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George Will Supreme Court must keep unions in check
George Will is a nationally syndicated columnist.

   Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded. Recent days have provided two illustrations of this tendency, both of them pertaining to labor unions, whose decades of declining membership testify to their waning power to persuade workers that unions add more value to workers’ lives than they subtract.
   Failing unions, like failing industries, turn to government for protection in the form of coercion. Failing industries have traditionally sought corporate welfare in the form of tariffs (coercion of consumers). Unions seek laws to confer what their persuasiveness cannot convince people to consent to.
   Last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against the Washington Education Association (WEA), Washington state’s teachers union, which was claiming a perverse government-conferred entitlement. Five days later, organized labor and its political allies, including she who would be president, marched in Washington, D.C. They were asking Congress to deny to workers, whom unions are trying to organize, the right to a secret ballot. Both cases also illustrate the increasingly casual resort to abridgements of the rights of free speech and association.
   Many states, including Washington, allow “agency shop” agreements whereby unions can levy fees on public employees who choose not to join a union but are represented by the union in collective bargaining. Thirty years ago the Supreme Court held that nonmembers cannot be forced to pay the portion of union fees that are used not for collective bargaining but for political activities. Often states have “opt out” provisions, whereby nonmembers are required to request that the political portion of their fees be refunded.
   About 3,500 of Washington state’s approximately 70,000 teachers choose not to join the WEA, which made opting out a tedious chore. To get their refund — about 25 percent of their fees — the nonmembers had to follow procedures detailed in six pages of arcane instructions.
   In 1992, however, Washington voters approved by referendum an “opt in” rule. Unions were forbidden to use nonmembers’ fees “to influence an election or to operate a political committee, unless affi rmatively authorized by the individual.”
   Amazingly, the WEA persuaded the state Supreme Court that requiring it to ask permission before using other people’s money — for political speech that those people do not want to finance — was an unconstitutional burden on the WEA’s right of free speech. This novel, to be polite, theory did not persuade even one of the nine often fractious justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
   Speaking for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that when government allows agency-shop arrangements, it creates a remarkable entitlement: It gives a private entity, a public employees union, “the power, in essence, to tax government employees.” The WEA’s complaint — a notably brazen example of the entitlement mentality — was against the supposedly burdensome “opt in” condition placed on its exercise of that power. With understandable asperity, Scalia said: “The notion that this modest limitation upon an extraordinary benefit violates the First Amendment is, to say the least, counterintuitive.”
   The WEA’s whiny audacity was not more offensive than the aim organized labor tried to advance with Tuesday’s march and rally in the nation’s capital. Unions were demonstrating in support of legislation with the Orwellian title “Employee Free Choice Act.” It would deny employees the choice of a secret ballot when voting on unionization of their workplace. Instead, union organizers would use the “card check” system, which allows them to pick the voters they want: Once a majority of workers — exposed one at a time to face-to-face pressure from union organizers — sign a union card, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers.
   The Supreme Court has said that the card-check system is “admittedly inferior to the election process.” Hillary Clinton, who has given herself a makeover as a moderate, and who was elected by secret ballots, and who hopes that next year voters will use their secret ballots to give to her the power to nominate Supreme Court justices, nevertheless toes labor’s line when she advocates abolishing workers’ right to a secret ballot. Abolition, she says, will “create a fair and level playing field between workers and employers.”
   When in March the House passed card-check legislation for unpersuasive unions, a principal sponsor was George Miller, D-Calif., who in 2001 wrote, with 15 colleagues, to Mexican officials, on behalf of the rights of Mexican workers, insisting “that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.” Now, that is persuasive.  

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since the trade unions earlier won from the state Legislature a requirement that all public construction projects have to pay union wages (misleadingly called "prevailing wages").

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Honestly...if it weren't for the unions (PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONS ONLY), some industries wouldn't be making the money they do today. It truly does help the economic system.

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Faith a reason not
to pay union dues
   COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Roman Catholic teacher whose religious beliefs conflict with the political positions of her labor union cannot be forced to pay dues, a federal judge ruled.
   U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost’s ruling broadens the category of employees who may opt out of unions because of religious beliefs beyond Seventh-day Adventists and Mennonites.
   In his ruling last week, Frost struck down the Ohio law that held only members of religions that “historically held conscientious objections” to union membership could opt out. The judge said anyone with demonstrated religious beliefs should be exempt from paying dues to unions whose positions they find objectionable.
   The law discriminated among religions by recognizing the Seventh-day Adventist and Mennonite objections to joining unions while denying the same right to others, the judge said.

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In his ruling last week, Frost struck down the Ohio law that held only members of religions that “historically held conscientious objections” to union membership could opt out. The judge said anyone with demonstrated religious beliefs should be exempt from paying dues to unions whose positions they find objectionable.

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Quoted from BIGK75

Some jobs, you're just told that you will be.  Guess it depends on the employer and the union.

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SUNY researchers allowed to unionize
NLRB rules students are covered under law
BY JASON SUBIK Gazette Reporter

   The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that research assistants working on State University of New York campuses, including about 500 at the University at Albany, may now form collective bargaining units.
   CWA Local 1104 Executive Vice President Kathleen Sims said her union, which first petitioned the NLRB to allow a research assistant union vote at UAlbany in 2002, plans to hold a rally at noon today, despite objections from SUNY officials, in front of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Technology Management. The building is part of the nanocollege complex off Washington Avenue where most of the research assistants work.
   UAlbany spokesman Michael Parker said the college has offered its campus center as an alternative location because the CESTM building and the land around it are controlled by the Fuller Road Management Corp. Sims said the grounds are public property and the rally will go ahead.
   “This is a rare decision for labor these days,” Sims said of the NLRB ruling. “We have a First Amendment right to be there.”
   The NLRB decision, made June 29, classified research assistants working for the Research Foundation of SUNY Sponsored Programs as “statutory employees” covered under the National Labor Relations Act, reversing a 2005 judgement by NLRB Acting Regional Director Rhonda Aliouat. She found the assistants to be students engaged in a primarily educational activity.
   Research Foundation of SUNY officials released an e-mail reacting to the decision on Tuesday.
   “We received some unexpected news last week regarding our 2003-2005 graduate student union cases,” wrote Research Foundation Vice President of Human Resources Lynn Manning. “The cases have been remanded to the [NLRB] regional office, and we are working with them to establish dates, locations in the next week or so to open the ballots.”
   Union votes held at UAlbany in 2002, SUNY Buffalo in 2003 and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse in 2004 were impounded when the Research Foundation appealed earlier rulings that allowed the votes.
   “Until the votes are counted, no one knows whether the majority of students who cast ballots in these elections that occurred three to five years ago were supportive of a union,” Manning wrote.
   According to the Research Foundation’s Web site, it is not supportive of unions because if the foundation’s work force were to become unionized . . . “costs to campuses would increase substantially. Central offi ce will have to hire or contract with experts in collective bargaining and union negotiation. Additional costs for specialized external labor counsel are also likely.”
   Graduate assistants and teaching assistants, who sometimes teach classes and grade papers, have long been unionized throughout the SUNY system, but up until now research assistants who work for the Research Foundation of SUNY, which is a private nonprofit “educational corporation” created in 1977 separate from SUNY, have not been. The assistants are graduate students who apply for work on grant-funded research projects paid for in part by private corporations for whom the research may benefit. They sign patent waivers and can be fired at will by the Research Foundation.
   “There was a research assistant who testified here at Albany that said ‘I get one check from the Research Foundation and one check from IBM, and it has nothing to do with my dissertation,’ ” Sims said.
   Testimony from research assistants at SUNY Buffalo in 2003 indicates that most assistants work about 20 hours a week during the school year for between $15,000 and $30,000. Some students testified that as much as 90 percent of the research they did related directly to their doctoral dissertations, while others said it had no baring or an “incidental” relationship to their graduate studies.
   In the NLRB decision, the majority concluded that the Research Foundation of SUNY is not an educational institution and does not issue degrees.
   “Moreover, the undisputed evidence demonstrates the existence of an economic relationship between the [assistants] and the [Research Foundation] rather than an educational relationship,” wrote board members Peter Kirsanow and Dennis Walsh.
   NLRB Chairman Robert Battista dissented from the decision. He concluded that all of the assistants were doctoral candidates who “. .. must do research to get that degree, and that research must be done through the [Research Foundation].”
   The board’s decision clarifies its 2004 ruling in a case of Brown University graduate assistants wanting to form a union. In the Brown case, the NLRB reversed precedent that viewed anyone in a “master to servant” relationship to be covered by the National Labor Relations Act and established a student exemption in instances where the labor was for primarily educational purposes. Aliouat had cited Brown when ordering the union votes remain impounded.
   “What this means is there’s a new precedent in the higher education industry and that’s what really lights up my Christmas tree,” Sims said. “We are cautiously optimistic about the votes.”
   Research Foundation officials have questioned the validity of votes held among graduate students long graduated.
   “It is significant to note that the vast majority of the students who voted in the three elections at UB, UA and ESF are no longer at those campuses,” Manning wrote. “It is unknown how current students would feel about having a union representative imposed on them without having the opportunity to participate in a union election.”
   CWA Local 1104 Attorney Mark Pearce said U.S. labor law does not allow retroactive benefits to past research assistants, but also makes valid their collective bargaining vote even if they are no longer employed by the Research Foundation.
   “It would be against public policy to allow employees to be victimized by the protracted nature of the process,” he said.
   Pearce said the Research Foundation could, in effect, appeal the NLRB ruling by refusing to contract with the collective bargaining units, which would trigger an NLRB prosecution, the results of which could be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

