Labor movement gives all of society a lift

By James Haslam

When we celebrate Labor Day, we celebrate the contributions of the hard-working families who get up every day to make society run. Postal workers deliver our mail, iron workers construct our buildings, firefighters and health care workers save our lives, educators teach our children, retail clerks pour our coffee with a smile, and countless other people spend most of their waking lives collectively making society happen.

Labor Day is also a time to celebrate victories won by the labor movement: the weekend, the eight-hour workday, employer-funded health care, a more humane workplace, and Social Security. As these gains erode, the need for a new labor movement based in our communities, workplaces, and homes is increasingly important.

Too many of us work in unhealthy and demeaning jobs and receive too little in return. At work, we leave our constitutional rights at the door. The values we cherish most as Vermonters — freedoms of speech and assembly, a fair trial — apply at work only when we organize and win as workers. Unions are not only important for those workers who negotiate a contract with their employer. When nurses at Fletcher Allen Health Care organized a union and bargain wage increases, their peers at other hospitals often get big raises as a result.

But it's more than that. The corporate system has its own vision for society. It thrives when we are insecure, disposable, interchangeable, caught up in a war of all against all. Native Vermonter and union activist Pattie Russell knows this all too well. In her 18 years of working at Burlington's Specialty Filaments plant, Russell's neck was injured by a steel pipe, and she was also forced to undergo shoulder surgery from repetitive motions. For her hard work and dedication, Russell was offered a mere two weeks of severance pay when a venture capital firm decided to close her plant, eliminating more than 100 good jobs. Russell and her union joined with the Vermont Workers' Center to wage a campaign to fight back and win a fair severance.

Many unionized manufacturing jobs are leaving Vermont — affecting 8,000 families in the past four years alone — and are mostly being replaced with low-wage, mostly non-union service and retail jobs.

A strong labor movement is essential to the health of a society. The labor movement has its own vision for a society based on solidarity, civil rights, healthy families, and sustainable communities. A strong labor movement also looks beyond its own self-interest, to the rights of workers throughout the world. This is why the national AFL-CIO voted unanimously to bring the troops home as quickly as possible from Iraq at their July convention, and why the Vermont Workers Center opposed the Iraq War before it began. We support our Iraqi counterparts who are organizing unions to improve their communities and risk their lives to democratize the new Iraq.

This past year in Vermont, we saw how the labor movement can be dedicated to broader social uplift. The Vermont AFL-CIO, Vermont-NEA, and Vermont State Employees Association joined others to help lead the fight for health care as a basic right and for a publicly financed universal health care system. The Fletcher Allen nurses and other health care unions are working together on a special campaign to create safe staffing laws to improve conditions for patients and nurses at health care facilities throughout Vermont.

This Labor Day, let's honor the fact that there are people in Vermont and around this country in the labor movement dedicated to fighting for the rights of all working families.

The stakes are high, and we all need to get involved. So we're asking you not only to join us to celebrate Labor Day, but to help us create the improved society that we all deserve.

James Haslam is the director of the Vermont Workers' Center/Jobs With Justice

Why Montpelier's downtown union drive ended

By James Haslam - Published: July 15, 2005
Montpelier Times-Argus

For several years, there was a steady flow of calls to the Workers' Center's Workers Rights Hotline from workers in downtown Montpelier. All kinds of workers in all kinds of workplaces had complaints and questions about being treated unfairly at work. Unfortunately, as many people know from firsthand experience, it's often difficult or impossible for one individual worker to solve problems on the job. Workers have very few individual rights, under our labor laws.

In June of 2003 the Vermont Workers' Center – Jobs With Justice began partnering with United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) to pioneer an innovative response. Jointly we committed ourselves to help workers in Montpelier learn about collective action and organize a citywide union. Immediately there was a lot of interest amongst workers, people working in shops, markets, theaters, restaurants, and bars. And now — after almost two years of struggle — this month the UE and Workers' Center decided to end the Downtown Union campaign.

The high turnover in this low-wage industry, combined with the retaliation against some high-profile leaders of the union, has made it difficult to recruit enough active leadership. Looking back, the Downtown Union experienced lots of challenges, but also unexpected success.

Every day, the Workers' Rights Hotline receives calls from workers all over Vermont who have experienced unfair treatment on the job. Favoritism, discrimination and disrespect, and unjust firing are all common in Vermont's workplaces, and all are perfectly legal. The law protects workers against discrimination based on race, gender, and a handful of other protected categories – though the legal process is slow, and discrimination often difficult to prove – but for the most part, the only way for American workers to have enforceable rights on the job is through a union contract.

For workers in small retail and service establishments, organizing one small shop at a time is simply not possible under current American labor law. Furthermore, some issues, such as the lack of livable wages and healthcare, can only be addressed on an industry-wide basis, or require political solutions to protect small businesses from the predatory practices of big-box stores. This is why Montpelier downtown workers sought to organize a city-wide union. As they started gathering together they realized there were issues they would like to address. The idea of a Downtown Workers in Montpelier gradually took hold. Often expressed as: "If business owners have their employer association, doesn't it make sense to have ours?"

Many downtown employers were not as thrilled about the possibility of downtown workers having their own organization. When the conflicts that happen every day in some workplaces were brought out into the open, the union was sometimes accused of causing polarization. In fact, the union was often just bringing these long-standing problems out of the closet and into the light of day. But this process does involve conflict, and sometimes it made some residents of Montpelier uncomfortable. A memorable example is that of the conflict with the Bashara Corporation, which operates J. Morgan's Steakhouse. After the majority of workers at the steakhouse signed up for the union in a span of a few weeks, the Bashara Corporation responded in a Wal Mart-style illegal union-busting campaign. Nearly 30 charges of Unfair Labor Practices against pro-union employees were filed against the Bashara Corporation. These included charges of people being fired and having hours cut. The National Labor Relations Board investigated, a settlement was reached and workers received back pay. But the intimidation had worked. The workers who had previously signed-up for the union became scared of losing their jobs. Bashara Corporation was allowed to undermine their workers union despite the overwhelming support the workers received from the community. Unfortunately this was another sad example of the failure of labor law in this country.

The Montpelier Downtown Workers Union did not succeed in its ambitious goal of establishing basic standards for working conditions in downtown Montpelier, let alone being able to enforce them through a union contract, but there also was success. There were workers who initially opposed the idea of the union, but then experienced unfair treatment themselves and seeking the help of the union stewards. Some of these folks themselves became vocal union supporters. The union assisted workers throughout downtown Montpelier, from both small stores and corporate employers, in resolving numerous problems, ranging from discriminatory application of store rules to receiving back wages or settlement checks as a result of wrongful firings and sexual harassment.

But perhaps the single greatest accomplishment was bringing attention to the rights of people working in this industry. As one union activist put it in an interview last summer, "We're not invisible any longer. That's a victory." Since this campaign started, some workers have told us that their employers have been on their best behavior. The concept of organizing in an industry which is not a traditional place for people to have unions has been raised.

Many union organizing campaigns take a few rounds to succeed. The Fletcher Allen Health Care Registered Nurses voted against the union twice, and a few years later reconsidered and voted in a union by a 2-to-1 margin. The faculty at UVM had three union elections over a 20 year period before they succeeded in establishing their union.

In many ways the energy of the campaign is continuing in new forms. Workers at Vermont Center of Independent Living who joined are now becoming associate members of UE Local 221, which represents workers who work for non-profit organization across the state. Some former Downtown Union members and others are attempting to start a union chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as something different and separate from the UE and Vermont Workers' Center.

At the Vermont Workers' Center we have learned a great deal from supporting the efforts of the Downtown Union campaign and are committed to continuing the campaign for workers' rights. Whatever form that campaign takes, we will be there to support workers who are organizing for good jobs at livable wages, decent healthcare, and dignity and respect on the job.

James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers' Center – Jobs With Justice. More information available at www.workerscenter.org. The Vermont Workers' Rights Hotline is 802-229-0009.

Taking a trip to nowhere

Brian McGrory
Boston Globe
July 5, 2005

Their journey should have ended far better than it did.

Last week, a group of Vermont bristle factory workers who are being dismissed from their jobs with a mere two weeks severance pay decided to come to Boston and make their plea to executives from the private capital firm that is shuttering their plant.

They wanted to ask for more severance pay, given that some of them have worked for Specialty Filaments for more than 30 years. And they wanted to ask about the status of their pensions, because the management hasn't provided any information about them in the last several years.

I had high hopes. I thought maybe Robert C. Ammerman, the founder and managing partner of Capital Resource Partners, would invite the factory workers up to the office for bagels and juice.

They'd sit around a table and Ammerman would ask each of the workers about their jobs, their families, their long history with the century-old company. They'd talk about their pride in seeing an Oral-B toothbrush with bristles that they helped make. They'd mention the injuries they suffered in the plant over the years. They'd describe how this plant was the only job some of them had ever known.

