Tag Archives: recent news

International Musician, Recent News

CIW Women’s Group Sends Letter to Wendy’s CEO

At a time when national attention is directed toward the sexual harassment and assault of women in Hollywood, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) Women’s Group says gender-based violence in the fields remains largely overlooked. In early October, CIW sent a letter to Wendy’s CEO Todd Penegor, along with the company’s board chair and a major shareholder, calling attention to the sexual violence occurring in Wendy’s supply chain and requesting a meeting to discuss the issue. The letter called for Wendy’s participation in the Fair Food Program and questioned why Wendy’s had shifted from purchases in Florida, where Fair Food Program protections have largely eliminated sexual harassment and assault, to purchases in Mexico, where the abuses are rampant.

According to US statistics from the American Association of University Women, Langer Research Associates, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, 25% of all women as a whole, 65% of women on college campuses, and 80% of women in agricultural fields, have reported sexual harassment or assault in the workplace. CIW is a worker-based human rights organization which began with farmworkers in 1993.

International Musician, Recent News

Risking Your Life for Minimum Wage

The dozens of fires that broke out across California in October shed light on the fact that about 20% of the fire fighters—entry-level first responders employed by the state department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire)—were earning just $10.50 per hour, minimum wage. Cal Fire firefighters also work 72-hour workweeks, which is 16 hours more than what local firefighters work. The entry-level Cal Fire firefighters are able to earn comparable wages, but only due to time-and-a-half earned on 19 hours of mandated overtime.

Until their most recent contract, Cal Fire turnover was high, as the pay scale for higher level positions had not been adjusted to reflect minimum wage increases and entry-level firefighters could earn more than their bosses. Also, the long hours are hard on the families of firefighters who often don’t see them for days or weeks at a time. The demands of the job continue to grow with the frequency, costs, and impacts of fires across the state.

International Musician, Recent News

Whistleblower Fired

Bill Rosario, a longtime engineer of an Anchorage Hilton hotel claims he was unjustly fired for showing photos of hotel room mold to his union. Though the hotel general manager claims that he was terminated due to “serious and demonstrable misconduct,” it is suspicious that the firing came one day before the Anchorage Assembly passed new protections for whistleblowers reporting mold in public buildings like hotels.

“I’m very worried when I hear that somebody giving a complaint of a potential health risk and they get fired for it,” says Assembly member Eric Croft who introduced the ordinance. The union, UNITE-HERE! Local 878, has already initiated a legal proceeding with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

International Musician, Recent News

Postal Workers Rally in Boston

On October 18, Postal workers and their supporters rallied in front of Boston’s main post office to protest job cutbacks that have led to long lines and delivery delays around New England. Scott Hoffman, president of the Boston chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, says hundreds of area vacancies have gone unfilled.

A pilot program to outsource operations to Staples, Inc. was scrapped last spring after a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ordered the US Postal Service to discontinue its retail relationship with Staples. The Staples deal was an attempt to replace union jobs with low-wage, nonunion workers.

International Musician, Recent News

Orchestra Steps Up to Heal the Island

A little more than three weeks after damage from Hurricane Maria that left 10% to 15% of Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra members homeless, the orchestra began a series of free concerts to help heal the island’s people. The orchestra’s musicians are members of Local 555 (San Juan, PR).

“Our idea is to play for those who need more,” said Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra Music Director Miximiano Valdés in a WBUR radio interview. “There are many people left with nothing here. The themes of the concerts, which include both classical and traditional Puerto Rican music, will be loss, survival, and rebuilding.”

Local 555 President Miguel Rivera, a trumpet player, also took part in the radio interview. He said the needs of the people go beyond food and water. “The people of Puerto Rico need food for the soul, I think, and music for me, is the best art because it goes right to your heart,” he said.

The first concert was performed October 13 in San Juan. The goal is to bring music to the hearts of many of those affected by the hurricane. The musicians plan to perform throughout November, not only in the capital city, but also in smaller interior cities.

“I think it is very important that we start performing as an orchestra and reaching out to people because we need to feel hope and I thin music helps us feel hope,” said piccolo player Ana María Hernández Candelas. “Music is the universal language, and it can definitely heal people.”