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Union sues over retired workers’ benefits
BY KATHY PARKER Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Kathy Parker at 885-6705 or kparker@dailygazette.net.

   The CSEA had filed a grievance on behalf of the retirees and an arbitrator had been named to hear the case, Phinney said, so he was surprised when he was served with court papers saying the union was suing.
   “I guess this could actually turn out better if a judge decides it,” he said. “We have been paying for years, but since 1986, the contract has included the word ‘or.’ ”
   He said the payment of both insurance premiums has cost the village about $33,000 a year and it’s not yet known how much of a savings could be realized by having retirees pick one or the other.
   “I think most people will take the insurance we have,” Phinney said.
   Assalian said it’s not known how many retirees have been impacted by the change in policy. Two former employees were named in the suit, but Assalian said it is a class action suit covering any former village employee with benefits.
regular health insurance and Medicare Part B but in March sent a letter to the retirees telling them they had to choose one or the other,” Assalian said.
   Mayor Robert Phinney said the letters were sent after village trustees discovered that they had made an error in paying both.
   “For 15 years or more, the village had been paying both, my mistake. The contact
   The Civil Service Employees Association representing retired South Glens Falls workers has filed a lawsuit against the village claiming that insurance payments have been illegally cut.
   Therese Assalian, spokeswoman for the CSEA, said a class action suit was filed against the village in state Supreme Court in Saratoga County last week.
   “The village has always paid for both
   The town retirees named in the suit are John Dixon and Marvin Millington.
   Millington said the Medicaid deductions will cost him about $1,000 a year.
   “The village makes the deduction out of my check now where they had been paying it. I signed a form allowing for a payroll deduction, but the village was reimbursing it. I don’t know why they changed things mid-stream,” he said. language states we can pay for one or the other and gave the employee the choice of which,” Phinney said.  

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SCHENECTADY COUNTY
Staffing dispute figures in CSEA talks
County may drop appeal if negotiation can solve Glendale issue
BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporter

   County negotiations with its unionized workers are focused on health benefits, according to a spokesman, but include an attempt to sort out a weekend staffing dispute at the Glendale Home.
   That dispute has been in contention since 2005, has now moved to the state appeals level, and shapes part of the talks with the CSEA for a new contract, according to Christopher Gardner, county attorney.
   The issue emerged recently when a state Supreme Court judge upheld an arbitrator’s ruling that Schenectady County violated a union contract in trying to meet a state mandate at the Glendale Home.
   State Supreme Court Judge Vincent J. Reilly Jr.’s June 5 decision requires the county to rescind any changes it made to its collective bargaining agreement with Local 847 of the Civil Service Employees Association.
   Gardner said the county is appealing Reilly’s ruling with the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court. At the same time, he said, the county is attempting to address issues that led to the defi - ciency through negotiations with the CSEA.
   The state Department of Health in 2005 cited the Glendale Home for failing to provide planned activities for residents on weekends. At the time the deficiency was issued, the county was providing part-time activities for residents.
   The state said the county had to provide full-time weekend activities or else face fines, possible closure or both. In response, the county changed or eliminated shifts, benefits and overtime, and also required exempt employees to work weekends.
   The union filed a grievance against the “unilateral violation of the agreement,” said CSEA spokeswoman Therese Assalian. An arbitrator sided with the CSEA. However, the county refused to comply with the arbitrator’s decision and the union brought the matter to court.
   Reilly rejected the county’s contention that the arbitrator’s ruling was faulty because it “conflicted with other laws or affected public policy, was totally irrational or clearly exceeded a specifically enumerated limitation on the arbitrator’s power.”
   Assalian said the arbitrator’s decision and Reilly’s ruling “upheld the validity of an agreement that was agreed to by both parties and has been in place and worked well for over a decade. The agreement was the result of a grievance settlement that came about through the assistance of a mediator.”
   Assalian said the county could have addressed the state deficiency “without violating the agreement.” Reilly agreed, saying nothing in the arbitrator’s decision prohibited the county from adding additional staffing to meet state requirements.
   Gardner said the county has since corrected the deficiency by “redeploying existing staff and by increasing staff.” He also said the county would withdraw its appeal of Reilly’s ruling if it and the CSEA are able to resolve weekend staffing issues through contract negotiations.
   The county has been negotiating with the local CSEA unit since its four-year contract expired in January. The CSEA represents 800 employees at the Glendale Home, Schenectady County Community College, the public library, Department of Social Services, the Schenectady Job Training Agency, as well as county nurses and highway workers.
   The county also is negotiating with the 200-member Service Employees International Union Local 1199, the 25-member SEIU Local 721, the 150-member Sheriff’s Benevolent Association and a smaller unit of correction officers.
   The county’s work force numbers approximately 1,800.
   Gardner said a top issue is health care. “We’ve been through most of the health care issues. The unions have been responsible and responsive,” he said.
   He refused to discuss other issues, saying the county and unions have imposed a news blackout.

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Gardner said the county is appealing Reilly’s ruling with the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court. At the same time, he said, the county is attempting to address issues that led to the defi - ciency through negotiations with the CSEA.
   The state Department of Health in 2005 cited the Glendale Home for failing to provide planned activities for residents on weekends. At the time the deficiency was issued, the county was providing part-time activities for residents.    The state said the county had to provide full-time weekend activities or else face fines, possible closure or both. In response, the county changed or eliminated shifts, benefits and overtime, and also required exempt employees to work weekends.    The union filed a grievance against the “unilateral violation of the agreement,” said CSEA spokeswoman Therese Assalian. An arbitrator sided with the CSEA. However, the county refused to comply with the arbitrator’s decision and the union brought the matter to court.