And in the end, Ammerman would announce that they could forget about their severance pay. They could forget about it because he would keep the plant open so the 100 proud workers could continue doing what they've always done so well. Everyone would hug and applaud.

Yeah, right. As the Hertz ads say, "Not exactly."

Oh, the Specialty Filaments factory workers journeyed to Boston all right. They journeyed here, about eight in all, in a three-car caravan 3 1/2 hours through lush Vermont valleys and over verdant hills. And when they arrived at Capital Resource Partners on Merrimac Street, they were met with a locked door.

It didn't seem to bother them. Jim Lamore, a worker for 34 years, carried a fishing rod, saying he was "hoping to land the big one." Patricia Russell -- think Carla on "Cheers," only sassier -- brought along the X-rays of the plates and screws in her neck because of work injuries. Others carried signs that read, "CRP has the goldmine and we got the shaft."

Eventually, they talked their way into the lobby, then onto the elevator, and into CRP's offices on the second floor. Impressive offices, too, with soaring ceilings and a backlit stained glass collage of Boston sports teams, and a pair of chairs from the old Boston Garden.

But before the Vermonters took two steps, a building manager who refused to give his name cut them off and said CRP was closed. Closed? It was early Thursday afternoon. Phones were ringing. People could be seen and heard in their offices. Guys, they're factory workers, not morons.

After the group was escorted to the sidewalk, Chuck Hall, a plant worker for 19 years, grabbed the megaphone and led a chant of "How do you spell greed? CRP."

A few passing cars honked. The blinds rustled in one CRP office upstairs. A smattering of onlookers gathered across the street. And that was pretty much that.

I left messages for Robert C. Ammerman and Alexander "Sandy" McGrath, both managing partners of Capital Resource Partners, but they didn't call me back. When I called CRP's chief operating officer, Jeffrey W. Potter, the man who answered the phone said he wasn't there.

OK, so Robert C. Ammerman, Alexander "Sandy" McGrath, and Jeffrey W. Potter aren't going to answer the questions of lowly employees and reporters. Perhaps the Massachusetts or Vermont attorney general will make an inquiry about the pension fund and leave them no choice but to respond.

Meantime, if you see any of these clowns from Capital Resource Partners around, you might want to ask why they'll only give two weeks pay to men and women who poured their lives into a factory, and why they wouldn't even give those workers two minutes of their time. I'll keep you posted on how this plays out.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His email is mcgrory@globe.com

Action to Defend Immigrant Workers in Bennington

By Eesha Williams | Special to the Vermont Guardian

BENNINGTON — Three Latino men at a gathering of about 40 supporters in Bennington Thursday said a Pennsylvania-based construction company had refused to pay them for weeks of work. Only one of the men spoke English. They said they and at least 10 of their co-workers on the site where a new Hampton Inn Hotel is being erected were owed thousands of dollars in wages from work performed more than a month ago.

"We don’t even have money to buy food," said Jose Villanueva, one of the workers. "We came here all the way from California because they said they would pay us $15 an hour."

A Montpelier-based labor union, Ironworkers Local 474, last week hired a lawyer to sue the workers’ employer on their behalf, even though the men are not union members, said union spokesman Patrick Long. "An injury to one is an injury to all," Long said. "I don’t care if these men are legal or illegal immigrants, union members or not union members. They were wronged and so we’re helping them."

Both workers told the Guardian they do have proper documentation that allows them to work in the United States.

Full article available at the Vermont Guardian website (requires paid subscription)

Iraqi labor leader visits Vermont, calls for troop withdrawal

From the Montpelier Times-Argus:

Published: June 19, 2005

Adnan Rashed spent years in exile when labor unions were outlawed in his native Iraq. The 56-year-old was a prime mover in the Workers' Democratic Trade Union Movement, which was a giant thorn in the side of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Rashed returned home shortly after the end of Hussein's brutal regime — which murdered thousands of workers — and promptly got to work organizing fellow laborers. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, on whose executive council he sits, is now 200,000 strong, with workers from all walks of Iraqi life.

It's an impressive accomplishment in an occupied country brutalized first by a madman dictator and now, for three years, by the ravages of war. Organizing labor in a country where 70 percent of the workforce is unemployed, and in which unions had been outlawed for nearly three decades, is a daunting task.

Rashed was in the United States last week to talk about what he and fellow workers face in Iraq.

But, more importantly, his planned visit to Vermont — he was expected to attend a potluck supper in Montpelier on Saturday night — should give us pause about the state of labor worldwide and about the delicate thread by which most of the world's workers hang onto a sustainable livelihood.

"The state of labor has only gotten worse," said Dawn Stanger, vice president of the Vermont Workers' Center, a member of the Teamsters union and a 16-year employee of United Parcel Service. "Someone else has used the line, 'trade unions are the canary in the coal mines.'"

And the canary is dying. In Iraq, the signs are obvious and not wholly unexpected.

According to Vermont Labor Against the War — the workers' center is part of the group — the war and occupation have brought on "the illegalization of their unions, the imminent threat of the privatization of most of the public sector by foreign corporations and a 70 percent unemployment rate."

The signs are obvious here, too. Union membership is at an all-time low in this country, driven in part by hard-line bargaining by multinational corporations who routinely decide that workers are expendable "assets."

Promised pensions are being yanked, wages are stagnant and government is increasingly hostile to workers.

A perfect example of that right here in Vermont is the recent fight over the elimination of an early retirement program that had been a part of the benefits package promised to full-time faculty at the Vermont State Colleges.

In addition to losing a retirement option — a disturbing and far-too-common trend in American businesses — the professors bore the brunt of name-calling by Gov. James Douglas.

He suggested that professors were receiving a too-generous benefit that was no longer affordable. He called them "big labor" and "special interests." And he excoriated their political benefactors for having the temerity to stand up to the eradication of worker security.

On a national level, the current political leadership is indifferent to labor most of the time, and, when it comes to issues such as wages, benefits and trade, it is downright hostile.

In Iraq, Rashed and his fellow workers are living under the shadow of Washington-forced economic and political policies that are not bringing stability or security to vast swaths of people.

To Stanger, Rashed should not be fighting against the interests of America and its multi-billion dollar corporations. She said, unions should be exploited for what they are best at fostering: a democratic lifting of their members' economic boats.

"I think we've given the troops in Iraq an impossible mission," Stanger said. "You can't push democracy, it has to rise from within. Trade unions are an effective way of doing that."

I think the reverse also is true. In America, ignoring the plight of workers can only serve to weaken our own democracy.

Darren Allen writes weekly about Vermont issues, people and events. You can reach him at darren.allen@timesargus.com.

From the Burlington Free Press:

Adam Silverman
Burlington Free Press
June 20, 2005

U.S. assistance has helped Iraq build a democracy, but troops should leave now so a truly free, self-governing Iraq can emerge, Iraqi union leader Adnan A. Rashed told a crowd Sunday in Burlington.

Speaking through interpreter Maher Elhashami, the 56-year-old Rashed was the featured guest at a rally following an anti-war march along Church Street to City Hall Park. About 70 people marched, chanted and listened to Rashed, an executive officer with the Union of Mechanics, Printing and Metals Workers.

"Our job right now is to right the equation in Iraq," Rashed said. "We demand for our freedom and sovereignty as Iraqis."

Rashed is one of six leaders of Iraq's emerging trade-union movement who are spending two weeks touring the United States, a visit coordinated by U.S. Labor Against the War. Vermont labor groups organized two local stops, one Saturday in Montpelier and the other Sunday in Burlington.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein outlawed unions in the 1970s, a move that forced labor organizers into exile or underground, according to U.S. Labor Against the War. Rashed spent 2 years in hiding in Iraq, and another 2 years in exile in Syria, he said. Hundreds or thousands of fellow labor activists were killed, he said.

After U.S. forces toppled Saddam's regime in 2003, trade unions regrouped and exiled leaders, including Rashed, returned. He lives in Baghdad, he said, where he works as part of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.

Sunday's event started at noon outside the Unitarian Universalist church at the top of Church Street. The crowd began marching toward City Hall.

"No justice! No peace! U.S. out of the Middle East!" people chanted.

Curious Church Street shoppers and diners looked on as the group, including Rashed, marched past. One man carrying an obscenity-laced sign referring to President George W. Bush drew applause and disgusted rebukes from onlookers.

Mayor Peter Clavelle greeted the marchers at City Hall Park and welcomed Rashed. Two city police officers watched the proceedings.

Rashed said that truly representative government and fair labor practices in Iraq can occur only after the U.S. military leaves. The United States has helped democratic government emerge in a country once ruled by Saddam's "most horrible regime," Rashed said.

"Your support is very important so as to help us be a free country," he said.

Vermont union leaders also spoke, voicing their opposition to the U.S.-led war. Labor leader Ellen David Friedman said the anti-war viewpoint is shared by a majority of Americans. Jonathan Kissam, secretary and treasurer of the United Electrical Workers of America Local 221, said U.S. unions are in solidarity with their Iraqi counterparts. That support, Kissam said, is necessary because of an expanding corporate culture.

