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PCCFFAP Portland Community College Federation Portal: PCCFFAP Update, Salem Update,
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our blog: http://thewordsmithcollection.blogspot.com/2009/02/lets-get-nation-back-on-track.html
Minimum-wage workers in Oregon are better off
Statesman Journal
Organized labor's role in raising the minimum wage demonstrates a commitment ...more
Gallup: Strong Support for Freedom to Form
Unions |
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Union Workers Protest Outside Dick's Sporting Goods
October 22, 2009
By Heather Hintze
EUGENE, Ore. -- Disgruntled union members are standing
outside the future site of Dick's Sporting Goods on Green
Acres Road in Eugene, frustrated at the company's hiring
practices. The Pacific Northwest Regional Council of
Carpenters is currently in a labor dispute with S & S
Drywall, a subcontractor for Dick's. The union says S
& S doesn't meet area standards: full family medical
insurance, retirement benefits and a standard carpenter
wage, $32/ hour. S& S contends that since they are
non-union, they are allowed to pay workers $21- $31 an hour,
which is at or above the state's standard wage of $22 an
hour. They say the company also provides medical and dental
benefits for the individual or family, depending on the
worker's preference. Union members say the protest
will last six month to a year.
S & S Drywall says they have finished all their work in
Eugene and are no longer on site.
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The fine folks at the Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR)
have released a series of
one-page reports summarizing
what unions mean for workers all around the country. |
Reading, Writing, and Union-Building
Monthly Review -
Herndon,VA,USA
In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be
even smaller. ..... catalogue and Powell's, the unionized
book-seller in Portland, Oregon. ...it's
long past time for progressives in labor to find new methods of
encouraging rank-and-file reading -- or to revive some of the
old-fashioned ones |
The Iraqi Teachers
Union has issued an emergency appeal for support
- the union faces a
government takeover. |
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March 4, 2009, 6:58 am
A.F.L.-C.I.O. to
Support Nationalizing Banks
The A.F.L.-C.I.O.s executive
council will call on the Obama administration on Wednesday to
speed the nationalization of problem banks to stimulate lending
and lift the sagging economy, The New York Timess Steven
Greenhouse reported.
The
labor federation, a lobbying powerhouse that represents 10
million workers, will thus become one of the first groups
and certainly the most powerful to call for moving more
aggressively on nationalization, both to counter Republican and
business cries against it and to press the Obama administration
not to vacillate over such a move.
A.F.L.-C.I.O.
officials asserted that the administrations practice of
giving billions of dollars in dribs and drabs to distressed
banks had failed to restore their solvency, leaving them as
zombie banks that largely refrain from lending, thereby
contributing to the economys decline.
The
executive council is scheduled to approve a statement that
criticizes the Obama administration for indulging shareholders
of distressed banks by not nationalizing the banks to speed the
cleanup of their balance sheets.
We
believe the debate over nationalization is delaying the
inevitable bank restructuring, which is something our economy
cannot afford, a draft of the councils statement said.
The
labor leaders also asserted that the Obama administration, like
the Bush administration, had failed to obtain fair value for the
tens of billions it had invested in distressed banks.
By
feeding the banks public money in fits and starts, and asking
little or nothing in the way of sacrifice, we are going down the
path Japan took in the 1990s a path that leads to zombie
banks and long-term economic stagnation, the draft
statement said.
The
statement makes clear that the group wants to add its political
and lobbying muscle to calls by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nouriel
Roubini and other economists in favor of nationalization.
Labor
leaders said the administration appeared to be vacillating on
nationalization partly out of fear of Republican attacks that it
was adopting socialist policies... |
The social networking site for trade unionists.
Now with 1820 registered users. If this is your
first visit to the site, please
click here. |
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Resolution Format
How to take action at your state convention. |
by Mike Hall, Jan 28, 2009
For the
second year in a row, the percentage of workers who
belong to a union grew, according to the annual survey of
union membership released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS).
In 2008, union membership grew by 428,000,
increasing the percentage of union members in the workforce
to 12.4 percent, up from 12.1 percent in 2007. Overall, 16.1
million workers carry union cards.
Union membership, AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney
says, is especially valuable to working families as the
nations economy is in the worst recession in decades.
Todays numbers confirm what many
working people already know: that if given the chance,
American workers are choosing to join unions in larger
numbers. Workers in unions are much more likely to have
health care benefits and a pension than those without a
union; in todays economy, thats the difference between
sinking and swimming.
The BLS survey also reports on the union
advantage workers receive on payday. In 2008, full-time
union workers earned a median weekly salary of $886 while
nonunion workers were paid 28 percent less per week, $691.
Some 60
million workers say they would join a union if they had
the opportunity. But when workers try to form unions through
the flawed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) process,
employers routinely respond with threats, intimidation,
firings and harassment.
Of the 311,000 new workers who joined
unions in 2007, the latest year for which such figures are
available, only 70,000 workers were able to form a union
through the NLRB process. Today, most workers who form new
unions do so after their employer has agreed to recognize
their union through a majority sign-up processa major
provision of the
Employee Free Choice Act.
The Employee Free Choice Act would restore
the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain for a
better life. While some 78 percent of the public support the
legislation, Big Business is waging a multimillion-dollar disinformation
campaign against the bill.
On top of that, congressional Republicans
are vowing to kill the workers rights legislation. They
have even gone so far as to threaten to block President
Barack Obamas choice of
Hilda Solis as secretary of labor. Says
Sweeney:
In
todays economy, Americas working men and women
need a fair shot at forming a union, now more than ever.
The Employee Free Choice Act will give workers the
freedom to bargain with their employers for better
benefits, wages, and job security, and it will allow
themnot their companyto decide how to form their
union.
