UNIONS GROW BY 200,000-PLUS—Union membership numbers, released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Jan. 20, show a significant increase of 213,000 union members in the past year while union density remained steady at 12.5 percent. Those numbers reverse a trend of decline in recent years as good union jobs disappeared. “In a political climate that’s hostile to workers’ rights, these numbers illustrate the extraordinary will of workers to gain a voice on the job despite enormous obstacles,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Also in 2005, BLS figures show the increase in union members’ wages was double the increase in wages of nonunion members, underscoring just how important union membership is to workers at a time when wages are being held flat and health care and retirement costs are being shifted from employers to employees. 

POWER WORKERS VOTE IBEW—Forty-seven workers at the Central Maine Power Co., voted Jan. 13 to join Electrical Workers Local 1837.

TORONTO FILM WORKERS CHOOSE IATSE—Projectionists for the Toronto International Film Festival voted to join Theatrical Stage Employees Local 173. The 28 projectionists voted in September, but the ballots weren’t counted until Jan. 3 because festival management filed election challenges that were settled the same day.

MINIMUM WAGE VETO OVERRIDDEN—The Maryland General Assembly voted to override Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s (R) 2005 veto of a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 an hour. The state Senate voted 30–17 Jan. 17 and the House 91–48 Jan. 13. Also on the minimum wage front, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) and Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell (D) last week urged their state legislatures to act on bills to boost their states’ minimum wage. The AFL-CIO is pushing minimum wage increases in dozens of states, and at least nine states are expected to include referendums on the November ballot that would boost their minimum wages. The $5.15 federal minimum wage has not been increased since 1997. Republican congressional leaders have turned back several attempts to boost the wage, including twice derailing minimum wage bills in 2005. The Maryland wage win was the second victory in less than a week for the state’s working families. On Jan. 12 the legislature voted to override Ehrlich’s veto of the Fair Share Health Care Act that requires private employers with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of payroll for workers’ health care. Of the four Maryland employers that large, only Wal-Mart fails to meet the 8 percent threshold for employee health care. Visit www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/healthcare/ for more information.

ALITO COMMITTEE VOTE SET—The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote Jan. 24 on President George W. Bush’s nominee, Judge Samuel Alito, for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. A confirmation vote by the full Senate is expected shortly after the committee vote. As a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Alito has a record of decisions and dissents that take an extremely narrow view of workers’ rights, an AFL-CIO analysis revealed. Alito has consistently sided against America’s workers, according to the analysis, including denying overtime pay to newspaper reporters, thwarting Congress’ efforts to guarantee all employees unpaid time off from their jobs for serious illnesses and putting roadblocks in the way of workers trying to remedy job discrimination. The AFL-CIO opposes the nomination. Visit www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/upload/alito_review.pdf to examine Alito’s record in workers’ rights, civil rights and other important cases. Visit www.unionvoice.org/campaign/no_to_alito_np/wk68zv7w36dn to send a message to your senators opposing Alito’s confirmation.
 
SUPPORT FOR EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT GROWS—Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) became the 208th U.S. House of Representatives co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1696 and S. 842). The Senate bill has 42 co-sponsors. Among other provisions, the act would strengthen workers’ rights protections by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation. For more information on the Employee Free Choice Act, see www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/.

KY UNION MEMBERS RALLY AGAINST ANTI-WORKER BILLS—Nearly 2,000 Kentucky union members and their allies packed the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort Jan. 17 to protest Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s (R) drive to win right to work for less legislation (H.B. 38). Fletcher was met with a chorus of boos and chants of “Union Yes” as he made his way to deliver his state budget address. “When Gov. Fletcher takes on the working families of the commonwealth, they’re going to fight back,” said Kentucky State AFL-CIO President William Londrigan. Fletcher said the right to work for less legislation, coupled with his proposed repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law that requires contractors on state-funded construction projects to pay workers the prevailing wage in the region, would boost the state’s economy. The proposals “won’t do anything to guarantee anyone a job and they won’t do anything to improve Kentucky’s economic climate. What they will do is hurt every working family’s standard of living,” AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told the rally. Backers of so-called “right to work” legislation claim it protects workers from being forced to join unions. But under federal law, no one can be required to join a union. The bill would ban employers and employees from agreeing that nonmembers should pay their share of the costs of representing them and negotiating on their behalf. Workers in states with so-called right to work laws have a consistently lower quality of life than those in other states—lower wages, higher poverty, less access to health care—according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau. Working families and their unions also are gearing up to fight right to work for less battles in Indiana, Missouri and New Hampshire. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/ns01122006.cfm.

