fines. The union says that’s why the PMA refused the 30-day contract extension agreed to by the ILWU, and instead insisted on the president’s Taft-Hartley intervention to end their own lockout.

After Bush did what the PMA wanted and intervened, ILWU spokesman Steve Stallone said, “They are going to be trying to financially break this union with fines and throw our leaders in jail. We fully expect (the PMA) to begin its allegations of slowdowns... It is a complete setup.”

In fact, the union now alleges that the “setup” includes the PMA’s deliberate sabotage of efforts to clear the unprecedented backlog of containers and ships so that it can claim a slowdown, according to formal complaints filed by the ILWU with the Labor Relations Committee.

“The PMA is systematically crippling productivity at the docks and blocking the movement of goods to the American public,” said the ILWU’s Ramon Ponce de Leon. “First they locked out the workers and prevented them from doing their jobs. Now they’re trying to weaken the manpower on the docks and impair our ability to move cargo.”

A number of unions representing public employees declared Oct. 23 as “Health Care Action Day” and held rallies and events statewide to call attention to rising health insurance costs and to support affordable and effective health care for all consumers. These actions aimed to alert the governor, legislators and the health insurance companies that controlling health insurance costs needs to be a top priority going into the 2003 legislative session. Some 100,000 state employees face significantly higher health insurance premiums and fewer health options. Unlike teachers, private vendors and state elected officials, these workers received no pay raises in 2002 to offset the higher costs.

Hundreds attended a central Health Care Action Day rally held near the Capitol Building in Olympia and were addressed by Attorney General Christine Gregoire and Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, among others. Rallies and marches were also held in Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, Spokane and Medical Lake.

More than 500 people attended the annual Labor Rally organized by the Spokane Labor Council on Oct. 15. Union members and their families heard from labor leaders including WSLC Secretary-Treasurer (and Spokane native) Al Link, and many labor-endorsed candidates. But it was Mayor John Powers (not a candidate this year) who got special attention, being booed by many in the crowd for failing to negotiate a new contract with the 2,100 unionized city employees. Two years ago, Powers earned labor’s endorsement, but his relationship with labor has soured as city employees have worked since January without a contract. After 14 months of talks, union leaders say the mayor is losing his credibility.

While the mayor addressed the crowd expressing willingness to negotiate, workers picketed the stage with signs that read: “Mayor Powers: Spokane City Employees Deserve A Fair & Honest Contract Now!”

Powers has said he won’t dip into reserves to fund pay raises and he wants workers to begin paying for a portion of their health insurance premiums.

Office building janitors in the Seattle and Portland areas are struggling to maintain wages and benefits they’ve won with union contracts. They do so against a corporation quickly becoming notorious for its atrocious treatment of workers who clean its buildings, Equity Office Properties.

Janitors at the Verizon building in Eastgate, some of whom had worked there for more than 10 years, enjoyed a union job and a $10.15 hourly wage with health and retirement benefits. But recently, Equity Office Properties decided to use a non-union cleaning contractor whose workers report pay of $7.50 an hour with no benefits. Service Employees International Union Local 6 has paid for newspaper advertisements and organized rallies to send a message to Equity (the largest owner of commercial real estate in the country) and all building owners that workers who clean their buildings deserve full-time jobs with decent wages and benefits.

Boeing engineers and technicians represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, IFPTE 2001 will return to the bargaining table Oct. 29. SPEEA pledges to focus on attaining job security at a time when the company is shedding tens of thousands of jobs in the Puget Sound area, while keeping employment stable—or even growing—at overseas operations.

Two years removed from its historic first strike, SPEEA faces new challenges negotiating with Boeing after the company’s bruising battle with the International Association of Machinists District 751. IAM members ultimately rejected Boeing’s final contract offer on Sept. 13, but failed to muster the 66.6 percent majority required to strike the company. SPEEA represents some 18,000 engineers and technical workers in Washington and 1,300 in Wichita, Kansas. The union hopes to wrap up talks by Nov. 12, and announce results of ratification votes on Dec. 2 in Seattle, and Dec. 4 in Wichita.

The state minimum wage will increase to $7.01 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2003, the state announced Oct. 1. The lowest legal hourly wage is recalculated each year thanks to Initiative 688 filed by WSLC President Rick Bender in 1998, supported by the state labor movement and community organizations, and ultimately approved by a 2-to-1 margin. The initiative set out to take the politics out of the minimum wage issue by requiring an annual cost-of-living adjustment based on changes in the Consumer Price Index.

“It’s great news for minimum wage earners every year that they will be getting the cost-of-living raise they deserve,” said Bender, “but $7.01 an hour is still poverty wages for thousands of Washington families. Every year, we should congratulate ourselves that the law is working as voters intended, and then rededicate ourselves to the fight for maintaining and creating good family-wage jobs.”

Washington was the first state to approve annual inflationary adjustments in its state minimum wage, but the idea has since caught on in other states. In Alaska, the current minimum wage of $5.65 an hour will increase to $7.15 on Jan. 1, 2003, and also be adjusted annually for inflation. In Oregon, voters will decide Nov. 5 on a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage from $6.50 to $6.90 with an annual cost-of-living adjustment.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remains at a shameful $5.15 an hour. (In states that set rates that differ from federal law, the higher state rate applies.) In Congress, the usual political bickering over the impact of minimum wage increases has allowed the wages of the lowest paid workers in the country to stagnate for five years now.

In their last legislative action before the November elections, Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected on a straight party line vote Oct. 16 a Democratic economic stimulus proposal to extend unemployment benefits for six months with 13 weeks of additional benefits, increase the federal minimum wage by $1.50 an hour and create jobs and improve our infrastructure by boosting highway spending by $4 billion. The House GOP move to reject these crucial proposals caps “a legislative session marked by the astonishing arrogance of the Republican-led House in handing out legislative rewards to corporations, such as a $254 million tax break for Enron, while ignoring the very real needs for families struggling through the recession,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.