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UAW pointing to non-labor expenses in contract dispute
Detroit automakers aim to bridge cost gap with Japan firms
BY TOM KRISHER The Associated Press

   DETROIT — As bargainers for the United Auto Workers and domestic automakers try to reach a new contract, Kenneth Cooksey is one of many workers who doesn’t understand why the companies are so focused on the cost of labor.
   By most accounts, labor expenses for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC amount to about 10 percent of the price of a new vehicle, including wages, benefits and “legacy” costs for retiree pensions and health care.
   So Cooksey, a 37-year Ford worker from Detroit, doesn’t buy the companies’ logic that they have to erase a roughly $25-per-hour labor cost gap with their Japanese competitors — Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co.
   “We can’t help it [that] the foreigners don’t have the legacy costs because they just came over,” said Cooksey, who works at a plant just west of Detroit that assembles the Focus small car.
   Nissan, Honda and Toyota all pay about the same wages as the Detroit Three. The companies say the cost gap comes in other areas such as health care for active and retired workers, absenteeism, paid days off, and the jobs bank, in which workers get most of their pay when laid off.
   By some accounts, the biggest chunk of that $25 the companies want to shave is in retiree health care.
   But the union likely will focus the contract talks on the nonlabor costs of building cars and trucks, much of which is controlled by the companies. The current pacts with the Detroit Three expire Sept. 14.
   “The vast majority of the costs of producing a vehicle and transporting it to a dealership and preparing it for sale — including design, engineering, marketing, raw materials, executive compensation and other costs — are not related to direct or indirect manufacturing labor,” the UAW said in a fact book written for reporters covering the talks.
   However, the domestic automakers pay $1,200 to $1,500 per car just for health care, a huge competitive difference that has to be addressed, said Laurie Harbour-Felax, managing director at Stout Risius Ross Inc., a financial and strategic advisory company.
   “We’ll never be able to compete in the same situation with the Japanese because they don’t have the same issues,” said Harbour-Felax, who wrote a study that found a $2,400 profit gap per vehicle between the Detroit Three and the Japanese automakers.
   About half the gap can be attributed to the labor cost difference, she said.
   Retiree costs are one reason Ford, Chrysler and GM lost a combined $15 billion last year. Although Ford and GM recently turned profits, they’re still losing money in North America.
   The Detroit Three have a combined unfunded retiree health care obligation of about $90.5 billion, a staggering number that must be carried on their books and paid over the life of their employees. With far fewer retirees, the Japanese companies have much lower payments.
   On the bargaining table is the domestic companies’ desire to reduce or get rid of that giant obligation, perhaps by funding a UAW-run trust that would pay retiree health care bills.
   Still, the domestic automakers have a lot they can do to become more efficient to reduce costs and close the profit gap with the Japanese automakers, Harbour-Felax said.
   Among the inefficiencies, which all three say they are working to reduce, is the lack of standardized parts globally. Ford, GM and Chrysler have multiple parts that are unique to one model, while Toyota and Honda have standardized parts for nearly all models.
   The Detroit Three also are less efficient because they don’t build as many cars on shared underpinnings, nor do they design and engineer as many models for sale globally, she said.  

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State, unions holding contract talks
CSEA, PEF among negotiating units at the bargaining table
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Bob Conner at 462-2499 or bconner@dailygazette.net.

   The Civil Service Employees Association resumed contract negotiations with the state this week after walking away from them in late June.
   CSEA spokesman Steve Madarasz said the union is hoping the resumed talks will prove more fruitful than the negotiations that started in April and were interrupted on June 29 because “we just weren’t getting much in the way of feedback” from the state. CSEA’s previous contract expired at the end of March.
   Craig Dickinson, spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations, declined to comment on the union’s claims.
   The state is currently engaged in negotiations with most of its unionized employees, almost all of whom are working under the terms of expired contracts. Dickinson said negotiations are under way with CSEA, the Public Employees Federation, and unions representing police officers and correction officers. Negotiations with unions representing college teachers are on hold until the start of the school year, and a union jurisdictional dispute is delaying the start of talks between the state and representatives of state police investigators.
   Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for PEF, said that in addition to contract issues, it is also concerned about the proposed moves of state data-processing employees and food lab workers from the Capital Region to the Utica and Geneva areas, respectively. The union opposes the moves, which were announced in the waning days of Gov. George Pataki’s administration. The moves are supported by political leaders from the Utica and Geneva areas and opposed by some from the Capital Region. The Spitzer administration has yet to make its position clear.
   On Wednesday, Spitzer s p o k e s w o m a n C h r i s t i n e Pritchard said the state does intend to establish a new data center, and the possibility of doing so in the Utica area remains “under review.” She could not provide information about the possible food lab move.
   Wells said PEF is also hoping that the Senate will pass and the governor sign a bill passed by the Assembly that would ban employers from forcing nurses to work overtime.
   Both CSEA and PEF provide information about the status of contract negotiations on their Web sites. Dickinson said the state’s policy is not to comment on those matters.  

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Dickinson said negotiations are under way with CSEA, the Public Employees Federation, and unions representing police officers and correction officers.

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Both CSEA and PEF provide information about the status of contract negotiations on their Web sites. Dickinson said the state’s policy is not to comment on those matters.

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CAPITOL
Spitzer vetoes union-backed bills
Legislation sought to protect retiree health benefits
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Bob Conner at 462-2499 or bconner@dailygazette.net.

   Gov. Eliot Spitzer vetoed several bills this week that were backed by public employee unions, the most significant of which would have prevented state and local governments from reducing the health benefits of retirees unless a corresponding reduction were made in the benefits of active workers.
   The two bills protecting retiree health benefits were sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna, who noted Thursday that retired teachers are already protected by a similar law. “Linking health insurance coverage for retirees and active workers is a fair approach,” Farley said in a statement responding to the veto, “and one which has been approved by three governors” — Mario Cuomo, George Pataki and Spitzer — when it comes to teachers.
   Pataki, however, also had vetoed bills similar to those Spitzer vetoed Wednesday.
   In his veto message, Spitzer said that while “these bills seek to advance the laudable and important goal of insuring that retiree health care benefits do not become a unique target of budget cuts,” nonetheless “it would be unwise to impose on every public employer in the state” the mandates in the legislation.
   E.J. McMahon, director of the fiscally conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy, said the vetoes were significant because the bills would have prevented governments from dealing with “the huge looming cost of benefits for retirees.”
   Farley’s statement said he “will introduce a bill creating an expert task force, with instructions to deliver recommendations to the governor and the Legislature by next spring” as to how to proceed. Spitzer called for an executive branch study and report.
   “A study is good if it produces the recognition that something needs to be done other than freezing all benefits in place,” McMahon said.
   Spitzer also vetoed union-backed bills that would have restricted reassignment of public employees and expanded pension benefi ts for “peace and police officers” in the Department of Taxation and Finance. Measures that he signed included one to raise the state police mandatory retirement age from 57 to 60.
   Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for the Public Employees Federation, and Steve Madarasz, spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, both said they were disappointed with the vetoes of the retiree health benefi ts bills, but praised Spitzer for prior actions he has taken this year. Wells cited the governor signing a law to combat workplace violence that she said Pataki had vetoed. Madarasz referred to Spitzer’s executive order making it easier to unionize day care workers.
   McMahon said the day care action, which his organization opposed, had been a big win for the unions. But he praised Spitzer for his previous veto of a bill that would have made it harder for local police departments to discipline officers, as well as for this week’s vetoes.

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Farley’s statement said he “will introduce a bill creating an expert task force, with instructions to deliver recommendations to the governor and the Legislature by next spring” as to how to proceed. Spitzer called for an executive branch study and report.

Quoted from bumblethru

Not being a fan of the ACLU....in theory their goal is to uphold the constitution of the United States and protect the rights of ALL peoples, groups, organization, ethnic and religious freedoms. Now, although that is not a bad thing, they do seem to push the envelope at times.

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I mean zoloft/paxil/adderall/lunesta/prozac etc....

Quoted from bumblethru

I mean zoloft/paxil/adderall/lunesta/prozac etc....