Recent News

Unions Oppose Trump’s Pick to Head Government Personnel Office

A broad coalition of labor organizations, including the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and AFL-CIO, have launched strong opposition to President Donald Trump’s pick to head the government’s personnel office. The 16 unions stated in a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that George Nesterczuk has a failing record in fostering a federal workplace “free of discrimination, nepotism, and political influence.” A former Republican Office of Personnel Management official, Nesterczuk helped develop the Defense Department’s National Security Personnel System (NSPS), which was a discriminatory system with disdain for due process worker protections and merit system principals—hallmarks of modern civil service. NSPS was repealed in 2009.

 

Recent News

Justice Department Denies LGBT Protections Under Title VII

The US Justice Department urged the federal appeals court in Manhattan to reject a lawsuit from a former skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired for being gay. Rights groups argue that LGBT workers should be protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on basis of sex, race, color, national origin, or religion. Essentially, the Justice Department contends that laws against workplace gender bias do not apply to the LGBT community because of companies that fire workers over sexual orientation will do so whether they are male or female.

This stance goes against a June brief filed by a group of 50 large, multinational companies and organizations arguing that discrimination based on sexual orientation should be illegal, even if that would lead to more employee lawsuits. The Justice Department’s decision came at the heels of President Donald Trump’s announcement that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military.

Recent News

OSHA Regulations Withdraw and Delayed

The Trump Administration has delayed or withdrawn 860 regulatory rules during its first five months, according to an article on manufacturing.net. Among suspended Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules were provisions regarding combustible dust exposure, construction noise, vehicles driving in reverse at factories and construction sites, and chemical exposure standards. According to Bloomberg, other industry-supported workplace safety rules, including those regulating communications towers and industrial trucks, have remained on track.

 

Peg Samenario of the AFL-CIO slammed the dust and told Bloomberg that the White House “is abandoning protecting workers from health and safety hazards.”

Recent News

Unions Important to News Organizations

On July 15, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and National Public Radio reached a tentative, three-year agreement, preventing 400 NPR employees from striking. Despite soaring public radio ratings following the election of President Donald Trump, NPR sought to institute a two-tier salary system where one group of workers would receive lower pay, which would have dealt a major blow to solidarity. Management considered gutting overtime pay and taking health care coverage away from temporary workers.

“They are trying to lower salary minimums, and they are really trying to weaken the power of the union,” says NPR producer Becky Sullivan, asserting that they were trying to create a situation that allowed outside people to do union work and take away the union’s ability to file a grievance. The new deal includes salary increases and repels efforts to erode union protections and institute the two-tiered salary system.

During negotiations, some of NPR’s most popular staff, including All Things Considered host Robert Siegel, sent a letter to CEO Jarl Mohn detailing the importance of a union contract. “NPR has become great partly because of our labor-management contract,” the letter read in part. “The contract has ensured proper working conditions, collaboration, and collegiality, and an atmosphere of mutual respect.”

“Despite the often-referenced decline in organized labor, news unions have been a major story over the last two years as media outlets like Salon, Vice, MTV News, The Guardian US, Jacobin, Thrillist, Slate, and others have obtained union representation,” wrote Journalist Gary Weiss at the Columbia Journalism Review. “They never really went away, of course, but for the first time in memory they are proactive rather than on the defensive.

 

Recent News

Canadian Anti-Union Bills Repealed

Canadian unions are celebrating the adoption of Bill C-4, which repeals the Conservative, anti-union Bills C-377 and C-525. Bill C-377 created red tape that would have forced unions and the businesses they work with to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours producing and processing expense reports to be reviewed and filed. Bill C-525 would have made it more difficult for federally-regulated workplaces to join a union. Prime Minster Justin Trudea had pledged to repeal the bills if elected.

“Our affiliates and labour activists across the country have organized and campaigned against these bills from the beginning, and this is their victory to celebrate,” says Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff. “By passing Bill C-4, the federal government has demonstrated it understands the importance of fair labour relations, and the critical role unions play advancing rights for all Canadian workers.”