"We are facing enemies with a global vision of privatization and endless war," he said.

Rashed praised the relationship between Iraqis and Americans.

"We will stay friends," he said, "no matter how many tanks in Iraq and how many people get killed."

Adam Silverman is a Burlington Free Press staff writer. Contact him at 660-1854 or asilverm@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

Speech for Iraqi Trade Union Tour (Jonathan Kissam)

By Jonathan Kissam

We are living in an era when the United States government, both at home and abroad, has committed itself to defending the fortunes of a very small group of people. The result of this is exorbitant military funding and the substitution of military force for peaceful diplomacy. The result of this is ruthless budget-cutting of public services -- schools, health care, and, ironically and appallingly, services for veterans. And the result of this is that well-established public institutions and essential government services -- like Social Security -- are not seen by our government as a common treasury for all, but as potential profit centers for their corporate cronies.

When public services are privatized, the most common way for the privatizers to make money is to fire all of the public employees who used to do those jobs, often at decent wages and benefit levels, and replace them with low-wage, no-benefit, often part-time or temporary jobs. They pocket the savings in payroll, while our communities suffer the loss of decent jobs. Furthermore, privatization, with its motive for profits, compromises essential government services. Privateers forced to choose between quality services or higher profits invariably take the money and run, leaving the public with the worst of all worlds: poorer services at higher costs. And privatization cuts at the very heart of democracy itself. Public services are created through the democratic process; they are the collective decisions we make about how to meet our own needs as a society. When they are turned over to unaccountable private corporations, we give up control, we give up the very "rule of the people" which is what democracy means.

Privatization can be beat, as when school district workers in Barre, with the assistance of the Vermont Workers' Center and other community activists, turned back a privatization plan almost ten years ago, or when service and maintenance workers at UVM, members of UE Local 267, worked with students to fight off a plan to privatize the shuttle services. It requires struggle, but this should be no surprise. Our standard of living, our rights of free speech and assembly, our civil rights, our democracy itself are not gifts from benevolent governments and corporations, they were won through struggle.

This is why we are in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Iraqi trade union movement, because, just as working people and the labor movement have been an essential part of making our own country live up to its democratic ideals, the Iraqi trade unions are the best hope for a democratic and peaceful Iraq. But more than that -- we must stand in solidarity with our trade union sisters and brothers in Iraq, and everywhere in the world, because we are facing enemies with a global vision of privatization and endless war. Only with global solidarity can we have a democratic and peaceful world.

Jonathan Kissam is Secretary-Treasurer of UE Local 221 and a member of the Vermont Workers' Center Coordinating Committee

Speech at Iraqi Trade Union Tour (Dawn Stanger)

By Dawn Stanger

I'm Dawn Stanger. I'm a Teamster who works up at United Parcel Service in Williston. I'm also vice president of the Vermont Workers' Center. My fellow activists and I hope you will join our struggle, and there are sign up sheets on our table. The Workers' Center and affiliated unions and community groups joined the national group US Labor Against the War-USLAW, in 2003 and the Vermont State AFL joined us, creating Vermont LAW and we organized this leg of the tour. Without financial help from the Champlain Valley Labor Council, it was impossible, so a tip of the hat to them. USLAW has more than 4 million union members who opposed attacking Iraq, and we wanted you to hear from these union leaders. There are officials touring the Midwest and the West too, 25 cities in all, and it's cost big, so we'll be looking for some help. Burlington has spent 16.3 million dollars already "freeing" Iraq, but donations today will be better directed toward democracy. There are USLAW donor cards circulating and we hope you'll be kind enough to chip in to help us cover costs and help the Iraqis.

Sure I know, most of you turned out here to hear Adnan Rashed talk, and Vermont union folks are a bit of a distraction from the "real" story. We're proud in USLAW that Iraqi unionists will even talk to us after we devastated their country. We want to share information, tactics and money to help them attain democracy from within. And we know they can help us confront some problems here. Vermont's trade unionists are speaking today because the "real" story has been ignored for far too long. Workers are under siege worldwide, not just unionized workers like me who are down to 8% in the U.S. private sector, and public workers like Marty who make up the other 4%, but all workers. Corporate greed is driving U.S. foreign and domestic policy. I'll read you the USLAW Mission Statement because it lays it out well:

"We're living in an era in which the government has manipulated our nation's fear of terrorism to launch wars, destroy our economic security, undermine government services, erode our democratic rights and intensify divisions among working people…Under the mantle of National Security, the present Administration seeks to reverse decades of victories won by working people to regulate corporate conduct, protect the environment, strengthen the rights of workers, defend civil liberties, end racism, sexism and discrimination, and provide an adequate social safety net. But democracy as we know it is under threat. The USA Patriot Act threatens our fundamental rights under the Constitution. This crisis is aggravated by the government's policies of military intervention abroad and attacks on working peoples' rights at home. Only corporations and the wealthy have benefited. Our nation faces a domestic calamity - unemployment, declining wages and benefits, de-unionization of the workforce, privatization and reduction of public services, crumbling health care and educational systems, underdeveloped communities, cuts in veterans benefits, escalating public debt and decreased economic, social and personal security…We cannot solve these economic and social problems without addressing U.S. foreign policy and its consequences. The foreign policy of the Bush Administration, with the consent of Congress, is based on military aggression and the threat of force. It has weakened, rather than strengthened security in the U.S., creating enemies around the world and alienating friends. This policy has done immense harm to innocent civilians abroad and to our friends and family members in the military. The policy of Permanent War has been based on lies and false promises to the American people and lucrative contracts to large corporations. This is coupled with a strategy of unbridled economic globalization with so -called 'Free Trade' Agreements aimed at exploiting workers, controlling natural resources and destroying jobs and communities. War has become a strategy for advancing the interests of US corporations in international markets."

USLAW pretty much sums it up. Union activists are particularly well placed to frame this mess. We were the first targets in the corporate shooting gallery. Corporations had to crush unions. Unions help workers keep up standards their grandparents fought for in the labor movement; 40 hour a week jobs, pensions, weekends, social security, public schools, health insurance, and wages high enough so only one wage earner was necessary per family. But those standards are pretty much gone. The attacks have been relentless. Unions are the canaries in the coalmine of democracies. And it has become almost impossible to organize unions here in "supposedly" the greatest democracy in the world. When the Vermont AFL joined USLAW in September of '04, their resolution called on the governor to release from duty and return to Vermont all our Guard personnel. In DC, John Sweeney invited the Iraqis to attend their convention in July. And we're working to get the national AFL-CIO to call for the end of the occupation. But we know the fix isn't in Iraq. We gotta get the corporations out of our government.

They're wrecking everything. Look all around in the news. Look at Enron, Social Security- look at United's pensions. This is how we're treated? Corporations contract by law to pay for certain things, in lieu of wages, and then won't comply. And taxpayers are forced to bail them out. Have you seen the movie, The Corporation? It's called "externalizing" costs. The "real" story is that corporations run the world. Working families need to become just as "ruthless" and just as global in our support for each other. Working class solidarity must reach beyond borders and the distractions of corporate politicians and misguided union leaders.

To Vermont labor activists, it is only natural that Iraqis call for the profits from their oil to be devoted to Iraqis. We're glad to hear that Iraqi workers chased Kellogg, Brown, and Root from the oil fields and defeated lower wages. We're psyched to hear that port workers expelled Mersk shipping company and ejected Stevedoring Associates from Um Qsar. Labor victories are rare for us here. Worldwide, people catch on faster because things are worse. We're heartened by the recent EU votes, the rebellion in Bolivia, where Bush has referred to the workers and farmers as "terrorists", and the rejection of 'free trade' by workers in Central and South America. We're proud of Specialty Filaments' workers in Burlington who refuse to go quietly while their company tramples them. The task ahead is huge though, and we need everyone engaged. When I hear neighbors dissing teacher's benefits, saying how they should be less because taxpayers don't get healthcare, I think, oh my god, the working class here is so far from where it needs to be.

Bush just gave big tax cuts to the rich and corporations. In 1945, corporations paid 1/3 of all taxes collected. By 2003, their share was 7%. 3/5ths of corporations paid no taxes at all between '96 and 2000. Given huge tax cuts, they free-traded our manufacturing away. Huge tax cuts to the rich and our president proposed 5.3 billion in cuts for veteran's medical services by 2010. Huge tax cuts, while productivity increased, but real wages dropped, and families only kept up by working ridiculous hours. Every Vermont tax dollar: 30 cents goes to defense spending. 19 cents goes to paying old military debt and 3 cents goes to veterans' benefits, an expense no citizen begrudges. But that's before Iraq's costs are tallied. 205 billion has been spent, so far. And that means less public service for every worker who falls through the cracks.