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Okay...there ya go with that 'nursey' talk again!! I guess these are sleeping pill and anit-depressents, huh? See, I get my nursing degree from TV ads! :D

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Unions still flex economic muscle
Labor stays strong in area despite national downturn
BY JAMES SCHLETT Gazette Reporter

Earlier this year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 294 scored a new bargaining unit.
Consisting of only five members, the unit was not a huge win for the Teamsters. But it was somewhat peculiar, given their profession: Albany County district attorney investigators.
“It’s not an oddity to us. A lot of people think truckers when you say Teamsters,” said Teamsters Business Agent Paul Engel.
   Twenty-five years ago, the investigators would have seemed like atypical Teamsters material. What is an oddity, though, is how the Teamsters and other unions in the Capital Region have evolved and managed to keep their ranks fairly stable while membership numbers have plummeted nationwide.
   “At least for our union, [the environment] has improved over the past 10 or 20 years. Even the last 40 years,” said Arlea Igoe, the treasury-secretary of the Public Employees Federation, which represents 57,000 government workers statewide, including 18,000 in this region.
   In organized labor’s 1950s heyday, one out of three U.S. workers were union members. Now, that national rate is one out of eight, with half of those people being employed in the public sector. In this region, however, union membership this Labor Day is almost on par with what it was in the 1950s, with nearly one out of three workers carrying union cards.
   “We are an anomaly because of the state government having those two unions together with the public schools [union],” Deborah Kelly, a Siena College assistant professor of man- agement, said of the region’s major public sector unions: PEF, the Civil Service Employees Association and New York State United Teachers.
   It is largely because of those three unions — with an aggregate membership of 907,000 — that organized labor around Albany has bucked the national membership slump.
   In 2006, U.S. union membership totaled 12 percent of the work force, or 15.4 million, a drop of 326,000 from the previous year. The union membership rate has been steadily slipping from 20.1 percent in 1983, the earliest year for which comparable data are available, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
   Meanwhile, the Capital Region’s unionized work force grew 23.3 percent since 1986 to 130,671 last year. More than two out of three of those union members — 69.7 percent — work in the public sector, according to statistics compiled by Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
   “It might be the case for Albany, but not for anywhere else,” said Florida State economics professor David Macpherson.
BUFFALO FADES
   Not long ago, it was a different story. For decades, the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area reigned as upstate New York’s union capital. But since 1986, its membership density has declined from 33.3 percent to 23.2 percent.
   During the 1990s, Albany and Buffalo ran neck and neck with each other to be the state’s most densely unionized metropolitan area. But by 2003, Albany had pulled well ahead of Buffalo, with union membership rates of 31.2 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, according to the Trinity and Florida State statistics.
   Nevertheless, at 132,252 members as of last year, the Buffalo area’s unionized work force is still 1.2 percent larger than the Capital Region’s.
   Buffalo’s massive manufacturing sector was what made it upstate’s No. 1 union town. But as economic tumult diminished its waterfront commerce, aerospace, electronics and steel industries, organized labor also suffered. Between 1969 and 2003 in the Buffalo area, manufacturing employment dropped from 180,000 to 88,000, according to a 2005 report by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
   Although the Buffalo area has a significant public sector, it is significantly smaller than the Capital Region’s 107,336-strong government work force. The Albany area has sustained manufacturing losses on a scale similar to those in Buffalo, but its strong trade unions have kept its private sector growing.
SEVERAL FACTORS
   Organized labor’s abnormal robustness in the Capital Region can be attributed to three key factors, union and business leaders say.
   The first two reasons are the most obvious and the ones most lamented by the business lobby.
   First, there are organized labor’s deep roots in New York, a historically strong Democrat state. It is also a state with a legal framework that heavily favors public sector unions, most notably the 1967 Taylor Law, which forbids cuts to salary and benefits for government workers after a contract expires.
   Second, labor’s roots have also long been intertwined with state and local government workers.
   “We already had a head start,” said Mary Sullivan, executive vice president of the CSEA, which has 265,000 members statewide, including 40,000 in the Capital Region.
   The Teamsters, for example, have been active in the Albany area since 1903. At first, the union primarily represented private sector workers. But the Teamsters have increasingly diversified membership ranks by venturing deeper into the public sector.
   Along with representing the Albany County investigators, the union’s membership also includes county sheriff’s department supervisors and correctional workers. Yet the union maintains a private sector base, with its largest employer being United Parcel Service.
   At 2.3 million union members in 2006, California is the only state that surpasses New York in organized labor membership. New York last year had 2 million union members. But the work force in California totaled 14.5 million workers that year, nearly double New York’s 8.1 million, according to the Trinity and Florida State statistics.
   Those strong union membership rolls have led to some sweet paychecks for state and local government workers — an average of $52,129 annually in the Golden State and $51,445 in the Empire State in 2003, according to the Public Policy institute of New York State, a research and education organization affiliated with the Business Council of New York State.
   Those fat paychecks have contributed to the Capital Region’s economic prosperity — often at the expense of other upstate cities without the large public-sector job base.
‘ECONOMIC OASIS’
   “It’s very clear the Capital Region is almost always an economic oasis,” said Business Council spokesman Matthew Maguire.
   Albany has flourished because a significant amount of the tax funds raised to pay state workers are spent in the city and surrounding communities.
   A report by the Public Policy Institute found that New York in 2005 had the nation’s highest per-capita tax burden and the fourth-highest property tax burden. Those burdens have driven many businesses out of the state while dissuading others from entering it, the Business Council maintains.
   The third reason for the strength of organized labor in the region, labor leaders say, is the Capital District Area Labor Federation: the AFL-CIO’s regional arm based in Albany.
   The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations is the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, consisting of 55 national and international organized labor groups.
   The CDALF’s member unions represent a total of 120,000 workers in 11 counties. The federation wields an almost unprecedented amount of clout in terms of mobilizing and organizing workers and political activism. Only a handful of such organizations exist in the country.
   Facing slumping member rolls and economic pressures throughout the 1990s, the AFL-CIO moved to restructure its nationwide network. In select areas, the AFL-CIO placed its free-standing central labor councils under an umbrella group dubbed an area labor federation.
   Because of their independent nature and lack of coordination with each other, the councils had been ineffective at mobilizing and organizing. “It seriously was not working,” said Joe Fox, president of both PEF and CDALF.
   Under its New Alliance initiative, the AFL-CIO initially planned to roll out five New York-area labor federations by consolidating 25 central labor councils. In 2001, New York State AFL-CIO’s new president, Denis Hughes, volunteered Albany to host the nation’s first area labor federation. That move put local unions “on the same page politically” and strategically, Engel said.
   Through the federation, local unions have been able to throw their combined weight behind political candidates. Picketing and other rallying efforts are also more likely to pull large crowds from a spectrum of professions because of CDALF’s mobilization network.
   In 2005, a third of AFL-CIO’s members broke off from the national federation to form the dissident Change to Win, an affiliation of six unions including the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union. But in Albany, the area labor federation managed to keep its ranks largely intact because the local Teamsters and SEIU Local 1199 signed solidarity charters allowing them the remain involved in the CDALF.
   “A structure was established here that was not established elsewhere in the country, and that solidified organized labor,” said Fox.
SOME SETBACKS
   Strong member rolls and solidarity, however, can be deceiving when gauging the strength of organized labor. That point became abundantly clear to hundreds of Finch, Pruyn & Co. union workers, who lost their jobs at the Glens Falls paper mill in 2001 after going on strike over a contract dispute.
   Finch usurped the union by hiring more than 400 replacement workers. The foiled strike marked an instance when “the union gambled and lost” — a lesson area workers will likely not forget easily, said Kelly, the Siena professor.
   Despite the setbacks, Kelly categorized labor unions in the region as being “strong and healthy” — so much so that there isn’t a lot left for them to struggle to attain. Over the past century, unions have successfully pushed a plethora of workplace reforms through Congress and state legislatures, covering everything from safety issues to family medical leave.
   In February, New York unions exerted their political muscle when they secured an integral role in talks to reform the state workers’ compensation system — a longtime sticking issue in Albany.
   The landmark agreement wrought by Gov. Eliot Spitzer pleased unions by increasing benefits for injured workers for the first time in more than a decade. The business community liked the provision that will gradually reduce workers’ compensation employer costs.
   “We saw earlier this year, in a very positive way, an indication of labor’s strength and capabilities,” said Maguire, at the Business Council.
   A day after being elected governor in November, Spitzer convened a meeting with the leaders of the Business Council and AFLCIO to discuss the reform issue.
   That agreement has warmed the once-frosty relations between organized labor and business. Maguire said further progress might be made on other sticky issues in Albany, such as health care and employer liability reforms.
   “Right now, we’re focusing on a glass half full,” he said.
   Organized labor’s progress outside politics has been less swift, especially in terms of organizing. Unions’ repeated failed attempts to organize at Albany Medical Center and Price Chopper call into question workers’ confidence in organized labor and its potential for growth, Kelly said.
   “The companies are fighting the new unions tooth and nail,” said Kelly.
ELLIS CAMPAIGN
   Engel said one of area unions’ chief tasks is now “finding people who aren’t represented.” Many of those workers might be in the service and health care sectors.
   At the CDALF, Fox said hospital workers are severely underrepresented in the Capital Region. Ellis Hospital in Schenectady houses the region’s only unionized hospital work force, consisting of 450 nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association.
   For the past 18 months, the International Union of Electronic Workers/Communication Workers of America Local 301 has been attempting to expand into Ellis. The Schenectady union, which primarily represents General Electric Co. workers, wants to cover about 500 operating room technicians, housingkeeping staff and X-ray workers.
   “The truth of the matter is we haven’t stopped [organizing at Ellis] yet. It’s a slow process,” said IUE/CWA Local 301 Business Manager Carmen DePoala.
   Labor leaders say unions are needed now more than ever, especially as workers’ access to affordable health care gets squeezed by rising costs. But it remains unclear how much extra funding unions will be able to wring out of businesses for health care.
   Kelly said many employers have not reduced the amount they spend on employee health benefits, though it might seem like they have to workers. It is more a matter of the same level of funding buying less health care.
   “They can try [to increase health benefit spending], but in the end there is only so much money [businesses] can spend on labor,” said Kelly.
   In July, the United Auto Workers started contract talks with Detroit’s Big Three automobile makers, who have increasingly made it clear they are willing to cut workers and benefits to stay competitive globally.
BENEFITS A PRIORITY
   The UAW’s defense of generous health care benefits for active and retired auto workers is playing a pivotal role in the negotiations. Industry experts have said the UAW — the unofficial face of U.S. organized labor — is in for the “toughest contract talks in the union’s history.”
   “People are seeing right now the value of an organization that supports the middle class because right now no one else is supporting the middle class,” said Fox.
   Employers’ growing inclination to target health care benefits and pensions has NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira declaring that New Yorkers are in an “anti-union era.”
   When NYSUT — the state’s largest public union, with 585,000 members — meets with school administrators over teacher contracts, health care benefi ts almost always top the list of proposed cuts.
   However, Neira said NYSUT, which has 22,100 members in this region, has become increasingly more involved in issues beyond salaries and health care benefi ts. Compared to when Neira started teaching elementary school in East Harlem 28 years ago, she said, NYSUT devotes more energy to safety, environmental and professional development issues.
   “Now, union members expect us to go beyond the realm of bread and butter,” Neira said.

