WBEZ | unions

Laid-off workers open their own factory

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:29:00 -0500

A few hours before the grand opening of New Era Windows Cooperative, Melvin "Ricky" Maclin is standing in the middle of the factory, beaming.

"All of this is ours," he said. "We have our own trucks, our own forklifts. It’s a whole new world."

Maclin’s title is the same as the 17 other people who work here: worker-owner. Together, they vote on decisions about the factory. He proudly shows the place where they jackhammered the floor to install water pipes. He says the workers didn’t know how to complete some of the steps to set up the factory, but they learned. They also took classes on business management.

"At first we thought we were just lowly factory workers," Maclin said. "But now we see we have so much more in us."

Maclin says that being a worker-owner means that for the first time in his life he has control over what happens to him. Back in 2008, when the factory was closed for the first time, he was devastated.

"This was right before Christmas," he said. "I didn’t even know if I was going to be able to buy my grandkids a doll for Christmas. It was a dark time, it was like we were in a free fall."

Maclin and the other workers of Republic Window occupied the closed factory. They were later paid the severance wages that they were legally entitled to receive. A California- based company called Serious Materials bought the factory and hired back the workers. But not long after, they also closed down.

The workers decided to do things differently that time and buy the factory themselves.

Working World, the organization that provided them with a credit line to help open the cooperative, says it would cost most companies $5 million to open. It cost New Era less than $650,000.

The first windows made by the factory will be titled the “1110 Series” after their union, United Electric 1110.

Shannon Heffernan is a reporter for WBEZ. Follow her @shannon_h

Chicago mail carriers protest proposed cuts of Saturday delivery

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:10:00 -0600

More than 100 postal workers rallied in Chicago Monday to protest a proposed plan to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced the cuts earlier this month, and has since gone head-to-head with members of Congress over whether the U.S. Postal Service is authorized to cut six-day service without congressional approval.

Postal carriers have responded with protests across the country. In front of a post office in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood Monday, mailmen spilled out onto the street holding signs and calling on Postmaster Donahoe to step down.

“There’s a lot of other cost-cutting measures they can try that they haven’t even tried yet,” said Janet Rendant, who has been a mail carrier for 25 years. “At least give us a chance, give the public a chance.”

She and others accused the post office of cutting union jobs before seeking out other savings, and said they don’t believe cutting mail service will actually save the post office much money because it will also result in a loss of customers.

Mark Reynolds, who represents the postal service in Chicago, said they’ve already closed facilities and consolidated rural post offices to cut costs.

“Obviously these are very difficult decisions that we have to make,” said Reynolds. “But what we’re trying to do is to maintain customer service to the extent possible.”

The U.S. Postal Service ended its 2012 fiscal year nearly $16 billion in the hole, and they say cutting Saturday delivery will save them $1.9 billion annually. The National Association of Letter Carriers believes Congress can address the deficit by getting rid of a requirement that the postal service pre-fund its pension obligations.

A Congressional mandate that requires the post office to deliver mail six days a week expires March 27, but the cut to Saturday delivery would not go into effect until August. Delivery to PO boxes and package delivery would continue on Saturdays. Still, some congressmen think the postmaster general is outside of his purview, claiming any change to delivery days must be approved by Congress.

Mark Osier, a postal carrier for 38 years, attended the Chicago protest because he was concerned about younger postal workers’ jobs – and about his postal customers.

“People look forward to the mailman coming,” he said. “Especially older people. It’s their day’s event.”

The postal service paid for a survey in February that found that 80 percent of Americans favor cutting mail delivery to five days a week.

But Osier said six-day postal delivery is symbolic. He and others at the protest say they believe cutting Saturday service marks the beginning of the end for postal workers, and for a long-standing tradition of unionized postal delivery jobs.

“This is an institution, this is as American as apple pie,” Osier said. “We’ve gotta keep it going.”

Follow Lewis Wallace on Twitter.

Unions propose paying more to fix pension crisis

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:07:00 -0600

Public employees say they're willing to chip in more of their salaries toward their retirements if the state of Illinois can guarantee that it'll fully fund state pensions.

