In Canada, a private member’s bill, supported by SMART and the Canadian Building and Construction Trades, has passed its first reading. The bill, C-292, would amend the Canadian Labour Code to require the Minister of Labour to maintain a registry containing information reported by employers about accidents, occupational diseases, and other hazardous occurrences.
This bill would require employers to report information about all accidents, occupational disease, and other hazardous occurrences known by the employer to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour.
According to James Jackson, SMART Director of Canadian Affairs, “this bill will bring change that positively impacts workers by giving them access to information about hazards they are exposed to at work. This has been a long time coming.”
Author: paul
A skateboard half-pipe was built and installed by SMART SM Local 441’s fourth- and fifth-year apprentices in Mobile, AL, as a community service project for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. SM Local 441 Business Manager Robert Payne said, “we are proud that our apprentices took on this project and did a great job fabricating and erecting it at the site. We are sure that it will provide the skateboard community a lot of fun for years to come.” The project was presented as a gift to the city on May 13, 2016 with Brother Payne and SM Local 441 Training Coordinator Swan Cleveland on hand for the ceremony.
On June 10, a federal appeals court sided with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule which speeds up the union election process. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NLRB did not exceed its authority in issuing the rule.
The NLRB, in its original ruling, held that employees can vote on union representation 11 days after a petition for representation is filed.
The election rule was being challenged by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). These anti-worker groups and their supporters claimed that it limits an employer’s ability to contest voter eligibility and pre-election hearings. The groups also argue that sections of the rule violate federal privacy laws. The Fifth Circuit, arguably the most conservative federal court in the nation, did not agree.
The SMART Mechanical/BMWED coalition held negotiations on Tuesday, May 24, 2016, with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC) at Norfolk Southern’s corporate office in Atlanta, Georgia.
SMART Mechanical/BMWED expert economist, Tom Roth, gave an in depth presentation regarding the “Big Four” Class 1 freight railroads’ financial status. In summary, the demand for coal has been reduced on account of a glut of cheaper natural gas derived by fracking, coupled with a lessening of world demands for coal, particularly from China. Consequently, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific have experienced decreased volumes of coal shipped by rail. However, the railroads have been able to adapt their business model by fulfilling other shipping demands to moderate their losses in coal volume. He also observed that while 2015 revenue was a little off from the peak year of 2014, the railroads were still doing comparatively well and have been enjoying a historically prosperous run for over a decade. The concluding remark of economist Roth was that the current financial and economic environments for the “Big Four” railroads are better than the last two rounds of national negotiations, even though 2016 will continue to see some structural readjustments in railroad operations.
The NCCC had no immediate comments regarding the presentation but did note that they desired to analyze the information and requested the sources of Roth’s presentation. They further noted that they would provide a presentation regarding their position on the freight railroads’ financial status at an unspecified future date.
Further negotiations are scheduled for the end of July 2016 as well as during September 2016. Although negotiations are proceeding slowly, we believe that the SMART Mechanical/BMWED initiatives on healthcare will assist the parties in reaching a voluntary agreement. SMART Mechanical & Engineering Department members are represented by Chairman Joe Fraley.
The AFL-CIO released its annual “Death on the Job Report,” marking the 25th year the organization has produced a report detailing the state of worker safety. Regulations have never been strong enough to fix all of the country’s workplace safety problems, but they help nonetheless. According to the AFL-CIO, more than 532,000 lives have been saved by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
In 2014, 4,821 workers died on the job and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational disease. That is 150 workers per day due to hazardous working conditions. Just over a third of all workplace fatalities happened to workers between the ages of 55 and 65, and workers 65 and older have three times the risk as other workers.
The trend of Latino workers facing more dangerous conditions also continued in 2014, when 804 Latino workers died on the job, of which 64 percent were immigrant workers.
As is traditional at the start of a new year, our union—members and the organization that serves them—is looking ahead. Continued growth will add to our strength in the workplace and in politics, in 2016 and beyond.
In this unusual political year, so much has already happened that it can be hard to remember we are still several months away from the November 8 General Election.
As a Union and as individual voters, our task is to look beyond all the “breaking news” and stay focused on what really matters—our Union issues, the common concerns that should drive our votes.
These are the same things that our prior generations have talked about, that my father talked about at our dinner table 30 and 40 years ago, and our recent member survey confirmed it. Members give the highest emphasis to the pragmatic issues at the heart of working life and trade unionism: Jobs and hours; wages and benefits; secure retirement; representation and respect for workers and contracts; organizing to add employers and members.
This is Unionism: the needs we have in common, the things that unite us. For ourselves, our families, and our Union, we must stay united as Union members to wield our strongest collective voice as we pursue those basic interests in the workplace, at the bargaining table, and in elections at all levels.
Union to the core
This issue of The Members’ Journal focuses on those central union matters, from the political news to the special focus section on pages 16–24. There are two broad themes.
First is organizing and strategies, starting with the many efforts to add members and employers so we continually gain strength in each shop, each market, and each industry. It means working with “Jobs to Move America” to build plants under PLAs where rail cars will be built Union, too. It is lobbying to defeat anti-union legislation like our Brothers and Sisters did in New Mexico.
Organizing and strategies include the many ways we build our strength and our power.
The other broad term is contracts, which fix our hard-earned wages and benefits, define our workplaces, and support the steadfast negotiation and representation that brings our shared potential to individual members.
Success on those issues involves us taking a stand for each other, in solidarity. There is no better example than Local 66 members who are nine months into a stand at North shore Sheet Metal in Western Washington. Their struggle is to ensure that our core values are not compromised through negotiations and to protect those values across our industry. Local 66 needs our support!
Contracts are a process and its results, the concrete Union gains that we negotiate and protect with our considerable strength and power.
What those two broad areas have in common is that they rely on our collective strength and concerted action. They rely on solidarity. On focusing our efforts. On standing together as a Union.
The timeless slogan says it all: United we bargain. Divided we beg.
Unity matters
Make no mistake, elections involve all of these elements, too. We organize volunteers and voters to elect pro-union candidates. Our strategic political action is part of democracy’s “contract” in which voters support candidates who support their issues and programs.
This Fall, when we’re (probably) down to one candidate from each of the major parties, those common issues for all working people must be the driving force in our individual and collective efforts. Yes, there will be a lot of action between now and Election Day. As voters and volunteers, if we stick with the issues, the choice will be clear: a proven friend of labor or an anti-union demagogue.
On our side, where the fight is for a White House that will address our bread-and-butter concerns, we will have someone we can work with.
When the crucial home stretch arrives, we must be ready to work and vote for the pro-worker side. We will unite to elect a President (and Congress) who side with Labor and with our most basic concerns.
Our role this Fall will be strategic—and highly visible: educating our members and other voters and building support for our candidates up and down the ticket. In turn, those who we help to elect will have the core principles of working families clearly in mind when they take office and fulfill their role: creating jobs and investments and policies that will help members of SMART and of other unions as well.
Standing united with the house of Labor, we will turn out to bring in a new President—and a new day for working families in America.
Fraternally
Joseph Sellers, Jr.
General President
It’s not just federal elections that have an impact on working families. As we were reminded all too well in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, state and local elections can have far reaching consequences.
For the past six years, working families have been placed on the defensive by a flurry of state and local measures looking to break the power of collective bargaining all across this country.
Despite ongoing losses, unions are gaining strength, fighting back—and winning—with new approaches, emphasizing a renewed focus on the grassroots and building awareness of legislative issues.
We are starting to notch the victories that will eventually turn the tide against these right-wing attacks. Below are recent examples—be they wins or temporary setbacks—from three states where the battle for working families is being waged.
WEST VIRGINIA
Union-busting by override
Despite a long, hard-fought battle, West Virginia became the nation’s 26th Right-to-Work for less state earlier this year. West Virginia stands out for the historic and bloody battles workers waged there for generations. West Virginia’s coal miners were at the forefront of the fights that brought better pay, safety, unionization and solidarity to working families in the early half of the 20th century.