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More than two out of three of those union members — 69.7 percent — work in the public sector,

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A bone for unionized construction workers

   Forget about the day off; New York’s unionized construction workers got their real Labor Day present last Tuesday, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer called a halt to the creation of new worker apprentice programs.
   While the move technically applies to all employers in all trades, it will mostly affect those who use non-union workers. Indirectly, though, it will also impact taxpayers who foot the bills for public works projects.
   As a result of the moratorium, non-union employers in the growing number of municipalities with laws requiring state-approved apprentice programs will be unable to bid on public projects — unless they already had an apprentice program in place.
   Such programs have typically been the domain of large, union employers, but when local governments (such as Schenectady’s a few years ago) started imposing the requirement on all contractors, many smaller ones who employed non-union workers began taking the necessary steps to comply.
   The rules imposed by the state Labor Department are quite burdensome, requiring, among other things, that employers administer programs away from their own premises. Still, they were viewed as a cost of doing business with public entities, and according to a statewide consortium of non-union contractors known as the Associated Builders and Contractors, roughly 100 contractors have instituted them in recent years. Now, unless Spitzer’s decree is only temporary, none of their brethren will be able to join in.
   The upshot, of course, will be reduced competition for public contracts; less incentive for qualified contractors to sharpen their pencils and submit cost-conscious bids; and (need we say it?) larger bills for taxpayers. Happy Labor Day.

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Spitzer kicks non-union
contractors

   Here’s a beauty.
   Do you remember a few years ago Schenectady and other localities began adopting a rule that in order for contractors to bid on public construction jobs they had to have apprentice programs? And not just apprentice programs, but apprentice programs approved by the state Labor Department, following the union model and based somewhere other than the contractor’s own premises?
   It was a way to make it diffi - cult for non-union contractors to bid on public jobs, and local governments went along with it, authorized to do so by the state, not out of any sense of fairness or any concern with training new workers but simply bowing to union power.
   In response, small non-union contractors endeavored to get their own apprentice programs approved, despite the bureaucratic hurdles, and some of them even succeeded. In fact quite a few succeeded — about 100 statewide, just from the Associated Builders and Contractors, which is a consortium of mostly non-union builders. Which meant that the requirement didn’t entirely have the desired effect. It didn’t entirely drive non-union shops out of public business. Some of them still managed to compete.
   So now Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat supported by and beholden to labor unions, has just
halted the recognition of new apprentice programs, which means if a contractor wants to bid on a public construction jobs he must still have an apprentice program, but he can no longer get one approved.
   A beautiful catch: You gotta have it, but you can’t get it!
   We are “suspending the development and approval of apprenticeship programs in all trades,” the governor announced the other day. “The addition of new participating employers to existing programs is also being suspended.”
   He made the announcement at a convention of the Long Island Federation of Labor, and though I wasn’t there, I’m sure it went over very well with the union officials.
   “This is the pay-off for all their support throughout the campaign,” said Scott Zylka, political affairs director for Associated Builders and Contractors, and I suppose it is. It certainly has nothing to do with the economic health of New York and nothing to do with fair competition.
   And please note that this amazingly brazen move goes well beyond the bogus Wicks Law reform, which was passed by the Assembly, is supported by the governor, but is stalled in the Senate. That non-reform would require that contractors have apprentice programs in place for three years before being allowed to bid on public works, meaning, it wouldn’t be enough that you jumped all the hurdles and got a union-type program approved by the state. After you got it approved you would still have to wait three years before you could build a school or a library.
   Or even more, because you would have to actually graduate some apprentices, not just have the training program in place, and since some of those programs last five years, you would have to wait that long. So that particular measure would be another way of locking up work for the trade unions, masquerading as reform of something else.
   The unilateral executive action by the governor leapfrogs that pokey little scam and leaves it far behind. Now you can’t get an apprenticeship program approved no matter what. Never mind waiting three years or five years.
   More clearly than anything it gives the lie to the propaganda we endured a few years ago, or at least I endured, when trade-union representatives and subservient local politicians were beating their breasts about the great importance of apprentice training and how vital it was to quality workmanship, economic growth, and the future of mankind.
   Now they don’t want it anymore. All finished. Why? Because non-union contractors were taking them up on it.
   What they do want is what I said they wanted all along: a monopoly on public construction work.
   No, wait! Not just public work after all. This bulletin just in from Long Island: The town of Oyster Bay passed a local law on Tuesday evening extending the apprenticeship requirement to private construction also. Specifically to commercial buildings or collections of commercial buildings totaling 100,000 square feet or more, meaning anything of any consequence in the private sector.
   You can’t do that kind of construction any longer in Oyster Bay unless you have an apprentice program, and of course, thanks to Gov. Spitzer, you can no longer get an apprentice program. You can do the work only if you already have one.
   This local law was pushed by — do you want to guess? — the carpenters’ union, the electrical workers union, the laborers union, the sheetmetal workers’ union.
   So maybe the governor’s suspension of new apprentice programs throughout the state is not the fi nal step. There’s still the Oyster Bay step. And then maybe there could be another step of flat-out prohibiting anyone from engaging in any construction work whatsoever unless a member of one of the trade unions.
   Becky Meinking, chapter president, Associated Builders and Contractors: “Every time in New York I think I’ve seen it all, then I see something new. It makes me wonder where we’re going to be in five years. As a taxpayer I fear for the future of the state.”
   Me too. After all, why do you think our local taxes are so high? Why do you think it costs so much to build schools and libraries and courthouses?
   And here I was, all set to give the governor credit for vetoing another silly and insulting labor-sponsored bill that had been slavishly passed by the Legislature, a bill that would have required licensing of all levels or workers who install fire sprinklers, which was an arcane matter designed to benefit no one but the trade unions.
   But forget that now. He didn’t give them that little gumball, but he gave them the store.