A coalition of unions called We Are One Illinois released a study Wednesday analyzing two pension proposals before lawmakers. It also proposes recommendations.

The group is made up of teachers, fire fighters, police officers, government workers and laborers. It says they're willing to pay another 2 percent, or about $350 million, of their salaries if the state can guarantee payments.

Illinois has the worst-in-the-nation pension problem with more than $95 billion in unfunded liability.

The group's other recommendations include closing tax loopholes to bring in $2 billion in revenue and calling for a pension summit next month with union participation.

Chicago makes deal with painters union to help put injured painters back to work

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 18:29:00 -0600

The city of Chicago has inked an agreement with the local painters union to allow injured employees to return to work more quickly, painting fire hydrants and curbs.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement Friday the Transitional Return to Work agreement with the local Painters District Council No. 14 will save money while providing better services to city residents.

Currently, the city's water management department contracts with outside vendors to paint the curbs and hydrants.

Meanwhile, injured painters who cannot perform their original assignments are recovering at home.

The new agreement will establish a work crew of up to two of those injured painters, provided they are able to do the work.

Emanuel said the Transitional Return to Work program could be a model for other unions.

Labor groups, employees protest during Black Friday at Chicago Wal-Mart stores

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 09:03:00 -0600

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Chicago area Wal-Marts today as holiday shoppers crowded the stores for Black Friday sales.

A group of Wal-Mart employees called the Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart (OUR Walmart) transported protesters around the city in buses. Protesters want the nation’s largest retailer to offer more dependable schedules, better health care and higher wages to employees.

Both sides have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board as part of an their ongoing dispute.

Park Forest resident and Wal-Mart employee Marie Kanger-Born said she hopes the Black Friday protests will give the movement momentum.

"The rest of the country has started to take notice of the plight of the Wal-Mart workers," Kanger-Born said. "This is America. Everyone should be able to work one job and make a decent livable wage."

Chicago resident and Sam's Club employee Rosetta Brown said she has protested how Wal-Mart treats workers like her for more than a decade.

"We’re just tired of taking it and we need to be heard," Brown said. "I mean, a person should be able to exercise their right to vote if they want a union. The workers are speaking out saying we need help and we’re coming together. What’s wrong with that? Wal-Mart should be listening and having a meeting with all of us."

Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg didn't address the protesters concerns directly but said Friday morning that the protests were not getting in the way of holiday shoppers. The company was on track to have its best-selling Black Friday event ever.

"Last night during our Black Friday events we had only 26 protests occurred at stores (nationwide) and many of them did not include any Wal-Mart associates," Lundberg said.

He said Wal-Mart estimated that fewer than 50 associates participated in protests nationwide on Friday night.

"In fact this year, roughly the same number of associates missed their scheduled shift as last year," Lundberg said.

Chicago Public Schools gets contract with SEIU

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:38:00 -0500

Chicago Public Schools has reached a tentative contract agreement with its second largest union.

The school system announced early Monday that it's negotiated a three-year contract with the Service Employees International Union Local 73. That union represents about 5,500 CPS employees, including custodians, special education classroom assistants, school bus aides and security workers.

Chicago Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard says he's grateful to the union's negotiators and members for their work during the talks.

SEIU Local 73 President Christine Boardman says the union will recommend the contract to its membership for a ratification vote. Boardman says the contract contains job security provisions that the union considered a top concern.

Negotiations continue between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Loretto Hospital registered nurses vote to unionize

Wed, 30 May 2012 16:16:00 -0500

Updated June 6, 2012, to include hospital management comments.

A union that has been trying for a decade to gain a foothold among hospital nurses in Chicago has won an election to represent 144 of them in the Austin neighborhood.

Registered nurses at Loretto Hospital voted 80-37 to bring in Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The two-day vote, which ended Saturday, allows AFSCME to negotiate the pay, benefits and work conditions of RNs at the hospital’s main facility, 645 S. Central Ave.

“If you don’t have happy nurses, you don’t have happy patients,” said Kora Fields, an RN in the hospital’s behavioral health unit who says she voted for the union.