UMWA OK’D AS SAGO MINERS’ SAFETY REP—The Mine Workers will be allowed to represent the interests of the nonunion miners at the Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va., during the investigation into the Jan. 3 explosion that killed 12 miners. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) approved the UMWA participation after it received a request for the union’s help from Sago miners. Federal mine safety laws permit the union to represent miners at any mine on safety issues at the request of two or more miners. UMWA representatives will have the right to be present during any MSHA interviews of the miners and will be allowed to accompany MSHA investigators during mine walk-throughs. The mine’s owners, International Coal Group (ICG), objected to the union’s participation, but MSHA certified the UMWA’s role Jan. 18. “This investigation is about finding out the truth. If the company has nothing to hide, it should favor an open investigation with all parties participating fully,” said UMWA President Cecil Roberts. At the Aracoma Alama No. 1 mine—a nonunion mine in Logan County, W.Va.—two miners died after a Jan. 20 fire that 10 other miners escaped. Roberts called on Congress and state legislatures to take “whatever steps are needed” to ensure federal and state mine safety agencies strictly enforce mine safety regulations. “We must also develop new initiatives that will give every miner a vastly improved chance to walk out of a mine after an accident, alive and well and safe in the arms of their loved ones,” he said after the two miners’ bodies were recovered Jan. 22.

NEW SEMESTER: NYU GRAD STUDENTS RETURN TO STRIKE—New York University graduate students resumed their strike as the new semester began Jan. 17. About 1,000 graduate teaching assistants, members of Graduate Student Organizing Committee/UAW Local 2110, walked out Nov. 9 to protest the university’s refusal to bargain a second contract. More than 500 professors have joined the graduate employees’ protest by teaching classes off campus during the strike. The school announced Aug. 5 it no longer would recognize the union and let the contract lapse. In 2004, the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a Clinton administration ruling and abolished federal labor law protections for graduate employees. But nothing in the NLRB ruling prevents NYU and other universities from voluntarily recognizing the union. To learn more about the graduate assistants’ fight for a second contract, click on www.2110uaw.org/gsoc.

FEDS’ CEO PAY PROPOSAL ‘NOT ENOUGH’—A new report shows the urgent need for real reform of CEO pay and the federal government’s proposed remedy for more disclosure, while important, is not enough, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. The average CEO is paid 431 times more than a U.S. worker’s average salary, more than 10 times the ratio in 1980, according to Executive Excess 2005: Defense Contractors Get More Bucks for the Bang by the economic and social justice advocacy groups Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed new rules to disclose the total pay for corporate chief executives are long overdue, but “increased disclosure alone is not sufficient to reform executive pay,” Sweeney said. “Ultimately shareholders must be empowered to more easily nominate their own directors to serve on board compensation committees.” For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/ or visit the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch website at www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/index.cfm to see how CEO pay has been growing.

PRICES CONTINUE CLIMB AS WAGES ROLL DOWNHILL—With prices rising at the fastest rate in five years, the average hourly wage dropped for the third year in a row. The BLS reported Jan. 18 that the average hourly wage fell 0.5 percent last year, while real weekly wages for nonmanagerial employees—more than 80 percent of the workforce—declined 0.4 percent, after adjusting for inflation. At the same time, the consumer price index, driven by surging energy costs, rose 3.4 percent over the same period. BLS figures also show the inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings of wage and salary workers in the fourth quarter of 2005 declined 1.8 percent from a year earlier to $321. “The growing economy is showing up everywhere except where it’s needed most: in the paychecks of working families. The gap between real wages and productivity growth remains a fundamental problem in the current economic expansion,” said Jared Bernstein, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeat_econindicators_wages_20060118).

SUIT SEEKS NAMES OF ‘UNLOCATABLES’ OWED BACK PAY—Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) filed suit Jan. 18 against the U.S. Department of Labor seeking the names of some 95,000 workers deemed “unlocatable” by the government and who are owed back wages under settlements between the Labor Department and various employers. As of 2004, the department reported some $32 million in uncollected workers’ back wages. The money reverts to the national treasury three years after a back wages case is settled, IWJ said. From 2002–2004, IWJ was working with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division on a database of unlocatable workers owed back wages that can be posted on a website. But when former Wage and Hour Director Tammy McCutchen, who conceived the idea, left office in 2004, her successors balked at giving IWJ the names, says IWJ Executive Director Kim Bobo. IWJ educates and mobilizes the religious community on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits and conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers. For more information, visit www.iwj.org/.

