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AFL-CIO Calls for Right to
Join a Union and to Health Care
TURN AMERICA AROUND!!
The drug
companies whine about research costs then make double-digit profits
while they spend twice as much on advertising than they do on
developing new drugs—straight out of your co-pays.
The CEO responsible for the Bear Stearns financial
services collapse gets a multi-million dollar walking
package—guaranteed with your tax dollars—while foreclosures eat away
at our neighborhoods.
A worker writes to Local 201, “We whisper about
unions here. They tell us we’ll lose our jobs if we say “union” out
loud.” When it comes to the right to organize a union, we are
living under the Taliban.
Had enough? Time to Turn America Around!
The AFL-CIO, the national coalition of unions which
includes our own union, the Communications Workers of America, is
gearing up for an all-out effort to elect a President and
Congress to change course—and then to make sure they actually do
change course in 2009!
The goal is to educate our members, friends and
families on the key issues and then get them to vote in November.
The second stage is to take those issues to Congress and the new
President next year, leaving nothing to chance.
The CWA is leading the charge on health care reform and passing
the Employee Free Choice Act. We are calling for quality health
care for all Americans that will “control costs” with “a
strong role for government” to make it happen.
To give the millions of workers who say they want to join a
union a chance to actually do so, the Employee Free Choice Act will
let a union be recognized once a majority sign cards, provide
neutral arbitration to settle a first contract, and penalties for
the corporate criminals who violate labor law at their whim, without
the slightest fear of punishment.
The Campaign Gets Started:
Alex Brown, Local 201
Vice-President, has been asked by the CWA and Local 201 to lead the
effort for health care in Massachusetts. The Local 201 Legislative
Committee has started talking about the campaign and to push for
increased political COPE check-off for political contributions.
The Education Committee and the Legislative Committee are
working on plans to train “one-on-one” health care warriors, in May,
to take the campaigns into the Local 201 workplaces. They will be
circulating “Health Care and EFCA” (Employee Free Choice Act) cards
throughout the plant. The national CWA has committed funds to train
140 activists from our Local to be organizers—we need YOU to be a
Health Care Warrior.
The North Shore Labor Council is having an “Open Meeting”
to kick off the Health Care Campaign this month—Wednesday,
April 26 at the Local 201 Union Hall at 7 PM. All union members
and their families are invited to attend. Sixty union members and
retirees came to a Labor Council showing of the Michael Moore movie
“SiCKO” last month.
In May the NSLC will start going door-to-door in New Hampshire
with information about the Health Care Campaign, including facts
about Senator John McCain’s plan to tax your health care benefits.
As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka put it, “What’s
happening to our economy is the predictable result of the 30 years
of the conservative, neo-liberal, profit-skimming corporate policies
we’ve been talking about—free trade, deregulation, privatization and
de-unionization chief among them.”
We’ll be working all Spring, all Summer, and all Fall
to get rid of the free-market extremists. Then next year we hold
the feet to the fire of the new Congress and the new President.
DUES AND BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS
By Business Agent Ric Casilli
I reported to the April
Membership meeting that we not only had a balanced budget in 2007,
but realized a surplus for the Local of almost $62,000 with close to
a $1.5 million budget. I also presented a 2008 “guideline” budget
which, if followed, could realize about a $12,000 surplus at the
Local level.
These monies give us additional reserves in the event we come
up “short” in 2009 attempting to transition to the difficult dues
structure mandated by the IUE- CWA Merger Agreement of 2000.
As I stated before, Local 201 was not enthused about the dues
structure contained in the 2000 Merger Agreement between the IUE and
CWA. Local 201 campaigned against that piece of the Agreement. The
“cap”, on the amount of monies that have to be sent by Locals to the
International and Member’s Relief Fund (International Strike Fund),
is eliminated in Jan. 2009. Also, IUE locals must begin paying into
the CWA Defense Fund. The net result is that, in 2009, IUE Locals
are facing either huge dues increases or serious shortages of funds,
or a mixture of both.
A secondary complaint of Local 201, and other IUE locals, is
that the CWA dues structure is not “flat” like our traditional IUE
dues, every member at a location paying the same dues for the same
representation. CWA’s dues structure mandates no less then a
MINIMUM monthly dues of 2.25 hours of each individual’s pay,
thus individuals pay different amounts and those amounts could go up
during the year
National meetings held recently between IUE and CWA
representatives over these issues made a couple of things clear.
First, CWA will not change their fundamental dues
structure for the IUE division. They intend to charge IUE locals the
same way they charge all their traditional CWA Locals, taking their
International portions calculated on each individual’s hourly pay.
Any change to that would require a Convention vote which would have
little chance of passing. Thus, IUE Locals will have to
deal with the big dues increase or big cuts dilemma.
CWA informed the IUE locals that many CWA locals elect to charge
well above the 2.25 hours pay per month minimum dues required (some
up to 3.0 hours pay per month). All monies collected above the 2.25
minimum stay 100% with the Local union.
Second, CWA will approve an administrative “option” for IUE
Locals, whereas a Local can choose to keep a “flat based” dues
(every member of the bargaining unit pays the same) rather than dues
being charged differently for each hourly or salaried job rate. This
would not change the amount of money sent to the International, but
it would allow IUE Locals a traditional flat based
dues system as well as freeze members’ dues for the year,
maintaining just one annual dues increase. Dues would be
calculated by using the “average” pay rate of all members at a
location during the October before each upcoming dues year.
I am drawing up some proposals for our May 13th
Local 201 Full Policy Board Meeting. I will try to address
an approximate $330,000 gap ( mostly caused by new mandated
dues structure) in funds for Local 201 in 2009, will include
assessing a figure higher then the 2.25 hours pay per month minimum
required, tapping our local strike fund ( not International Strike
Fund), and making some modest cuts. It will include keeping
our traditional flat based dues system.
I would like to get over this hurdle with our proud Local
still active and effective on all 3 sides of the CWA triangle:
collective bargaining representation, organizing, and political/
community involvement. Some proposals may require Constitutional
changes, others may not. The Local 201 Policy Board and/or
Constitution Committee will need to discuss the different proposals
and they could come in front of the Membership Meetings any time
from May to the end of the year.