And what is the state of Vermont's democracy? Union folks here are just sick about the occupation and our friends, relatives and coworkers suffering. Many people don't want to question the military at all. Some are uncomfortable talking about it as if, for their kid's sake, they just want to cross their fingers and parrot Bush's rhetoric about freedom. Their kids in Iraq are confident they can "win" democracy, and they're afraid to "undermine" that. But we desperately need to talk about all this because we have given their kids an impossible mission. Democracy has to rise from within. No democracy has ever been created under occupation. And union activists know that the last thing Bush's cronies want anywhere is democracy. The Iraqis would immediately boot us out, our 17 military bases and all our damned corporations too. Sure Iraqis want investment, but no Iraqi citizen agreed to wholesale looting. Iraqis need the right to organize to fight corporate vultures. The U.S. should enable democracy, help these secular, progressive organizations, but we aren't. If fact, we kept Saddam's anti-union law specifically to keep a thumb on Iraqi labor. See, despite Bush's vow to promote freedom and democracy, U.S. arms sales policy tells us the real truth. Most major recipients of our arms sales in the developing world are undemocratic, as defined by our own State Department. And U.S. supplied weaponry is present in a majority of the world's active conflicts. Does this benefit us? No, it makes more danger. But it does benefit corporations.
And our democracy is being squashed. 52 Vermont towns voted to have the legislature study our National Guard's involvement. We petitioned because it's logical to contact your representatives if you care for your soldiers and your country's moral ideals, and sense both going down the wrong road. Our legislators were blackmailed, you might say; the military insinuated they could take away our air base in Colchester, and our citizen legislators caved and tabled the discussion. And it's desperately needed. This was not a defensive war. The guard are defenders. Vermont's working class soldiers signed up to protect fellow citizens, not corporations. These kids are deployed in areas of Iraq where there's depleted uranium. DC Democrats are wisely talking about mandating testing for returning troops, but under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency, that same EPA that allowed all our union brothers and sisters in NYC to go back to work before the air was fit to breathe, so they could get Wall Street up and running. And now 11 of Vermont's sons have been buried. 53 others carry scars. Workers, soldiers, and our ideals must not be sacrificed for corporate profits.

We need to examine our own democracy, right away. And we have to help Iraqis achieve democracy, but from afar. We should assume Saddam's debt. He was our guy. Resources should be redirected from the military to things workers really need, while providing adjustment assistance for those displaced. In the end, the best way to support our troops is to make sure they don't fight wars that shouldn't be fought, wars for oil and empire, wars that don't serve working class interests here or elsewhere. We must repudiate bullying foreign policies, comply with international law, dismantle our worldwide military bases, and renounce offensive wars. Otherwise we will only send more loved ones to die for no good reason in a world made more dangerous by the arrogance of our government. We want our troops home now.

Dawn Stanger is a Teamster and Vice-President of the Vermont Workers' Center

Brushed off in Vermont

Brian McGrory
Boston Globe
June 17, 2005

If you ever wonder how it is that big business has earned such a bad name these days, look no further than a Boston-based venture capital company by the name of Capital Resource Partners.

First, CRP, as it's often known, decided to shutter a Vermont manufacturing plant it has owned for a few years that has been in operation since the 19th century. The plant, part of Specialty Filaments Inc., makes bristles for hairbrushes, brooms, and Oral-B toothbrushes. If there's anything more American than a northern New England bristle-making factory, I haven't seen it.

CRP summoned the plant's hundred or so workers to a downtown Burlington hotel last month and hired some outsourced human resources types to give them the cheery news. Police stood at the edges of the room. The announcement lasted less than five minutes. The officials left without taking questions.

Good going, guys. Good going.
But maybe, just maybe, you can chalk that up to overseas competition, maybe a change in oral hygiene habits. Possibly people are suddenly sweeping less since CRP bought the company.

But that's not the bad part.

No, the bad part is what happened a few days later. A few days later, Capital Resource Partners told the plant workers that they would each get two weeks' severance, regardless of their tenure at the plant. The worker who had labored at the plant for 20 years would get two weeks' worth. Thirty-year veterans, two weeks. Forty-year veterans, well, you get the picture.

And that's not all. According to the union, Capital Resource Partners told the workers that they could not guarantee that severance would even be paid. On top of that, if a worker found a new job within that two weeks, they forfeited their severance pay.

You read that right: Men and women making maybe $15 an hour who had dedicated their working lives to a bristle manufacturing company might have to give their paltry severance back to the multimillionaire Bostonians who are shutting down their plant. Hold on: I've got Charles Dickens calling on Line 1.

Actually, it was James Lamore on the phone. He's 57 years old. He's worked at the plant for 34 years. He remembers the days that don't seem so long ago when it was the number one bristle manufacturing operation in the world. And now he gets two weeks severance maybe.

"We are devastated, let me tell you," he said.

Of special concern is his pension. He and a couple of dozen other longtimers had a pension under the plant's old owners, the EB & AC Whiting Co., but no one under the new regime will tell them where the money is, or if it still exists.

I gave Capital Resource Partners a call. The kind receptionist referred me to the chief operating officer, Jeffrey W. Potter, who didn't call me back. I called him again and again; no call back.

Maybe Jeffrey W. Potter was busy looking for the factory workers' pension, so I sent an e-mail to Robert C. Ammerman, the CRP founder and managing partner. He did not reply. I called his house in Beverly Farms last night. No response.

I won't take it personally. US Representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont told me yesterday that he's called Robert C. Ammerman three times in the last month, and Ammerman has not called back. He's probably so worried about these employees that he can barely talk about them. Right.

"When people work for 15, 20, 25 years, you have to treat them with a little bit of dignity," Sanders said. "Giving them $1,500 and telling them to have a good life doesn't do it."

Admittedly, for all I know, Robert C. Ammerman and Jeffrey W. Potter of Capital Resource Partners in downtown Boston might be the most philanthropic guys in town. They might be great businessmen. They might be kind to kids and dogs. But they've caused a whole lot of pain for a whole lot of hard-working people who deserved a whole lot better than what they got. And for that, they should be truly ashamed.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His email is mcgrory@globe.com

Speech at Anti-War, Anti-Budget-Cuts Rally

By Dawn Stanger

Hello. I'm Dawn Stanger and I'm a Teamster. I work up at UPS in Williston. And I'm here representing folks from the Vermont Workers Center, and U.S. Labor Against the War - USLAW. The Workers' Center is a coalition of trade unions, community groups, and individual workers pushing for economic justice. We are also Vermont's only Jobs with Justice chapter. In January '03 the Workers' Center affiliated with USLAW, the union group opposed to attacking Iraq, and in September '04, I'm proud to say that Vermont's AFL-CIO joined millions of union workers across the U.S. in opposing the occupation. Over the last two years, major national unions and state labor federations have demanded the troops home now.

So USLAW has built ties with Iraqi trade unionists and some will tour the U.S. soon. Hopefully they'll visit Vermont. Their labor movement has a proud history, including resistance to British occupation with strikes suppressed at gunpoint. Unions were outlawed then, and then again by the Baathists after a general strike in '68. And Saddam executed union activists. Since Saddam's overthrow, the Iraqis worked quickly, organizing unions in 12 industries. They organized a union of the unemployed, 150,000 strong, and marched and demonstrated for survival payments. They held a 45-day sit-in across from American headquarters. In Basra, Iraqis stopped working 2 days after British troops arrived, demanding the right to organize. Refinery workers struck demanding better wages. Leather factory workers stormed out of work and marched to the Labor Ministry. Though they've been imprisoned by the U.S, and tortured and killed by the resistance, Iraq's union folks are the single most important force fighting for a democratic, multi-ethnic Iraq. In recent coverage of the Pope's death, we saw how he helped Labor in Poland leading to the overthrow of a repressive government. Unions help create and maintain democracy. We condemn all attacks on Iraq's trade unionists.

When WTO protestors like me look at the U.S. plan for Iraq, we see the same old free trade. There's the privatization of public services, ownership rights for foreign firms, repatriation of profits, a 15% flat tax, opening banks to foreign control, structural adjustment programs, and national treatment for corporations. Trade barriers have been eliminated. Iraq will join the WTO and sign MEFTA , the Middle East Free Trade Area announced last May. But Saddam's law that barred union membership and representation - that was not changed. War makes privatization easy. First you destroy society. Then you let corporations rebuild it. And we're busy building and maintaining 14 military bases in Iraq with your hard-earned tax dollars.
On the home front, thousands of workers were de-unionized in creating the Department of Homeland Security; the Bush administration felt their unions a security threat. Now our president proposes new rules called the "National Security Personnel System" that would tear up union contracts and eliminate protections our federal workers have against political pressures. Whistle-blowers and critics could simply be transferred away. When the shipping firms locked out the Longshore Workers, the Attorney General declared commercial shipping a matter of national security, and got an injunction so the President could send troops to work the docks. Yet today, cargo containers are still uninspected. Three Republican governors have now negated their state workers' right to bargain and 9 million dollars of the first 87 million for Iraq was used to arm police in Miami against free trade protestors, union folks, while U.S. chemical plants are still unsecured. Our nuclear plants are vulnerable. You just gotta ask "Who's really being protected?"