UNION PIONEER JULIUS UEHLEIN MEMORIALIZED—A memorial service for labor pioneer Julius Uehlein is scheduled for Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral Parish of St. Patrick, 212 State St., Harrisburg, Pa. Uehlein, whose labor career began at 17 when he helped form the Steelworkers Organizing Committee at the Lorain, Ohio, steel mill where he worked in 1934 and led to the presidency of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO where he retired in 1989, died in Washington, D.C., Dec. 25, 2005. He was 88 years old. During his 55 years in the labor movement, Uehlein served in a variety of capacities for the Steelworkers, including staff representative, political action specialist and legislative director of the union in Pennsylvania. After retiring from the USWA, Uehlein was elected to two four-year terms as Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president. For more information, visit www.paaflcio.org/ or www.post-gazette.com/pg/05363/629248.stm.  

HEALTH CONFERENCE SET—The National Labor College is joining with the University of Illinois, Michigan State University and 11 unions to sponsor the National Union Representatives in Health Care Conference, April 30–May 2, at Disney’s Coronado Springs in Orlando, Fla. The conference will focus on health and safety, universal health care, collective bargaining and organizing. To register online for the conference, visit www.lir.msu.edu/lep.

ACTORS TO HONOR SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK—The Screen Actors will honor child star and diplomat Shirley Temple Black with its Life Achievement Award during the Jan. 29 live broadcast of the Annual SAG Awards at 8 p.m. EST/PST, 7 p.m. CDT and 6 p.m. MST on Turner Network Television and TBS. The largest of all union awards show, the SAG Awards will recognize the outstanding performances of 2005 in five film and eight television categories. Black’s “contributions to the entertainment industry are without precedent. Her contributions to the world are nothing short of inspirational,” said then-SAG President Melissa Gilbert, who announced the award last September. “She has lived the most remarkable life, as the brilliant performer the world came to know when she was just a child, to the dedicated public servant who has served her country both at home and abroad for 30 years.”

NEW AT WWW.AFLCIO.ORG

REMEMBERING FORD ROUGE THROUGH MUSIC—“Forgotten: The Murder at the Ford Rouge Plant,” the latest addition to the AFL-CIO’s Cool Tools website, is the soundtrack from the original jazz and blues opera set in Detroit. “Forgotten” tells the story of the Rev. Lewis Bradford, a Methodist minister who worked at a Detroit mission before his mysterious death at the Ford Rouge auto plant during the 1930s where he worked and was part of the effort to form a union with the UAW. After a long bitter struggle, which included workers being beaten by corporate thugs, and a massive strike, the Ford Rouge became the first Ford plant to sign a union contract in 1941. Also check out the new book, Building More Effective Unions, by University of Pennsylvania professor Paul Clark, who outlines innovative and practical strategies for changing workers’ attitudes about their union through improved communications, more open leadership and long-range strategic planning. Both are available at The Union Shop Online at www.aflcio.org/shop. Find more Cool Tools at www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/publications/magazine/cooltools.cfm.

STOP THE SENSELESS SLAUGHTER OF GOOD JOBS—The most critical challenge facing the United States is stopping the destruction of good jobs, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a National Press Club audience Jan. 18 in Washington, D.C. “The senseless slaughter of the good American job has been going on for the past 25 years. It’s at the core of a corporate-driven strategy to compete in the global marketplace by degrading work and workers, rather than competing through ingenuity—competing through privatization, deregulation and de-unionization, rather than by innovation,” he said. Sweeney decried the destruction of good U.S. jobs that once created “the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the strongest democracy in the history of the world....We are barely creating enough new jobs to match the growth in our workforce—and increasingly, the jobs we are generating are dead-end alleys.” To stem the flood of job loss, Sweeney said strong workers’ rights protections must be included in all trade agreements; strong anti-sweatshop laws must be enacted; and tax laws that encourage corporations to send jobs overseas should be repealed. He called for universal health coverage so workers can live secure lives and corporations can compete in the global marketplace; for corporations to invest more in workers and less in their executives; for doubling funding for job training and skills development and education; and for raising the federal minimum wage. He also outlined the AFL-CIO’s efforts to move the country in a new direction, including the growth of the AFL-CIO community affiliate, Working America; the federation’s increased emphasis on organizing new workers; recent legislative and election victories; and growing congressional support for the Employee Free Choice Act. The entire speech is available at www.aflcio.org/goodjobs, and unions and allied groups are encouraged to post the speech on their own websites or link to it.