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A beautiful catch: You gotta have it, but you can’t get it!
   We are “suspending the development and approval of apprenticeship programs in all trades,” the governor announced the other day. “The addition of new participating employers to existing programs is also being suspended.”

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Strike vote reveals workers’ feelings
Executive compensation is a sore spot; UAW contract deadline nears
BY TOM KRISHER The Associated Press

   SALINE, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. has brought a lot of uncertainty into Gerald Williamson’s life.
   The factory where he works is on a list of plants slated to be sold or even closed, and like other workers, he’s had to give up part of his pay raises to help the company fund its huge retiree health care bill.
   So when it came time to vote to give union leaders the power to call a strike if contract talks go south, Williamson got some satisfaction last week out of casting his ballot in favor.
   “To try to force us to make any more concessions, it’s unreasonable and we’re willing to shut them down,” said Williamson, 55, who works at a plant that makes instrument panels and other parts in Saline, about 40 miles west of Detroit.
   Plenty of United Auto Workers members share his thoughts. At his plant, 99 percent approved the strike authorization. Voting nationwide wrapped up last Friday, but the final tally was not announced. Typically, though, strike authorizations are approved overwhelmingly.
   With contracts between the union and Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC set to expire Sept. 14, UAW leaders have asked members during the past few weeks to authorize a strike. It’s standard procedure, and it doesn’t mean that a work stoppage will occur.
   Williamson, a 13-year Ford worker from Ypsilanti, says he doesn’t want a strike and he doesn’t think the company wants one either.
   But like many workers, he’s unhappy that he’s had to give up money when new Ford President and Chief Executive Alan Mulally is making millions.
   “When you ask people to make concessions and they help out and chip in, then everyone has to make concessions,” Williamson said after voting on Wednesday.
   Mulally’s compensation package was valued at $39.1 million during his four months on the job last year, according to an analysis of a Ford filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Workers at many Detroit-area factories often refer to executive compensation when asked about concessions.
   The package also bothers Bill Garner, 54, who voted in favor of a strike. He thinks the salaries of Mulally and other top Ford executives should be cut.
   “If they were down more, I don’t think it would be near the issue it is now,” said Garner of Saline, who has seen only one strike in his 35 years with Ford.
   When Mulally was asked last week about criticism of his compensation, he said that leadership counts.
   “All the skills required to run a business are market-driven,” said Mulally, who was hired away from Boeing Co. last year to rescue the money-losing Ford.
   All three Detroit-area automakers are seeking concessions from the UAW as contract talks progress behind closed doors. They point to what they say is around a $25-perhour labor cost disadvantage to their prime Japanese competitors. A big chunk of that is the multi-billion-dollar long-term retiree health care obligation, which the companies want to unload by paying the UAW a lump sum so it can form a trust to pay the medical bills.
   Led by Ford’s record $12.6 billion loss last year, the three Detroit automakers lost a collective $15 billion in 2006. Ford had to mortgage its factories to generate enough cash to stay in business.
   The losses, brought on by high gas prices sending consumers away from Detroit’s trucks and sport utility vehicles, led to restructuring at all three automakers. Thousands of union workers left their companies under buyout or early retirement packages.
   As part of that restructuring, Ford last year took the Saline plant and 16 others from its former parts arm, Visteon Corp., and placed them into a holding company for sale or closure.
   Workers at Local 892 in Saline don’t know if they will have jobs or for whom they’ll be working in the future. They also don’t know if they’ll be part of whatever national contract the UAW negotiates.
   Yet in Saline, many of the 1,300 hourly workers have some hope. Ford recently has been moving equipment into the plant to make interior parts for new vehicles, the workers say.

United Auto Workers union members march in the Labor Day parade in Detroit on Monday. The annual parade through the heart of Detroit’s downtown contained no speeches, but thousands of labor members marched or stood with signs calling for preserving health care benefits and job security.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger yells his support to other unions as they march in Monday’s parade in Detroit.

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Hoffa: GOP Has Destroyed Itself
Author: John Mercurio

Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t have a presidential candidate he and his powerful Teamster’s union is backing, but he praises Democratic candidate John Edwards for making strong appeals to labor a centerpiece of his campaign.

Since James P. Hoffa, the son of the legendary Teamster’s boss, took the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1999, he has energized his 1.4 million membership, making the country’s 4th largest union once again politically relevant and influential.

At 66, Hoffa is not only busy building union membership – conducting recruiting efforts among workers at UPS, FedEx, and solid waste companies – but also using the Teamsters clout to influence U.S. trade policies, block unfettered access of Mexican trucks into the U.S., and push for Iran divestment. He is even making a mark in the world of cyberspace – the Teamsters Web site, teamster.org, buzzes with blogs, commentaries, and the latest news for union members.

Hoffa’s main obsession today is making sure his union can adapt to a rapidly changing political landscape and help Democrats retake the White House in 2008.

“The Republican Party has destroyed itself,” Hoffa recently told NewsMax in an exclusive interview. “I don’t know what else they could do that’s worse or how they could come to labor and ask for our support. And I don’t see how working people, or labor, could give them that support.”

Hoffa once flirted with endorsing the GOP in the 2000 election. His union backed Reagan in 1980. But Hoffa has little sentimentality toward the Republicans.

He says the Republican Party “isolated itself from the labor unions and from working families” by pushing pro-business policies that are simply anti-worker.

“They’ve advocated terrible trade policies that have cost this country thousands and thousands of jobs. They’ve tried to get rid of Social Security. They have gotten us into a very unpopular war and they’ve alienated us from the rest of the world.”

To fight his battle, Hoffa has even turned to the byzantine world of liberal bloggers.

This August he ventured to the 2007 YearlyKos blog convention in Chicago and made a highly choreographed entrance.

The hard to please bloggers were impressed.

“I went because I was hungry and somewhat curious since Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was going to speak,” one liberal blogger wrote recently on DailyKos, referring inaccurately to Hoffa as “Jr.” (His middle name is Phillip; his father’s was Riddle).

“When I got there I was impressed. Music, hamburgers, a bar and two Teamster-owned big trucks on display. What’s not to like? Then came the big event – a 3rd rig rolled in honking and out of it came Markos [Moulitsas] AND Jimmy Hoffa. Big hoopla, very impressive.”


The Democratic Primaries


Three years ago, Hoffa put his muscle behind a longtime ally, Congressman private Gephardt, in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gephardt’s campaign crashed and burned in Iowa and he quickly quit the race.

Hoffa is apparently intent on not making the same mistake again and wants to make Big Labor, with the Teamster’s at the fore, a Democratic kingmaker.

Hoffa has yet to pick a candidate and is withholding the Teamsters’ support until two key developments occur:

First, the political landscape firms up, giving him a clear sense of what it would take for his candidate to win.

Second, candidates start to give a clear picture of how they would advance his union’s ambitious agenda as president.

In his interview, Hoffa singled out former Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards “has done a very good job articulating a more populist message, and that’s one that resonates with the members,” Hoffa said.

Hoffa said Sen. Hillary Clinton, who leads by wide margins in most national polls, is “obviously out front” and is running a “smart, controlled, very professional” campaign.