“I live in the Austin area,” Fields said. “I grew up in the Austin area. My family comes to this hospital. My friends are treated here. I do love Loretto Hospital. But there needs to be increases in wages and we need to be respected as the professionals that we are.”

An AFSCME statement says pro-union nurses defied an “aggressive anti-union campaign” by Loretto management. The statement praises the nurses for their “unwavering determination to improve patient care and ensure fair treatment on the job.”

Loretto spokesman Jim Waller called the hospital’s nurse wages “competitive for the marketplace” and denied that management campaigned against AFSCME. “We were just being clear what being in a union is and that what’s paramount to us is patient safety,” he said.

Loretto, a 187-bed nonprofit facility, has helped lead an effort this year to exempt Illinois safety-net hospitals from proposed state Medicaid payment cuts.

The vote, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, makes Loretto the second Chicago hospital whose registered nurses have unionized this year. In January, National Nurses United won an election to represent 150 at the South Side’s Jackson Park Hospital and Medical Center.

Until the Jackson Park election, unions had made little progress in Chicago-area hospitals except those owned by university and government entities.

The Loretto vote marks a rebound for AFSCME, which lost a bruising election battle last summer at the Northwest Side’s Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center. RNs at that hospital voted against AFSCME after more than eight years of campaigning by the union.

Less pay, more training for new streets and sanitation workers

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:29:00 -0500

New Chicago streets and sanitation workers will see more training but less pay under a new agreement between the city and a major labor union.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the agreement Tuesday with Laborers Union 1001. He said the changes are projected to save taxpayers more than $30 million dollars over the next six years.

From now on, new hires for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation won't just be trained for one job, like rodent control. They'll also learn how to remove graffiti, trim trees,sweep the streets, hang signs and more. On average, the city hires 50 new workers for that department each year. Emanuel said the changes would make things more flexible for superintendents that need more hands on deck for a particular job.

"This is a new day. We have to write new rules. We can't get stuck in the old way," Emanuel said.

New hires will start at $20 dollars per hour, which is $13 dollars less than the current entry rate. Their rates per job will also change. Currently, a street and sanitation worker is paid the same rate, no matter which job he or she completes. The new rules state that someone who trims trees, for example, won't be paid the tree-trimming rate if he or she is needed for street sweeping.

Lou Phillips, head of Local 1001 said the plan was a win-win-win, especially with the city's tough budget situation.

"My service is providing work for my members and that's what I have to do. So if we need to be more competitive to fit into the scheme of things, then we need to be more competitive. We need to step up and do the right thing," Phillips said.

The new agreement won't affect any current employees in the union. They are still covered by a previously negotiated contract that runs for five more years. Phillips said he'd be talking to members this evening about the new rules.

Navistar layoffs add to doubts about incentives

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:22:00 -0600

Sears Holdings Corp. and Chicago’s financial exchanges have quit threatening to pull up stakes now that Illinois has enacted tax breaks for them. But it remains unclear whether state incentives to big companies are wise uses of economic-development resources. A personnel shift by Lisle-based Navistar International Corp. will add fresh doubt.

WBEZ has learned that some new jobs Navistar promised under an Illinois incentive agreement are coming to the state at the expense of unionized workers in Indiana.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced the Navistar incentives last year after the company threatened to pack up its headquarters in west suburban Warrenville and leave the state. The deal committed Illinois to a $64.7 million bundle of tax credits and job-training subsidies for the company. It committed Navistar to moving the headquarters to Lisle, a couple miles east, and to adding 400 full-time Illinois employees.

Navistar’s first report to the state about the jobs isn’t due until next year, so it’s hard to tell how many positions the company has created thus far. Employees confirm that dozens of new engineers and designers are working at the Lisle facility.

Navistar is creating those jobs as it phases out its Truck Development and Technology Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, just three hours southeast of Chicago. The latest Fort Wayne cuts came December 2, when the company laid off 130 employees, mostly engineers and designers who are United Auto Workers members. Before the layoff, some of the Fort Wayne workers had to help train their Lisle replacements.

