‘We won’t go back!’: Ohio unionists rally for human rights

[Algorem]

http://www.pww.org/article/view/8259/

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 12/14/05 20:13

“We can’t win in the bankers’ court,” Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, told the cheering crowd of over 1,000 UAW workers, mostly Delphi employees, in Dayton, Ohio, Dec. 10. Referring to the use of the bankruptcy courts by Delphi and other corporations to dump workers’ pensions and health care, Cohen declared “We can’t win in the bankers’ court, but we can win!

“We can win in the streets, the streets of Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Chicago and Dayton! We need to shut it down and take it all to Washington. By God, they’ll listen then,” Cohen yelled, to massive, prolonged applause...

Ohio AFL-CIO President Bill Burga told the rally, “We fought a world war to defeat the Nazis, for human rights for all, but who has rights today? Not working people! Corporations have the ‘right’ to steal workers’ pensions, steal workers’ health care. The right to organize is a right that we’ve fought and died to gain. We intend to enforce that right!”

Burga read a letter from Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), now a candidate for Senate, stating that he is working in Congress to organize hearings on the Delphi situation, which the GOP majority had refused to do. Burga went on to say to the Delphi workers, to loud cheers, “All the unions of the AFL-CIO will stand shoulder to shoulder with you in this fight, until victory!”...

[4dsc]

1. Count me in..

I'll be glad to stand with any unionst against these greedy corporations..

[PDJane]

2. It is definitely time

for a resurgence of unions and people power.....The corporations have had their day, and they are ruining our world.

[ohio_liberal]

5. But how?

Corporations either use bankruptcy to rape their work force, or the plants shut down and move overseas with cheap labor. How do they fight back?

This isn't a snarky comment. I really want to understand how it's possible for unions to gain power again. Is it going to take acts of Congress to force change in the business practices of these companies?

[Greyhound]

6. Call me a radical nutcase but what about the workers (Union)

organize and buy the assets and just do what they've always done. We seem to have a big blind spot where upper management is concerned. They really don't do anything to justify the enormous expense they represent, and without that unproductive overhead, the company can effectively compete with the off-shoring companies. Why has Southwest airlines been kicking all of their competitions ass for (2) decades now? They are employee owned and the executives make substantially less than their counterparts at the bankrupt airlines.
The point is, the facilities will still exist, the people that know how it works will still be there, the suppliers will still be there, etc. The only thing lost is the paper entity and the idiots that ran the business into bankruptcy.
Whaddyathink? :shrug:

[ohio_liberal]

7. If our government doesn't force equal footing, companies can't compete

Southwest is a kick-ass company. But what about the manufacturers?

There's a local employee-owned steel mill here that was named Weirton Steel. It was at the time West Virginia's largest employer. All the workers belong to the Independent Steelworks Union. They spent millions and millions of dollars to upgrade equipment in the 80's to compete with foreign companies, to make themselves more efficient and safe. It was a necessary expense and all of the US steelmakers were doing the same. They were absolutely competitive but not for long. There were years of illegal foreign steel dumping (selling forgeign steel on US markets for much less than market value, often with the financial aid of that company's government) to flatten steel prices and drive the US companies out of business. It worked. The company went into bankruptcy along with dozens of other US steel companies. They never got back what they had in the late 80's. The company was sold to Mittal Steel, a huge conglomerate, rather than shut down the company altogether. The new owner started laying off workers almost immediately. Last week they announced that they'd shut down production lines and 800 more workers would be let go. These people have absolutely no idea what they'll do. The union is basically powerless. I think most people with some foresight could've seen what would happen. The conglomerate only wanted the employee-owned company's order books. And some machinery.

I don't know what this company could've done differently. They tightened belts, took pay cuts, reduced pensions, the management sure wasn't getting wealthy off the backs of the workforce. The government didn't enforce laws that were already in place. And it destroyed the steel industry.

I don't see how any American manufacturing company will be able to compete with cheap foreign labor if the government doesn't step up and force equality and enforce the damned laws. And maybe stop giving them tax breaks for picking up and moving outside the country. The unions will have leverage, if a company can't simply close up shop and move elsewhere.

[Occulus]

8. Postal workers are the key

We can't strike. Legally.

HOWEVER-

Get this. Right now, in postal facilities across the country, there is a class of employee being used, and overused. They are called "casuals". Although casuals work for the USPS, they have no union representation, no health benefits, no vacation time, no sick leave, and can be fired by their direct supervisor for any reason under the sun. They are being worked twelve hours a day, six days a week in many cases. This, among other things, denies full-time workers overtime and reduces the quality of the service, not because casuals don't know or don't do their jobs, but because they are worn so thin in the process that they couldn't care less about how well they are doing their jobs. I can't honestly say I blame them.

Currently, there are a number of major arbitration awards in the works regarding a grievance known as "casuals-in-leiu-of". Basically, what's going on is USPS management is handing casuals jobs off the street, while at the same time "reverting" (eliminating) bid jobs for full time, part-time flexible, and part-time regular employees. These three latter classes of employee DO have the union protections and benefits casuals do not.

What a shock that management is using casuals instead.

