I am sitting here this early morning listening to the first storm of the year. The weather people tell us tht La Nina is going to visit us again this winter, and we need to prepare for an unpredictable season.
The parallels between the weather and the three companies we work for seem striking to me. A&T is taking over TCI, inc.; Lucent is downsizing again; and, of course, USWest is merging with Q-west. All of this can be upsetting and unpredictable to our members. Add to this mess the fact that our union is going through changes of its own. District Vice President Sue Pisha has retired and has been replaced by John Thompson. John has shuffled his staff and set some new directions and goals. Local 7804 is about to go through major changes of its own. There will be a new slate of officers and several new Executive Board members.
As the newly elected President-to-be, I want to take time to invite all of our members to take an active part in the operations of Local #7804. This organization needs the input, expertise, and help of all members to make the next years successful and prosperous. I particularly wish to urge our younger members to become activists for the long term. You have the most to gain or lose in the future, and your participation will determine what it shall be.
Please get involved. Just a small amount of time and committment make a great difference when everyone is involved. There are many committees to be manned, and,of course, we always need more stewards. So volunteer and find out what is happening in your local. Remember the decisions we make affect you directly. If we don’t have your input we can’t make the right decisions for your work group.
In Unionism, Clay Bowlby
Wednesday, December 8, 1999
By
PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The World Trade Organization meeting collapsed last week, but organized labor emerged from the chaos legitimately claiming a victory in its battle to influence U.S. trade policy, according to academic observers.
Amid the tear gas and protests, unions won President Clinton's support for eventually using sanctions against countries that violate certain core labor practices. Union leaders also helped turn back policies that some feared would weaken existing labor standards.
Together, the events represented one of the labor movement's most successful efforts to help shape the Clinton administration's trade agenda, according to labor professors.
"Labor was a central voice and it was the opposition that was very much playing defense," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "Overall, I think it was a major victory" for the labor movement.
The longstanding relationship between organized labor and the Democratic Party played a key role in forcing WTO delegates to consider union trade issues, according to Tom Juravich, the director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The Clinton administration also felt compelled to offer union leaders some support since it's trying to rally their members behind Vice President Al Gore's campaign for the presidency, Juravich added.
Unions helped their own cause by staging a massive, and generally disciplined, march through the streets of Seattle during the WTO meeting.
"What the Gore campaign saw and what Clinton saw wasn't 30,000 marchers, they saw 30,000 people that would normally be at phone banks," said UC Berkeley's Shaiken.
Clinton handed unions their greatest victory as the WTO conference opened, when he told the Post-Intelligencer he would eventually consider sanctions against countries that violated core labor standards.
While, Clinton couched the statement -- calling for a working group to develop the standards and setting no timetable -- union leaders saw his words as a major step in their direction.
Not all of the news out of Seattle last week was good for U.S. unions. For example, the WTO didn't endorse a strong WTO working group to examine trade and worker rights.
But, unions were more concerned with getting trade ministers to simply consider their issues, such as barring child labor and permitting workers to organize.
"Originally, they (trade ministers) were going to evade it all together . . . By the end, they were actually conflicted about that," said Margaret Levi, the director of the University of Washington's Center for Labor Studies.
American steelworkers also suffered a symbolic blow. Under a draft proposal, the WTO promised to review anti-dumping rules, which penalize countries that sell products below cost in foreign markets. The U.S. steel industry and its union workers are adamantly opposed to altering the rules, charging that so-called dumping policies threaten the steel industry.
In the end, the world's trade ministers didn't issue a comprehensive proposal. Still, the fact that they even discussed the idea upset the United Steelworkers of America.
"We were extremely distressed by the discussion," said Gary Hubbard, a spokesperson for the United Steelworkers. Dumping "destroys our steel industry and our jobs."
The dumping proposal died when the entire negotiating effort collapsed late Friday night.
The collapse also amounted to a major victory for WTO opponents as a whole, according to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
"The breakdown reflects the first step in a serious coming to terms with pivotal issues -- accountability, democratic procedures, workers and human rights, and the environment -- that protesters highlighted all week," Sweeney said in a statement released on Saturday.
Now, Sweeney and others are trying to use the momentum from Seattle to tackle what they say are threats to U.S. union members.