Navistar has “rewritten the job descriptions so the people that used to do the work here — the union folks — don’t qualify anymore on paper,” said Craig Randolph, a design engineer the company laid off after 15 years at the Fort Wayne center. “So they’re eliminating the high-seniority, older employees like myself and replacing them with nonunion college kids — guys fresh out of school. And the taxpayers in Illinois are subsidizing the whole thing.”

Asked for a response, Navistar spokeswoman Karen Denning called it unusual for engineers to have union representation in the first place, a claim disputed by auto industry experts. Denning also sent a statement that said the company’s decision to shift the Fort Wayne jobs to Lisle was “based solely on our desire to compete in the global economy.” The statement added that Navistar has allowed many Fort Wayne employees to relocate to the Chicago area and stay with the company.

The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity sent a statement that doesn’t directly address whether the Navistar incentives have anything to do with the Fort Wayne layoffs. The statement says the state’s assistance to companies like Navistar over the last decade has “created and retained tens of thousands of jobs,” including unionized positions.

There’s not much proof to back up such claims. Scholars who study the effects of corporate incentives point out that companies decide where to operate based on proximity to suppliers, markets, transportation and so on. Another factor is whether workers are bargaining collectively. Just this summer, Navistar announced it was closing a unionized plant in Chatham, Ontario. The company has moved that work to nonunion facilities in Texas and Mexico.

“I don’t think that the [Illinois] incentives are causing Navistar to shift around its workforce,” said Rachel Weber, an associate professor of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “But they do send a message that the public sector and taxpayers are validating these kinds of activities. And, if you asked a lot of taxpayers in the state of Illinois whether they’d want to support these kinds of activities, I don’t think they’d be so happy about it.”

Weber pointed out that the economies of Illinois and Indiana intertwine closely and said it would help both states to quit poaching jobs from each other. Eliminating state incentives for corporations, she added, would free up resources for everything from workforce readiness to small-business incubation.

The union, for its part, didn’t return calls about the Fort Wayne layoffs and isn’t creating a public fuss about them. That raises questions about the role of UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams, who serves on Navistar’s board of directors under a decades-old agreement that reserved the seat for the union. Because Williams draws salaries from both the UAW and Navistar, and because he once directed a UAW region that includes Illinois but not Indiana, some of the union’s Fort Wayne members accuse him of hanging them out to dry.

The voters strike back: GOP shellacked

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:39:00 -0600

Looking over the election results from last night, all I can think is: It’s a good day in America.

Yes, yes, so much excitement about the defeat of the anti-union measure in Ohio, the weird “personhood” proposal in Mississippi, the fact that the Democratic governor was easily re-elected in Kentucky (land of Rand Paul), and a black woman is new mayor of Gary, Indiana.

But the craziest encouraging sign that perhaps there is some sense in the world? Arizona’s state senate president Russell Pearce, the man who wrote Arizona’s draconian immigration law, was sent packing in an historic recall election -- a thorough trouncing, in fact -- by his constituents.

Sure, he was replaced by a Republican, Jerry Lewis, but a moderate Republican, for Pete’s sake, and that’s an endangered species any sensible human being should want to save. And, sure, the Mormon Church had much to do with Pearce’s derailment but -- God! -- isn’t it great when religious institutions actually assist the meek? Plus, it makes up a little bit -- just a little itty bit -- for the Mormons’ ugly involvement in California’s Prop 8 debacle.

The cherry on top of all this would be if the Democrats actually kept the Republicans from controlling all of Virginia’s state government. Right now, it looks like the GOP has majorities in both houses, plus the governorship. A total of 86 votes may be the difference between absolute GOP control or some semblance of democracy.

But even better would be if the Democrats saw this for what it is: a warning shot that the GOP understands it’s not a majority party and won’t be playing that game much longer. Instead, the Republican party will be staking out particular territories for concentrated efforts, creating power bases to leverage national issues and policies that they can’t otherwise win. It’s a strategy born of the Tea Party, but now absolutely mainstreamed by the GOP.