Author: paul

Minority and low-income residents of the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area now have a new opportunity to learn green construction skills thanks to a partnership between the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation and Summit Academy OIC. The program—Build MN Green—teaches participants the green construction, occupational safety and environmental awareness skills currently wanted by employers in Minnesota’s growing construction industry.
As part of Build MN Green, the 250 program participants will complete coursework that will help them understand safety rules, green building tactics, including LEED® Awareness, and CPR and first aid skills.  “This program is helping people get a leg up in their search for a job in the construction industry,” said David Foster, President of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation. “As the industry becomes more and more green and efficient, the need for workers with these kinds of skills will only increase. We’re proud to help train these future workers.”
Construction jobs in the Twin Cities are expected to expand by 37.7 percent between 2010 and 2020, representing 17,932 jobs. These jobs are fueled by a resurgence of housing development and the building of major sporting facilities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The use of LEED—an industry-recognized program for green building design, construction, operations and maintenance created by the U.S. Green Building Council—is growing rapidly in today’s environment, especially in the public sector. Minnesota is currently home to more than 260 LEED certified buildings, including 236 commercial buildings.  Summit Academy works in partnership with the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades and Build MN Green courses are already underway. Following graduation, Summit Academy and the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation will help graduates find full-time employment with construction companies and building trades unions’ apprentice programs.
Earlier this year, Summit Academy OIC was selected to serve as the Employment Assistance Firm for the construction of the Minnesota Vikings stadium.

On November 4, 2013, Arbitrator Michael Gottesman issued a second decision related to several questions concerning implementation of the merger and establishment of a single union, SMART.  The Transportation Division requested that General President Nigro hold off posting the Gottesman decision until after November 19^th, and that the parties would publicize the decision simultaneously.  He agreed.   This agreement was not meant to withhold the information, but to allow the parties to utilize the time to finalize language in the few unresolved sections of the SMART Constitution.
__________________________________________________________________
Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that selected pieces of this decision have been distributed to various parties and when viewed individually, or more importantly not within the full context of the decision, the reader may form a false or misleading impression of the Arbitrator’s intent.  Therefore, I believe it is important to release the full Arbitrator Decision at this time for all to read and so those who have received only specific sections of the document have the ability to view those items within the intended context. 
General President Joseph J. Nigro
 
Arbitrator Gottesman’s Decision of November 4, 2013

The Union Sportsmen’s Alliance kicks off the 6th season of its award-winning TV series, Brotherhood Outdoors, with an elk hunt that is as challenging as it is inspiring. The show, winner of “Best Combination Show” in the 2011 Sportsman Choice Awards and a contestant for “Best Educational/Instructional” show in 2013, launches its exciting new season on Jan. 5 at 11 a.m. ET on the Sportsman Channel.
The new season begins with an elk hunt featuring union machinist Gene Barnes who sets his sights on helping his 74-year-old father, Harlyn Barnes, harvest a bull elk in memory of his late son and the cherished hunting trips the three of them shared together. Follow the group as they confront Idaho’s steep terrain and high altitude, hiking to 7,500 feet in elevation to a lookout point to glass for elk.
As the series continues, viewers will join an operating engineer on his quest for Boca Grande tarpon, chase coons through moonlit woods with a laborer, head to California with a machinist for some quick action wingshooting and his first hog, outwit or outwait a 150+ Kansas buck with a roofer and much more!
Brotherhood Outdoors awards union sportsmen and women who are committed to preserving North America’s outdoor heritage with a guided trip or the opportunity to show off their guiding skills and local hunting or fishing destinations on national TV.
Presented by Bank of Labor, Brotherhood Outdoors is also sponsored by the following unions, contractors and corporate partners: Buck Knives, Carhartt, Employee Benefit Systems, International
Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, National Electrical Contractors Association, ULLICO and United Association/International Training Fund.
For more information about Brotherhood Outdoors, the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance or Sportsman Channel, visit www.BrotherhoodOutdoors.tv and www.facebook.com/brotherhoodoutdoorstv.
About Sportsman Channel: Launched in 2003, Sportsman Channel, and Sportsman HD, is the only television and digital media company fully devoted to sportsmen in the United States, delivering entertaining and educational programming focused exclusively on hunting, shooting and fishing activities. Sportsman Channel reaches more than 32 million U.S. television households and is available in HD. Visit www.thesportsmanchannel.com, follow on Twitter, @SPORTSMANchnl (twitter.com/SPORTSMANchnl) and Like on Facebook, facebook.com/sportsmanchannel

This comprehensive class is designed for the beginning service technician. The concentrated training program consists of 96 hours of intense classroom and hands on training within a 12-day schedule. The objective is to enable participants to acquire a complete understanding of the HVAC systems and its components in order to perform HVAC service work with confidence.
Course work includes electric theory, refrigeration theory, and heating theory (gas). All three components cover extensive troubleshooting and hands-on experience with active equipment.
This course will be held at St. Louis Local 36, January 26 – February 9, 2014.
Application deadline is January 13, 2014.
To register, please contact your coordinator or go to www.sheetmetal-iti.org.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is seeking to streamline the whistleblower process by introducing an online form to register discrimination and retaliation complaints. The form provides enough information for whistleblower investigators to follow up and begin a case. Previously, whistleblowers could only file a written complaint or call the agency’s hotline.
The new online form prompts the worker to include basic whistleblower complaint information so they can be easily contacted for follow-up. Complaints are automatically routed to the appropriate regional whistleblower investigators. In addition, the complaint form can also be downloaded and submitted to the agency in hard-copy format by fax, mail or hand-delivery. The paper version is identical to the electronic version and requests the same information necessary to initiate a whistleblower investigation.
OSHA enforces the whistleblower provisions of 22 statutes protecting employees who report violations of various securities laws, trucking, airline, nuclear power, pipeline, environmental, rail, public transportation, workplace safety and health, and consumer protection laws. Detailed information on employee whistleblower rights, including fact sheets and instructions on how to submit the form in hard-copy format, is available online at www.whistleblowers.gov.

A top Senate Democrat is calling on the Obama administration to scrutinize federal contractors’ compliance with labor laws, citing results of a congressional investigation that showed widespread violations of the law.
The findings were outlined Wednesday by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions  Chairman Tom Harkin (D., Iowa). The year-long probe conducted by his staff  found that nearly 30% of companies hit with the highest penalties for federal labor-law violations are also federal contractors.
You can read more about this story via the Wall Street Journal.

Speaking in Toronto last week, conservative party senator Hugh Segal praised the role of unions in Canada saying, “Active unions and free collective bargaining are essential to building a prosperous Canada and a stable middle class.”
Earlier this year Sen. Segal led the Senate’s efforts to amend the anti-union Bill 337, which had been endorsed by Prime Minister Harper.  He told the crowd:
“It was bad law, it was unconstitutional,” Segal said, adding that he will continue to oppose the bill if the Harper government attempts to revive it.
“As I stand before you today, I will stand in the Senate and oppose it again.”
Stating that “my Canada is the place where collective bargaining makes Canada stronger and a better place,” the pro-worker conservative pointed out that Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was also a conservative who believed that collective bargaining was essential to the middle class.

The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) has filed an injunction to prevent the implementation of a new rule by the U.S. Department of Labor that would encourage the hiring of disabled Americans and military veterans, calling it “wasteful and burdensome.”
It is worth noting that the ABC has operated as nothing more than a right-wing ideological, anti-union organization that does not represent the voice of the construction industry and does not engage in any activities designed to promote or enhance the industry.  In fact, the ABC represents less than 1% of all construction contractors in the United States.  A significant part of the group’s membership consists of non-construction business and organizations such as flower boutiques, car dealerships, law firms, and barbecue shacks.
The ABC’s primary reason for being has been, and continues to be, to neutralize and limit the scope of the unionized construction industry and ensure that the lowest common denominator of a company’s baseline profit, and nothing else, is used as the standard throughout the industry.
While the unionized construction industry invests over $1 billion a year in skilled craft workforce development; the ABC shuns such investments.  And that is why they have been actively and aggressively seeking a new and expanded foreign guest worker program in the US Congress – so its members can continue to have ready access to a low-wage, and easily exploitable workforce.
And where the unionized construction industry is proactive in working to create structured pathways for disadvantaged Americans (women, minority workers, military veterans, etc.) to secure quality career training and skills development opportunities in the construction industry, the ABC criticizes and actually devotes significant resources to oppose such efforts.
Lobbying and then suing to block a program that helps veterans build meaningful careers when they return home may be the new low, even for an organization such as this one.
 
You can read more from We Party Patriots.