This past Sunday at the general membership meeting, President Bonaduce read a letter from Local 107 President and International Vice President Bill Hamilton regarding our health and welfare fund. It was offered as a way of putting the news about our fund into perspective. In short, it spells out how we stack up against similar funds around the country, and it dispels some of the misinformation that may be out there right now. If you want to read the letter in its original form, you can download it here in PDF format.

Click here to download the letter

The memo bears the title “March Cost Cutting Initiatives.” It even talks about laying off Article 22.3 Teamsters. Click here to read more about it.

Click here to download the memo.

Watch part two here.
Watch part three here.

(via Denver Brown Blog)

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
and then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
and then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
and then… they came for me… and by that time
there was no one left to speak up.”
- attributed to Martin Niemoller

This past week in the Willow Grove UPS hub, some disturbing things have been happening. While we’ve known for a while about layoffs, the new developments revolve around the company reportedly trying to redefine some key terms in our contract.

The company announced, on rather short notice, plans to layoff certain inside workers. While any layoffs are disturbing in their own right, these layoffs are structured quite differently than past staffing reductions. In particular, these layoffs have targeted higher seniority, Article 22.3 employees, who have been kept from their guaranteed work hours while lower seniority employees have been permitted to keep working in the same operation.

On Friday, February 6, 2009, several Article 22.3 workers were kept out of work in this fashion. Inquiries made to the Local Union were met with claims that the Union had no involvement in the layoff selection process, which is in itself a serious violation of contractual rights. Furthermore, Union officials maintained that they were “completely against” what was happening.

How did the company get away with laying off full-time workers while junior employees were allowed to work in the same operation? Good question. Maybe it’s because they attempted to redefine seniority by insisting that Article 22.3 employees are in a totally separate classification from any part-time employees (even when full and part-time employees are both doing the same exact work).

While that may seem like a gross violation of the terms or our contract, it gets worse when you find out the company also claims the displaced employees have no right to bump. And how do they get away with that? Apparently, they do it by claiming that each day laid off is its own separate layoff. You see, in our supplement, most laid off workers with seniority have the right to bump after a specified number of layoff days. If the company is only laying off for a day each week, they will claim the count of days laid off is reset every week, even if their intent is to maintain a reduced work schedule for several weeks at a time.

Perhaps the company feels this is ample justification to deprive Union employees of some of their most basic rights, but it’s pretty clear the spirit of the contract doesn’t mean what they want it to mean.

The question now is, what are we going to do about it?

I say “we” because, aside from concepts we’ve already discussed in this post like seniority and bumping rights, there is an equally important concept we all need to embrace for our Union to be as effective as it needs to be:

SOLIDARITY

Solidarity is the one word answer to any misguided Union member who feels that violations committed against other Union members don’t affect them. It’s the one word retort to anyone who sees a Union brother or sister being violated and responds by saying, “It’s not my problem.” And it’s the only effective way to answer injustice that will otherwise spread to effect all of us.

And it will spread. What you mistakenly believe is someone else’s problem today will someday become your problem, too. And that day may come sooner than you expect. The only way to be ready for it is to stand by your fellow Union members.

Otherwise, it may turn out the way it did for people like Martin Niemoller (quoted at the top of this post), who mistakenly believed it wasn’t their problem when the Nazis went after other groups of people.

As I type these words, I know there are people in our Union who believe that what’s happening to others isn’t their problem. Because they don’t see themselves in the line of fire right now, they keep quiet — maybe because they don’t think the company’s sights will ever be turned on them, or maybe because they’re afraid that by standing up for others, the company will target them next. Whatever the case, if we don’t stand by our fellow Union members, who exactly do we expect will stand by us when it is our turn to be targeted?

Management depends on this kind of foolish indifference and apathy. They hope we’ll selfishly let them pick off our brothers and sisters so it will be even easier to target the rest of us in the future.

Think about it — before it’s too late.

Click here to find out who your representatives are. Then email or call them to let them know you will hold them accountable if they fail to stand up for real Americans — because however anyone feels about the idea of bailouts, the failure to take action will have a directly catastrophic effect on regular Americans.

• Joe the Autoworker.com
• stories labeled ‘UAW’ at Joe’s Union Review
• ‘Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker’ at The New Republic
• ‘Hands Off the UAW’ at The Nation

Even if you understand that $70 refers to more than just hourly wages, you might still have a completely false idea stuck in your head. The number being put out by those spreading the $70/hour lie refers to a strange formula based on total compensation figures.

The formula in question fails for one huge reason: the per hour cost for current union autoworkers is arrived at by adding benefit costs for retired union autoworkers as well. Using the same distorted math, someone could probably tell the same lie about UPS Teamsters. After all, our complete benefits package over the years is comparable in every way to what UAW members have been getting, and if you add in all UPS compensation/benefit costs (including hundreds of thousands of retirees) and only divide by the number of active employees, you’ll get a similarly huge distortion. So, if UAW members at GM, Ford and Chrysler are getting $70 an hour in total compensation, we probably aren’t far behind. But any Teamster working at UPS knows we don’t cost the company anywhere near that much.

If you’ve read this far, you should understand how utterly untrue the $70 per hour myth is. And if you understand that much, you might be wondering who would be starting such a misleading rumor.

Simply put, the rumor was started by people who exist to tear down unions and the gains unions have made on behalf of workers. And the path they’ve envisioned to tearing down unions goes right through Detroit, where they believe the failure (or restructuring) of the major American automakers will result in the collapse of the United Auto Workers union.

The rationale they like to offer is that, if the auto industry can vaporize the union, they can lower total compensation costs to more closely resemble those of foreign automakers employing workers in the U.S. (whose costs they estimate in the range of 40-50 dollars per hour). The problem with this rationale is that UAW members at the U.S.-owned auto plants are already closer to that compensation level than union bashers spreading these lies would have us believe. In fact, the most recent UAW contract with GM has drastically reduced GM’s liability for both retirees and active workers (a fact that has many in the UAW more than a little bothered), something the people behind the $70 per hour lie also fail to account for.

But the real danger is in allowing the anti-union dream scenario to become reality. If the union presence disappears or even decreases noticeably, all autoworkers, union or not, will see their compensation drop by a lot.

Remember when I mentioned that the anti-unionists want to erase “the gains unions have made on behalf of workers”? I didn’t say “union workers,” because I wasn’t just referring to union workers. I was referring to workers in any industry with a union presence.

Like the people at Fedex, who get just that much more in pay because UPS is unionized. Then there are the folks working for Toyota, Honda or the other foreign automakers with non-union plants in this country. You see, in both cases, non-union employers offer as much as they do because the unionized companies set a benchmark for industry compensation. Failing to offer compensation that appears close to the benchmark would make non-union plants easier targets for union organizing. And if the unions disappear, so does the benchmark — allowing non-union compensation to drift as low as management desires.

When unions are driven out of industries, those industries inevitably go minimum wage (think of meat processors, cutters and others in the meatpacking industry). And more minimum wage jobs are not what this economy needs.

But it’s probably just what the people telling the $70 an hour lie want.

Pay attention, because while it may be U.S. autoworkers under attack today, it will be others tomorrow. Someday, it will be UPS Teamsters getting smeared by some extravagant lie about how much more money they make compared to the average non-union worker. Don’t believe it? If you remember all the news reports from August, 1997, you know it’s already happened.

While Teamsters walked picket lines at UPS, there were voices on the news telling the American public that UPS workers make too much, have benefits that are too good, and so on. As UPS Teamsters know, we don’t receive exorbitant salaries or benefit packages, but that was the lie the anti-unionists were pushing.

Thankfully, the lie failed then. It failed because the union and others who were sympathetic to the workers’ cause beat it back. It will only fail again if the UAW and all the sympathetic voices they can find stand up and let people know it’s just another lie.

We need to join that sympathetic chorus and keep this lie from gathering steam. We can let our friends, family and government representatives know it’s a lie. We can make calls, send emails and letters to Congress. Tell them not to put automakers in a position to steal back hard-won rights from UAW members, or to eliminate the benchmark they’ve won for non-union autoworkers.

Again, it’s about solidarity. And again, it’s going to take an effort from everyone who understands what’s really at stake. You can start sending a message to your governmental representatives by clicking here.

Related links:

• Joe the Autoworker.com
• stories labeled ‘UAW’ at Joe’s Union Review
• ‘Debunking the myth of the $70-per-hour autoworker’ at The New Republic
• ‘Hands Off the UAW’ at The Nation

Incidentally, the Liberty Bell is where two Philadelphia area congressmen, Chaka Fattah and Patrick Murphy (my congressman), rallied with Wackenhut workers and SEIU organizers to launch the Wackenhut Workers Organizing Committee.

Read the story from the Philadelphia Daily News here.

Learn more about what’s going on with the organizing effort at the SEIU’s Eye on Wackenhut website.

And they’re running ads trying to convince unsuspecting Americans that collective bargaining should be as unattainable as possible. And why not? After all, millions of American workers wouldn’t want to be able to enjoy the healthcare and economic security we as Union members enjoy, would they?

But seriously, CDW is merely a front group for business interests that know it will be just that much harder to exploit American workers in a world where they have a right to the benefits of legislation like the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act). That’s why they’re lobbying not just the government, but also the unsuspecting public to stop the EFCA from passing.

Don’t be taken by the lie.

The EFCA guarantees American workers the right to choose the benefits of Union representation simply by having a majority of workers choose. No drawn out, expensive elections. No corporate threats or coercion. Just the right of the majority of workers to choose what they want.

Now that you know it’s a lie, let other people (especially those who don’t have good Union jobs) know why the EFCA is vital to the economic survival of everyday people.

In addition to being aware of this propaganda and telling everyone else who needs to know, please consider supporting a candidate for President who will support the rights of working people to make a real living, namely by supporting passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. And continue to let your Congressional representatives know you support the EFCA, too.

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