The final right-to-work vote resulted from the Republican legislature’s override of a veto from Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D), who opposes right-to-work. West Virginia Republicans also voted to eliminate that state’s prevailing wage law—and overrode Gov. Tomblin’s veto of that bill as well.
While the events in West Virginia outline another temporary setback, working families have once again won the day in New Mexico.
NEW MEXICO
Union win shocks opponents
The 2016 legislative session was an unqualified success for New Mexico’s Sheet Metal Local 49. With anti-worker legislation whipping through the country, New Mexico has shown itself to be an emerging labor stronghold—with tactics and pro-worker forces to be reckoned with.
With damaging bills such as those designed to strip workers (both union and non-union) of their union-negotiated prevailing wages, and the so called, Right-to-Work bill (the “Employee Preference Act”) being pushed by the Republicans, workers’ rights in New Mexico are under serious threat.
Yet, SM Local 49 members were able to defeat this legislation and keep it from reaching the Governor’s desk. The winning effort saw Local 49 work in collaboration with the New Mexico Building and Constructions Trades Council, the New Mexico Federation of Labor, and many other labor organizations.
Grassroots effort plus research for our allies
Labor’s victory has left the state’s Republican-controlled House in shock—and now aware of our political influence in the Capitol.
SM Local 49 has been a crucial asset and resource in this defeat of the attack on “little Davis-Bacon,” providing our Democratic decision makers with facts and research on public works projects. The backup material was used to discredit claims made by the partisan New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, which is staffed by antiworker zealots.
Along with the research support, a special thank-you for the members who sent handwritten letters to their legislators in opposition of these bills as well as for all the other SM Local 49 members, staff, family and friends who gave so much of their time and effort to secure the future of New Mexican workers.
This fight is not over, but with everyone pulling together through this 2016 election to support candidates who support us, we will be more than ready when the attack inevitably begins again in the 2017 Session. This battle proves that together, we can make things happen!
KENTUCKY
Resurgence puts RTW on hold
In Kentucky, labor-backed candidates won three of four special House elections in March, culminating a comeback that left right-to-work for dead in that state. For now.
Right-to-work was very much alive last fall and through the winter as Republican Matt Bevin was elected Governor on a platform that included right-to-work as a feature. The state Senate has a strong Republican majority that favors right-to-work.
Gov. Bevin’s election, however, left the Kentucky House of Representatives, then held by Democrats by a slim margin, as the only obstacle blocking right-to-work from being the law of the land in Kentucky. And four seats had special elections ahead of an anticipated vote.
The GOP was expected to sweep all four special elections, to gain a House majority. Further, a GOP sweep—or even wins in three of the races—would have given the Republicans significant momentum going into this fall’s elections. Their pro-right to work stance alienated them from Kentucky’s working families who saw the GOP’s anti-worker agenda exposed for all to see. Now momentum seems to be with the Democrats.
ELECTION YEAR: EACH OF US MUST STEP UP
Events in each of these states shows the importance each of our votes have in swaying the lives of millions of working families. Whether we vote, and the decisions we make when we do vote, will determine the course of future attempts by anti-worker politicians and their wealthy benefactors to cut wages and benefits so they can suck up every last bit of corporate profit.
The labor movement stands as the last line of defense against those efforts. VOTE UNION! From State offices to the U.S. Senate to President, if we to stand united like they did in New Mexico, we can beat back these assaults on working families and reverse the anti-labor tide that is eroding our jobs, livelihoods and families’ futures.
SMART is part of Jobs to Move America (JMA), a coalition of six international unions and more than 40 major community groups. JMA works with officials, agencies, and businesses to make sure that the nation’s more than $5.7 billion in annual transportation manufacturing work is built union—and in America. And that includes building the facilities, too.For the nation, that $5.7 billion goes to upgrading America’s transit network with clean, efficient trains and buses. For workers, JMA can help communities to harness those huge taxpayer dollars to create good jobs.
SMART members will get those jobs just through the eventual manufacturing work but also through Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on related construction work for new or expanding facilities.