Corporations squash our collective interests. Watching the fake Social Security crisis, it occurred to me that privatization and deregulation are most often not done at gunpoint. Here, after trumpeting decades how government is bloated and wasteful and how privatization and de-regulation work, corporate politicians have convinced many Americans that government programs are bad. This way Wall Street can sneak in and rob us of the safety net that our grandparents in the labor movement struggled years to build after economic downturns forced families to the breadlines. Workers' Center folks are increasingly alarmed about our nation's priorities. We live in a country where the top 1% has more income each year than the bottom 100 million people combined.

Look at the bankruptcy bill if you want a nutshell of our system. The credit companies made 30 billion last year, charging people outrageous interest rates to compensate for their risk. And 90% of bankruptcies were caused by lost jobs, death in the family, divorce, or medical bills. But no longer will a judge be allowed to look at your case and say, ah, oh yes, we'll forgive your debt because you were forced into this by your kid's diabetes or your husband's death. No way. This bill makes judges ignore your circumstances and set payments, creating debtors for life, doing at home what the World Bank has done overseas for years. Yes, the corporate politicians will teach us responsibility 'til it hurts. Media deceives, but workers can't miss the connections over time.

In the wealthiest country in the world, huge tax cuts combined with military expenses make debt for our grandchildren and cuts in our services. But we have needs. We need retirement security; half our grandparents would live in poverty otherwise. We need insurance so if we get killed and can't work, our children are protected. We need medical care that keeps folks healthy, separate from jobs and paid for collectively and progressively. If we had proper preventive care in Vermont, we wouldn't have a third of our soldiers returned home for medical reasons. We need our government to help solve real collective crises like childcare costs, healthcare, and fossil fuels, but political donations cannot be the deciding factor. This is supposed to be a democracy. And taxing the rich is never discussed. We're the ones who sacrifice. It's a neo-con game.

And neo-cons are not working for democracy, either here or in Iraq. Unions increase democracy. Unions indicate how well workers are doing overall, and unions are now down to 11% here. This means American families are hurting. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants… It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 … This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Eisenhower got it. But in 1945, corporations paid 1/3 of all taxes collected. By 2003, their share was down to 7%. 3/5ths of corporations paid no taxes between '96 and 2000. Given huge tax cuts, they free-traded our manufacturing away. Huge tax cuts given while real wages dropped since the 70's and families could only keep up by working ridiculous hours. Huge tax cuts to the rich, and they dare to come back to us now to pay for their war. The military consumes 50% of our taxes and corporations and the rich pay even less now. The wealthiest country in the world and we are continually trying to stave off cuts. And we know what rending our social fabric means. It means less food stamp eligibility, less FDA inspections, less highway improvements, less health care, less small business assistance, less for veterans, less foster care, less Medicaid, less Medicare, less for poverty, less for farmers, seniors, students, cops, veterans, the homeless, and the hungry. All so the rich can have more money.

Vermont's soldiers are our co-workers, neighbors, friends, relatives, and our children. Yes, they're volunteers, but most are economic draftees looking for a better life. Turned down at Wal Mart, Jessica Lynch went to Iraq. This war betrayed soldiers' faith that their government wouldn't deceive them. This was not defensive. Vermont's soldiers signed up to protect people, not corporations. And to those who say this is not a local issue, I say this; we pay for the war here. We're buried here, and we'll all live here with Vermont vets and any ghosts they bring home. At the Workers' Center we're urging workers to stand and fight. The workers who build the wealth are under attack. The Iraqis struck at gunpoint. Who dies in wars? We do. Who pays? We do. Who mourns? We do. Who profits? Not us. This folks, is class war and it's fought locally, with wages, taxes, jobs, retirement, healthcare. Our working class soldiers are fighting for a system that is stacked high against them, there and here. We stand here today demanding justice, a society of our priorities, not those pushed down from the 5% at the top of the economic ladder. "Never have so few taken so much from so many for so long."

Our troops should not be sacrificed to make the world safe for corporations, or to distract us from economic disaster brewing at home. Resources should be redirected from the military to things workers really need, while providing adjustment assistance for those displaced. In the end, the best way to support troops is to make sure they don't fight wars that shouldn't be fought, wars for oil and empire, wars that don't serve working class interests here or elsewhere. We must repudiate bullying foreign policies, dismantle our worldwide military bases, and renounce offensive wars. Otherwise we will only send more loved ones to die for no good reason in a world made more dangerous by the arrogance of our government. We want our benefits and we want our troops home now.

Dawn Stanger is a Teamster and Vice-President of the Vermont Workers' Center

IBM Essex Junction, VT Plant “Honored” With 2004 Dirty Dozen Award

Charging that IBM does not adequately protect their employees, their families and the community at large from dangerous solvents and chemicals used in the manufacturing process, the Alliance @IBM / CWA Local 1701 joined the Toxics Action Center to present the company with a 2004 Dirty Dozen Award. The Alliance@IBM is an alternative union campaign representing IBM employees across the United States, and the Toxics Action Center is a New England-based environmental group. They were joined by a representative of the Vermont Workers’ Center / Jobs with Justice and the Political Director of the Vermont State Labor Council.

More from Alliance@IBM »

Unions work for everyone

Op-Ed in Burlington Free Press, August 26, 2003

By James Haslam

The main reason people need unions is to have a voice about their working conditions. As the saying suggests, "united we bargain, divided we beg."

Organizing a union is the only way for workers to wrench fairness from the corporate system. As Labor Day approaches, more and more workers are realizing the value of union membership. In Vermont, from the nurses at Fletcher Allen, to UVM's faculty, to the co-op workers at City Market and Hunger Mountain, thousands of workers are organizing unions.

The Fletcher Allen RNs recently demonstrated how forming a union works, and how union members can make real changes at work. After several unsuccessful attempts where management spent millions on anti-union campaigns, last Oct. 4, the RNs voted two to one to unionize.

Since poor working conditions and short staffing in health care can lead to people dying, AFT Local 5221 could then discuss and take initiative on things they wanted changed. So they negotiated a contract that, among other things, insisted upon safe "nurse-to-patient staffing ratios" - contract language that can save patients' lives. They also helped lead a statewide Patient Safety Act, which calls for the same for all our state's hospitals. The lesson is that, being organized, they were able to accomplish things that they would not be able to do as individuals.

This is also an example of unions creating a more just society. When only the employer class organizes, into chambers of commerce, business and industry associations, and PACs, corporate interests control public policy. But when workers organize, they can change public policy so it serves working class families, not just the rich.

When you see the bumper sticker, "The Labor Movement: The Folks That Brought You the Weekend," remember that it was union activists who fought to win Social Security, paid sick leave, vacations, and holidays, work place health and safety laws, public education, the eight-hour day, the 40-hour week, protection from discrimination and more. It has always been a fight to push forward social reforms, but only in struggle is victory possible.

Layoffs result when corporate executives put profit above public good. Workers at IBM are now organizing a union, Alliance@IBM with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). They have given their lives to IBM yet now they're being dumped, and rich executives are dictating their lay-off conditions. Verizon too wants to move jobs, eliminate and contract out work. But in contrast to IBM, Verizon employees (CWA members and those in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) are currently negotiating to keep their jobs. The fact that these workers have a union contract and can actively protect their livelihood, instead of being at the mercy of management's whims, is important for Vermont.

Since workers are consumers, their jobs are vital to all local commerce. With free trade policies and corporate globalization leading to the loss of good jobs, the 500-plus Verizon jobs represent some of the last good jobs in Vermont. Workers' collective interests often extend to greater community interests.

Labor Day is the time to honor the contribution workers have made in society. It's a time to celebrate our struggles and victories to improve our lives and our communities.

On Saturday Aug. 30, unionized nurses, Verizon workers, and hundreds of other workers with their families will gather for the 3rd Annual Labor Parade and Picnic in Burlington. The parade starts at 11 a.m. at H.O. Wheeler School and ends at Roosevelt Park, where there will be music, speakers, and free food (prepared with volunteer union labor). It's time to celebrate Vermont's exciting labor movement, and help put the "move" in the movement.

James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers' Center, a nonprofit workers' rights organization based in Montpelier.

Vermont Workers and Communities Fight for Healthcare Justice

By James Haslam, Director, Vermont Workers' Center
Published in Labor Notes, August 2003



For the nurses of Vermont’s largest hospital, Fletcher Allen, three times was not the charm. The more than 1,200 registered nurses of the hospital had tried unsuccessfully to form a union three times over the previous decade in the face of management’s aggressive union-busting tactics.

On their fourth try, with the help of the Vermont Workers’ Center / Jobs with Justice and the AFL-CIO, the nurses had an unprecedented level of community support. This helped to tip the scales in their favor. In the latest and most dramatic victory in the Workers’ Center’s Justice for Healthcare Workers Campaign, the Fletcher Allen nurses, organized as new members of United Professions of Vermont/American Federation of Teachers Local 5221, won their contract campaign.

The proposed new agreement includes a ban on floating, a ban on mandatory overtime (which will ensure that nurses are not forced to work grueling back-to-back shifts) and staffing ratios, based on the California ratios with an additional mechanism which gives nurses the ability to change ratios and control over the Hospital's staffing budget -- which makes it among the best agreements in the country in terms of staffing language.

BUILDING COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

The groundswell of public support for the nurses’ historic victory represents the culmination of years of Workers’ Center community mobilization around a series of union struggles. In 1998, the United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 went on strike at Copley Hospital. It was big news in a small Vermont community.

The Workers’ Center helped by doing a tremendous amount of leafleting, phonebanking, writing letters to the editor, coordinating rides for community members to our picket line, calling the hospital CEO, and attending a huge rally. They used similar mobilization tactics later that same year, when nurses at Rutland Regional Medical Center organized a union, Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 6, and had to withstand an anti-union decertification drive after not getting their first contract. With the community’s help, the union defeated the decertification drive and got their first contract.

When workers at Berlin Health and Rehabilitation Center (BH&RC) in central Vermont organized with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) in 2000 to become the first unionized private nursing home in the state, the Workers’ Center put its muscle behind their struggle. Adding to the challenge was the hiring, by the corporation that ran BH&RC, of the notorious union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis. The UE and the Workers’ Center fought the Jackson Lewis anti-union campaign by organizing an Appeal to Fairness petition that called on the company to end the campaign and respect the workers’ right to organize. Religious leaders, politicians, and hundreds of community members heeded the call to sign the petition.

The Appeal to Fairness was delivered to the BH&RC administration by a community delegation. Just as important, it was also given to all the nursing home workers, so they knew their community was behind them. The workers prevailed and formed a union, UE Local 254, and entered into 19 arduous months of bargaining to win a first contract.

To support the workers through this struggle, the Workers’ Center formed a community support committee that organized candlelight vigils, rallies, targeted parades, and informational pickets at BH&RC and its sister facilities throughout the state.

Community delegations were sent to the U.S. headquarters of the corporation that owns BH&RC and a stockholders meeting in Toronto, and also made several visits to the nursing home itself. With the tremendous commitment of a core group of leaders from the organizing committee at this nursing home (which sees approximately 70% annual worker turnover) supported by intense, organized community pressure, the workers were able to achieve their purpose and more.

Not only did the BH&RC workers get their contract in January 2002, but the state of Vermont, responding to all the attention generated by this campaign (which focused on the need for decent working conditions and adequate staffing in nursing homes) implemented the first ever staffing rules for Vermont nursing homes.

LARGER CAMPAIGN

During this time of community organizing around the BH&RC workers, the Workers’ Center realized that short-staffing and poverty wages were prevalent in all other nursing homes in the state as well. And with five or more unions representing healthcare workers in Vermont, something needed to be done to bring them all together to work in common struggle. From these realizations, the “Justice for Healthcare Workers” campaign was born.

The campaign has been successful because it has enabled Vermont’s five health care unions, along with community activists from all over the state, to work together towards a common goal. It has also framed the various healthcare worker struggles throughout the state as one big struggle, in the broader context of healthcare reform and as a social justice cause.

The Workers’ Center also sees the Fletcher Allen campaign as a groundbreaking victory in healthcare that creates the potential for fixing a broken healthcare system in Vermont. It has held rallies, forums, workshops and public education events around the need for universal healthcare access. As healthcare workers organize and unite their struggles, they can help lead the fight for worker justice and quality, and affordable healthcare for all. With eight of twelve Vermont hospitals, all nursing homes but one and thousands of other healthcare workers unorganized, we look forward to building off these recent victories to win many more for both the labor and healthcare justice movements!

Victory at Fletcher Allen Healthcare

The Fletcher Allen nurses reached a tentative agreement, moments before the rally this Saturday, June 21st (see their news release below)!

Congratulations to all of the Fletcher Allen nurses! You were incredibly strong, committed and united through this whole struggle - and with this strength you've accomplished great things!

The nurses will vote on the settlement in the coming days, but what they've won in this settlement is nothing short of historic. It is a huge victory for the nurses at Fletcher Allen, of course, but also for all Vermont nurses, as Fletcher Allen sets the standard for the state. It's a big win for all Vermonters, who will benefit from the improved quality patient care that nurses will be able to provide. And it's even bigger than that, for the triumph at Fletcher Allen is one for nurses throughout the country (they are the first hospital in the country to have a ban on mandatory overtime and one of ten who have won nurse-to-patient staffing ratios).

In Vermont, this is a gigantic victory for all Vermont workers, as it is the type of win that puts the "move" in the labor movement. Through the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign, we will continue to work with the Fletcher Allen nurses and other VT healthcare local unions to help healthcare workers throughout the state organize for their rights. We want to thank all of you who helped the Fletcher Allen nurses in this struggle for justice and quality patient care. I would love to mention names, but there are literally thousands of people who got involved in many ways.

I would like to share one message we received just before the settlement from someone involved in the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign:

"I'm unfortunately unable to attend the rally but I'll be there in spirit. We have an outpost of Fletcher Allen in our hospital here in Rutland (Dialysis Center). The chief of surgery asked me today, a full-time O.R. nurse, if there were a picket line in Rutland would I cross it to come to work. The emphatic answer is 'NO' "
---- in solidarity, Tisa Farrow, RN (Rutland Regional Medical Center Chief Steward, OPEIU, local 6, AFL-CIO).

Thanks to Tisa and so many others whose solidarity and support really made a difference!

James Haslam
Vermont Workers' Center, Director

NURSES CHEER SETTLEMENT OF A FAIR CONTRACT

Rally Celebrates the Beginning of a New Day at Fletcher Allen

On Saturday, an estimated 600 community members, local leaders, and nurses gathered together outside of the hospital to celebrate the long-desired settlement of a fair contract with the Fletcher Allen nurses' union.

"We are ecstatic at what we were able to achieve in these negotiations," said Jen Henry, RN, a member of the Bargaining Team. "Today, we can say that it is truly a new day at Fletcher Allen."

Settlement came in the early afternoon on Saturday, just a few hours before the rally, and after three days of informational picketing by the nurses drew an overwhelmingly positive community response. The nurses had been engaged in contract talks with the administration since December. The contract agreement was approved by the Bargaining Team at approximately one in the afternoon on Saturday after a round-the-clock bargaining session, and is expected to be approved by the full union membership in a final vote that will take place on a date in the near future that is yet to be determined.

"This contract will bring Fletcher Allen a long way towards becoming a world-class hospital," said Barbara Segal, RN, co-chair of the Bargaining Team. "We are incredibly happy for our patients, who can expect great things because of this."

Key changes to past Fletcher Allen policy in the contract include:

* Safe nurse-to-patient ratios, which will greatly improve the time that nurses have to spend with each patient;
* A ban on mandatory overtime, which will ensure that nurses are not forced to work grueling back-to-back shifts;
* often regardless of whether or not they had the correct certifications to perform all the necessary duties on that second unit; and
* An economic package that will improve the hospital's ability to recruit and retain qualified nurses in a time when a shortage of qualified nurses has created a highly competitive job market across the country.

"This day has been a long time in coming," said Steve Chamberlin, RN, co-chair of the Bargaining Team. "Finally, we nurses at Fletcher Allen will have the tools that we need to provide the quality and safety in care that our patients deserve. We congratulate the administration in coming to an agreement with us that is good for the patients, the nurses, and the community."

MORE INFO: Contact VT Workers: Center 802-229-0009 or the Fletcher Allen Nurses' Union, UPV/AFT Local 5221 at 802-657-4040. To learn more about the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign, email info@workerscenter.org

Universal Healthcare Now!

June 2003, Op-Ed in Rutland Herald and Times Argus

By Sue Lucas, RN, President of United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 at Copley Hospital

As someone whose job is to heal people when they are sick and keep them healthy, my heart aches because our healthcare system is not working. We need a universal health care system that covers everybody, not one which is becoming too expensive for most of us.

Simply put, our health care system is in a crisis state. We all know some of the obvious reasons, but as a Registered Nurse, I am acutely aware of the damaging working conditions which are actually forcing good, caring medical personnel out of the industry, making a bad situation all that much worse. I take pride in the level of care I can give those patients I am responsible for, and who are sick and in need. But all too often, systematic short staffing compromises our ability to provide the quality of care we were trained to do.

And I know of the growing number of people who are sick or hurt that don’t even make it in to see us! There are over 40 million people in the United States who do not have health insurance of any kind. There are tens of millions more who are underinsured. For those of us who do have health insurance, premiums are escalating rapidly, with employers increasingly passing the costs on to workers. Employers are seeking to insulate their profits from the health care crisis by forcing their workers to pick up the tab. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, employee premium contributions for single coverage grew by almost 27 percent on average and for family coverage by 16 percent from 2001 to 2002, when total premiums for job-based coverage grew by 12.7 percent.

The problems are both local and national. Last November, Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury provoked a two-week strike by demanding drastic increases in workers' contributions towards health insurance premiums. In January, workers at General Electric struck for 2 days over the issue of health insurance - the first nationwide strike at GE since 1969. But, while companies like GE and Verizon are hugely profitable and could easily afford to absorb increased health insurance costs, many smaller, non-profit and public employers with limited budgets are caught between the rock of increasing costs and the hard place of workers who simply cannot afford to contribute any more out of their own pockets.

In our beautiful state, the state programs that act as band-aids on our broken health care system - VHAP and Dr. Dynasaur - are threatened because of the government budget crisis. As premium contributions and co-pays for these programs rise, their beneficiaries - most of whom are children - will forego needed preventative care. From my work, I see firsthand that people who do without preventative care are more likely to end up in the emergency room. This drives up the total costs for the system. And they don’t come in for sniffles.

We need universal coverage of health care. Not only because health care is a basic right that should be available to everyone, but also because it makes financial sense. The General Accounting Office in 1991 stated that, "If the United States were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer with the authority to oversee the healthcare system, the savings in administrative costs would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."

The movement to fix the health care system and develop one which is universal is growing. Ohio Congressman and Presidential Candidate, Dennis Kucinich, has introduced a universal healthcare plan. Locally, last September, over a thousand Vermonters flooded Montpelier for a universal health care rally called Prescription For Change. A new coalition - the Coalition for Vermont Universal Healthcare System – is working to bring more groups in Vermont together to make a new healthcare system happen.

Seeing the ills of the current approach first hand, day in and day out, health care workers are also organizing to fix the current system and move to one which treats people as patients, not consumers. In the face of the corrupt and misguided administration at Vermont’s largest medical institution, the RNs at Fletcher Allen Health Care have formed a union and are now bargaining a contract which will prioritize quality patient care over profits. (Community members are invited to join them as they rally for a fair contract at Fletcher Allen’s main entrance on Colchester Avenue on June 21st at 3:30 P.M.) We nurses have also begun a Justice for Healthcare Workers campaign with the Vermont Workers’ Center. Our goal is to unite healthcare workers across the state in an effort to pass quality patient care legislation and support healthcare workers’ ability to organize unions across the state.

On June 5th, the workers at GE, Verizon, and other workplaces throughout New England are holding a Health Care for All Action Day and will wear stickers saying “Health Care For All: No Cuts in Benefits or Services.” As part of this action day, the factory workers who are members of UE Local 234 and work at Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury will work with other community groups to hold a vigil for universal healthcare at 4 P.M. A movement of workers, the uninsured, seniors, small business owners and health care providers is beginning to build strength. We need to stand together to demand a solution to fix a broken system and provide affordable quality healthcare for us all.

Sue Lucas, RN is the president of United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 at Copley Hospital and helps coordinate the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign of the Vermont Workers’ Center. With questions or comments call 802-229-0009 or email info [at] workerscenter [dot] org.

Livable Wage Rally Speech

From Livable Wage March and Rally, April 12, 2003

By Cindy Bubrouski
Hello! I'm Cindy Bubrouski. I'm an Instructional Assistant at Montpelier High School and have worked in that district for six years. I am also the president and chief negotiator of our VTNEA local, the Montpelier Educational Support Staff Association.

Instructional Assistants (or paraprofessionals) perform a wide variety of educational support services, from providing individual and small group instruction, to personal care. Every day, we do our best to educate students who are cognitively, physically, emotionally, or behaviorally challenged. Many of us are trained in facilitative communication, or have received specialized training to teach reading and writing. Many of us assist classroom teachers, and many of us provide direct instruction. All of us know how challenging our jobs are.

Historically, school districts have seen fit to devalue our work. For too long we have been an invisible workforce, the "orphans" of the school districts. Paraprofessionals across the state have been caught up in a web of low wages, and nonexistent or unaffordable healthcare benefits. We have seen our job responsibilities continue to grow, but not our wages and benefits.

Most school districts still offer starting wages more than $3.00 an hour BELOW the State of Vermont's Joint Fiscal Office's newest 2003 Livable Wage figure of $11.58 an hour. Keep in mind, that figure represents a single person working a full-year, and receiving employer- assisted health benefits. Most paras are not offered affordable health benefits, and are forced to rely on Vermont's public assistance services. This is a disgrace, and a slap in the face to hardworking, dedicated educators. Who ends up paying for the benefits that school districts withhold from their paraprofessionals? We all do!

A 1995 Occupational Wages report, from the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce, illustrates how paraprofessional hourly wages have not kept pace with inflation. The average wage for a "teacher's aide" in 1995 was $8.60. That was almost 8 years ago! Now I ask you, how many of your school districts still pay their paras that $8.60 (or less) as a starting wage? It's shameful! Paraprofessionals deserve a livable wage that provides for the basic necessities!

What can we do? Friends, first of all, if your district's paras aren't organized, form an association and get on board with VTNEA! It is time to head to the collective bargaining table with your school board! If you are already organized, remember this above all else when you begin bargaining, START WITH THE LIVABLE WAGE AS YOUR BASE! $11.58! Know that what you settle for will not only effect your district's paraprofessionals, but will reverberate with every paraprofessional statewide. Stay strong. Begin and continue Livable Wage campaigns in your districts. Support one another. We are all in this together. As long as one paraprofessional earns a poverty wage, we are ALL the poorer for it! Vermont's school support staff deserve a respectable, livable wage!

Thank you.

Cindy Bubrouski is president of the Montpelier Educational Support Staff Association

The Livable Wage Battle Hymn

(to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic")

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the day
When we won't just work for peanuts
We will work for decent pay
So it's time to stop complaining
And draw action from our rage
In the fight for a livable wage

CHORUS:
Come, let's join the great big chorus
No one else will do it for us
And we know we'll win the day
In our fight for decent pay
Cause the union makes us strong

We know our work is valuable
Our bosses know it too
And the workers who we stand beside
Depend on what we do
In our jobs and our communities
We're just like super glue
Cause the union makes us strong

CHORUS

Well they say the times are tough out there
That taxes are too high
But we also pay those taxes
And watch health bills go sky-high
We're not asking for a free lunch
But we want our piece of pie
And the union makes us strong

CHORUS

(sung at April 12, 2003 Livable Wage March in Burlington)

Vermonters Need Livable Wages and a Fair Economy

April, 2003 Op-Ed in Burlington Free Press

By James Haslam, Director, Vermont Workers' Center

Vermont's working people are facing the greatest economic crisis in recent memory. Workers in Vermont and around the country are working harder, longer, and more productively than ever before, and yet we are being laid-off by profitable companies, asked to shoulder the costs and risks of health care, and watching our retirement savings being ripped off by unscrupulous corporate criminals. And while failing corporations like the airlines get bailed out with public money, laid-off workers whose unemployment benefits have run out see only cuts to the social programs that help us heat our homes, afford our rent, and feed our children.

In the midst of all these problems, working people need for our political and community leaders to stand up and confront this recession with programs and policies that make the lives of workers better, not worse. We need economic stimulus that puts money in the pockets of workers, who will spend it and boost the local economy, rather than the pockets of the very wealthiest members of our society. We need a universal health care system which covers everyone rather than continued attempts to shift the costs and risks of health care onto workers. And we need an adequate social safety net so that economic downturns do not push workers into bankruptcy, homelessness and despair.

During the Great Depression, workers, seniors and religious leaders stood up to demand that the government confront the economic crisis. The resulting legislation - Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act (which created the minimum wage), and the National Labor Relations Act (which legalized collective bargaining) - combined with public works spending, came to be known as the New Deal. The New Deal eased the immediate crisis by putting money in workers' pockets, pushed the country toward recovery, and insured that recovery, when in came, benefited working people.

Now is the time for working people and community members to mobilize to demand change. We need to support workers in the K-12 schools, at our nursing homes, hospitals, universities and grocery stores, who are standing up for livable wages. We need to insist that our political leaders work towards a fair economy by creating livable wage jobs, guaranteeing health care for all, and preserving an adequate social safety net. Come to the March for Livable Wages and a Fair Economy in Burlington on April 12th, because united, we can make our economy a fair economy for all.

Vermont Workers' Center Resolution Against the War

Adopted at 1/18/03 Steering Committee Meeting

WHEREAS, the Vermont Workers' Center has, in its mission, already resolved to fight for economic justice for all workers; and,

WHEREAS, the burdens and dangers of war would fall disproportionately on working people, the poor, and people of color, both at home and abroad; and

WHEREAS, we have no quarrel with the working-class in Iraq who will suffer most, having already suffered long under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and sanctions; and

WHEREAS, under the ongoing war on terrorism, corporate interests received taxpayer bailouts and tax cuts, yet ordinary workers face serious economic problems that are not addressed; job losses, falling wages, health-care insecurity, pension and 401k losses; and

WHEREAS, the war will dramatically increase military spending. Vermont's share is estimated now at $143 million. The cost of the war necessitates cuts in essential services; education, housing, social security, unemployment benefits, healthcare, transportation, clean water and air, all at a time when our tax dollars could be used for retraining and jobs, and to plug local deficits caused by tax cuts.

WHEREAS, the war covers for corporate corruption and union-busting; the federal government's use of Taft-Hartley against the ILWU, the privatization of public jobs (AFGE) under the Homeland Security Act, and other offenses to the right of workers to protest, organize, and strike; and

WHEREAS, workers responded to 9/11 with heroism, and have always responded with the public at heart. The USA PATRIOT act and similar measures invade privacy and expand government's ability to detain workers based on mere suspicion, to conduct telephone and internet surveillance and secret searches, and to define people engaged in political protest as "domestic terrorists". The TIA and TIPS programs will further scrutinize our economic and personal lives; and

WHEREAS, all of Vermont's Congressmen voted against this war, and the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney expressed concern about the motives for this war and its domestic components; and

WHEREAS, fear increases racism, and U.S. citizens feel no more secure after war in Afghanistan; and,

WHEREAS, there is no credible evidence linking Iraq to the 9/11 attacks; and

WHEREAS, we value the lives of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, who will have to fight in this war, more than control of Middle East oil; and,

WHEREAS, "pre-emptive", "unilateral" policies do not represent the necessary global perspective; genuine security will be achieved only by fighting world-wide for social and economic justice, therefore:

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED that the Vermont Workers' Center publicly opposes the war on Iraq; and we urge supportive members and affiliates to get involved in local efforts to stop this war.

Labor Statement Against the War

At Montpelier Antiwar Rally, January 18, 2003

By Jonathan Kissam

Good afternoon.

I bring greeting on behalf of the national executive board of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE). UE was the first national union to denounce this war, back in September, but we have been joined by many others in the trade union movement, including the 1.3-million member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and dozens if not hundreds of local and regional labor organizations. Just last Saturday, over 100 trade unionists representing more than 2 million workers gathered in Chicago to found U.S. Labor Against the War. And just this morning, the Vermont Workers Center, a labor-community coalition including many Vermont unions such as the Vermont State Employees Association, the United Nurses and Allied Professionals at Copley Hospital, the Alliance@IBM and the Washington-Orange County Central Labor Council, passed a resolution against the war.

The mission of the labor movement is to fight for justice for working people. This war is a threat to the lives, the economic well-being, and the civil liberties of workers, both here and in Iraq, so we in the labor movement must speak out against it.

This war is a threat to our lives. The history of warfare is for the most part the history of some rich guy getting into an argument with some other rich guy about some stuff - land, oil - and then large numbers of working people have to go fight other working people who we really have no quarrel with. This war clearly fits the pattern - it's one unelected oil tycoon wanting to grab oil from another unelected oil tycoon. As UE has unequivocally stated, no one, not a single American and not a single Iraqi, should die to boost the profits of oil and military corporations.

This war is a threat to our economic well-being. Over the past year, we have witnessed a tidal wave of corporate corruption, as the con artists and kleptomaniacs in charge of corporations like Enron have looted their employee's retirement funds, laid off tens of thousands of workers, and rewarded themselves richly with stock options, golden parachutes, and the ill-gotten gains of insider trading. Meanwhile, Bush has skillfully used the threat of war with Iraq to distract the American public from this corporate malfeasance, and to prevent any meaningful reform. Furthermore, the costs of this war will preclude the federal spending we so desperately need for infrastructure and schools, and for rebuilding our manufacturing base -- investments that would provide real economic stimulus and put people back to work. And this war will push the economy even further into recession, while war spending draws money away from our already inadequate social safety net. It is criminal that in the richest country on earth, twelve percent of the population, including twelve million children, live in poverty, and it is doubly criminal that Bush is proposing to divert resources away from social spending to pay for an unjust war.

This war is a threat to our freedom. The assault on civil liberties is an integral part of this war, and part of that assault is a vicious attack on trade union rights. When workers being merged into the new Department of Homeland Security were excluding from collective bargaining rights and civil service protections, we were told that it was justified in the name of "national security." Last week, workers at the Transportation Security Administration were told, in effect, that the clause in the UN Declaration of Human Rights guaranteeing all workers the right to collective bargaining does not apply to them, again in the name of "national security." And last November, also citing "national security," the Bush administration used an injunction to force the west coast longshore workers to work essentially under government supervision, stripping workers in this highly dangerous industry of their rights to take collective action to protect their own safety, life and limb. Despite all this, there is hope. If we stand together, we can stop this war. If we stand together, we can build a peaceful and just tomorrow.

No War on Iraq!
Fight for a Fair Economy!
Defend Our Civil Liberties!

Thank you.

Jonathan Kissam is Secretary-Treasurer of District 2 of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)

Labor Struggles Are Community Struggles

Op-Ed In the Rutland Herald and Times Argus newspapers, December 2002

By James Haslam

When workers organize to collectively bargain fair wages, benefits, and safe working conditions they are exercising a basic and important human right. They are struggling for dignity and justice at work, but also in the local community.

“Working conditions are living conditions. Healthy and safe workplaces that compensate fairly, raise the standard of living in our communities,” says Dan Brush, President of GCIU 745c, the union at Capital City Press in Barre. “The effects of poverty, such as crime, domestic violence, and untreated illness, are devastating to a healthy community. I strongly believe that unions make communities better places to live.”

The connections between people organizing unions and the benefits to greater society are endless. Unions struggled for many benefits we now take for granted, such as the eight-hour-day, the minimum wage, social security, the end of child labor and the public school system. In Vermont, we have some more recent examples.

In August of 2000, over a hundred nursing home workers organized a union at Berlin Health & Rehabilitation Center (BH&RC) for livable wages and working conditions, but also for the ability to provide proper care. In doing so they created a public debate about proper staffing, and shed light on industry-wide problems. So the state agencies investigated, and because of those members, regulatory steps have begun to assure proper staffing in Vermont’s nursing homes. Quality care also united over a thousand Registered Nurses at Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC) to form a union in October. We’re all better off now that nurses have a voice with management.

But organizing isn’t easy. The laws, which supposedly protect our right to organize, are weak and poorly enforced. Employers harass, misinform and intimidate to create confusion to scare their employees from organizing. It’s a $300-million a year industry consulting corporations to use these coercive tactics. Some of the biggest national union-busting firms have been involved in local organizing campaigns. BH&RC hired Jackson & Lewis out of Connecticut (who are holding a seminar on “How to Stay Union-free” for healthcare employers throughout Vermont and New Hampshire on December 12th in White River Junction at Hotel Coolidge where dozens of community members plan to protest this activity in our community). FAHC hired Adams, Haskell, Nash & Sheridan from Kentucky. Both corporations waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on these union-busters whose sole job to thwart workers from organizing. To succeed despite these obstacles, workers need support from the community.

“The community support we got made a tremendous difference,” says Jennifer Henry, RN at Fletcher Allen. “Knowing so many people were behind us went a long way saying what we were doing was right and we could win.” [On October 3 & 4, the RN’s voted almost 2-to-1 to form a union despite the expensive campaign waged against them.]

Unionized workers bargain for the whole job market. For instance, the wage increases and benefits the Burlington nurses negotiate will positively affect other healthcare workers throughout Vermont. With their ability to negotiate, manufacturing unions raise the bar for the rest in the industry. And don’t believe the myth that by forming a union and bargaining forces corporations to relocate out of Vermont. That’s just a fear tactic from employers who want to retain the power to dictate everything. Statistically, non-union plants move more often than union plants.

“We are the absolute last people who want to see our plant move,” says Bob South, President of UE Local 234, the union at Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury. “If the company is hurting financially, we invite them to open the books so we can be part of the discussion of how to keep things running, and still get treated fairly. We pray that they stay, but if they leave, we’re better off having a union to negotiate the terms of a severance package.”

In our system, unions are the best way to fight for economic justice and safe working conditions. And as wealth disparity continues to grow, it becomes harder to find good jobs in Vermont and more difficult to support families. We have to fight back as a community.

Recently the religious community has gotten involved in labor struggles, many issuing teachings on the topic like the following from the Roman Catholic Church:

“The Church fully supports the rights of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions. This is a specific application of the more general right to associate…No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore, we firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably seen in this country, to break existing unions or prevent workers from organizing.”

The community makes a difference. Just because laws that protect workers are inadequate, it doesn’t mean we have to tolerate intimidating corporate behavior. If neighbors, friends and congregations stand together with workers we can make union-busting campaigns unacceptable. We can hold corporations accountable to the values we hold dear - democracy, freedom and equality. Labor struggles are community struggles and we all need to get involved.

James Haslam is the director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, a community organization committed to fighting for workers’ rights. With questions or comments contact 802-229-0009 or info [at] workerscenter [dot] org