As a senator, Clinton has developed strong ties with New York unions. Her campaign has tapped Mike Monroe, a former president of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades, as senior political adviser for labor outreach.

Monroe’s work has apparently started to pay off. Hoffa and other labor leaders have largely forgiven Clinton for her past membership on the Wal-Mart board of directors during her time in Arkansas, and for her selection of chief campaign strategist Mark Penn, whose firm has a subsidiary that helps employers fight union organizing drives.

Still, Hoffa said his reluctance to support the former first lady’s 2008 campaign instead stems more from her failure so far to focus on issues important to his members.

“I would hope that she would speak out more on the issues that resonate with the average American,” he said, ticking off a list of labor priorities, including trade, “affordable” health care, and so-called “pension protection.”

“You can’t talk about these issues enough,” he told NewsMax. “All of the [Democratic] candidates are missing the boat by not talking about them more.”

Sen. Barack Obama, he said, “is the real surprise candidate so far. He’s running a very interesting race.”

Obama’s campaign has recruited Temo Figueroa, a former deputy political director of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, as the campaign's national field director.

And yet, Hoffa remains unconvinced -- and uncommitted. “There’s just no one candidate that stands out yet,” he said.

Though union membership has been falling – dropping from 20 percent of eligible workers in 1983 to 12 percent last year – unions remain a potent force in politics. That’s especially true in the Democratic primaries, which rely on union activists to do the political grunt work – such as manning phone banks, door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts.

For Hoffa and his union allies -- specifically Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, with whom he formed a breakaway chapter of the AFL-CIO called “Change to Win” -- the 2008 campaign will be a key test of whether, by dramatically “changing” their approach to political and campaign activism, they can still win on a national playing field.


Foreign Issues


Recently Hoffa has taken on another major cause that endears him to foreign policy hawks: In late August, he formally joined the Iran divestment movement by urging his union’s pension funds to shed all shares they own in companies doing business in Iran.

His goal: sponsoring an Iranian version of Solidarity's Lech Walesa, whose leadership in the 1980s transformed Poland's workers into an invincible political force.

“It’s amazing that with all the potential for that country, they would chose to become such a rogue state, denying the Holocaust and adopting bizarre policies toward everyone,” Hoffa told NewsMax. He said he advocates pension funds and business divesting because “Iran has got to be brought in line until it becomes a responsible citizen in the world, and they’re not that right now.”

During the interview, Hoffa said he doesn’t see parallels between his efforts to work with the federal government on national security priorities and American unions during the Cold War that strongly supported a hawkish foreign policy.

“America has to have an assertive foreign policy, we recognize and support that,” he said. “We have to have a policy that makes sense. You’re attacking us, doing things that are against the general good. This is a new and current threat.”

He also expressed concern about new federal regulations that would allow Mexican trucks unfettered access to the United States. He said the “known” risks to the American public -- especially in border states like Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas -- are “unbelievable.”

“There’s almost unanimous consensus that they’re not near our standards,” he said.

“They don’t have training for drivers licenses, drug testing, physicals for their workers. They’ve done nothing, despite the fact that NAFTA was passed 13 years ago, to bring themselves up to our standards. There’s a tremendous environmental problem. The only ones who are for the idea are George W. Bush and some business people who think they can make a lot of money off it.”

On Aug. 29, the Teamsters union sought an emergency injunction to block the Bush administration from allowing Mexican trucks to operate freely throughout the U.S.

While this and other administration moves have made the prospect of the union backing a Republican candidate next year “very remote,” Hoffa also acknowledged some frustration with the Democratic field for failing to address one of the Teamsters’ top issues: illegal immigration.

The Teamsters strongly oppose the guest-worker program included in the bipartisan “compromise plan” President Bush proposed earlier this year, which many Democrats supported, and Hoffa charged that the Bush administration has failed to stem the flow of illegals in large part to keep wages down in the U.S.

“Illegal immigration is one of the major problems facing the U.S.,” he said. “We have to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. I do think we have to find a way to integrate the people who are here and control our borders.

“The AFL-CIO and Teamsters have come out against the guest-worker program. We want to find some way for a path to citizenship for the 15 million who are here but we don’t want a guest-worker program.

“It’s a matter of supply and demand. Part of the plan for Bush pushing for unlimited people coming across the border, it’s basically designed to compress wages.”

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By any measure, union apprentice programs are better

   In response to Carl Strock’s column on Aug. 30, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight the vast differences between union and non-union apprenticeship programs. This moratorium was not a favor to the governor’s union supporters but, instead, a result of a review of apprenticeship enrollment and graduation numbers that simply do not measure up.
   The facts on this issue speak for themselves — in 2006 there were 93 programs registered by the New York State Department of Labor to provide training under the designation of Skilled Construction Craft Laborer. A total of 69 registered programs were being operated by non-union contractors, while 24 programs were considered union-sponsored programs. The 69 non-union programs had a total of 51 currently enrolled apprentices (less than one apprentice per program) while the 24 union programs had a total of 916 currently enrolled apprentices (approximately 38 apprentices per program). Additionally, 35 non-union programs failed to have a single active apprentice in their program.
   In respect to moving apprentices through the skilled construction craft laborer program, the numbers are even more dramatic. The 69 “open shop” programs had a graduation rate of 5.2 percent while the union programs graduated 22.4 percent of their apprentices. Over the last decade, the non-union programs graduated a total of six apprentices, while their union counterparts had graduated 306 apprentices in that span. In fact, 93 percent of the “open shop” programs have failed to graduate a single apprentice since their inception.
   In each statistical category, the union programs performed far better.
   Organized labor is not calling for an end to the apprenticeship system but, rather, a thorough review of any existing programs that are not up to par, regardless of union or non-union status. The union programs have done, and continue to do, a better job in the area of apprentice training They recruit more, educate more, graduate more and employ more Non-union programs should be held to an equivalent standard.
JAMES MELIUS
Copake
The writer is administrator of the New York State Laborers’ Tri-Funds.  

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Taxi strike leader noted for strength under pressure
The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — She is the unlikely embodiment of New York City’s striking cabbies: A college graduate, a woman, barely 5 feet tall, soft-spoken.
   But as the city’s two-day taxi job action headed toward its fi nish, Bhairavi Desai reaffirmed her prominent role in the city’s labor movement and her willingness to make bold moves on behalf of her membership in the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
   “She doesn’t rattle easy,” said Ed Ott, head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “That’s the thing that’s very interesting to me — she does not rattle easy. Under extraordinary pressure, she keeps an even keel.
   “She never raises her voice. She never swears. She’s steady as a rock.”
   Desai, 34, is a slight woman — 5-foot-1, 110 pounds — who cofounded the alliance in 1998, the same year the city’s cabbies refused to drive in a historic one-day walkout over working conditions.
   This time around, she organized a 48-hour work stoppage over the city’s insistence that all cabs be fi tted with new technology including global positioning systems and video screens that will allow customers to pay by credit card.
   The cabbies are complaining that the GPS technology will allow Big Brother into their cabs and that the credit card option will cut into profits by costing them a 5 percent fee on every transaction.
   The technology must be in place as the cabs come up for inspection starting Oct. 1.
   The city has 13,000 yellow cabs and 44,000 licensed drivers. The alliance — an advocacy group, not a union — claims to represent about one-fifth of those cabbies.
   The success of the strike that began Wednesday morning remained in dispute well into day two. City officials said 82 percent of the taxi fleet was on the road Thursday, while the ever-passionate Desai was proclaiming triumph.
   “You know, the numbers can be spun as much as the opposition wants, but the reality is the waiting lines speak for themselves,” Desai said Thursday.
   It’s that attitude that made her one of 17 people recognized by the Ford Foundation in its 2005 Leadership for a Changing World awards, where she was among those cited for bringing “not only concrete gains to their communities but a determination to stand for justice.”
   One year earlier, she was honored by another group as one of the “Top 5 Under 35” South Asians in the metropolitan area. And in 2003, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund presented her with a “Justice in Action” award.
   Desai was born in India, where her grandmother — as related in stories to her grandchildren — was arrested in the fight for her homeland’s independence. Her father was an attorney who “fought for the rights of the underprivileged,” Desai once said.
   When she was 6, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Harrison, N.J., a gritty blue-collar town near Newark.