Union growth was broadly shared across
demographic lines and occupations. Growth was strongest in
the public sector, among Hispanics, and in Western states.
Click here for the full
report, including a demographic breakdown of union
membership by occupation, race, gender, state and more.
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Oregon Carpenters'
Local Endorses HR 676
Portland, Oregon. Carpenters' Local 247 has endorsed HR 676, single
payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers
(D-MI).
An informal group of union members from different crafts, calling
themselves Cross Trade Solidarity, has organized to push for endorsements
of the Conyers legislation in Portland area locals.
HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system in the U.S. by
expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to every resident.
HR 676 would cover every person in the U. S. for all necessary medical
care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient
services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental, mental
health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for
substance abuse), vision care, chiropractic and long term care.
HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save billions
annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private
health insurance industry and HMOs.
In the 110th Congress, HR 676 had 93 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers
HR 676 has been endorsed by 481 union organizations in 49 states including
118 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 39 state
AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,
MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI,
MT, NE, NY, NV & MA).
For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:
Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayerHR676.org
01/28/09 |
|
Church maintains that labor movement can help everyone
By SDACT(SDACT)
Portland Jobs with Justice is a coalition of 85 labor unions and
community groups that act in solidarity with workers in efforts to obtain their
rights. Butler tells the story of how one employer changed worker sentiment from
80 percent ...SDACT Blog - http://www.sdact.com/blog/
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Activism
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Alternatives
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Labor
Cutting Wages Won't Solve
Detroit's Crisis
Thursday
04 December 2008 |
In the 1980s, Chevrolet
proclaimed itself the "Heartbeat
of America," but today the
American auto industry barely
registers a pulse. As Washington
considers Detroit's plea for
life support, the only place
where pundits, politicians and
Big Three executives seem to
agree is that auto workers must
make do with less or watch their
jobs disappear. Some lawmakers
have complained that unions are
the source of the problem, but
they fail to understand some
inconvenient truths. According
to the latest figures from the
U.S. Commerce Department, every
worker in Big Three factories
could work for free and only
shave 5 percent off the cost of
their cars. The auto companies
pay as much for hubcaps and
fenders as they do in wages.
;
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Current News!
The Wordsmith
Collection's
Union News Alternative
News
For the first time in
many years, union
membership is increasing.
UNION MEMBERS IN 2007
In 2007, the number of workers belonging to a union rose by 311,000
to
15.7 million, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. Union members accounted for 12.1 percent of employed
wage
and salary workers. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union
data are
available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent.
Some highlights from the 2007 data are:
--Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly
five
times that of private sector employees.
--Education, training, and library occupations had the highest
unionization rate among all occupations, at 37.2 percent,
followed closely by protective service occupations at 35.2 percent.
--Among demographic groups, the union membership rate was highest for
black men and lowest for Hispanic women.
--Wage and salary workers ages 45 to 54 (15.7 percent) and ages 55 to
64 (16.1 percent) were more likely to be union members than were
workers ages 16 to 24 (4.8 percent). |
|
Google News Alert for: Portland Oregon Labor
Unions
AFL-CIO Portal
www.aflcio.org - America's Union Movement
www.writingresource.info/election2008.html
PCCFFAP Summer Newsletter (Vol. 8 #3)
Past issues |
As
reported by WWire on Friday, the
40-member Professional Staff Organization of the
Oregon Education Association is at an impasse with
the OEA board.
Normally, a strike by a 40-member labor group
wouldn't be big news. But the OEA staff does much of
the organizational work for the powerful
47,000-member statewide teachers' union, especially
during the election season when the OEA is
mobilizing on statewide measures and trying to
organize for candidates it's supporting.
Here's the text of a release OEA staff sent out
announcing the strike:
OREGON EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PROFESSIONAL STAFF
ON STRIKE
Portland, September 14, 2008 The
Professional Staff Organization (PSO) of the Oregon
education Association (OEA) is on strike as of 12:01
A.M., Monday, September 15. Pickets will begin
Monday morning at all OEA offices throughout Oregon.
All union members are expected to honor those
pickets.
Alternative News Resources
for Research and Activism
The
American
Federation of Teachers:
www.aft-oregon.org/
AFT ACTION LINK!
www.aflcio.org -
America's Union Movement
Portland
Community College Faculty Federation
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P C C F F !
Federation
Members online forum:
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AFL-CIO Portal
www.aflcio.org - America's Union Movement
www.uoregon.edu/~lerc Univ. of Oregon Labor Education & Research Center
AFSCME Councils and Locals - West AFT-Oregon
Locals
Portland Jobs With Justice
How Will Bush’s Social Security
Plan Affect You?
Go
Figure To see
how President Bush’s proposal would affect your Social Security
benefits, check
out the
Social Security calculator.
It’s
designed for anyone who was born
in 1950 or later. It’s easy to
use, but it’s
not fun.
submitted by
Mark
Schwebke
mschwebke@comcast.net
Meet progressive people with visionary world views.
Democrats, Greens,
activists - progressives of all flavors are what you'll find at this
site.
It's free to join... democraticsingles.net/
The Portland Alliance
Progressive
Directory
Support Local Media
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Reporter
 
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Peaceworker
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Portland.Indymedia.org
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Community
Calendar
UnionResource.org/ |
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Sign-up for "The
Rundown: Election 2008" |
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Oregon has voted against him, but Sizemore fights on The
Oregonian - OregonLive.com - Portland,OR,USA And because Sizemore has not gone away, a coalition that stretches from
labor unions to civic, religious and environmental groups to
business organizations ...
See all stories on this topic |
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The Who, What, Why,
When, Where, and How of Employee Free Choice!
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Oregon Ballot Measure for November 2008! What's up? Where do
unions stand? How should we vote?
Get the
Skinny! |
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