Casuals are typically untrained or undertrained, with management not using on-the-job instructors (which are, unsurprisingly, paid at a higher level for that particular training work); they're simply thrown into the job, oftentimes being forced to work alone on machinery designed for multiple operators. In many cases, employees who are NOT casuals (including myself) are required to do the same; I have worked on mail sorting machinery for as much as SIX HOURS by myself.

The AFL-CIO should be talking to the postal unions to see if the unions are willing to go on strike nationally, with the postal unions striking first, and then all the other AFL-CIO unions threatening to follow suit if those postal workers are fired. It would, in essence, be a repeat of the postal strike of the 1970s.

Because of that strike, we were able to negotiate a no-layoff clause in exchange for an inability to strike, per both the contract and the law (as I understand things). However, I see the overuse of casuals to be a sort of "layoff by proxy": casuals are being given day-shift jobs, with weekend days off, in spite of my being told- as a full-time regular employee with all benefits and unions protections- that it would take me working for the USPS for up to FIFTEEN YEARS before I would get a day shift with weekends off.

Now, the aforementioned arbitration awards regarding the "casuals-in-leiu-of" situation has already netted several locals multimillion-dollar arbitration awards; however, since such has happened in three or four locals in PA, and one (soon to be two) in MI THAT I KNOW OF, you would think postal management would take the clue.

Not so.

Ladies and gentlemen, postal management is the one single source of problems with our postal system. They are strictly and solely responsible for every last bit of inefficiency, delay, poor morale, and on and on. Truthfully, we who work on the floors of the plant, in the associate offices, and as carriers do NOT need management present in order to do our jobs, and honestly, oftentimes management doesn't even know how our jobs are done.

If the AFL-CIO wants the nation's attention, they need to get in touch with the APWU, NALC, and the mailhandler's union (whose acronym escapes me at the moment). They need to convince those unions to join a strike, in violation of their contract and the law.

WHY? Why violate our own contract? Why violate the law? BECAUSE MANAGEMENT DOES, DAILY. And gets away with it. Take a look at our national grievance backlog and tell me the system is not broken. Take a look at our workplaces, and tell me OSHA standards are not being flouted.

YES, I get benefits. YES, I get sick leave. YES, I get vacation time- and ONLY because we scared the piss out of the powers that be over a quarter century ago.

It's time, and past time, to scare them again. Postal workers have the power to completely crash the US economy. We need to flex that powerful, grim muscle once again.

I could get fired for this post. Frankly, I don't care. Doing so could well be the impetus that puts all this into motion!

BRING IT ON.

[PATRICK]

9. The abuse of casuals

is perennial but maybe at your local the abuses are not being fought hard enough. Eventually they can be beaten down over working casuals such long hours instead of having an adequate workforce.

The main problem locally is that between automation which is being used to keep regular employment sometimes artificially low(lots of overtime!) the casuals bounding in at Christmas, though in fewer numbers than the past, get LESS hours with less friction than in the past. There is some loss of overtime
at which some regulars(those not exhausted) can complain about and some misuses of casuals in bid positions(which they do terribly with no training) but I don't think it is as bad or will engender the same grievances we won in the past.

Even without the casuals we are feeling the automation crunch(whether it performs adequately or not) on keeping jobs. We are accepting this "interim" under-staffing since "eventually" when all is online we will suddenly be overstaffed. I have worked MY entire twenty year postal career under this modernization dynamic with only the words of old timers long retired to paint a picture of the labor intensive days of solid bids and predictability. Now I take for granted one thing. the work force will always be reduced to the necessity of much overtime and casuals as much as possible to justify the promises of automation that cannot be delivered in the real world. the main problem being machinery does not treat all mail lovingly and its timed processes and volume potentials don't have the flexibility to match mail flow changes. And that is being really polite.

And yes, the problems are top up when the union cannot beat back the bad decisions and poor philosophy at the management levels. The intent of postal management has always been to shrink the work force and drown the unions in a bathtub no matter their polite praise of the workforce and showcasing of some appointees brought up through the working class ranks. Short of destroying the postal system, perhaps still doomed by the e-world, they cannot beat a strong union. Sadly, the mindset does tend to go to real world suicide and poor decisions to satisfy cheap labor conservatism.

Had there been no union they(the entire USPS) would have collapsed along with all service standards under a wave of abused cheap and ignorant labor as have any endeavors they DID manage to so plan. The labor management relationship is a yin/yang thing not a utopia, but not the abyss there would be and the breakup of the obsolete failing technology that would have swiftly ensued without the union- even without its ability to strike and win more battles that would benefit worker and consumer and society alike.

[theHandpuppet]

3. Just another ploy by corporate Amerikka to destroy the country's unions

So we can go back to the days of peasant labor and slave wages sans any benefits. Will people never learn the lessons of history?

Kicking and recommended!

[lpbk2713]

4. Labor unions are the biggest thorn in the rethugs side.

We should support labor unions if for no other reason than this. With the help of sympathetic politicians the fat-cat rethugs have whittled away at the gains the labor movement has made over the years. We should never give up because the fat-cats know they have too much at stake and they will never give up.



:thumbsup: