Dick Meister

Women bringing new strength to unions

0

By Dick Meister

Women are well on the way to overtaking men in the ranks of organized labor
— and for good reason. As a new study shows, women who’ve joined unions have significantly better pay and benefits than working women who have not joined.

Although only about a fifth of women workers overall currently belong to unions, they already make up about 45 percent of all unionized workers. They’re expected to become a majority within a dozen years, according to the study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Dick Meister: the other SF State Strike

0

By Dick Meister

In marking the 40th anniversary of the student strike at San Francisco State College this year, don’t overlook the faculty strike that broke out in early 1969, not long after the student strike began. The eight-week-long walkout led by the American Federation of Teachers was one of the longest and most bitter teacher strikes in California history.

Although the faculty members called their strike to seek firmer rights, lesser teaching loads and other improved working conditions for themselves, they also demanded that the college negotiate an agreement with the student strikers and otherwise resolve student grievances.

Dick Meister: Labor’s high hopes

0

LABOR’S HIGH HOPES

By Dick Meister

Organized labor is rightly claiming a major role in the Nov. 4 victories of President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats ­ and is rightly expecting much in return.

The figures are impressive. One-fifth of all voters were union members or in union households, and fully two-thirds of them supported Obama, a ratio even higher in battleground states.

The AFL-CIO calculates that more than a quarter-million volunteers campaigned among their fellow union members and others, discussing the issues that were of particular importance to working people, drumming up support for Obama and other labor-friendly Democrats and, finally, getting labor voters to the polls on election day.

Meister

0

WILL THE YOUNG RESCUE UNIONS?

By Dick Meister

There¹s good news for unions attempting to attract the young members that they must attract if they are to grow. It comes in recent studies showing clearly that younger workers do better as union members and that increasing numbers of the workers agree.

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act!

0


By Dick Meister

The chances of independent candidate Ralph Nader winning the presidency are as remote as ever in this, his fourth try. But he has important things to say about vital matters that mainstream contenders virtually ignore.

Democrat Barack Obama professes to be ­ and undoubtedly is ­ a strong supporter of organized labor. Like most other Democratic office seekers, he’s endorsed the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which is designed to reverse the steady decline in labor’s fortunes.

But neither Obama nor any of labor’s other Democratic allies has called for the step beyond enactment of the Free Choice Act that is essential if labor is to grow and prosper. Ralph Nader demands it: “Repeal Taft-Hartley!”

Dick Meister: Sarah Palin and Frances Perkins

0

Dick Meister is a rarity in U.S. journalism. In an era when the media is hiring more business reporters and doing more business reporting, it has cut out almost all labor reporters and labor reporting. However, Meister has been covering labor and political issues for more than 50 years from his San Francisco base. He was a former labor and political reporter for the Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Guardian, and KQED. His weekly column will appear regularly on the Bruce blog and the Guardian website. You can see previous columns on his website at DickMeister.com. B3

A FIRST FOR LABOR, A FIRST FOR WOMEN
By Dick Meister

Amid the speculation that Sarah Palin could become our first woman vice
president, don’t forget the first woman who actually did serve in a
president’s cabinet — Frances Perkins, one of the most important
leaders, woman or man, to ever hold any federal post.

Perkins, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first – and only – secretary of labor, had
a tremendous impact on government policy and the status of ordinary
Americans. Her politics were far different from Republican Palin’s rigid
conservatism. Perkins was a liberal Democrat, a very liberal, politically
astute Democrat who devoted her entire career to improving the lives of
America’s working people and helping provide them and others true economic
justice and security.

No peace, no work

0

OPINION Organized labor is set to mark May Day — International Workers’ Day — with what could be the loudest and most forceful demand yet for rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) will lead the way by refusing to work their eight-hour morning shifts at ports in California, Oregon, and Washington. For them, it will be a "no peace, no work" holiday — in effect, a strike against the war.

Like many other unions and labor organizations nationwide, the ILWU has long opposed the war in Iraq as an imperialist action in which the lives of young working-class Americans and Iraqi citizens are being needlessly wasted.

The ILWU hopes the dramatic act of shutting down West Coast ports will inspire Americans everywhere to oppose the war.

The coalition behind this movement, US Labor Against the War (USLAW), has been growing steadily since the invasion of Iraq. It’s now the largest organized antiwar group of any kind and is drawing important support, not only from unions but from a wide variety of socially-conscious activist groups outside the labor movement.