Jobs to Move America is working to make sure all of this well-funded, ongoing work is done right here in America by fairly treated and decently paid union workers.
History reborn: Rail cars will be built in Chicago
More than a century ago, rail cars represented an industry where sheet metal and transportation workers had close ties across a single industry: making, repairing, and operating rail stock for a growing America. Now SMART members will work on—and in—Chicago’s first new rail-car assembly plant in 35 years.
City officials and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) awarded a contract for the largest rail car order in CTA history—846 7000-series cars to be built by CSR Sifang America. CSR’s winning bid pledged to build a brand-new rail car assembly facility in Chicago, representing an investment of $40 million and expected to open with 170 jobs:
• SMART sheet metal workers and other trades will build the new plant under a PLA.
• Rail cars will be produced by SMART members and those of the IBEW.
“With this agreement, CTA riders will get state-of-the-art rail cars and Chicago returns to our roots as the place where the next generation of rail cars are built [and operated], providing good jobs for our residents. That is a classic win-win for Chicago,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Praise for JMA, agencies and collaborative efforts
“This historic agreement was the result of strong collaboration between the City, our federal partners, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and Jobs to Move America (JMA),” Emanuel continued. “I cannot thank them enough for their partnership in making it possible.”
This model approach centers on a “U.S. Employment” provision: bidders had to provide the number and type of new jobs they planned to create related to the production of the new rail cars, as well as an outline of their job recruitment and workforce training strategies.
Union and community officials nationwide are understandably optimistic about the JMA model, which leverages requirements for U.S. employment and union-level wages to create good jobs.
“This is the result that comes from when we work together, not only within the union but with elected officials and the entire labor movement,” said Rocco Terranova, SM Local 73 Business Manager and SMART’s Eighth General Vice President.
“With our with our Brothers and Sisters in the SMART Transportation Division we will bring back good, high paying jobs home and make sure our members lead the way in operating the next generation of transit here in Chicago and across the country.”
For the past nine months, members of SMART SM Local 66 (Seattle, WA) have been battling in a labor dispute with Northshore Sheet Metal. This strike originally started with a dispute at the bargaining table over wage equalization, work preservation and language related to travel.
Those issues are at the heart of what SMART fights for every day, so every member and every local should follow the Local 66 battle—and offer whatever support they can.
Asked to be signatory locally but open shop elsewhere
Northshore had proposed being signatory in Local 66’s Western Washington jurisdictional area while remaining non-signatory everywhere else that they bid work.
The company wants to take their own crews on the road, pay them non-contract wages wherever they do work, and refuse to equalize wages for installing products fabricated elsewhere. Allowing this would dangerously undermine the basic principles in the Standard Form of Union Agreement (SFUA).
Local 66 and its membership understand this and are taking this stand to prevent the erosion of well-established working conditions, something each of us would do to protect the basic principles our forefathers fought to attain.
Making them feel the heat
Northshore seems to have lost a large chunk of existing business. When the strike began, roughly 125 members worked in the shop; current reports estimate that they are down to 15–20 working regularly. In comparison, every single Northshore employee who honored the strike is currently working temporarily at another signatory contractor.
During this dispute, Northshore filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against Local 66 with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The company was attempting to get the NLRB to declare the Local’s pickets illegal, but Region 19 of the NLRB dismissed all these charges.
Courage calls for our coast-to-coast support
These brave members who are taking a stand for all of us have received and continue to receive support from their Brothers and Sisters in Seattle and across the United States.
When it became necessary for the Local to create a strike fund in support of these members, not a single person spoke against its passage. Several locals, such as SM Local 104 in Northern California and Local 293 in Hawaii have donated $25,000 and $20,000, respectively, to the strike fund.
You can also take a personal stand to support your Brothers and Sisters at Northshore. If you see the company’s “Northclad” products at your own jobsite, report them to your Business Manager. You can also sign up for updates through the SMART Action Network (www.smartaction.org) for information on how you can take a stand with these members.
Members standing up with each other and for each other: that’s what Unionism is all about.
