LABOR

TRANSIT STRIKE GAVE HOPE TO OTHER UNIONS

LARRY MCSHANE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - The three-day walkout by city
transit workers, while a hassle for millions of New Yorkers, was a boost
for unions from coast to coast as they face negotiations where
management calls for health care and pension givebacks are almost
inevitable, labor experts say. "This was a very important stand for
those workers to have made," said Ron Blackwell, chief economist for the
AFL-CIO. "It will resonate nationally.". . . "I think it's a positive
for the labor movement," said Bruce Raynor, president of the garment
workers union UNITE. "The strike was a success. The workers supported
the union. It was a bold and strong move."

For the leadership at Change to Win, a coalition of seven unions
representing 5.4 million workers, the link between the strike and the
future of organized labor was clear. Chairperson Anna Burger sent TWU
local president Roger Toussaint a letter before the strike praising his
"struggle to preserve health care and retirement security for your
members.". . . Joshua Freeman, who wrote a history of the TWU, said the
walkout "will certainly discourage efforts in the future to diminish
pension benefits for other workers."

Blackwell was impressed by the transit union's willingness to make a
stand despite fines of $1 million a day against the union, and two days
pay for each day on strike for its members. The union violated the state
Taylor Law, barring public employees from striking.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060102/LIFESTYLE06/601020323&SearchID=73231480857675


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UNION MEMBERS TO BE ASKED NOT TO GIVE TO PBS

DAN CATERINICCHIA, WASHINGTON TIMES - The National Association of
Broadcast Employees and Technicians/Communications Workers of America
Local 31 is planning to ask hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide
to stop donating to their local Public Broadcasting Service stations.
The local union's contract with the Public Broadcasting Service was
terminated in early November after 90 percent of its members voted to
reject the company's offer. Nationally, the Communications Workers of
America has about 700,000 members. . . The union wants any future
layoffs to include fair buyout packages and be done through its master
seniority list, said Mark Peach, Local 31's president. Also, the union
would continue sharing jurisdiction with the company, which means
nonunion workers can do union jobs, as long as Local 31 maintains a
certain number of full-time employees. PBS wants to lower that minimum
requirement as a precursor to layoffs, he said. "

http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20060103-093214-2163r.htm

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MINORITY UNIONS INVOKING CIVIL RIGHTS MORE OFTEN

DEEPTI HAJELA, ASSOCIATED PRESS - The Transport Workers Union and its
supporters linked their labor woes to the civil rights struggle, an
approach that people who study the labor movement say is being used more
often as some unions see increasing minority membership. More than 70
percent of the TWU's 33,000 members are people of color, including its
president. "In organizing itself I see a tremendous increase in the
reinventing of the labor movement as the heir of the civil rights
movement," said Gary Chaison, professor of labor relations at Clark
University in Worchester, Mass. "I think it's the recasting of the labor
movement in a way that I haven't seen in many years."

"Unions have got to find a language that justifies the actions that they
are taking, they're going to have to use the language of civil rights,"
said Robert Korstad, associate professor of public policy studies and
history at Duke University. "They have to make that connection that
they're fighting for the same things."

The transit workers made that connection when they walked off the job
amid a bitter dispute with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
over pensions and wages, shutting down New York's subway and bus system
for three days and turning millions of people into pedestrians. TWU
President Roger Toussaint, responding to criticisms that the union was
breaking a state law that bans strikes by public employees, invoked the
name of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. "There is a higher calling than
the law and that's justice and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the
call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who
are driving buses today would still be in the back of the bus,"
Toussaint said.

http://www.blacknews.com/pr/unions101.html

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GOP MAY FORCE NON PROFITS TO CLOSE DAY LABORER CENTERS

WASHINGTON TIMES - Nonprofit groups would be forced to close their
day-laborer centers under legislation that would require them to check
and report the legal status of the workers they help, said Maryland's
largest immigrant advocacy group. Kim Propeack, spokeswoman for CASA of
Maryland Inc., said her group's day-laborer centers "and other worker
centers would in a large part be forced to shut down" if a bill offered
by U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. becomes law. The Wisconsin
Republican's legislation would extend legal-status verification beyond
those who directly employ illegal aliens to public, private, for-profit
and nonprofit agencies that help immigrants find work. The Sensenbrenner
bill, which the House passed last month on a 239-182 vote, would impose
a maximum fine of $40,000 per illegal alien that an employer hires or
that an agency helps find work.

http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060103-105056-3864r