January 20, 2006

After a yearlong fight to protect the retirement security of flight attendants at bankrupt United Airlines, AFA-CWA has reached a tentative agreement with the airline for a defined contribution pension plan.

United flight attendants will vote on the pension plan by the end of February. Union leaders have mixed feelings about the plan, as it replaces what had been a secure defined benefit plan.

"While we are pleased to be able to offer a replacement plan for the United flight attendants' consideration, these kinds of plans will never provide the dignified and secure retirement guaranteed by the defined benefit plan destroyed through the bankruptcy process," AFA-CWA President Pat Friend said.

Greg Davidowitch, president of the AFA-CWA Master Executive Council at United, described "exhaustive efforts" in the courts, on Capitol Hill and at the bargaining table to reach agreement. "Within the context of bankruptcy and today's political climate, this agreement provides a foundation of retirement security for flight attendants," he said. "Now the flight attendants at United Airlines will have the final say."

The plan includes a 3 percent company match effective Jan. 1, 2006, coupled with an additional 2 percent contribution. The contribution will grow to 2.5 percent next January and 3 percent the following year. With the matching funds, United will ultimately be putting up to 6 percent into the plan, double what the company originally proposed. The agreement also includes $20 million in convertible notes and immediate vesting for all flight attendants currently at United.

AFA-CWA represents 17,000 flight attendants at United and more than 46,000 flight attendants in all. For more information about the United plan, go to http://www.unitedafa.org/. 

NABET-CWA Charges NPR with Labor Law Violation

NABET-CWA members at National Public Radio are urging elected officials and other newsmakers not to give interviews to NPR if the field production is not being done by a NABET-CWA represented technician.

Nearly 100 skilled technical workers, members of CWA Local 52031, have been trying for several months to reach a fair agreement with NPR management. Workers rejected a management proposal in December that would have jeopardized jobs and quality at the radio network, and management now has acted to undermine the contract, said Local President Mark Peach. 

NABET-CWA filed an unfair labor practice charge against NPR management for assigning a producer — a non-technical employee — to conduct an interview with U.S. Senator Evan Bayh on Jan. 17 and to perform the technical and quality control work normally done by a NABET-CWA employee. Bayh's office cancelled the interview when it learned of the labor dispute.

The technicians work in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. 

"Management wants to shift greater amounts of what is highly skilled work to non-technical employees. This demand not only is contrary to NPR management's own policies requiring that it meet industry standards, but is an insult to the skilled and talented technicians that are responsible for a quality product," said Peach.

Peach also raised those concerns in a letter to NPR member stations, alerting them that NPR management, by demanding sub-standard work practices, "has said that quality no longer matters." This stance jeopardizes the quality product that stations and loyal listeners expect, he said.

Peach asked member stations and newsmakers to contact NPR to urge management to get back to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair agreement that acknowledges the critical role of technicians in producing a quality network.

For more information on the dispute, go to www.nabet31.com and click on the NPR link.

Report: U.S. Employers Abusing H1-B Visa Program for Cheap Labor

A new report by an immigration research group supports CWA's stance that American employers are abusing a temporary visa program to fill jobs with cheap labor.

"The data suggest that rather than helping employers meet labor shortages or bring in workers with needed skills, as is often claimed by program users, the H1-B program is instead more often used by employers to import cheaper labor," wrote John Miano, author of the report for the Center for Immigration Studies.

CWA convention delegates are on record as opposing the visa program, which critics say results in lower wages for American workers while giving high-tech companies a way to prevent union organizing by using H1-B workers.

The H1-B program was created 16 years ago to allow U.S. companies to hire skilled workers to fill shortages when American workers with the necessary skills aren't available. The visas apply to occupations that require college degrees or equivalent work experience but are almost exclusively used by high-tech companies to fill computing, engineering and scientific jobs.

Federal law requires companies using H1-B workers to pay them the same as other employees doing the same work or the prevailing wage for the occupation, but the CIS report — based on Labor Department data — found that the temporary workers are being paid significantly less than their American counterparts.

"The wide gap between wages for U.S. workers and H1-B workers helps explain why industry demand for H-1B workers is so high and why the annual visa quotas are being exhausted," Miano said.

Rep. Bill Paxcrell, D-N.J., said he has no doubt the CIS report is accurate. "Corporations are providing a glass ceiling for American workers in a trap of virtual servitude for low paying, overworked H1-B employees," he said. "My friends, that is not an exaggeration, that is not hyperbole, I found this through research to be the truth."

'Slaughter' of American Jobs a Crisis Being Ignored, Sweeney Warns

At a National Press Club speech this week, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney posed the question, "What if President Bush told the American people the truth?" about the economy, saying the "senseless slaughter" of good American jobs is the most critical challenge facing the United States today.

The job loss is "at the core of a corporate-driven strategy to compete in the global marketplace by degrading work and workers, rather than competing through ingenuity," competing through privatization, deregulation and de-unionization, rather than by innovation," Sweeney said at the Washington, D.C. event Jan. 18.

Noting heated disagreements about the Iraq war, court appointments, corporate corruption and more, he said America is "facing a question of even greater magnitude that is being ignored by leaders of one party and avoided by leaders of the other."

"That question is: What are we going to do about the destruction of good jobs in our country — the jobs that for the past half century helped us create the largest middle class, the most dynamic economy and the strongest democracy in the history of the world?"

He cautioned that Bush will undoubtedly paint a rosy picture of the economy in his State of the Union speech Jan. 31. The truth, in contrast, "would involve admitting that we are barely creating enough new jobs to match the growth in our workforce — and, increasingly, the jobs we are generating are dead-end alleys. Our trade policies have translated into over 2 million lost manufacturing jobs, our debt to other countries is rising by more than $1 million a minute and almost $700 billion in U.S. Treasury notes are held by China alone."

IN BRIEF:

  • As the strike by 300 CWA members at Verizon Information Services enters its 12th week, supporters from Verizon locals and other CWAers are stepping up their "dump the book" actions.

    Through these actions, CWAers are supporting their brothers and sisters and putting more pressure on Verizon to end its unfair labor practices and bad faith bargaining and negotiate a fair contract with VIS workers.

    This week and next, union members are collecting hundreds of yellow pages directories and delivering them to company locations in Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse and New York City, telling Verizon that the now scab-produced directories are unacceptable.

     

  • While many initiatives on behalf of working families are blocked at the federal level, unions are making headway through state legislatures. District 2 locals, working with the state AFL-CIO, helped turn the tide in Maryland, where the State Legislature on Jan. 12 overrode Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich's veto of a Fair Share Health Care bill. 

    Broadly known in the media as the Wal-Mart bill — because that corporation is the only one in the state affected by the legislation and lobbied hard against it — the new law requires any private employer with more than 10,000 employees in Maryland to spend at least 8 percent of its payroll for workers' health care, effectively bringing health care to 170,000 Marylanders.

    The AFL-CIO is backing similar legislation in 32 states including Colorado, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. According to the Washington Post, the states most likely to follow Maryland's lead are Washington and New Hampshire.

     

  • When it comes to lunch breaks for California workers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is, well, out to lunch.

    The governor favored a regulation that would have weakened the right of California workers to go to lunch by making it easier for employers to coerce workers out of their meal breaks. It also would have lessened the penalties on employers found to deny meal breaks. But union members wouldn't stand for it, and the governor was forced to back off.

    "Thanks to the many union members who opposed the lunch break take-away, we have won a tremendous victory," said Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer.