Yesterday I was excited to announce that the SEIU California State Council has endorsed me in my race to represent California's 10th Congressional District, a Northern California district encompassing parts of Contra Costa, Solano, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. With 700,000 members, SEIU is the largest labor union in California, and their ranks include a broad cross-section of working Californians, including social workers, nurses, classroom aides, security officers, college professors, homecare workers, janitors, and more.
Why I'm motivated to lead on single-payer health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, and green-collar jobs over the flip...
(Posted by Steve Smith, California Labor Federation) Sen. Dianne Feinstein is going to hear from both sides in the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act this week, but there couldn't be a more stark contrast in the messenger.
Corporate executives from around the country are attending a lobbying junket to DC on Wednesday organized by the Chamber of Commerce in hopes of persuading Feinstein to join them in opposing labor law reform.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, workers who have been fired or intimidated simply for trying to join a union will gather to begin a two-day fast Wednesday morning at Feinstein's office to implore her to stand with them by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.
As the negotiations and wrangling over the bill continue, Feinstein has emerged as a key player. While initially expressing skepticism about the bill (even though she was a co-sponsor of identical legislation in 2007), Feinstein is working with Sen. Harkin and others on seeking a solution that would garner the 60 votes needed for cloture. While political viability is important, the real consideration here must be on how the legislation would help the millions of workers who want a union to better their lives and the lives of their families.
To that end, we must have a bill that would do three things:
Ensure workers have the freedom to join a union, without harassment and intimidation;
Increase penalties on corporations that violate the law by firing or threatening workers;
Provide a timely and fair process for a first contract.
Without meeting those principles, the bill won't be worth the paper it's printed on. The next few weeks are critical. With Al Franken expected to be seated soon (knock on wood), the negotiations over the Employee Free Choice Act are headed into overdrive. And that means corporate honchos are going to be leaning heavily on key Senators like Feinstein in a last-ditch effort to derail the bill. And while Washington is a lot bluer than it used to be, make no mistake, corporations still have a stranglehold on power in our nation's capitol.
CEOs like Lee Scott of Wal-Mart have said they'll do whatever it takes to prevent the Employee Free Choice Act from passing. They're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a dishonest campaign to defeat the bill. We can't let them succeed because the fate of this bill is intrinsically tied to the fate of the middle class. While CEOs are fighting to protect their multi-million dollar perks and lavish contracts, workers are fighting for health care, a living wage and safety on the job.
What can you do? Now that we're in the home stretch of what has been a generation-long struggle for fairness in the workplace, I urge all progressives to take a stand in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. In California, more than 50,000 hand-written letters have already been delivered to Feinstein. Tens of thousands of calls have been made to her offices. Hundreds of impacted workers have visited with her staff across the state. But we must do more to counter the corporate onslaught.
Call Sen. Feinstein and tell her you support the bill. Send a message of support on our Facebook page to the workers who are fasting this week for their rights or, better yet, if you're in the Bay Area stop by Wednesday or Thursday to show your support. Let friends and family know that Feinstein needs to hear from them too.
We'll be out in front of Feinstein's office Wednesday and Thursday - rain or shine. Hope to see (or hear from) you then.
I recently sponsored a resolution in the Los Angeles City Council to express support for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and I am proud to report that on April 28th, the resolution passed the council 13-1.
EFCA, when it becomes law, will make joining a union easier for millions of Americans, a necessity if we are to raise workers' wages, ensure healthcare coverage for all and rebuild the middle class. The case for it is clear, which makes it all the more frustrating that the bill appears stalled in the US Senate.
As our resolution states, in part:
WHEREAS, the free choice to join with others and bargain for better wages and benefits is essential to economic opportunity and good living standards; and
WHEREAS, unions benefit communities by strengthening living standards, stabilizing tax bases, promoting equal treatment and enhancing civic participation; and
WHEREAS, states in which more people are union members are states with higher wages, better benefits and better schools; and
WHEREAS, union workers receive better wages and benefits, with union workers earning 29 percent more than workers without a union, 35 percent more likely to have access to health insurance and four times more likely to have access to a guaranteed defined-benefit pension; and
WHEREAS, unions help raise workers' pay and narrow the income gap for minorities and women by increasing median weekly earnings by 31 percent for union women workers, 31 percent for African-American workers, 50 percent for Latino workers and 9 percent for Asian American workers...
As David Dayen pointed out recently, there is one big name missing from the list of supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act - Senator Dianne Feinstein.
The entire California Democratic Congressional Delegation, including Senator Barbara Boxer, has indicated their support for the bill. And Senator Feinstein co-sponsored and voted for the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007.
Now her support is needed more than ever before. Today Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) went out of his way to announce his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. For many supporters of workers' right to organize, especially supporters of this bill which will help restore the balance in workers' decision to join a union away from the union-busting industry that helps employers break unions and keep down wages, Specter's decision is disappointing. It does mean that it will be more difficult to secure passage of the bill in the Senate.
And that's precisely why we must insist that Senator Feinstein express her support for the Employee Free Choice Act. To help accomplish that the Courage Campaign is asking its members to sign our petition to Senator Feinstein so that she will know Californians support the Employee Free Choice Act - and that she should as well.
Over the flip is the text of the email we sent to our members.
My name is Lisa Tomasian and I'd like to tell you the story behind a letter I wrote to the trustees of SEIU-UHW.
Having worked at Kaiser Hospital as a Radiology Technologist as well as having served as an elected union shop steward for the past 18 years, I believe that workers' rights are human rights. I've come to believe that labor unions are the vehicle and voice for workers to advocate for social justice.
(Fabulous news. The labor movement needs unity as much as its individual workplaces need it. Steven Greenhouse of the NYT has a story about this. - promoted by David Dayen)
Today the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced an accord to work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees in the US.
As Registered Nurses, we know all too well that working in a hospital these days means engaging in a daily struggle to provide care in an industry more concerned about it’s bottom-line than about providing patient care.
Registered Nurses struggle day in and day out to provide care without adequate staffing and resources. Non-RN hospital staff are struggling to fulfill essential hospital functions with ever decreasing numbers of staff, while worrying that they’ll be the next to be laid off.
Our patients, left to wonder if a nurse will be available to help if they ring their call-lights and whether their hospital bills will bankrupt their families are likely the most affected.
Under the pact, SEIU and CNA/NNOC, the largest unions in the nation representing healthcare workers and registered nurses, respectively, will work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees and step up efforts to enact Employee Free Choice Act.
The resulting massive increase in unionization will improve the experience of providing and receiving care in US hospitals—and the resulting movement will change the whole nature of how health care is provided in the US.
In the words of Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of CNA/NNOC, the nation's largest organization of direct care RNs with 85,000 members in all 50 states:
"This is an exciting new day for nurses and patients across the nation. This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on RN economic and professional standards and patient care conditions. It will also strengthen the ability of all direct-care RNs to fight for real healthcare reform and advocate for improved patient care conditions and stronger patient safety legislation from coast to coast."
In the words of Andy Stern, President of SEIU, the nation’s largest healthcare union:
"This marks the beginning of a new future for nurses and other healthcare workers and their patients throughout this nation. We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation, and make the new healthcare system operational. Is this accord surprising? Perhaps, but those who recognize our shared value of making sure registered nurses and other healthcare workers have not only a say but a critical role in helping reshape a failed system into something that actually helps people know that this is the right step to help us meet the challenge and the call of this moment."
Among key elements of the pact:
• The two unions will work together to organize non-union hospital workers throughout the country, with CNA/NNOC as the leading voice for RNs, and SEIU as the leading voice for all other hospital workers.
• The unions will launch an intensive national organizing campaign with an initial focus on the nation’s largest hospital systems. • In addition to organizing, SEIU and CNA/NNOC will coordinate on a broad range of other issues from bargaining with common employers to the campaign to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.
• SEIU and CNA/NNOC publicly endorse measures that allow states to adopt single-payer health care systems.
• Both parties will refrain from "raiding," seeking to displace the existing members of the other's organization, or from interference in the other's internal affairs.
• The two unions will create a new joint RN organization in Florida to represent current and future RNs of both unions. In all other states, SEIU will continue to represent their current RN members in collective bargaining.
In my previous posts, United Healthcare Workers Holding our Ground and We are the Union. SEIU who are you? I shared my experience of the trusteeship SEIU International imposed on SEIU-UHW and the birth of our new union, NUHW. What I'd like to do today is share with you why this experience has been a defining moment for me and my sisters and brothers building NUHW...
In the five weeks since SEIU International trusteed California's SEIU-UHW West something enormous has transpired in our state: California's healthcare workers have spoken.
What those workers have said is crystal clear: We choose NUHW.
The stimulus plan isn't the only thing Republicans are obstructing. Hilda Solis, still the representative from CA-32, was nominated as Secretary of Labor by President Obama on December 19. It's been nearly two months and her nomination still hasn't moved out of the Senate HELP committee.
Republicans, led by Mike Enzi of Wyoming, are trying to stop Hilda Solis because of her support of workers' rights, including - but not limited to - the Employee Free Choice Act. They even want her to promise to not lobby on behalf of Employee Free Choice as a condition of confirmation - which she has so far refused to do.
A hearing was finally to have been held in committee on her nomination last week but news of a tax problem her husband had - which has since been resolved - caused yet another delay, and conservatives are hoping to use the delays to kill one of Obama's most progressive nominees entirely.
It's time for Californians to stand up for Hilda Solis.
She's been there for us in the past. Last summer when Arnold Schwarzenegger planned to slash the wages of over 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage, Solis joined our successful grassroots effort to block that move. Now that she is poised to bring significant progressive change to an important part of the federal government, it's vital that California progressives show that we have her back.
The Courage Campaign is asking its members to show their support for Hilda Solis by asking them to sign a letter to Senator Ted Kennedy, chair of the Senate HELP committee, encouraging him to lead the fight against conservative resistance and for Hilda Solis's confirmation.
In doing so we join our allies at SEIU and MoveOn.org who have also pushed out their own kinds of support Solis actions in recent days. There's also a Facebook group to join as well.
Why a letter to Senator Kennedy? We're not at all worried that he isn't supportive of the nomination or that he's unwilling to move quickly to get it done. What we want to do instead is demonstrate to key Senators just how wide and deep public support for Hilda Solis truly is. To reinforce the case for her confirmation, and to help Kennedy and other Democrats beat back the conservative attack on a true progressive hero.
At Wednesday's rally in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, a number of brave workers who have been hurt by our broken labor law system spoke out to explain why we badly need this vital new law to protect the freedom of workers to form a union and bargain.
These workers are just a few of the nearly 30,000 workers who are harassed, discriminated against and fired every year for trying to exercise the freedom to bargain for health care, pensions and fair wages and treatment. Their stories illustrate, on an honest and personal level, the real problem with the nation's current labor laws: People who want to form unions are at the mercy of corporations because the laws are badly tilted toward companies, not workers.
The voices of the casino workers were heard within the Capitol today. Hundreds of red-shirted workers gathered on the North steps for a rally and then marched inside in an orderly fashion to do some lobbying. The event culminated as over two hundred UNITE-HERE members chanted from the second story of the rotunda "¡Si, Se Puede!" just steps from the office of Speaker Fabian Nunez. The dome amplified the chants as staffers poked their heads out of their office doors and the CHP scrambled to ensure the direct action did not get out of control.
The events today were the last big push by the workers to ensure that workers rights were included in the Indian gaming compacts that the legislature is about to vote on. At issue are the basic workers rights protections that workers have under California law. In particular, the right to use check cards to indicate the desire of workers to form a union.
It is that exact right that is actually being heard in the U.S. Senate ironically today, as part of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Democratic leadership here in the state legislature has been indicating that they are siding with the tribes on the establishment of right to work colonies in the casinos. Dozens of labor leaders, including Working Californians' co-chairs Marvin Kropke and Brian D'Arcy signed on to a letter to Senator Perata and Speaker Nunez recently. Here is an excerpt from that letter:
(Now cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos for your reading pleasure... And oh yes, please sign the UFCW petition to show your support for the grocery workers! - promoted by atdleft)
The dirty tricks have begun again. We really shouldn't be surprised that the grocery stores would resort to breaking the law, in an attempt to weaken the workers negotiating position. After all, three years ago Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons entered into an illegal pact to share their profits, in order to outlast the worker strike. That landed them in court facing anti-trust charges. And just last year, Ralphs plead guilty to fraud charges and lying to the government. It was part of their scheme to use fake social security numbers to hire strikebreakers during the last contract dispute. They paid $70 million in fines and were placed on three years' probation.
Albertson's faced a strike vote Sunday and they immediately dug back into their bag of dirty tricks. They violated the National Labor Relations Act in the following ways:
Dan Walters thinks that there is hypocrisy in the push to ensure that our votes are counted accurately and the simultaneous support for the Employee Free Choice Act. It is about Democracy he says, and transparent election processes.
He doesn't actually have the guts to go far enough to say that he trusts black box voting. Instead, he tries to undercut Bowen and Feintein by saying it is just all to confusing to sort out. In the end, this really comes down to trust. The components of the machine matter less than how the voters perceive the security and accuracy of the voting method. We need to fix our voting systems because people do not trust them. There may be a extremely secure, open-source, touchscreen that enables all people to vote privately, but if the voters do not believe that their vote will count, then something needs to change.
The current system for choosing to form a union is completely broken, with severe consequences for millions of American workers. Every 23 minutes a worker is either fired or discriminated against for supporting a union. Employers routinely force their workers to be subjected to propaganda and threats. There are no meaningful penalties for breaking the current law. Walters focuses on the check card provisions of the legislation.