PETER MORGAN/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, pickets with the group near a taxi stand at Pennsylvania Station in New York on Thursday

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Organized labor is not calling for an end to the apprenticeship system but, rather, a thorough review of any existing programs that are not up to par, regardless of union or non-union status. The union programs have done, and continue to do, a better job in the area of apprentice training They recruit more, educate more, graduate more and employ more Non-union programs should be held to an equivalent standard

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Ford sales collapse again - boycott a driving force

Simply put, people are not buying Fords.

Ford Motor Company continues to suffer monthly sales losses because of its support of homosexuality.

For August, Ford reported a 14.4% drop in sales over the same month last year.

Rather than taking a neutral position in the culture war, Ford uses its profits to support gay activist groups, whose top agenda is to push pro-homosexual marriage and "gay" hate crimes laws on the rest of the nation.

While other automakers are at least holding their own (GM sales actually went up in August), Ford continues to suffer huge sales losses month after month.

It's obvious by now that homosexuals don't have enough purchasing power to keep the Ford ship afloat.

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Ford Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees

Ford GLOBE -- Changing the Corporate Culture
Ford GLOBE is an ever-expanding grassroots network of hourly and salaried employees, retirees and contractors at Ford Motor Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates. We welcome new members. Your participation is what helps make the group what it is and what it will become. Whether this is your first shy, tentative outreach to like-minded individuals at Ford or one small part of an ongoing activist lifestyle, your presence and viewpoints are welcome in this group. Ford GLOBE respects each members choice on how "out" they wish to be.  
Ford GLOBE's goals are mutually beneficial between GLOBE members and Ford Motor Company. By helping to maintain a safe, supportive work environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people at Ford, enhancing their loyalty and productivity, Ford GLOBE helps Ford Motor Company to achieve its goal of becoming the world's premier automotive company.  

Towards that end Ford GLOBE has launched these web pages to inform and educate both potential members and the general public of our activities, both inside and outside the company. Please feel free to browse our pages, ask questions or send us feedback at  info@FordGLOBE.org.  

Ford GLOBE provides speakers for many organizations and events. Some of these are listed on our Speaker's Bureau. GLOBE support for Ford Recruiting is highlighted on our Ford Recruiting page.

What's New
Pride Celebration: On July 30th, Detroit's 10th Annual "Hotter Than July" Pride Picnic & Festival will be held in Palmer Park.  More
Social Event: On July 23rd, GLOBE Member Jeffrey Fensterman and his partner Marco will host a BBQ party at their beautiful lakeside home.  More
Pride Celebration: On June 5th, Motor City Pride 2005 will take place in Ferndale, Michigan.  Ford GLOBE and many other local organizations will host information booths throughout the day. More
Community Outreach: Joe Solmonese, the new president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), visited Ford Motor Company in Dearborn on Thursday, April 14 as part of his "On the Road to Equality" tour.  More
In the News: On February 23rd, Ford GLOBE Hourly Outreach Liaison Bob Burrell was featured by Ford's internal news agency, FCN. More

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Vision, Mission and Objectives

Ford GLOBE is an organization of salaried, hourly, or retired employees of Ford Motor Company, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and agency contractees who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (glbt) and allies.
VISION
Ford GLOBE's Vision is of a corporate culture which provides a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment where diversity is valued and everyone is empowered to be authentic about themselves in the workplace, without fear of loss of opportunity, thus allowing them full realization of their potential and equal participation in all aspects of corporate life.
MISSION
Ford GLOBE's Mission is to foster an inclusive and supportive atmosphere within Ford for glbt persons.
OBJECTIVES
  To promote understanding of Ford's policy and practice of hiring, training, and promoting the best qualified individuals, without regard to their sexual orientation, and to work towards expansion of Ford's policy and practice to include transgendered persons, in furtherance of its goal of becoming the top automotive company in the world.  
  To encourage and assist Ford in its efforts to achieve greater market share among glbt consumers.  
  To provide a venue for networking, socializing, and communication among Ford's (including subsidiaries and affiliates) active or retired glbt employees, contractees, and allies.  
  To endeavor toward a safe work environment at Ford, free from all forms of harassment.  
  To promote understanding of the workplace-related concerns and sensitivities of glbt people at Ford.  
  To advocate for mandatory diversity awareness training--specific to sexual orientation and gender identity issues--presented to all Ford employees and contractees and conducted by qualified, sensitive trainers.  
  To advocate for the business value of diversity within the workforce.  

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To advocate for mandatory diversity awareness training--specific to sexual orientation and gender identity issues--presented to all Ford employees and contractees and conducted by qualified, sensitive trainers.

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2nd taxi driver strike a possibility
The Associated Press

   NEW YORK — The advocacy group that led some of New York’s cabbies on a two-day strike said it might call for a second work stoppage if the city doesn’t start listening to its demands.
   “There is a possibility, but we hope that these two days have kind of gotten the message through,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance.
   Thousands of drivers were back on the job Friday as the strike ended with no immediate gains for the hacks who idled their cabs.
   The cabbies are upset with new city rules requiring all taxis to modernize by adding credit card machines and global positioning systems.  

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Oh, that deadly dust at Ground Zero
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

   On the health front, we have the news that all those alarming statistics we have heard regarding ailments arising from exposure to dust at the World Trade Center site were generated by a small clinic with strong ties to labor unions.
   This would be the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, in New York City, which, with very limited resources, has kept data, now challenged by other medical experts, on some 15,000 Ground Zero workers it has examined.
   A great many of those workers, including 69 percent of emergency responders, were found to have serious respiratory symptoms, and many of them, according to a doctor at the clinic, would need “ongoing care for the rest of their lives,” though it now emerges that those symptoms included things as trivial as a runny nose.
   The report, in The New York Times the other day, pointed out that the Selikoff clinic was founded in the mid-1980s “with political backing from New York labor leaders” and is “well known for serving injured union workers.”
   I hope I don’t need to explain that for a worker to be diagnosed with a lifelong ailment as a result of exposure at the World Trade Center site has major financial consequences, thanks to the concern and the generosity of our state government. It is roughly equivalent to winning the lottery.
   And well-deserved in my opinion if the ailment is genuine and grave — but if it’s a runny nose? Diagnosed by someone who is functioning as an advocate as much as he’s functioning as a doctor?
   I never would have guessed that such things could happen in a great city like New York.
APPRENTICES (CONT.)
   Then we have the letter from the union official objecting to my take on apprenticeship programs. My take was that Gov. Spitzer suspended the recognition of new programs as a sop to the trade unions.
   Why? Because non-union shops, in response to recently enacted local requirements, were actually developing apprenticeship programs and were getting them certified by the state, despite the many diffi culties involved, and were thus still able to compete with the unions in bidding on public construction jobs, and this is not what the unions wanted. They wanted a monopoly, and they prevailed on the governor to go along with them.
   Their efforts to cripple small mom-and-pop non-union shops through apprenticeship requirements weren’t working as they had hoped. That was my take.
   The union official’s take, as expressed in his letter published the other day, is no, no, no. The problem with the non-union apprenticeship programs is that they don’t measure up. They don’t enroll as many actual apprentice workers as the union programs do, and they don’t graduate as many either.
   But this is just more eyewash, ladies and gentlemen.
   Of course these small familyowned non-union companies don’t enroll or graduate as many apprentices as statewide unions do. It’s comparing the wrong things.
   Actually, a company that employs union labor doesn’t enroll or graduate any apprentices at all. The trade unions do that, statewide, and the company uses those workers and gets credit for it.
   But a non-union shop has to develop its own program and get state certification for it, and since that shop might consist of just a few people, like your local roofing company, it’s entirely possible that