USLAW’s members, which represent millions of workers, significantly include the AFL-CIO and most of the federation’s 56 affiliated unions. No one can doubt USLAW’s ability to organize a massive protest like the one ILWU is hoping to lead: it was USLAW that put together the antiwar demonstration that drew half a million marchers to Washington, DC last year.

USLAW is demanding primarily that "our elected leaders stop funding the war, bring our troops home, and start meeting human needs here at home," notes Fred Mason, an AFL-CIO official in Maryland.

In the meantime, says Gerald McEntee, a key public employee union leader, "We are spreading violence in Iraq, not democracy." The Bush administration’s policies, says Musicians Union leader Tom Lee, "make us less secure, increase the threat of terrorism, and have put Iraq on a path of civil war."

ILWU President Robert McEllrath has urged unions and allied groups outside the United States to also mount protests "to honor labor history and express support for the troops by bringing them home safely."

The AFL-CIO’s role is particularly notable. It marks the first time the federation has ever opposed a war, whether the president was a pro-labor Democrat or, as now, an antilabor Republican.

The longshoremen’s union, which was not affiliated with the AFL-CIO at the time, was firmly opposed to the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. The ILWU also was a major opponent of dictatorial regimes in South and Central America and the apartheid regime in South Africa, its members often refusing to handle cargo coming from or going to those countries. Just recently, ILWU members in Tacoma, Wash., refused for conscientious reasons to load cargo headed for the Iraq war zone.

We can only hope — and hope fervently — that the union’s May Day show of strong opposition to the war in Iraq will help prompt millions of others to conclude that they, too, cannot in good conscience support that seemingly endless war.

Dick Meister

Dick Meister is a San Francisco–based writer who has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a reporter, editor, and commentator. Contact him through his Web site: www.dickmeister.com

Eureka! Censored! Eureka! Will the Conglomerati publish the Censored stories?

0

Memo the readers of the Conglomerati (Singleton/Hearst/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens papers):

Keep a sharp eye out to see if any of the papers of these big chains publish the Project Censored story. Or if they comment on it or on any of this year’s censored picks. Or if they run any real coverage of the coming of the regional newspaper monopoly, the Guardian’s pick as the biggest local censored story.
(So far, at blog presstime, my agents and I have not spotted any.)

If they don’t run the story, it would be further confirmation of the reason the Guardian is happy to run the story every year as a front page special, which is then run on the website of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) and in alternative papers throughout the country. It is confirmation of the fact that not only does the mainstream media censor or trivialize lots of major stories in favor of “junk food news,” but it even censors a major local story out of Sonoma State University that has become the longest running media censorship project in the country (30 years). Delicious: censoring the censored story.

Let the Guardian and the Bruce blog know if you spot anything.

Eurekaism is now more rampant than ever. Where it will all end knows only God and Dean Singleton.

P.S. All of this censorship only illustrates a key problem with the mainstream press. The bloggers have been blogging away on these stories throughout the year and they will continue to blog away on major stories the mainstream press (and its wire service, the Associated Press) censor or trivialize. B3, blogging away at sfbg.com

CENSORED! by Sarah Phelan

The silent scandal by G.W. Schulz

Junk food news

The runners-up

EDITOR’S NOTES by Tim Redmond

The business of censoring labor by Dick Meister

The business of censoring labor

0

Most people, of course, work for a living. They spend at least half their lives working and, in fact, define themselves by their jobs. They obviously would be interested in ­ and obviously need ­ expert information on a regular basis about that most important aspect of their lives.

But the news media in effect censor that vital information. Their primary attention is not focused on those who do society¹s work. With the rare exception of such issues as the attempts to raise the minimum wage, or on special occasions like Labor Day, the media generally are not concerned with workers’ daily efforts to make a living. The media concentrate instead on the corporate interests and other employers like themselves who finance, direct and profit from the work.

Workers’ attempts to get a greater share of the profits and better working conditions by using the only effective tool available to them – collective action –­ are given only slight and frequently biased media attention. Strikes are an exception, but that coverage is usually concerned mainly with the strikes’ adverse effect on the general public.

Given their complexity and importance, collective bargaining and union activity generally should be among the most thoroughly and fairly covered of all subjects. Once, most newspapers had labor reporters to provide extensive if not always fair coverage. But almost no papers have such specialists today. With a very few exceptions, radio and television stations have never had them.