Their first major challenge will occur next year when the U.S. Congress votes on whether to accept a deal -- between the Clinton administration and China -- that would allow China to join the WTO.
Labor's role in and around the WTO meeting and the meeting's collapse will pressure lawmakers to consider rejecting the proposal, according to Juravich of the University of Massachusetts.
"It ups the ante," Juravich said.
Whatever the outcome of the vote, the events of last week invigorated a U.S. labor movement that some observers feel was struggling with declining membership and a changing workplace.
"Reports of labor's death have been greatly exaggerated," Shaiken said, playing on the old Mark Twain line.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has called upon labor locally and natinally to do everything possible to increase turnout in Seattle at what could be the biggest international trade rally in history on Tuesday, Nov. 30 (time and place to be announced).
That’s the first day of the World Trade Organization’s ministerial meetings in Seattle. U.S. negotiators will be meeting with trade ministers and heads of state from across the globe to make decisions that will govern world trade and investment for decades.
"Today it’s easier to prosecute a country for violating patent laws than for exploiting child labor," Sweeney said at the Washington State Labor Council convention in Wenatchee Aug. 20. "That’s not just wrong, it’s scandalous. If the WTO doesn’t work for working families-it doen’t work."
Sweeney said the gathering of world leaders presents the best opportunity ever to demand change.
For details on the rally write Wash. State Labor Council at 314 First Ave. West, Seattle, 98119.
The following is an excerpt from a letter from Bright Now! Dental.
Dear CWA Local Union Officer:
We would like to thanks locals 7803, 7804 ,and 7818 who are currently supporting Bright Now! Dental. If you are unfamiliar with Bright Now! Dental and the benefits that we are able to provide to union members at no cost, please take a moment to speak with one of the officers from one of the above locals.
Bright Now! Dental is not a new dental plan. We are simply an option to your already existing plan. The out-of-pocket fees to your members are substantially reduced (30-40 %) in comparision to what other dentists in the area may charge. In some cases we may even be able to offer zero out-of-pocket cost. Late evening and Saturday appointments are available. There is no cost to participate and no restrictions. Bright Now! Dental has been serving union members for more than 20 years.
Bright Now! Dental office is located at 4545 S. Union Street. Phone 475-7500.
At the end of 1999, Qual-Med will no longer be doing business in Oregon and Washington. A letter was sent from them as well as USWest notifying members of Qual-Med’s decision to cease doing business in the these States. Please be advised so you can make a switch to another health plan during the open enrollment period, which closes on November 15, 1999.
Los Angeles (AP)- The AFL-CIO is creating an internet gateway it hopes will connnect its 13 million members online and serve as a high-tech organizing device.
"This will be a revolutionary tool for communications," said Morton Bahr, president of the C.W.A. "Can you imagine being able to ask millions of Internet users to boycott a product or bombard an elected official with protests?"
The Web portal site, called workingfamilies.com, is scheduled to be up and running by Dec. 1 and union members will be offered Internet service at not more than $14.95 per month. The The AFL-CIO also said they will offer members discounted computers, with full financing, for as little as $600.
The Web site will link to the homepages of the AFL-CIO’s 68 affiliated unions. Card-carrying members also will have access to e-mail, news and weather.
The following is from a letter given to a technician by an elderly customer who was almost in tears at the callous treatement he had received; it is a poignant example of what happens when a corporation puts profits before people. In this case, employing an indifferent transient workforce instead of loyal full-time Union employees who care about the customers they provide service to.
Dear Sir, I don’t know who these people are that are always digging on each side of the road to the junction box on the corner of my fence. Last monday they were digging again on each side of the road, putting a pipe under the road to the junction post. Digging with a shovel and then with a Ditch Digger...before they were finished I went to use the phone in my house and it was out of order. I asked one of the men if their digging was the cause and he said, "Could be," and then got in his truck and drove off...The woman across the street has had her phone line messed up four times but made the crew repair it before they left. I was not so lucky. The phones ring but when you pick up the handset there is so much noise you cant hear a thing. Please Help! Have a sick wife. Need the Phone!
Life’s better here? Ask this poor gentlemena what he thinks and more than likely he would say that life isn’t a clever slogan, but a relationship built on trust and respect. We all know that. Let’s try to teach those running this corporation to understand it.
-Ed.
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