At most papers, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, labor coverage has been turned over to the business section. Since the material there is meant for readers who have a particular interest in business and a generally negative view of unions, the stories naturally are slanted that way by business reporters, who have little apparent understanding of labor.

The business pages typically downgrade, distort or simply ignore union views. They show little concern for general readers, including those who support unions or might want to if they had the opportunity to read thorough, balanced and expert accounts of their activities.

How about describing the country¹s major labor federation, the AFL-CIO, as a “trade association?” Or referring to democratically elected union leaders as “bosses?” The San Francisco Chronicle business page has made those petty but illustrative gaffes and, like the rest of the Bay Area¹s mainstream media, far more serious gaffes.

The list of important labor issues that have been ignored ­ censored ­ is seemingly endless. To cite just a few examples, the media:

— Frequently note that union membership is declining while failing to report that a principal cause is failure of the federal government to adequately enforce the laws that supposedly guarantee workers the right to unionize without employer interference.

— Fail to report numerous other anti-union actions of the Bush
administration, including its virtual non-enforcement of most other laws designed to protect workers.

— Rarely take notice of the on-the-job hazards that cause 6,000 deaths and more than 2 million serious injuries a year, and the need to strengthen and adequately enforce the job safety laws.

— Ignore labor¹s role as an advocate for the working people, union and non-union alike, who make up the vast bulk of the population, by characterizing labor as a “special interest.”

— Almost never report the views of union members and leaders on the major issues of the day. The views often are voiced at meetings of local labor councils and other union bodies that reporters ignore, while routinely seeking out the views of corporate and business executives.

— Pay little, if any, attention to many major union campaigns. Most recently, that’s notably included a nationwide drive to get McDonald’s to guarantee decent pay and working conditions to the impoverished tomato pickers whose work is essential to the hugely profitable fast-food industry.

So, despite the great importance of labor, despite most people¹s vested interest in it, despite the need to inform them fully about it, the media provide little that’s of real value to them in their working lives, and much that¹s prejudicial to their collective action.

Copyright © 2006 Dick Meister, former labor editor of the Chronicle and of KQED-TV’s Newsroom. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

An Unhappy Anniversary for Labor

0

It was 25 years ago this month that Ronald Reagan struck the blow that sent the American labor movement tumbling into a decline it’s still struggling mightily to reverse.
Reagan, one of the most antilabor presidents in history, set the decline in motion by firing 11,500 of the overworked and underpaid air traffic controllers whose work was essential to the operation of the world’s most complex aviation system.
Reagan fired them because they dared respond to his administration’s refusal to bargain fairly on a new contract by striking in violation of the law prohibiting strikes by federal employees. What’s more, he also destroyed their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).
Public and private employers everywhere treated Reagan’s action as a signal to take an uncompromising stand against the unions that they had accepted and bargained with, however reluctantly, as the legitimate representatives of their workers.
At that time, one-fourth of the US workforce was represented by unions. Today, largely because of employer actions since then — often openly illegal actions — the percentage of workers with union bargaining rights is less than half that.
Ironically, PATCO had broken with other AFL-CIO affiliates to endorse Reagan’s successful run for president in 1980. The union did so because Reagan had promised to “take whatever steps are necessary” to improve working conditions and otherwise “bring about a spirit of cooperation between the president and the air traffic controllers.”
Yet PATCO negotiators were rebuffed a year later when they asked for a reduction in working hours, lowering of the retirement age, and other steps to ease the controllers’ extraordinary stress, plus a substantial pay raise and updated equipment.
PATCO had no choice but to abandon its demands or strike to try to enforce them. And when the union struck, Reagan, certain of broad public support because of his great popularity, issued an ultimatum to the strikers: return to work within 48 hours or be fired and replaced permanently by nonunion workers.
Faced with millions of dollars in fines for vioutf8g Reagan’s order and the antistrike injunctions that his administration and airlines had sought and stripped by the administration of its right to represent the controllers, PATCO declared bankruptcy and went out of business.
Although Reagan’s ban on rehiring strikers was later lifted by Bill Clinton and a stronger, new union now represents controllers, safety experts say the air traffic control system remains understaffed and the controllers still under far too much stress.
That’s unlikely to change during the administration of George Bush, who’s as antilabor as was Ronald Reagan. The Bush administration, in fact, has imposed a new contract on the controllers that cuts their pay and pension benefits.
Neither is it likely that other employers will abandon the crippling antilabor practices that were inspired and furthered by Reagan.
Firing and permanently replacing strikers, previously a rare occurrence, has become a common employer tactic. It’s now the strike — an indispensable weapon for workers in collective bargaining — that only rarely occurs.
It isn’t just strikers who face penalties for exercising their legal rights. Employers also have taken to firing or otherwise penalizing workers who seek union recognition, despite the law that promises them the right to freely choose unionization. Many employers have also hired “ management consultants” who specialize in Reagan-style union busting.
“For all practical purposes, Americans have lost the freedom to form unions,” notes AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. “Our labor laws are so weak and so feebly enforced that workers join the union in spite of the law.”
It’s no coincidence that as union ranks have shrunk under the relentless antilabor pressures first applied to air traffic controllers a quarter century ago by Ronald Reagan, the ranks of the American middle class also have shrunk — as has the ordinary American’s share of the country’s wealth. SFBG
Copyright © 2006 Dick Meister, a San Francisco–based writer who has covered labor issues for four decades. Contact him through his Web site, www.dickmeister.com.

It’s criminal what Congress has done to the working poor

0

OPINION Congress’s Republican leaders belong in prison. They have openly violated one of our most basic laws, the 68-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act. It requires Congress to set the minimum wage high enough to guarantee a standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being.
The current rate of $5.15 an hour comes nowhere near to doing that. Even those who manage to work full-time make only $10,700 a year – $206 a week or about $900 a month, minus taxes and other deductions. They and the 15 million other Americans who are paid at or near the minimum – more than one-third of them provide the main or sole support for their families – are by any reckoning poverty-stricken and barely surviving.
The law allows states and local governments to adopt minimum-wage rates higher than the federal rate. Although California and 20 other states, San Francisco and 139 other cities and counties, and the District of Columbia have done so, the higher minimums cover only about half of the country’s workers.
Democrats have argued long and hard in the current session of Congress for a higher federal minimum, as they have in every other session since the $5.15 rate was set in 1997. But the Republicans who’ve been running Congress have higher priorities – raising their own pay and cutting the taxes that are such a burden to their wealthy supporters.
Oh yes, the GOP leaders did introduce a bill that would have raised the minimum. But the measure made that contingent on cutting the estate taxes of the very wealthy – a linkage, opposed by even some Republicans, that guaranteed the bill’s defeat.
They’ve raised congressional pay in every session since 1997, while doing nothing for the working poor. That’s added more than $31,000 to the minimum wage of congressional members, currently $165,200, with a $3,300 raise scheduled for Jan. 1. Unlike minimum-wage workers, who rarely have fringe benefits, members of Congress also get free health care, pensions, and other expensive extras.
The minimum wage for ordinary people would have risen to $7.25 an hour over the next two years under the latest Democratic proposal blocked by the GOP’s congressional leaders. Its main proponent, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, promised that the fight to raise the wage “will continue all across America.”
It is certain, in any case, that Democratic candidates will make it an issue in this fall’s election campaigns. They are well aware, certainly, of polls showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor a minimum-wage increase.
So why in the world are Republican leaders so adamantly against it?
Because their big-money backers in the restaurant business, who employ about 60 percent of all minimum-wage workers, are against it, as are many other business and corporate interests. The opponents have even formed a group, Coalition for Job Opportunities, to spread the fiction, much favored by the GOP, that a higher minimum would force employers to eliminate jobs.
Actually, the number of jobs has grown after each of the 19 times the minimum has been raised since it was initially set at 25 cents an hour in 1938.
The job growth has been spurred primarily by the increased spending of those whose pay has increased. Like all low-wage workers, they must spend virtually every cent they earn, thus raising the overall demand for goods and services and creating the need for new employees.
Think of the general benefits to society if the minimum-wage workers who now must depend on government assistance could earn enough to make it on their own.
Think of the benefits to employers. As several studies have shown, raising workers’ pay raises workers’ morale and, with it, their productivity, while decreasing absenteeism and recruiting and training costs.
Think of the benefits to small retailers. Opponents of a raise say they’d be hurt the most by a higher minimum wage, but it’s far more likely that they’d be among the greatest beneficiaries. For minimum-wage workers have no choice but to spend most of their meager earnings in neighborhood stores for food and other necessities. SFBG
Dick Meister
Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based writer who has covered labor and political issues for four decades as a reporter, editor, and commentator. Contact him through his Web site, www.dickmeister.com.